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And Self-Interpretation Natural Emotions Budapest Seminars in Early Modern Philosophy 2 & 3 N N O I NS O With the publication of the papers of the First Budapest Semi- I ETAT nar in Early Modern Philosophy in 2017, we accomplished over- OT R P coming such unfruitful divisions as the time-honoured inter- M E pretive distinction between “rationalists” and “empiricists”, lib- erating our perspectives from the rigid prejudices of simplifying handbooks. We also prepared the frame for further in-depth TURAL investigations in other areas of Early Modern thought, such as LF-INTER A E S are presented in our volume. It comprises papers based on the N contributions to the Second and Third Budapest Seminar in Ear- ly Modern Philosophy, held on 26–27 October 2017, and on 8–9 October 2018 at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. The topics Y AND T HT AND of both Seminars are relevant not only for the Early Modern phi- I losophy but also for our contemporary philosophical attempts G to find access to present reality: constructions of personal iden- Ri tity, and the multifarious relationship between theories and practices of natural right and the claims to live up to our nat- ural emotions. When composing this volume, our aim was not to present a systematic survey of any of these areas of topics in A N TURAL Early Modern philosophy. Rather, our modest goal was to foster & collaboration among researchers working in different countries IDENTPERSONAL and traditions. Many of the papers published here are already in implicit or explicit dialogue with others. We hope that they will generate more of an exchange of ideas both in early modern scholarship and in several related areas and disciplines. I LA (eds) ZA S T I ÓTH PERSONAL IDENTITY T JUD BTK . AND SELF-INTERPRETATION STVÁN STVÁN I NATURAL RiGHT AND OROS B & ÉR ISBN 978-963-489-228-1 V NATURAL EMOTIONS I L O Á G BOR G ÁBOR BOROS . JUDIT SZALAI . OLIVÉR ISTVÁN TÓTH (eds) Personal Identity and Self-Interpretation & Natural Right and Natural Emotions Budapest Seminars in Early Modern Philosophy 2 & 3 Gábor Boros – Judit Szalai – Olivér István Tóth (eds) Personal Identity and Self-Interpretation & Natural Right and Natural Emotions Budapest Seminars in Early Modern Philosophy 2 & 3 budapest • 2020 Cover: The Portrait's Box by Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio (1506–1510; Uffizi Museum) Photo: © Web Gallery of Art, 2011 © Authors, 2020 © Editors, 2020 ISBN 978-963-489-228-1 ISBN 978-963-489-229-8 (pdf) www.eotvoskiado.hu Executive Publisher: the Dean of the Faculty of Humanities of Eötvös Loránd University Layout: Ádám Bornemissza Cover: Ildikó Csele Kmotrik Print: Multiszolg Ltd Table of Contents Introduction . ..................................................... 7 PERSONAL IDENTITY Judit Szalai: States of the “Person” in Descartes . 13 Przemysław Gut: Leibniz on Personal Identity . ....................... 22 Charles T. Wolfe: Diderot and Materialist Theories of Self . .............. 37 Ákos Forczek: Apperception and Affinity: Kant on the Material Condition of the Identity of the “Psychological Person” . 53 SELF-KNOWLEDGE Bartosz Żukowski: Richard Burthogge’s Epistemology and the Problem of Self-Knowledge . 69 Peter West: Knowing Me, Knowing You: Berkeley on Self-Knowledge and Other Spirits . 84 NATURAL LAW Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann: The Space for Emotions in Natural Law. 107 Szilárd Tattay: Francisco Suárez and Modern Rationalist Natural Law Theories . ........................................ 121 Gábor Boros: Natural Right and Worldly Emotions of Love: Descartes, Molière, Spinoza . 139 Heikki Haara: The Concept of Simple Esteem inDe jure naturae et gentium . 153 József Simon: Shame, Common Wealth and Religion in the Thought of Miklós Bethlen (1642–1714) . 167 Mariangela Priarolo: Love and Order: Malebranche and the Feeling of Natural Law . 180 Paolo Santangelo: Chinese Cultures of Love: The “Cult of Qing” and Qing’s “Naturalness” . 198 LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS . ....................................... 221 Gábor Boros – Judit Szalai – Olivér István Tóth Introduction At least from the time when Descartes announced that the mind of the subject is better known to itself than the physical world, self-knowledge and personal identity played a cen- tral role in early modern philosophy. The focal questions in this period include whether the subject can be identified with the knowing mind, whether personal identity is grounded in the identity or some properties of that mind, or is in some manner based in physical reality, and whether self-knowledge is indeed superior to other types of knowledge. Some of the classical answers were given by prominent early modern thinkers, characteristically aiming at compatibility with the new mechanistic natural sciences. Other, lesser-known, but at times comparably promising solutions were offered by philosophers some of whose ideas we have yet to assimilate. This volume is based on papers presented at the Second and Third Budapest Semi- nar in Early Modern Philosophy held at the Eötvös Loránd University of Budapest on 26–27 November 2017, and 8–9 October 2018, respectively. We do not aim at presenting a systematic survey of personal identity, self-knowledge and natural law in early modern philosophy. Instead, we sample texts by less visible authors and re-think better-known positions concerning affectivity and the related conceptual fields in the period. The papers published come from different traditions, and some of them are already in implicit or explicit dialogue with others. We hope that this collection will contribute to the growth of our knowledge about the role of personal identity, self-understanding and natural law in early modern philosophy, and generate a greater exchange of ideas in the broader early modern scholarship. We would like to thank the National Research, Development and Innovation Office (Hungary) for generous funding in the framework of a research project on “Self-Inter- pretation, Emotions, Narrativity” (K120375), which allowed both the organizing of the conferences and the publication of the present volume. We would also like to thank the Student Union of the Faculty of Humanities at ELTE (ELTE BTK HÖK) and of ELTE 7 (EHÖK) for the funding they provided, both for the organization of the conferences and the publication of this volume. Finally, we would like to express our special thanks to Ákos Forczek, who has helped us throughout the entire process. Judit Szalai’s paper revisits the Cartesian notion of the “person”. For Descartes, a person is constituted by a mind conjoined with a body; we know about the mind-body unity via functions that are both mental and physical. How can Descartes spell out these functions in terms of actual states of the mind and the body, given the narrow metaphysical con- straints established by his own philosophy? Szalai’s paper traces the psychophysical pro- cesses involved in the passions in order to see how they can be made sense of in the light of Descartes’ metaphysical and epistemological commitments. Remaining in the Cartesian tradition, Przemysław Gut’s paper targets those inter- pretations of Leibniz’s account of personal identity, according to which Leibniz failed to formulate a coherent theory. Gut argues that Leibniz held the continuity of both the sub- stance and the psychological phenomena necessary for personal identity, because both are grounded in the continuity of the existence of a substantial principle. Gut then identifies this substantial principle with the soul, i.e. the Cartesian thinking “I” that is the ultimate subject of both personal identity and moral responsibility, which are in the focus of Leibniz’s philosophy. Leaving Cartesianism and the seventeenth century behind, Charles T. Wolfe, in his highly engaging paper, takes a look at the broad implications of materialism for early mod- ern theories of the self. His essay accomplishes two things simultaneously. First, it presents Diderot’s materialist theory of the self as constituted by an externalist metaphysical theory and a biological understanding of individuality. Second, it manages to place this early modern development in the much broader context of the history of western philosophy. He argues for the necessity of a revision of the traditional dichotomy between metaphysically sound but mechanistic materialism lacking a viable philosophy of mind and dualism with a sound philosophy of mind built on a shaky metaphysical theory. The last paper in the personal identity section focuses on Immanuel Kant, the key fig- ure of the transition from early modern philosophy to German Idealism. Ákos Forczek in his contribution links Kant’s major critical writings with his less studied texts in his Opus postumum, and maintains that “transcendental affinity” and personal unity are closely re- lated concepts, even though at first glance this is far from obvious. His main focus is the problem of what guarantees that the sensible manifold is suitable for experiencing it with- out violating the autonomy of the sensible. Forczek argues that after the failed attempt of the firstCritique , and the question-begging answer of the third, the true answer, related to self-knowledge, can be found in the Opus postumum. Opening the section on self-knowledge, Bartosz Żukowski’s paper examines the less- er-known Richard Burthogge’s philosophy of mind. Burthogge was an English physician at the end of the seventeenth century, whose views on the mind were considered highly unusual in his time and therefore remained unappreciated both by his contemporaries and by posterity. Żukowski shows, however, that behind Burthogge’s idiosyncratic language, 8 Introduction the epistemology of an interesting and innovative thinker can be reconstructed, someone who shared some affinities concerning self-knowledge with Leibniz and Kant. In contrast with Burthogge’s idealism, which has been largely ignored by early modern scholarship, that of George Berkeley has received much attention. Peter West takes a look at the classical problem of self-knowledge in Berkeley’s idealism: if ideas in the human mind represent their objects due to their similarity to external objects, and spirits are of a different metaphysical kind than ideas, how is self-knowledge, i.e.
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