Rationalism, Sentimentalism, and Ralph Cudworth
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Philosophy, Religion, and Heterodoxy in the Philosophy of Henry More, Ralph Cudworth, and Anne Conway
Church History Church History and and Religious Culture 100 (2020) 157–171 Religious Culture brill.com/chrc Philosophy, Religion, and Heterodoxy in the Philosophy of Henry More, Ralph Cudworth, and Anne Conway Sarah Hutton University of York, York, UK [email protected] Abstract Philosophers who hold the compatibility of reason and faith, are vulnerable to the charge of opening the way to atheism and heterodoxy. This danger was particularly acute when, in the wake of Cartesianism, the philosophy of Spinoza and Hobbes neces- sitated a resetting of the relationship of philosophy with religion. My paper discusses three English philosophers who illustrate the difficulties for the philosophical defence for religion: Henry More, Ralph Cudworth, and Anne Conway, for all of whom philo- sophical and religious truth were deeply intertwined. But each of them also subscribed to heterodox religious beliefs. This raises questions of whether there is a direct the rela- tionship between their philosophy and religious heterodoxy—whether they exemplify the charge that philosophy undermines religion, or indeed whether their defence of religion was a cover for heterodoxy. Keywords atheism – heterodoxy – Platonism – Descartes – More – Cudworth – Conway 1 Introduction Accusations of atheism occur relatively frequently in the philosophico-theo- logical polemics of the seventeenth century.1 This is particularly the case with 1 The term “atheism” itself had broader sense than it does today as a blanket term for irreligion © sarah hutton, 2020 | doi:10.1163/18712428-10002002 This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0Downloaded license. from Brill.com10/01/2021 08:06:06PM via free access 158 hutton Hobbes and Spinoza, but Cartesianism was seen by many as leading to athe- ism. -
The Wesleyan Enlightenment
The Wesleyan Enlightenment: Closing the gap between heart religion and reason in Eighteenth Century England by Timothy Wayne Holgerson B.M.E., Oral Roberts University, 1984 M.M.E., Wichita State University, 1986 M.A., Asbury Theological Seminary, 1999 M.A., Kansas State University, 2011 AN ABSTRACT OF A DISSERTATION submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of History College of Arts and Sciences KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY Manhattan, Kansas 2017 Abstract John Wesley (1703-1791) was an Anglican priest who became the leader of Wesleyan Methodism, a renewal movement within the Church of England that began in the late 1730s. Although Wesley was not isolated from his enlightened age, historians of the Enlightenment and theologians of John Wesley have only recently begun to consider Wesley in the historical context of the Enlightenment. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to provide a comprehensive understanding of the complex relationship between a man, John Wesley, and an intellectual movement, the Enlightenment. As a comparative history, this study will analyze the juxtaposition of two historiographies, Wesley studies and Enlightenment studies. Surprisingly, Wesley scholars did not study John Wesley as an important theologian until the mid-1960s. Moreover, because social historians in the 1970s began to explore the unique ways people experienced the Enlightenment in different local, regional and national contexts, the plausibility of an English Enlightenment emerged for the first time in the early 1980s. As a result, in the late 1980s, scholars began to integrate the study of John Wesley and the Enlightenment. In other words, historians and theologians began to consider Wesley as a serious thinker in the context of an English Enlightenment that was not hostile to Christianity. -
Empiricism, Stances, and the Problem of Voluntarism
Swarthmore College Works Philosophy Faculty Works Philosophy 1-1-2011 Empiricism, Stances, And The Problem Of Voluntarism Peter Baumann Swarthmore College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-philosophy Part of the Philosophy Commons Let us know how access to these works benefits ouy Recommended Citation Peter Baumann. (2011). "Empiricism, Stances, And The Problem Of Voluntarism". Synthese. Volume 178, Issue 1. 27-36. DOI: 10.1007/s11229-009-9519-7 https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-philosophy/13 This work is brought to you for free by Swarthmore College Libraries' Works. It has been accepted for inclusion in Philosophy Faculty Works by an authorized administrator of Works. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Empiricism, Stances and the Problem of Voluntarism Peter Baumann Synthese 178, 2011, 207-224 Empiricism can be very roughly characterized as the view that our knowledge about the world is based on sensory experience. Our knowledge about the world is "based" on sensory experience in the sense that we could not know what we know without relying on sense experience. This leaves open the possibility that sense experience is only necessary but not sufficient for the knowledge based upon it1-as long as the non-empirical elements are not themselves sufficient for the relevant piece of knowledge.2 The basing relation is not just a genetic one but also a justificatory one: Sense experience does not only lead to beliefs which happen to count as knowledge but also qualifies them as knowledge. In his important book The Empirical Stance Bas van Fraassen characterizes traditional empiricism at one point in a more negative way-as involving the rejection of "metaphysical" explanations which proceed by postulating the existence of something not 1 "But although all our cognition commences with experience, yet it does not on that account all arise from experience." (Kant, CpR, B1). -
FROM Foundations to Spirals the Final Stage of the Puzzle Will
CHAPTER EIGHT From fouNDatioNS to spiraLS The final stage of the puzzle will therefore be to answer the following question: if as Feyerabend says, knowledge is now ‘without founda- tions’, does that therefore also entail the epistemic anarchy which Feyerabend advocates, or is it possible to salvage the rather more ordered construction which is theological science? Enlightenment foundationalism and reductionism Logical positivism represented the most systematic formulation of enlightenment (and empiricist) foundationalism,1 and Feyerabend’s correct critique (theory ladenness/determinedness of observations) of this particular form of foundationalism is over-stretched to rather shaky conclusions (theoretical pluralism, counter-inductivism, relativ- ism, voluntarism), not shared by other more moderate critics of logical positivism. Torrance for instance, like most theologians, rejects logical positivism, welcoming a renewed ‘dynamic integration’2 between the theoretic and empirical components of modern physics. It is not obvious, at least from a developmental psychological or cog- nitive point of view, why foundationalism provides an ideal metaphor for knowledge or the methods of its acquisition. The two features of foundationalism which were attractive to enlightenment thought were 1 See Oberdan in The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, “The Vienna Circle’s ‘anti-foundationalism’ ”. Vol. 49/2, p. 297–308, for a ‘traditional’ account of Schlick’s work as foundational against the ‘anti-foundational’ interpretation of Uebel. For another anti-foundationalist account of logical positivism see M. Friedman, Reconsidering logical positivism, CUP, Cambridge, 1999. Here we have adopted a more conventional account of logical positivism, firstly because it is beyond the scope of this book to weigh arguments within the philosophy of science regarding traditional and revisionist accounts of logical positivism – but more importantly because our major players Feyerabend, in particular, Torrance, McGrath (e.g. -
Letting Scotus Speak for Himself
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE Medieval Philosophy and Theology 10 (2001), 173–216. Printed in the United States of America. provided by eCommons@Cornell Copyright C 2003 Cambridge University Press 1057-0608 DOI: 10.1017.S1057060801010076 Letting Scotus Speak for Himself MARY BETH INGHAM Loyola Marymount University In “The Unmitigated Scotus,” Thomas Williams calls for another, better reading of the Subtle Doctor: one in which he is able to “speak for himself.”1 In this and other articles, Williams criticizes recent Scotist scholarship for its misguided attempt to save Scotus from “the unpalatable position” he actually held, that is, a libertarian voluntarist divine command moral philosophy.2 He presents his position as one that, finally, allows Scotus to speak for himself. Williams’s position involves three distinct claims. First, that Scotus’s voluntarism is not moderate. Second, that he defends a libertarian notion of freedom, both in the divine and human wills. Third, that, as a result of the first two claims, natural reason is unable to know moral truths without some sort of supernatural revelation or immediate moral intuition. While these are clearly related, they must be argued for independently of one another. For example, Scotus could be a moderate voluntarist about the human will and a libertarian about the divine will. Additionally, he might be both a moderate voluntarist and nonlibertarian who defends some sort of supernatural requirement for moral judgment. So, even if the radical voluntarist, libertarian divine command claim in its most extreme form is unwarranted, one might defend it in a more nuanced formulation. -
Philosophy.Pdf
Philosophy 1 PHIL:1401 Matters of Life and Death 3 s.h. Contemporary ethical controversies with life and death Philosophy implications; topics may include famine, brain death, animal ethics, abortion, torture, terrorism, capital punishment. GE: Chair Values and Culture. • David Cunning PHIL:1636 Principles of Reasoning: Argument and Undergraduate major: philosophy (B.A.) Debate 3 s.h. Undergraduate minor: philosophy Critical thinking and its application to arguments and debates. Graduate degrees: M.A. in philosophy; Ph.D. in philosophy GE: Quantitative or Formal Reasoning. Faculty: https://clas.uiowa.edu/philosophy/people/faculty PHIL:1861 Introduction to Philosophy 3 s.h. Website: https://clas.uiowa.edu/philosophy/ Varied topics; may include personal identity, existence of The Department of Philosophy offers programs of study for God, philosophical skepticism, nature of mind and reality, undergraduate and graduate students. A major in philosophy time travel, and the good life; readings, films. GE: Values and develops abilities useful for careers in many fields and for any Culture. situation requiring clear, systematic thinking. PHIL:1902 Philosophy Lab: The Meaning of Life 1 s.h. Further exploration of PHIL:1033 course material with the The department also administers the interdisciplinary professor in a smaller group. undergraduate major in ethics and public policy, which it offers jointly with the Department of Economics and the PHIL:1904 Philosophy Lab: Liberty and the Pursuit of Department of Sociology and Criminology; see Ethics and Happiness 1 s.h. Public Policy in the Catalog. Further exploration of PHIL:1034 course material with the professor in a smaller group. Programs PHIL:1950 Philosophy Club 1-3 s.h. -
Nominalism and Constructivism in Seventeenth-Century Mathematical Philosophy
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Elsevier - Publisher Connector Historia Mathematica 32 (2005) 33–59 www.elsevier.com/locate/hm Nominalism and constructivism in seventeenth-century mathematical philosophy David Sepkoski Department of History, Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH 44074, USA Available online 27 November 2003 Abstract This paper argues that the philosophical tradition of nominalism, as evident in the works of Pierre Gassendi, Thomas Hobbes, Isaac Barrow, and Isaac Newton, played an important role in the history of mathematics during the 17th century. I will argue that nominalist philosophy of mathematics offers new clarification of the development of a “constructivist” tradition in mathematical philosophy. This nominalist and constructivist tradition offered a way for contemporary mathematicians to discuss mathematical objects and magnitudes that did not assume these entities were real in a Platonic sense, and helped lay the groundwork for formalist and instrumentalist approaches in modern mathematics. 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Résumé Cet article soutient que la tradition philosophique du nominalisme, évidente dans les travaux de Pierre Gassendi, Thomas Hobbes, Isaac Barrow et Isaac Newton, a joué un rôle important dans l’histoire des mathématiques pendant le dix-septième siècle. L’argument princicipal est que la philosophie nominaliste des mathématiques est à la base du développement d’une tradition « constructiviste » en philosophie mathématique. Cette tradition nominaliste et constructiviste a permis aux mathématiciens contemporains de pouvoir discuter d’objets et quantités mathématiques sans présupposer leur réalité au sens Platonique du terme, et a contribué au developpement desétudes formalistes et instrumentalistes des mathématiques modernes. -
1 1 Forthcoming in Philosophical Studies. Bellingham Conference
1 Forthcoming in Philosophical Studies. Bellingham Conference Issue, 2012 Grounding Practical Normativity: Going Hybrid Ruth Chang In virtue of what is something a reason for an agent to perform some action? In other words, what makes a consideration a reason for an agent to act? This is a prima facie metaphysical (or meta-normative) question about the grounding of reasons for action and not a normative question about the circumstances or conditions under which, normatively speaking, one has a reason to do something. The normative question is answered by normative theory, as when one says that such-and-such feature of an action is a reason to perform that action because bringing about that feature would maximize happiness. The metaphysical question asks instead for the metaphysical determinant of something’s being a reason. When we ask for the ground of a reason’s normativity, we ask what metaphysically makes something have the action-guidingness of a reason: where does the normativity of a practical reason come from? As Christine Korsgaard puts it, somewhat more poetically, what is the ‘source’ of a reason’s normativity? This paper takes a synoptic approach to the question of source and from this broad perspective explores the idea that the source of normativity might best be understood as a hybrid of more traditional views of source. The paper begins with a survey of three leading non-hybrid answers to the question of a reason’s normative ground or source (§1). It then recapitulates one or two of the supposedly most difficult problems for each, suggesting along the way a new objection to one of the leading views (§ 2). -
The Roots of Ethical Voluntarism
The Roots of Ethical Voluntarism COLLEEN MCCLUSKEY Many (if not all) medieval accounts of action focus upon the interaction between intellect and will in order to explain how human action comes about. What moves the agent to act are certain goals or desires the agent has and her deliberation about what it will take to accomplish those goals or satisfy those desires. Thus, medieval philosophers explain human action by referring to the operations of intellect or reason, which accounts for the deliberative aspect, and the will, which accounts for the desiderative aspect. This is not to say that they ignore other in uences on action, such as passions or emotions. But the basic model of action focuses on the intellect and will. These basic notions also play a role in explaining the freedom of human actions. Medieval philosophers argue that human beings act freely in virtue of a power or powers that they possess. According to these accounts, the fact that a given power performs its activity freely enables the human being to act freely. 1 A human being acts freely in virtue of there being freedom in a given power or powers. Scholars of medieval philosophy have argued that medieval accounts of free action shifted their emphasis during the course of the thirteenth century. Throughout much of the Middle Ages beginning with Augustine in the fth century and continuing into the early thirteenth century, philosophers discussed human freedom under the topic of liberum arbitrium . This term, often translated as “free choice” or “free decision,” refers to the power or powers which enable human beings to act freely. -
The Idealist Philosophers'
Document généré le 2 oct. 2021 16:48 Laval théologique et philosophique The Idealist Philosophers’ God Leslie Armour La question de Dieu Résumé de l'article Volume 58, numéro 3, octobre 2002 On tente de démontrer ici que les idées de Ralph Cudworth permettent de développer un concept philosophique de Dieu qui répond à plusieurs des URI : https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/000627ar perplexités de notre temps. L’association de l’amour et du réel ultime s’avère DOI : https://doi.org/10.7202/000627ar chez Cudworth une idée philosophique viable. Il y a lieu de se demander si la seule philosophie de la religion idéaliste réussie ne serait pas celle qui accorde Aller au sommaire du numéro la primauté au bien, et si ce n’est sa manifestation concrète comme amour qui seule puisse rendre intelligible le concept de Dieu, comme on le voit aujourd’hui dans l’oeuvre de Jean-Luc Marion. Éditeur(s) Faculté de philosophie, Université Laval Faculté de théologie et de sciences religieuses, Université Laval ISSN 0023-9054 (imprimé) 1703-8804 (numérique) Découvrir la revue Citer cet article Armour, L. (2002). The Idealist Philosophers’ God. Laval théologique et philosophique, 58(3), 443–455. https://doi.org/10.7202/000627ar Tous droits réservés © Laval théologique et philosophique, Université Laval, Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d’auteur. L’utilisation des 2002 services d’Érudit (y compris la reproduction) est assujettie à sa politique d’utilisation que vous pouvez consulter en ligne. https://apropos.erudit.org/fr/usagers/politique-dutilisation/ Cet article est diffusé et préservé par Érudit. -
Conclusion What Is the Subtle Body?
1 ABSTRACT This dissertation traces the historical genealogy of the term “subtle body,” following it from its initial coinage among the Cambridge Platonists back to the Neoplatonic sources from which they drew, then forward into Indology, Theosophy, Carl Jung, and the American Counterculture, showing the expansion of the term’s semantic range to include Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese materials. 2 Acknowledgements First thanks go to my committee members. I never would have entertained the possibility of doing a project like this were it not for the iconoclastic tendencies of Jeff Kripal and Anne Klein under whom a conventional dissertation would be nigh impossible to write. Thanks Jeff for helping me contact the daimon , and Anne for teaching me to read between the lines, to see the basic space in which text dances. Thanks to Deborah Harter for her careful, aesthetic editorial gaze. Beyond the committee, Bill Parsons’ genealogy of mysticism exerted no small impact on my own method. Niki Clements showed me the cool side of Hegel. And thanks to Claire Fanger, for the esotericism, and April DeConick, for the gnosis. Thanks to Gregory Shaw for the secrets of Iamblichean theurgy and to Michael Murphy for the siddhi camps out of which this genealogy was born. Thanks also to Pierre Delattre for reading an early version and providing magical feedback. I constantly bounced ideas off my infinitely patient classmates: Justin Kelley, Claire Villareal, Erin Prophet, Ben Mayo, Renee Ford, Anne Parker, Justine Bakker, Gregory Perron, Tim Grieve-Carlson, Tommy Symmes, Kassim Abdulbassit, Victor Nardo, Oihane Iglesias Telleria, and Namleela Free Jones. -
Voluntarism and Realism in Medieval Ethics
Journal ofmedical ethics, 1989, 15, 39-44 J Med Ethics: first published as 10.1136/jme.15.1.39 on 1 March 1989. Downloaded from Moral theories Voluntarism and realism in medieval ethics John Haldane University ofSt Andrews, Scotland Author's abstract tradition. The reference to medieval ethics in the title, therefore, is not to a movement whose members were In contrast to other articles in this series on the history of united by their common view ofthe nature ofmorality. moral philosophy the present essay is not devoted to Rather it indicates a period in the history ofphilosophy expounding the views ofa single author, or to examining a roughly bounded by the birth of Scotus Erigena 'John particular moral theory. Instead it discusses an important the Scot' (c 800-870) and the death ofNicholas ofCusa dispute between two medieval accounts ofthe relation (1401-1464) during which a wide range of moral between theological and moral propositions. theories was developed. In addition to its historical interest this debate is Of course, there is one crucially important common important both because it connects earlier and later ethical thread running through Western medieval philosophy: thought - being influenced by Greek moral theories and the assumption of the truth of the central doctrines of influencingsubsequentEuropeanphilosophy - and because Judaeo-Christianity. The religious dimension is of it concerns issues that remain important to philosophers and general relevance when trying to understand thecopyright. to those who claim that their ethical beliefs are dictated by concerns of writers in this era and has particular religious convictions. significance for the present attempt to explain the fundamental division among moral theories of the 'The point which I should first wish to understand is period.