Philosophy-The-Power-Of-Ideas-By

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Philosophy-The-Power-Of-Ideas-By Preface Chapter 1: Powerful Ideas What Is Philosophy? Misconceptions about Philosophy The Tools of Philosophy: Argument and Logic The Divisions of Philosophy The Benefits of Philosophy PART I: METAPHYSICS AND EPISTEMOLOGY: EXISTENCE AND KNOWLEDGE Chapter 2: The Pre-Socratics The Milesians Pythagoras Heraclitus and Parmenides Empedocles and Anaxagoras The Atomists Chapter 3: Socrates, Plato Socrates Plato Selection 3.1: Plato, Apology Selection 3.2: Plato, Republic Selection 3.3: Plato, Meno Chapter 4: Aristotle What Is It to Be? Actuality and Possibility Essence and Existence Ten Basic Categories The Three Souls Aristotle and the Theory of Forms Aristotle's Theory of Knowledge Logic Selection 4.1: Aristotle, Metaphysics Chapter 5: Philosophers of the Hellenistic and Christian Eras Metaphysics in the Roman Empire The Middle Ages and Aquinas Selection 5.1: St. Augustine, Confessions Chapter 6: The Rise of Modern Metaphysics and Epistemology Descartes and Dualism Hobbes and Materialism The Alternative Views of Conway, Spinoza, and Leibniz The Idealism of Locke and Berkeley Selection 6.1: René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy Selection 6.2: Benedictus de Spinoza, Ethics Selection 6.3: George Berkeley, Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge Chapter 7: The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries David Hume Immanuel Kant The Nineteenth Century Selection 7.1: David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding Selection 7.2: Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason Selection 7.3: Georg Hegel, The Philosophy of History Selection 7.4: Arthur Schopenhauer, The World As Will and Representation Chapter 8: The Continental Tradition Existentialism Two Existentialists Phenomenology An Era of Suspicion Selection 8.1: Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Humanism Selection 8.2: Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus Selection 8.3: Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality Selection 8.4: Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization Selection 8.5: Jürgen Habermas, Toward a Rational Society Selection 8.6: Richard Rorty, Philosophy and Social Hope Chapter 9: The Pragmatic and Analytic Traditions Pragmatism Analytic Philosophy The Philosophy of Mind Selection 9.1: A. J. Ayer, The Elimination of Metaphysics Selection 9.2: J. J. C. Smart, Sensations and Brain Processes Selection 9.3: Richard Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth PART II: MORAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY Chapter 10: Moral Philosophy Skepticism, Relativism, and Subjectivism Egoism Hedonism The Five Main Ethical Frameworks The Early Greeks Epicureanism and Stoicism Christianizing Ethics Hobbes and Hume Kant The Utilitarians Friedrich Nietzsche Selection 10.1: Plato, Gorgias Selection 10.2: Epicurus, Epicurus to Menoeceus Selection 10.3: Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics Selection 10.4: Epictetus, The Encheiridion Selection 10.5: Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals Selection 10.6: John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism Selection 10.7: Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil Chapter 11: Political Philosophy Plato and Aristotle Natural Law Theory and Contractarian Theory Two Other Contractarian Theorists American Constitutional Theory Classic Liberalism and Marxism Selection 11.1: Plato, Crito Selection 11.2: Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan Selection 11.3: John Stuart Mill, On Liberty Selection 11.4: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Communist Manifesto Chapter 12: Recent Moral and Political Philosophy G. E. Moore Normative Ethics and Metaethics W. D. Ross Emotivism and Beyond John Rawls, a Contemporary Liberal Robert Nozick's Libertarianism Communitarian Responses to Rawls Herbert Marcuse, a Contemporary Marxist "Isms" Selection 12.1: James Rachels, Killing and Starving to Death Selection 12.2: John Rawls, A Theory of Justice Selection 12.3: Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia PART III: PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION: REASON AND FAITH Chapter 13: Philosophy and Belief in God Two Christian Greats Mysticism Seventeenth-Century Perspectives Eighteenth-Century Perspectives Nineteenth-Century Perspectives Twentieth-Century Perspectives Selection 13.1: St. Anselm, Proslogion Selection 13.2: St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica Selection 13.3: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science Selection 13.4: Antony Flew, Theology and Falsification Selection 13.5: Mary Daly, After the Death of God the Father PART IV: OTHER VOICES Chapter 14: Feminist Philosophy The First Wave The Second Wave Selection 14.1: Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Women Selection 14.2: Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex Selection 14.3: Marielouise Janssen-Jurreit, Sexism: The Male Monopoly on History and Thought Selection 14.4: Sandra Harding, Should the History and Philosophy of Science Be X-Rated? Selection 14.5: Susan Moller Okin, Justice, Gender, and the Family Selection 14.6: Karen J. Warren, The Power and the Promise of Ecological Feminism Chapter 15: Eastern Influences Hinduism Buddhism Taoism Confucianism Zen Buddhism in China and Japan The Philosophy of the Samurai (c. 1100-1900) Selection 15.1: Confucius, Analects Selection 15.2: Buddha, The Eightfold Path Chapter 16: Postcolonial Thought Historical Background Africa The Americas South Asia Selection 16.1: Léopold Sédar Senghor, On African Socialism Selection 16.2: Martin Luther King, Jr., The Sword That Heals Selection 16.3: Carlos Astrada, Existentialism and the Crisis of Philosophy Selection 16.4: Francisco Miró Quesada, Man without Theory Selection 16.5: Sonia Saldívar-Hull, Feminism on the Border: From Gender Politics to Geopolitics Selection 16.6: Mohandas K. Gandhi, Satyagraha Selection 16.7: Rabindranath Tagore, Towards Universal Man Appendix: Aesthetics, by Dominic McIver Lopes Photo Credits Glossary/Index Moore−Bruder: Philosophy: Front Matter Preface © The McGraw−Hill The Power of Ideas, Sixth Companies, 2005 Edition Preface What do you do with a philosophy degree? Well, of the twenty undergraduates se- lected to be on the USA TODAY 2004 All-USA College Academic First Team, four are philosophy majors. You could ask them. Jon Novotny, from the University of Tulsa, credits philosophy with helping him see the bigger picture. Sara Shoener, of the University of Scranton, says majoring in philosophy “is the most practical thing I’ve ever done.” Ryan Keller, of Brigham Young University, finds that philosophy opened his mind to different perspectives. And Cristina Bejan, of Northwestern University, used philosophy in writing two plays that were performed at Oxford’s Burton Taylor Theatre during her junior year abroad. All four, in short, credit philosophy with broadening their horizons.1 We hope the changes in this edition will help broaden the horizons of anyone who reads the book. Here’s what we’ve done: Most important, we’ve added an appendix on aesthetics, written by Domi- nic McIver Lopes, of the University of British Columbia. We didn’t write it, so we don’t mind saying that this is one of the best short introductions to aesthetics you could hope to find. We’ve also expanded our coverage by including new elements. The new ma- terials added and subjects covered include: • French feminism and psychoanalysis • Hegel on the master-slave relationship • Emmanuel Levinas • Gilles Deleuze • Alain Badiou • Ayn Rand • New reading excerpts from Plato’s Apology, Plato’s Crito, and Spinoza’s Ethics • New photographs • Numerous new print and online references • New profile and feature boxes 1 USA TODAY, Feb. 12, 2004. vii Moore−Bruder: Philosophy: Front Matter Preface © The McGraw−Hill The Power of Ideas, Sixth Companies, 2005 Edition viii Preface We have also done a bit of rearranging, consolidating the chapter titled “An Era of Suspicion” with the chapter “The Continental Tradition.” This book remains, however, the same straightforward, ungimmicky historical introduction to philosophy it has always been, one that contains separate treat- ments of the major branches of philosophy. Our presentation — a middle road be- tween the historical approach and the “problems” approach — helps readers keep similar concepts together and helps instructors avoid leaving an impression that philosophy is a parade of unconnected speculations. Philosophy — Powerful Ideas We concluded years ago that most people like philosophy if they understand it and that most understand it if it isn’t presented to them in exhausting prose. In this text we strive above all else to make philosophy understandable while not oversimplifying. We also concluded years ago that some people just aren’t moved by the sub- ject. Worse, we learned that among those who aren’t are a few who are sane, intel- ligent, well informed, and reasonable and who generally have sound ideas about the world, vote for the right people, and are even worth having as friends. Philosophy is just not for everyone, and no text and no instructor can make it so. So we do not expect that every student, or even every bright student, who comes in contact with philosophy will love the field. But we do hope every student who has had an introductory course in philosophy will learn that philosophy is more than inconsequential mental flexing. Philosophy contains powerful ideas, and it affects the lives of real people. Consequently, it must be handled with due care. The text makes this point clear. Philosophy: A Worldwide Search for Wisdom and Understanding Until the middle of the twentieth century, most philosophers and historians of ideas in American and European universities thought philosophical reflection occurred only within the tradition of disciplined discourse that began with the ancient Greeks and has continued
Recommended publications
  • Introduction
    Notes Introduction 1. ‘Medicine’, in William Morris, ed., The American Heritage Dictionary (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976); ‘medicine n.’, in The Oxford American Dictionary of Current English, Oxford Reference Online (Oxford University Press, 1999), University of Toronto Libraries, http://www.oxfordreference.com.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/ views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t21.e19038 [accessed 22 August 2008]. 2. The term doctor was derived from the Latin docere, to teach. See Vern Bullough, ‘The Term Doctor’, Journal of the History of Medicine, 18 (1963): 284–7. 3. Dorothy Porter and Roy Porter, Patient’s Progress: Doctors and Doctoring in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Polity, 1989), p. 11. 4. I am indebted to many previous scholars who have worked on popular healers. See particularly work by scholars such as Margaret Pelling, Roy Porter, Monica Green, Andrew Weir, Doreen Nagy, Danielle Jacquart, Nancy Siraisi, Luis García Ballester, Matthew Ramsey, Colin Jones and Lawrence Brockliss. Mary Lindemann, Merry Weisner, Katharine Park, Carole Rawcliffe and Joseph Shatzmiller have brought to light the importance of both the multiplicity of medical practitioners that have existed throughout history, and the fact that most of these were not university trained. This is in no way a complete list of the authors I have consulted in prepa- ration of this book; however, their studies have been ground-breaking in terms of stressing the importance of popular healers. 5. This collection contains excellent specialized articles on different aspects of female health-care and midwifery in medieval Iberia, and Early Modern Germany, England and France. The articles are not comparative in nature.
    [Show full text]
  • APA Newsletters
    APA Newsletters Volume 04, Number 1 Fall 2004 NEWSLETTER ON FEMINISM AND PHILOSOPHY FROM THE EDITOR, SALLY J. SCHOLZ NEWS FROM THE COMMITTEE ON THE STATUS OF WOMEN, ROSIE TONG ARTICLES JOAN GIBSON “Philosophical Women of Early Modern Iberia” AMY OLIVER “Public Philosophy and Feminist Gain in South America” JANE DURAN “Chicana Feminisms and Lived Theory” REVIEW ESSAY Gloria Anzaldúa and AnaLouise Keating (eds.): Anzaldúa and the ‘Bridge’ as Home: Healing the Ruptures of Reason: This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions For Transformation REVIEWED BY VIKI SOADY REVIEWS Jane Duran: Worlds of Knowing: Global Feminist Epistemologies REVIEWED BY CATHERINE HUNDLEBY Eva Feder Kittay and Ellen Feder (eds.): The Subject of Care: Feminist Perspectives on Dependency REVIEWED BY LUCINDA PEACH CONTRIBUTORS ANNOUNCEMENTS © 2004 by The American Philosophical Association ISSN: 1067-9464 APA NEWSLETTER ON Feminism and Philosophy Sally J. Scholz, Editor Fall 2004 Volume 04, Number 1 and the contributions to the two Bridge volumes demonstrate FROM THE EDITOR both the hazards of the old view and the potential of the new. This issue of the Newsletter is rounded out with two compelling book reviews. The first is a review of Jane Duran’s Worlds of Knowing: Global Feminist Epistemologies by This issue of the Newsletter highlights the varying contributions Catherine Hundleby. Like Anzaldúa, Duran has outlined a new of Iberian, Latina, Hispanic, and Chicana feminist philosophers epistemological project that considers the lived experiences and might profitably be read together with the APA Newsletter of women throughout the world—including women from on Hispanic/Latino Issues in Philosophy edited by Eduardo Mexico and Latin America.
    [Show full text]
  • Cervantes and the Cultural Politics of Affect in the Early Modern Mediterranean
    UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE Sentimental Geographies: Cervantes and the Cultural Politics of Affect in the Early Modern Mediterranean DISSERTATION submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in Spanish by Paul Michael Johnson Dissertation Committee: Associate Professor Luis F. Avilés, Chair Professor Steven Hutchinson Assistant Professor Santiago Morales-Rivera 2014 Portion of Chapter 6 © 2011 Cervantes Society of America Portion of Chapter 4 © 2013 eHumanista All other materials © 2014 Paul Michael Johnson For my family, who taught me about passion Remember, Paul, it is passion that makes the world go round. […] In the absence of passion the world would still be void and without form. Think of Don Quixote. Don Quixote is not about a man sitting in a rocking chair bemoaning the dullness of La Mancha. It is about a man who claps a basin on his head and clambers onto the back of his faithful old plough-horse and sallies forth to do great deeds. J. M. Coetzee, Slow Man ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page LIST OF FIGURES........................................................................................................................................................... v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ......................................................................................................................................... viiii CURRICULUM VITAE ................................................................................................................................................ xii ABSTRACT
    [Show full text]
  • The Precarious Fame of Doña Oliva: the Issue of Authorship
    8 Editor’s Introduction Medicina opens with a long quotation of the section from the ninth book of the Natural History, where Pliny famously summed up the history of medicine as a long inconclusive succession of medical sects, all purporting to be right but all unable to reach true knowledge of the causes of disease. Echoing Pliny’s arguments, Sabuco says that the Saracens and the Chinese, who have no professional physicians, have a larger population than the Spaniards (in other words, they have a lower mortality rate). “Only in this art [i.e., medicine] may anybody declare himself a physician without being such; no other falsehood implies more danger and damage [than the medical falsehood], and less punishment at the same time: only the doctor is allowed to kill with impunity.”16 This dialogue On the True Medicine is the text that is translated and presented here, as part of the “Other Voice in Early Modern Europe” series.17 It is, as we shall see, a text that bears a significant relation to the Renaissance Querelle des femmes, beyond the remarkable circumstance of being emphatically presented as the work of a woman author. But before we examine in detail the content of the Dialogue on the True Medicine and locate it in the context of the medical and cultural world of the late Renaissance, as I shall try to do in this Introduction, we have to address a preliminary question. Who was this daring woman who attacked so uncompromisingly the medical establishment of her times? The Precarious Fame of Doña Oliva: The Issue of Authorship We know that she became immediately famous.
    [Show full text]
  • Medicine and the Querelle Des Femmes in Early Modern Spain
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by PubMed Central Medicine and the Querelle des Femmes in Early Modern Spain MONICA BOLUFER Introduction Among the forms of knowledge that express and at the same time shape world views and social standards, scientific discourse, like religious discourse, has played a key part in producing an appearance of truth, appealing to ‘‘nature’’ as incontrovertible evidence. Throughout history, medicine has helped to theorize and justify gender differences and inequalities by naturalizing them, that is, by basing the attribution of social functions and hierarchies on a set of physical, moral and intellectual inclinations and aptitudes, suppo- sedly rooted in nature, which doctors declared themselves to be the persons most author- ized to disclose and interpret. Indeed, in various ages and societies scientific discourses (particularly medical discourse) have persistently wondered about the meaning of gender difference and inequality, and in doing so they projected the conventions, expectations and prejudices of their own time on to their questions and responses, and on to the attitudes and results of their research and practice.1 The influence of medical science became particularly intense in European culture and society in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as the secularization of thinking reduced the preponderant role of providentialist explanations in favour of others based on ‘‘reason’’ and ‘‘evidence’’, and the medical profession experienced an increase in its social prestige and power. Since medieval times, however, medical or philosophical explanations of classical origin and the Christian tradition based on the Bible and theological authorities had been the main pillars that supported theories about the different ‘‘nature’’, functions and authority which corresponded to men and women in society.2 And therefore, in what they wrote for their professional colleagues or for a broader range of readers, doctors had an important influence on the societies in which they lived.
    [Show full text]
  • Giving Birth to Science: Oliva Sabuco and Her Intrusions Into the Male Episteme
    u CHAPTER FIVE Giving Birth to Science: Oliva Sabuco and Her Intrusions into the Male Episteme Silvia Arroyo Introduction With the growing control and institutionalization of medical practice in the Re- naissance, the professional space shrank. Based on academic qualifications, a divide was created between university-trained physicians, guildsmen, and “empirics.”1 Women, who had enjoyed a relative professional freedom in the Middle Ages (not only in their roles as nurses, midwives, and apprentic- es, but also as healers), were pushed into the margins of medical practice, along with unqualified men. In this cultural climate, a highly sophisticated collection of medical and philosophical treatises, entitled New Philosophy of Human Nature, appeared in 1587 under the authorial name of a twenty- five-year-old woman, Oliva Sabuco. This encyclopedic work is a collection of five Romance colloquies and two briefer opuscules in Latin and mixes medical knowledge, natural philosophy, and legislative materials with an arbitrista flavor. In the colloquies, three shepherds (Antonio, Veronio, and Rodonio) sit in a classical locus amoenus and engage in a conversation on different topics concerning the health of man and the “Republic” in its Pla- tonic sense. From the observation and description of the human body and its physiological behavior, the author moves to the “composure of the world,” thus signaling a movement from the microcosmos to the macrocosmos: the first colloquy, on “Knowledge of One’s Self,” is followed by a “Compo- sition of the World as It Is,” another brief exposition on “Treatments and Remedies of Proper Medicine,” a colloquy on the “The True Medicine,” Confined Women: The Walls of Female Space in Early Modern Spain Hispanic Issues On Line 25 (2020) ARROYO u 91 and, finally, two opuscules in Latin entitled “Brief Exposition on Human Nature” and “Proper Philosophy of the Nature of Composite Things.”2 Ironically enough, the authorship of this collection of treatises has been in dispute since 1903, when Oliva’s father’s will was found.
    [Show full text]
  • A HISTORY of WOMEN PHILOSOPHERS a History of Women Philosophers
    A HISTORY OF WOMEN PHILOSOPHERS A History of Women Philosophers 1. Ancient Women Philosophers, 600 B.C.-SOO A.D. 2. Medieval, Renaissance and Enlightenment Women Philosophers, 500-1600 3. Modern Women Philosophers, 1600-1900 4. Contemporary Women Philosophers, 1900-today A History of Women Philosophers Volume II Medieval, Renaissance and Enlightenment Women Philosophers A.D. 500-1600 Edited by MARY ELLEN WAITHE University of Minnesota Kluwer Academic Publishers Dordrecht / Boston / London Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Medieval, Renaissance, and Englightenment women philosophers, A.D. 500-1600. (A History of women philosophers; v. 2) Bibliography: p. Includes index. I. Women philosophers. 2. Philosophy, Ancient. I. Waithe, Mary Ellen. II. Series. B105.w6M39 1989 189'.088042 87-15209 ISBN-l3: 978-90-247-3572-3 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-009-2551-9 DOl 10.1007/978-94-009-2551-9 Published by Kluwer Academic Publishers, P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands. Kluwer Academic Publishers incorporates the publishing programmes of D. Reidel, Martinus Nifhoff, Dr W. Junk and MTP Press. Sold and distributed in the U.S.A. and Canada by Kluwer Academic Publishers, 101 Philip Drive, Norwell, MA 02061, U.S.A. In all other countries, sold and distributed by Kluwer Academic Publishers Group, P.O. Box 322, 3300 AH Dordrecht, The Netherlands. printed on acid-Jree paper All Rights Reserved © 1989 by Kluwer Academic Publishers Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1989 No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner.
    [Show full text]
  • Was There a Querelle Des Femmes in Early Modern Medicine?
    Was there a Querelle des Femmes in early modern medicine? ¿Hubo una Querella de las Mujeres en la medicina moderna? Gianna Pomata Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore (EE.UU.) [email protected] Recibido el 1 de octubre de 2013. Aceptado el 10 de noviembre de 2013. BIBLID [1134-6396(2013)20:2; 313-341] ABSTRACT Historians have often emphasized the anti-feminist role played by medical argument in the early modern Querelle des Femmes. In this article, I argue that this interpretation should be reconsidered. Plenty of evidence suggests that medicine played an important role on the pro-woman side of the Querelle, but so far this evidence has been analysed only piecemeal. When we review it together, a different story emerges, one in which proto-feminist argu- ments appear to be an influential and enduring aspect of early modern medical discourse, related to important new trends in early modern medicine. In this essay, I first look at the transformation of gender roles in humanism, and particularly in medical humanism, as they are indicated by two significant female voices in the Querelle, Nicole Liébault and Lucrezia Marinella, both daughters of physicians. I then examine one of the most striking novelties of early modern medicine, the emergence of medical writings on women’s diseases, newly addressed, to some extent, to a female public. It is especially in these texts that we find physicians voicing pro-women arguments, so much so that these works should be considered, in my view, as an integral part of the Querelle. On the basis of this evidence, I conclude that there was a Querelle des Femmes in early modern medicine.
    [Show full text]
  • APA Newsletters NEWSLETTER on FEMINISM and PHILOSOPHY
    APA Newsletters NEWSLETTER ON FEMINISM AND PHILOSOPHY Volume 08, Number 1 Fall 2008 FROM THE EDITOR, SALLY J. SCHOLZ ABOUT THE NEWSLETTER ON FEMINISM AND PHILOSOPHY SUBMISSION GUIDELINES AND INFORMATION NEWS FROM THE COMMITTEE ON THE STATUS OF WOMEN, ERIN MCKENNA ARTICLES LISA HELDKE “Knit a Bridge and Get Over It” GAILE POHLHAUS, JR. “Knitting and the Unfinished Project” DEBORAH PERRON TOLLEFSEN “Knit Two, Ponder Three: Reflections on Knitting, Philosophy, and Family” LESLIE PICKERING FRANCIS “Knitting” LISA CASSIDY “The Incorrigible Knitter Learns about Teaching” JAMI L. ANDERSON “Hegel Knits” MARIAM THALOS “The Wit of Knitting: A Philosophical Reflection on Knitting Things Aright” PATRICIA ALTENBERND JOHNSON “Thinking Gardening as Dwelling” © 2008 by The American Philosophical Association EMILY S. LEE “Ode to a Pot” ALISON REIHELD “Feminism, Food, and the Politics of Home Cookin’” ORNAITH O’DOWD “Singing Out: Making Music as a Leftist Feminist Philosopher” BOOK REVIEWS Anne Dufourmantelle, trans. Catherine Porter: Blind Date: Sex and Philosophy REVIEWED BY PATRICIA MARINO George Yancy, ed.: Philosophy in Multiple Voices REVIEWED BY MARK CHEKOLA Lori Jo Marso: Feminist Thinkers and the Demands of Feminity: The Lives and Work of Intellectual Women REVIEWED BY PENNY A. WEISS Jane Duran: Women, Philosophy, and Literature REVIEWED BY CHIELOZONA EZE Warren Farrell and James P. Sterba: Does Feminism Discriminate Against Men? REVIEWED BY GEORGE W. BOONE Judith Chelus Stark: Feminist Interpretations of Augustine REVIEWED BY JAMES WETZEL Oliva Sabuco de Nantes Barrera: New Philosophy of Human Nature REVIEWED BY INMACULADA DE MELO-MARTIN Robert Solomon: True to Our Feelings REVIEWED BY LYNN SOMERSTEIN Torin Alter and Sven Walter, eds.: Phenomenal Concepts and Phenomenal Knowledge: New Essays on Consciousness and Physicalism REVIEWED BY PAUL M.
    [Show full text]
  • Medicine and the Querelle Des Femmes in Early Modern Spain
    Medicine and the Querelle des Femmes in Early Modern Spain MONICA BOLUFER Introduction Among the forms of knowledge that express and at the same time shape world views and social standards, scientific discourse, like religious discourse, has played a key part in producing an appearance of truth, appealing to ‘‘nature’’ as incontrovertible evidence. Throughout history, medicine has helped to theorize and justify gender differences and inequalities by naturalizing them, that is, by basing the attribution of social functions and hierarchies on a set of physical, moral and intellectual inclinations and aptitudes, suppo- sedly rooted in nature, which doctors declared themselves to be the persons most author- ized to disclose and interpret. Indeed, in various ages and societies scientific discourses (particularly medical discourse) have persistently wondered about the meaning of gender difference and inequality, and in doing so they projected the conventions, expectations and prejudices of their own time on to their questions and responses, and on to the attitudes and results of their research and practice.1 The influence of medical science became particularly intense in European culture and society in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as the secularization of thinking reduced the preponderant role of providentialist explanations in favour of others based on ‘‘reason’’ and ‘‘evidence’’, and the medical profession experienced an increase in its social prestige and power. Since medieval times, however, medical or philosophical explanations of classical origin and the Christian tradition based on the Bible and theological authorities had been the main pillars that supported theories about the different ‘‘nature’’, functions and authority which corresponded to men and women in society.2 And therefore, in what they wrote for their professional colleagues or for a broader range of readers, doctors had an important influence on the societies in which they lived.
    [Show full text]
  • The Rise of Modern Metaphysics and Epistemology
    Moore−Bruder: Philosophy: I. Metaphysics and 6. The Rise of Modern © The McGraw−Hill The Power of Ideas, Epistemology: Existence Metaphysics and Companies, 2008 Seventh Edition and Knowledge Epistemology 6 The Rise of Modern Metaphysics and Epistemology Every part of the universe is body, and that which is not body is not part of the universe. —Thomas Hobbes Wood, stone, fire, water, flesh . are things perceived by my senses; and things perceived by the senses are immediately perceived; and things immediately perceived are ideas; and ideas cannot exist outside the mind. —George Berkeley he transitional period between medieval and modern times was the Renais- T sance (fourteenth through sixteenth centuries). Through its emphasis on worldly experience and reverence for classical culture, the Renaissance helped emancipate Europe from the intellectual authority of the Church. The modern period in history (and philosophy) that followed lasted through the nineteenth century. Its interesting cultural and social developments include, among other things, the rise of nation-states, the spread of capitalism and industrialization, the exploration and settlement of the New World, the decline of religion, and the even- tual domination of science as the most revered source of knowledge. The last development is the most important to a history of metaphysics and epistemology and is briefly described in the box “The Scientific Revolution.” To most educated Westerners today, it is a matter of plain fact that there exists a universe of physical objects related
    [Show full text]