Download The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy by Daniel Garber, Michael Ayers PDF

By Daniel Garber, Michael Ayers

The Cambridge heritage of seventeenth Century Philosophy bargains a uniquely finished and authoritative evaluate of early-modern philosophy written through a global workforce of experts. As with past Cambridge histories of philosophy the topic is handled by way of subject and topic, and because historical past doesn't come packaged in neat bundles, the topic can also be handled with nice temporal flexibility, incorporating common connection with medieval and Renaissance principles. the fundamental constitution of the volumes corresponds to the best way an informed seventeenth-century ecu may have equipped the area of philosophy. therefore, the historical past of technological know-how, spiritual doctrine, and politics characteristic very prominently. The narrative that unfolds starts off with an highbrow international ruled through a synthesis of Aristotelianism and scholastic philosophy, yet through the top of the interval the mechanistic or "corpuscularian" philosophy has emerged and exerted its complete effect on conventional metaphysics, ethics, theology, common sense, and epistemology.

Show description

Read Online or Download The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy (vol. 1) PDF

Best history & surveys books

Reid on Ethics (Philosophers in Depth)

This is often the first edited assortment to compile vintage items and new paintings by way of best students of Thomas Reid. The individuals discover key parts of Reid's ethical idea in an organised and thematic method, delivering a balanced and wide ranging quantity.

Fichte's Transcendental Philosophy: The Original Duplicity of Intelligence and Will (Modern European Philosophy)

This can be the 1st publication in English at the early works of the German thinker Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814). It examines the transcendental concept of self and global from the writings of Fichte's such a lot influential interval (1794-1800), and considers intimately lately stumbled on lectures at the Foundations of Transcendental Philosophy.

The pursuit of laziness : an idle interpretation of the enlightenment

We expect of the Enlightenment as an period ruled via principles of growth, construction, and industry--not an period that preferred the lax and indolent person. yet used to be the Enlightenment in basic terms in regards to the unceasing development of self and society? The Pursuit of Laziness examines ethical, political, and financial treatises of the interval, and divulges that the most important eighteenth-century texts did locate worth in idleness and nonproductivity.

Additional info for The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy (vol. 1)

Example text

In this way, knowledge having the requisite degree of certainty may be attained. ‘To avoid all errors,’ he says, ‘nothing more is required…than to use the most common rules of logic with great constancy and rigor’ (40). It is not necessary first to prove the existence and goodness of God, which would not be possible without these rules anyhow. The fact that these rules presuppose the validity of the two basic principles mentioned is no cause for worry; and the fact that they themselves cannot be proven valid is no reason to retreat into skepticism.

Leibniz suggests that I do not apprehend something clearly unless I am able to distinguish it from other things which resemble it. This is the criterion of clarity. Next, I do not apprehend something distinctly unless I am able to identify the various features of a thing which distinguish it from other things. This is the criterion of distinctness. And this involves more than clarity; for I may be able to distinguish something from other things which resemble it without being able to identify the features in virtue of which it differs from them.

Such knowledge, however, in the case of most things, is possible for God alone. And our disadvantage is even more serious than this, according to Leibniz. For on his view, a truly complete specification of the nature of most existing things would require an infinitely long analysis or specification of features; since a complete specification of the nature of an existing thing would require a specification of its relation to everything else in the universe. We can get along quite well for practical purposes with much more limited specifications; but this is what a complete knowledge of a thing would involve.

Download PDF sample

Rated 4.22 of 5 – based on 35 votes