SUBJECTIVITY AND INDIVIDUALITY: TWO STRANDS IN EARLY MODERN PHILOSOPHY INTRODUCTION Andrea Strazzoni* For generations of scholars the emergence of the notion of human subjectivity has marked the shift to philosophical modernity. Mainly traced back toDescartes’s founding of philosophy on the Cogito and to Kant’s ‘Copernican Revolution’,1 the rise of subjectivity has been linked to the […]
Category: Vol. 9 no. 1
Early Modern Subjects and the Self-Conception of Philosophy in Germany 1556-1599
EARLY MODERN SUBJECTS AND THE SELF-CONCEPTION OF PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY 1556-1599 Stefan HEßBRÜGGEN-WALTER* Abstract. The paper discusses the concept of a subject as an actor’s category in early modern philosophy and asks whether contemporary notions of subjectivity can be meaningfully related to this early modern understanding of the concept. When thinking about the early modern […]
Oliva Sabuco and the Matter of the Matter
OLIVA SABUCO AND THE MATTER OF THE MATTER Steven BARBONE * Abstract. This exploratory study investigates the work of Oliva Sabuco de Nantes Barrera (1562–1626?). Sabuco’s major work, New Philosophy of Human Nature neither Known to nor Attained by the Great Ancient Philosophers, which Will Improve Human Life and Health (1587), in many ways foresees […]
The recentior nominalis of Leibniz’s Disputatio metaphysica de principio individui: Fulgentius Schautheet and his Controversia against the Thomistic Doctrine on the Principle of Individuation
THE RECENTIOR NOMINALIS OF LEIBNIZ’S DISPUTATIO METAPHYSICA DE PRINCIPIO INDIVIDUI: FULGENTIUS SCHAUTHEET AND HIS CONTROVERSIA AGAINST THE THOMISTIC DOCTRINE ON THE PRINCIPLE OF INDIVIDUATION Chiara CATALANO* Abstract. In his Disputatio metaphysica de principio individui (1663), Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) supports his own account of the principle of individuation on the basis of the authority of […]
Hume’s Individual: Agent or Billiard Ball?
HUME’S INDIVIDUAL: AGENT OR BILLIARD BALL? Hannah DAWSON* Abstract. It is hard to make out the agent in Hume’s science of man. For the most part, human beings appear operated on passively by the association and attraction of ideas, creatures of custom rather than creators of the future, more predictable even than the rising of […]
Diderot and Materialist Theories of the Self
DIDEROT AND MATERIALIST THEORIES OF THE SELF Charles T. WOLFE* Abstract. The concept of self has preeminently been asserted (in its many versions) as a core component of anti-reductionist, antinaturalistic philosophical positions, from Descartes to Husserl and beyond, with the exception of some hybrid or intermediate positions which declare rather glibly that, since we are […]
From Radical Materialist to Idealist: The History of Spinozism in the Netherlands
FROM RADICAL MATERIALIST TO IDEALIST: THE HISTORY OF SPINOZISM IN THE NETHERLANDS Henri Krop, Spinoza, een paradoxale icoon van Nederand (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2014), ISBN: 978 90 351 38711, 821 pp. Frank DAUDEIJ* Henri Krop, the author of this impressive monograph, declares that he himself is ‘not a Spinozist’. Consequentially, anyone looking for an essentialist […]
Cartesian Empiricisms
CARTESIAN EMPIRICISMS Mihnea Dobre and Tammy Nyden (eds.), Cartesian Empiricisms (Dordrecht: Springer, 2013), ISBN 978-94-007-7690-6, xiii, 326 pp. Alberto VANZO* Cartesian Empiricisms is a collection of twelve essays on seventeenth-century and early eighteenth-century authors – mostly natural philosophers – who were active in France, the Netherlands, Germany and England. The editors present them as “Cartesian […]
Robert Boyle’s Experimental Philosophy Revisited
ROBERT BOYLE’S EXPERIMENTAL PHILOSOPHY REVISITED “Robert Boyle”, eds. Michael Hunter and Elizabeth Boran, Intellectual History Review, Volume 25, Issue 1 (2015), ISSN: 1749-6977 (print), 1749-6985 (online), 131 pp. Dana JALOBEANU* As the two editors inform us in the preface, this special issue arose out of a colloquium held at the Edward Worth Library in Dublin, […]
Experiments in Early Modern Natural History and Natural Magic
EXPERIMENTS IN EARLY MODERN NATURAL HISTORY AND NATURAL MAGIC “Instruments and Arts of Inquiry: Natural History, Natural Magic and the Production of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe”, eds. Dana Jalobeanu and Cesare Pastorino, Journal of Early Modern Studies, Volume 3, Issue 1 (Spring 2014), ISSN: 2285-6382 (print), 2286-0290 (online), 153 pp. Doina-Cristina RUSU This special […]