Individual Certainty and Common Truth: Leibniz’s Philosophical Grounds for Toleration Mariangela PRIAROLO* Abstract. A noteworthy aspect of the theological controversies arisen both in Catholic and in Protestant fields after the Reformation is the use of Cartesian philosophy for supporting the respective creeds. Theologians such as Antoine Arnauld or Pierre Jurieu appeal to Descartes’s theory of […]
Author: dti
Spinoza’s True Religion: The Modern Origins of a Contemporary Floating Signifier
Spinoza’s True Religion: The Modern Origins of a Contemporary Floating Signifier Anya TOPOLSKI Abstract. It is my aim in this paper to demonstrate that the notion of true religion, in the wake of Spinoza’s Tractatus, is a floating signifier. A floating signifier is a signifier with a changing signification. What makes true religion a particularly […]
Attenuated Deism and Hume’s Propensity to Believe
Attenuated Deism and Hume’s Propensity to Believe C.M. LORKOWSKI* Abstract. In this paper, I argue that a weak, attenuated belief in a deity is a natural belief for Hume, that is, a belief provided naturally rather than by reason. The main opposition to this reading comes from the fact that such belief is not universal, […]
Kant’s Touchstone of Communication and the Public Use of Reason
Kant’s Touchstone of Communication and the Public Use of Reason Lawrence PASTERNACK Abstract. Nearly all of the work that has been done on Kant’s conception of public reason has focused on its socio-political significance. John Rawls, Onora O’Neill and others have explored its relevance to a well ordered democracy, to pluralism, to toleration, and so […]
The Day in Which All Cows Are White: Spinoza’s Acosmism in Another Light
The Day in Which All Cows Are White: Spinoza’s Acosmism in Another Light Jason DOCKSTADER Abstract. In this essay, I aim to defend Spinoza against Hegel’s claim that he annihilated finite things and the real differences they instantiate. To counter Hegel’s charge of acosmism, I try to conceive of a Spinozist kind of acosmism that […]
Philosophical Aspects of Philipp Melanchthon’s Œuvre
Philosophical Aspects of Philipp Melanchthon’s Œuvre Der Philosoph Melanchthon, ed. G. Frank and F. Mundt (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012), ISBN 978-3-11-026098-4, e-ISBN 978-3-11-026099-1, pp. 241 Sandra DRAGOMIR The purpose of the collective volume “Der Philosoph Melanchthon” edited by Günter Frank and Felix Mundt is to move the famous Reformer Philipp Melanchthon in the focus of […]
Living with Purpose: Meaningful Lives in Early Modern England Examined
Living with Purpose: Meaningful Lives in Early Modern England Examined Keith Thomas, The Ends of Life: Roads to Fulfilment in Early Modern England, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), ISBN 978-0-19-924723-3, pp. i-xvi + 1-393 Iordan AVRAMOV* “Ne frustra vixisse videar!” According to the philosopher Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655), the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) kept muttering […]
LETTERS BY EARLY MODERN PHILOSOPHERS
INTRODUCTION Invited editor: Filip BUYSE Although the habit of letter writing is gradually disappearing today, “writing a message that is written down or printed on paper and usually put in an envelope and sent to somebody” flourished during the seventeenth century.1 In this special issue we concentrate on some of these letters. In particular, we […]
Macaria, the hartlib circle, and husbanding creation
Macaria, the hartlib circle, and husbanding creation Oana MATEI Abstract. This paper attempts to interpret one of the rarely read seventeenth-century atypical utopias, A Description of the Famous Kingdome of Macaria. Macaria originated inside the Hartlib Circle, was anonymously published and, for a long time, was considered a work by Samuel Hartlib. Classified as an […]
Boyle, Spionza and The Hartlib circle: The correspondence which never took place
Boyle, Spionza and The Hartlib circle: The correspondence which never took place Filip BUYSE Abstract. There is a bundle of texts that have become known as the Boyle/Spinoza correspondence, yet Boyle and Spinoza never directly communicated. How did this so-called correspondence start? Why did Boyle invite the philosopher Spinoza to comment on his scientific experiments? […]