Download or read book French Free Thought from Gassendi to Voltaire written by J. S. Spink and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2013-11-07 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book makes an important contribution to the history of ideas in France in the century preceding the main manifestations of the Enlightenment. A number of detailed studies already exist which deal with special aspects of the thought of the period, and works abound on individual thinkers such as Descartes and Pascal. Professor Spink, however, has endeavoured to present within a single volume a full, coherent and balanced account of the radical inquiries in literature, philosophy, and the natural sciences that stemmed from the intellectual crisis of the 1620s. He analyses the content of this body of free-thought and devotes particular attention to the ways in which the new ideas were disseminated in the face of the hostility of the civil and ecclesiastical authorities.

Download or read book French Free thought from Gassendi to Voltaire written by John Stephenson Spink and published by . This book was released on 1969 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book French Free thought from Gassendi to Voltaire written by John Stephenson Spink and published by . This book was released on 1960 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A Short History of Freethought written by John Mackinnon Robertson and published by . This book was released on 1915 with total page 556 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Gassendi s Ethics written by Lisa T. Sarasohn and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-18 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first book to explore the ethical thought of Pierre Gassendi, the seventeenth-century French priest who rehabilitated Epicurean philosophy in the Western tradition. Lisa T. Sarasohn's discussion of the relationship between Gassendi's philosophy of nature and his ethics discloses the underlying unity of his philosophy and elucidates this critical figure in the intellectual revolution.Sarasohn demonstrates that Gassendi's ethics was an important part of his attempt to Christianize Epicureanism. She shows how Gassendi integrated ideas of human freedom into a neo-Epicurean ethic where pleasure is the highest good, yet maintained a consistent belief in Christian providence. These views challenged what were then the new systems of philosophy, Hobbesian materialism and Cartesian rationalism. Sarasohn places Gassendi in his historical and intellectual context, considering him in relation to contemporary philosophers and within the patronage system that conditioned his own freedom. She investigates the links between his ethical thought and philosophy of science and makes sense of his attacks on astrology. Finally, her work clarifies Pierre Gassendi's considerable influence on seventeenth-century ethical and political philosophy, particularly on the work of John Locke—and thus on the whole English liberal tradition in political philosophy.

Download or read book Pierre Gassendi written by Delphine Bellis and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-04-21 with total page 502 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655) was a major figure in seventeenth-century philosophy and science and his works contributed to shaping Western intellectual identity. Among “new philosophers,” he was considered Descartes’s main rival, and he belonged to the first rank of those attempting to carve out an alternative to Aristotelian philosophy. In his writings, he promoted a revival of atomism and Epicureanism within a Christian framework, and advocated an empiricist and probabilistic epistemology which was to have a major impact on later thinkers such as Locke and Newton. He is moreover important for his astronomical work, for his defense of Galileo’s mechanics and cosmology, and for his activity as a biographer. Given the importance of Gassendi for the history of science and philosophy, it is surprising to see that he has been largely ignored in the Anglophone world. This collection of essays constitutes the first book on Gassendi in the English language that covers his biography, bibliography, and all aspects of his work. The book is divided into three parts. Part I offers a reconstruction of the genesis of Gassendi’s Epicurean project, an overview of his biography, and analyses of Gassendi’s early attacks on Aristotle, of his advocacy of Epicurean philosophy, and his relation to the skeptical tradition and to Cicero’s thought. Part II addresses Gassendi as a participant in seventeenth-century philosophical and scientific debates, focusing especially on his controversies with Descartes and Fludd. Part III explores Gassendi’s contributions to logic, theories of space and time, mechanics, astronomy, cosmology, and the study of living beings, and presents the reception of Gassendi’s thought in England. This book is an essential resource for scholars and upper-level students of early modern philosophy, intellectual history, and the history of science who want to get acquainted with Pierre Gassendi as a major philosopher and intellectual figure of the early modern period.

Download or read book Intellectual Origins of the French Enlightenment written by Ira O. Wade and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-03-08 with total page 700 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the same sense of historical responsibility and veracity he has exemplified in his studies on Voltaire, Ira O. Wade turns now to Voltaire's milieu and begins an account of the French Enlightenment which will explain its genesis, its nature and coherence, and its diffusion in the modern world. To understand the movement of ideas that produced the spirit of the Enlightenment, Mr. Wade identifies and examines the people, events, and rich development of philosophy in the Renaissance and seventeenth century. He considers, in turn, the challenges of the Renaissance and the responses of its leading writers (Rabelais, Bacon, and Montaigne); Baroque thought (Descartes, Hobbes, Pascal, the Freethinkers); and Classicism (Moliere, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz, Newton). Mr. Wade begins his discussion by examining the critical literature on the Enlightenment and concludes with a theoretical chapter, "The Making of a Spirit." As the history of an intellectual culture, his study makes vivid the power of thought in the making of a civilization. Originally published in 1971. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Download or read book The Autocritique of Enlightenment written by Mark Hulliung and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-29 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Of all the critiques of the Enlightenment, the most telling may be found in the life and writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. This searching, long overlooked auto critique receives its first full treatment by Mark Hulliung. Here he restores Rousseau to his historical context, the world of the philosophes, and shows how he employed the arsenal of Voltaire, Diderot, and others to launch a powerful attack on their version of the Enlightenment. With great intellectual skill and rhetorical force, Rousseau exposed the inconsistencies and shortcomings of the Enlightenment: the psychology of Locke, the genre of philosophical and conjectural history, the latest applications of science to the study of society and politics, and the growing interest in materialist modes of thought. As the century moved on, Hulliung shows, the most advanced philosophes found themselves drawn to conclusions that paralleled Rousseau's an agreement that went unacknowledged at the time. The Enlightenment that emerges here is richer, more nuanced, and more self-critical than the one reflected in many interpretations. By extracting Rousseau from personal entangle-ments that stymied debate in his time and that mislead critics to this day, Hulliung reveals the remarkable and remarkably unacknowledged force of Rousseau's accomplishment. This edition includes a brilliant new introduction by the author.

Download or read book Sceptical Doubt and Disbelief in Modern European Thought written by Vicente Raga Rosaleny and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-10-19 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines modern scepticism in all main philosophical areas: epistemology, science, metaphysics, morals, and religion. It features sixteen essays that explore its importance for modern thought. The contributions present diverse, mutually enriching interpretations of key thinkers, from Montaigne to Nietzsche. The book includes a look both at the relationship between Montaigne and Pascal and at Montaigne’s criticism of religious rationalism. It turns its attention to an investigation into the links between ancient scepticism and Bacon’s Doctrine of the Idols, as well as into the ancient problem of the criterion in Cartesian philosophy. Next, three essays focus on more general topics, like modern sceptical disturbances, clandestine literature and irreligion. Two essays investigate the role of scepticism in Bayle’s moral thinking and his theory of religious toleration. Hume’s sceptical philosophy is the subject of two papers by distinguished scholars. In addition, many contributors address the presence of scepticism in Kant and in the German Idealism, such as the role of Schulze's scepticism in the works of the young Hegel. The book closes with a paper on Nietzsche and scepticism, and an essay on the role of Popkin’s and Schmitt’s works on modern scepticism. This collection continues along a rich, fruitful path opened by Richard H. Popkin and pursued by many important scholars, like Gianni Paganini, John-Christian Laursen, and José Raimundo Maia Neto. It re-establishes that necessary dialogue between researchers of scepticism from all over the Americas, which began with Popkin, Oswaldo Porchat and Ezequiel de Olaso long ago. This insightful reflection on modern European scepticism will also serve as an important resource in the history of modern philosophy.

Download or read book Galileo in France written by John Michael Lewis and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2006 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Original Scholarly Monograph

Download or read book Boulainvilliers and the French Monarchy written by Harold A. Ellis and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-15 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Suspicious of the French monarchy, and scornful of the new elites that served it, Henri de Boulainvilliers (1658–1722) has been considered one of the Old Regime's paradigmatic aristocratic reactionaries, a founder of modern racist theory. Some scholars, however, have admired his "constitutionalism" and judged him a progenitor of an enlightened aristocratic liberalism now commonly held to have been a major force in shaping the ideology of the French Revolution. In a close contextual study of the writings of this enigmatic, pivotal thinker, Harold A. Ellis persuasively rethinks both images of Boulainvilliers, finding him a controversialist who interpreted French history as a self-consciously political writer seeking to address an emergent political public.

Download or read book Candide Third Edition written by Voltaire and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2016-04-15 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Candide has been delighting readers since 1759 with its satiric wit, provocations, and warnings. The novella has never been out of print and has been translated into every conceivable language. The text of this Norton Critical Edition remains that of Robert M. Adams’s superlative translation, accompanied by explanatory annotations. The Norton Critical Edition also includes: · A full introduction by Nicholas Cronk. · Six background studies of Enlightenment ideas and themes (by Richard Holmes, Adam Gopnik, W. H. Barber, Dennis Fletcher, Haydn Mason, and Nicholas Cronk), five of these new to the Third Edition. · Seven critical essays—five of them new to this edition—representing a wide range of approaches to Candide. Contributors include J. G. Weightman, Robin Howells, James J. Lynch, Philip Stewart, Erich Auerbach, and Jean Starobinski. · A revised and expanded Selected Bibliography.

Download or read book A History of Physical Theories of Comets From Aristotle to Whipple written by Tofigh Heidarzadeh and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-05-23 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although the development of ideas about the motion and trajectory of comets has been investigated piecemeal, we lack a comprehensive and detailed survey of ph- ical theories of comets. The available works either illustrate relatively short periods in the history of physical cometology or portray a landscape view without adequate details. The present study is an attempt to review – with more details – the major physical theories of comets in the past two millennia, from Aristotle to Whipple. My research, however, did not begin with antiquity. The basic question from which this project originated was a simple inquiry about the cosmic identity of comets at the dawn of the astronomical revolution: how did natural philosophers and astronomers define the nature and place of a new category of celestial objects – comets – after Brahe’s estimation of cometary distances? It was from this turning point in the history of cometary theories that I expanded my studies in both the pre-modern and modern eras. A study starting merely from Brahe and ending with Newton, without covering classical and medieval thought about comets, would be incomplete and leave the fascinating achievements of post-Newtonian cometology unexplored.

Download or read book Science For A Polite Society written by Geoffrey V. Sutton and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-02-06 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traditional accounts of the scientific revolution focus on such thinkers as Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton, and usually portray it as a process of steady, rational progress. There is another side to this story, and its protagonists are more likely to be women than men, dilettante aristocrats than highly educated natural philosophers. The setting is not the laboratory, but rather the literary salons of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France, and the action takes place sometime between Europe's last great witch hunts and the emergence of the modern world.Science for a Polite Society is an intriguing reexamination of the social, cultural, and intellectual context of the origins of modern science. The elite of French society accepted science largely because of their personal involvement and fascination with the emerging philosophy of nature. Members of salon society, especially women, were avid readers of works of natural philosophy and active participants in experiments for the edification of their peers. Some of these women went on to champion the new science and played a significant role in securing its acceptance by polite society.As Geoffrey Sutton points out, the sheer entertainment value of startling displays of electricity and chemical explosions would have played an important role in persuading the skeptical. We can only imagine the effects of such drawing-room experiments on an audience that lived in a world illuminated by tallow candles. For many, leaping electrical arcs and window-rattling detonations must have been as convincing as Newton's mathematically elegant description of the motions of the planets.With the acceptance and triumph of the new science came a prestige that made it a model of what rationality should be. The Enlightenment adopted the methods of scientific thought as the model for human progress. To be an ?enlightened? thinker meant believing that the application of scientific methods could reform political and economic life, to the lasting benefit of humanity. We live with the ambiguous results of that legacy even today, although in our own century we are perhaps more impressed by the ability of science to frighten, rather than to awe and entertain.

Download or read book Anthony Collins The Man and His Works written by James O'Higgins and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the study of a man who caught my interest both because of his own character and of the variety of his activities. It is an attempt to see him in his relationship, intellectual and literary, with the Europe of his day, to gauge his position in the development of Seventeenth and Eighteenth century thought, to examine the origins of his ideas and their effect and to place him in the social context of the England of the early Eighteenth century. The period in which he lived, coming at the beginning of the Enlightenment, was seminal for our own world and the man himself is of contemporary significance because of the similarity of his outlook, ifnot of his beliefs, to that of many today. He was at the centre of the major theological controversy of the Seventeen twenties and was one of the most contentious figures of his time. I would like to acknowledge my obligation to the scholars and librarians who have assisted me in producing this work: to Dr. E. A. O. Whiteman of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and to Mrs. M. Kneale, late of the same College; to Bodley's librarian Dr. R. Shackleton; to Dr. D. Rogers, Mr. D. G. Neill and to the staff of the Bodleian, especially those who work in Duke Humphrey; to the librarians of Christ Church, All Souls, St. John's, Wadham, Exeter and Corpus Christi Colleges, Oxford; to Mr. F. G. Emmison, Miss H. E. T.

Download or read book Naturalism and Unbelief in France 1650 1729 written by Alan Charles Kors and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-06-20 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Atheism was the most fundamental challenge to early-modern French certainties. Leading educators, theologians and philosophers labelled such atheism as manifestly absurd, confident that neither the fact nor behaviour of nature was explicable without reference to God. The alternative was a categorical naturalism. This book demonstrates that the Christian learned world had always contained the naturalistic 'atheist' as an interlocutor and a polemical foil, and its early-modern engagement and use of the hypothetical atheist were major parts of its intellectual life. In the considerations and polemics of an increasingly fractious orthodox culture, the early-modern French learned world gave real voice and eventually life to that atheistic presence. Without understanding the actual context and convergence of the inheritance, scholarship, fierce disputes, and polemical modes of orthodox culture, the early-modern generation and dissemination of absolute naturalism are inexplicable. This book brings to life that Christian learned culture, its dilemmas, and its unintended consequences.

Download or read book England s Rise to Greatness 1660 1763 written by Stephen Baxter and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-04-28 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1660 England was already prosperous, free, civilized, and the possessor of the makings of an empire. In the century to follow, the island nation became the world's greatest power. This cohesive collection of essays on a wide range of topics illuminates important facets of the political history of England from the Restoration to the American War of Independence. Arthur J. Slavin of the university of Louisville discusses and important problem in legal history in his "Craw v. Ramsey: New light on an Old Debate." Jacob M. Price of the University of Michigan takes another look at the Excise Crisis. Ragnhild M. Hatton of the London School of Economics sheds new light on George I. Daniel A. Baugh of Cornell University considers "pauperism, Protestantism, and Political Economy: English Attitudes toward the Poor 1660 - 1800." Anglo-Savoyard relations are the topic of Geoffrey Symocox of the University of California, Los Angeles. The late Arthur M. Wilson of Dartmouth is represented by a wise and charming paper entitled "The Enlightenment Came First to England." Lois G. Schwoerer of George Washington University finds new perspectives while examining the Glorious Revolution. John Brewer of Harvard explains "the Number 45: A Wilkite Political Symbol." Clayton Roberts of the Ohio State University discusses "Party and the Patronage in Later Stuart England," while Stephen Baxter of the University of North Carolina takes up some aspects of the conduct of the Seven Years War. All of the contributions were originally delivered at the Wiliam Andrews Clark Memorial Library during Stephen Baxter's tenure as Clark Library Professor in 1977 - 1978. Each of the essays will appeal to a learned audience of specialists, and the variety of topics will interest the general reader. This collection represents the leading scholarship on this remarkable period of English history. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1983.