Download or read book Scepticism clandestinity and free thinking written by Gianni Paganini and published by Honoré Champion. This book was released on 2002 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Return of Scepticism written by Gianni Paganini and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-03-14 with total page 501 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of articles (the Vercelli conference proceedings) places the theme of scepticism within its philosophical tradition. It explores the English philosophical thinkers, the French context, as well as major Italian figures and Spanish culture. It pays special attention to the relationships between history of philosophical ideas and the problems rising from the history of sciences (medicine, physics, linguistics, historical scholarship) in the 17th and the18th centuries.
Download or read book Skepticism and Political Thought in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries written by John Christian Laursen and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2015-02-26 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this collection, thirteen distinguished contributors examine the influence of the ancient skeptical philosophy of Pyrrho of Elis and Sextus Empiricus on early modern political thought. Classical skepticism argues that in the absence of certainty one must either suspend judgment and live by habit or act on the basis of probability rather than certainty. In either case, one must reject dogmatic confidence in politics and philosophy. Surveying the use of skepticism in works by Hobbes, Descartes, Hume, Smith, and Kant, among others, the essays in Skepticism and Political Thought in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries demonstrate the pervasive impact of skepticism on the intellectual landscape of early modern Europe. This volume is not just an authoritative account of skepticism’s importance from the Enlightenment to the French Revolution, it is also the basis for understanding skepticism’s continuing political implications.
Download or read book Skepticism From Antiquity to the Present written by Diego Machuca and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-01-25 with total page 768 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Skepticism: From Antiquity to the Present is an authoritative and up-to-date survey of the entire history of skepticism. Divided chronologically into ancient, medieval, renaissance, modern, and contemporary periods, and featuring 50 specially-commissioned chapters from leading philosophers, this comprehensive volume is the first of its kind. By exploring each of the distinct traditions and providing expert insights, this extensive reference work: - covers major thinkers such as Sextus Empiricus, Cicero, Descartes, Hume, Spinoza, and Wittgenstein. - acknowledges the influence of ancient skeptical traditions on later philosophy and explains why it is still a fertile topic of inquiry among today's philosophers and historians of philosophy. - analyzes various forms of skepticism including Pyrrhonian, Academic, religious, moral, and neo-Pyrrhonian. - addresses issues in contemporary epistemology and indicates new directions of study. Skepticism, a driving force in the history of philosophy, remains at the center of debates in ethics, philosophy of religion, epistemology, and the philosophy of mind. Skepticism: From Antiquity to the Present is an essential point of reference for any student, researcher, or practitioner of philosophy, presenting a systematic and historical survey of this core philosophical topic.
Download or read book Clandestine Philosophy written by Gianni Paganini and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2020-01-29 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Clandestine philosophical manuscripts, made up of forbidden works including erotic texts, political pamphlets, satires of court life, forbidden religious texts, and books about the occult, had an avid readership in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, becoming objects of historical research by the twentieth century. The purveyors of the clandestine could be found in the Dutch Republic, Switzerland, Denmark, Spain, and not least in Paris or London. Despite the heavy risks, including prison, the circulation of these manuscripts was a prosperous venture. After Ira Wade’s pioneering contribution (1938), Clandestine Philosophy is the first work in English entirely focused on the philosophical clandestine manuscripts that preceded and accompanied the birth of the Enlightenment. Topics from philosophy, political and religious thought, and moral and sexual behaviour are addressed by contemporary authors working in both America and Europe. These manuscripts shed light on the birth of pornography and provide an important avenue for investigating philosophical, religious, political, and social critique.
Download or read book Bodies of Thought written by Ann Thomson and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2008-07-03 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examining the development of a secular, purely material conception of human beings in the early Enlightenment, Bodies of Thought provides a fresh perspective on the intellectual culture of this period, and challenges certain influential interpretations of irreligious thought and the 'Radical Enlightenment'. Beginning with the debate on the soul in England, in which political and religious concerns were intertwined, and ending with the eruption of materialism onto the public stage in mid-eighteenth-century France, Ann Thomson looks at attempts to explain how the material brain thinks without the need for an immaterial and immortal soul. She shows how this current of thinking fed into the later eighteenth-century 'Natural History of Man', the earlier roots of which have been overlooked by many scholars. Although much attention has been paid to the atheistic French materialists, their link to the preceding period has been studied only partially, and the current interest in what is called the 'Radical Enlightenment' has served to obscure rather than enlighten this history. By bringing out the importance of both Protestant theological debates and medical thinking in England, and by following the different debates on the soul in Holland and France, this book shows that attempts to find a single coherent strand of radical irreligious thought running through the early Enlightenment, coming to fruition in the second half of the eighteenth century, ignore the multiple channels which composed Enlightenment thinking.
Download or read book Atheism and Deism Revalued written by Wayne Hudson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-15 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Given the central role played by religion in early-modern Britain, it is perhaps surprising that historians have not always paid close attention to the shifting and nuanced subtleties of terms used in religious controversies. In this collection particular attention is focussed upon two of the most contentious of these terms: ’atheism’ and ’deism’, terms that have shaped significant parts of the scholarship on the Enlightenment. This volume argues that in the seventeenth and eighteenth century atheism and deism involved fine distinctions that have not always been preserved by later scholars. The original deployment and usage of these terms were often more complicated than much of the historical scholarship suggests. Indeed, in much of the literature static definitions are often taken for granted, resulting in depictions of the past constructed upon anachronistic assumptions. Offering reassessments of the historical figures most associated with ’atheism’ and ’deism’ in early modern Britain, this collection opens the subject up for debate and shows how the new historiography of deism changes our understanding of heterodox religious identities in Britain from 1650 to 1800. It problematises the older view that individuals were atheist or deists in a straightforward sense and instead explores the plurality and flexibility of religious identities during this period. Drawing on the most recent scholarship, the volume enriches the debate about heterodoxy, offering new perspectives on a range of prominent figures and providing an overview of major changes in the field.
Download or read book Renaissance Scepticisms written by Gianni Paganini and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-11-14 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Even if specific pieces of research (on the sources or on individual authors, such as Pico, Agrippa, Erasmus, Montaigne, Sanches etc.) have given and are still producing significant results on Renaissance scepticism, an overall synthesis comprising the entire period has not been achieved yet. No predetermined idea of that complex historical subject that is Renaissance scepticism underlies this book, and we want to sacrifice the complexity of movements, personalities, tendencies and interpretations to any sort of a priori unity of theme even less. We acknowledge unhesitatingly that we had always thought of “scepticisms” in the plural, and believe that the different contexts (philosophical, religious, cultural) in which these forms grew up must also be taken into account. Furthermore, given the transversal nature and provocative character of the sceptical challenge, this book contains essays also on philosophers who, without being sceptics and sometimes engaged in fighting scepticism, nevertheless took up its challenge. The main authors considered in this book are: Vives, Castellio, Agrippa, Pedro de Valencia, Pico, Sanchez, Montaigne, Charron, Bruno, Bacon, and Campanella. The various essays in the book show the relevance of the philosophical thought of authors little known by the general public and put in new perspective important aspects of the thought of some of the great thinkers of the Renaissance.
Download or read book Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences written by Dana Jalobeanu and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-08-27 with total page 2267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Encyclopedia offers a fresh, integrated and creative perspective on the formation and foundations of philosophy and science in European modernity. Combining careful contextual reconstruction with arguments from traditional philosophy, the book examines methodological dimensions, breaks down traditional oppositions such as rationalism vs. empiricism, calls attention to gender issues, to ‘insiders and outsiders’, minor figures in philosophy, and underground movements, among many other topics. In addition, and in line with important recent transformations in the fields of history of science and early modern philosophy, the volume recognizes the specificity and significance of early modern science and discusses important developments including issues of historiography (such as historical epistemology), the interplay between the material culture and modes of knowledge, expert knowledge and craft knowledge. This book stands at the crossroads of different disciplines and combines their approaches – particularly the history of science, the history of philosophy, contemporary philosophy of science, and intellectual and cultural history. It brings together over 100 philosophers, historians of science, historians of mathematics, and medicine offering a comprehensive view of early modern philosophy and the sciences. It combines and discusses recent results from two very active fields: early modern philosophy and the history of (early modern) science. Editorial Board EDITORS-IN-CHIEF Dana Jalobeanu University of Bucharest, Romania Charles T. Wolfe Ghent University, Belgium ASSOCIATE EDITORS Delphine Bellis University Nijmegen, The Netherlands Zvi Biener University of Cincinnati, OH, USA Angus Gowland University College London, UK Ruth Hagengruber University of Paderborn, Germany Hiro Hirai Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands Martin Lenz University of Groningen, The Netherlands Gideon Manning CalTech, Pasadena, CA, USA Silvia Manzo University of La Plata, Argentina Enrico Pasini University of Turin, Italy Cesare Pastorino TU Berlin, Germany Lucian Petrescu Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium Justin E. H. Smith University de Paris Diderot, France Marius Stan Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, USA Koen Vermeir CNRS-SPHERE + Université de Paris, France Kirsten Walsh University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Download or read book Joseph Priestley written by Isabel Rivers and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008-01-17 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Joseph Priestley was one of the most remarkable thinkers of the eighteenth century. Best known today as the scientist who discovered oxygen, he also made major contributions in the fields of education, politics, philosophy, and theology. This collection of essays by a team of experts covers the full range of Priestley's work and provides a new and up to date account of all his activities, together with a summary of his life and an account of his last years in America. The book will re-establish him as a major intellectual figure in Britain and America in the second half of the eighteenth century.
Download or read book Anticlerical legacies written by Elad Carmel and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2024-01-09 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anticlerical legacies is the first comprehensive study of the reception of Thomas Hobbes’s ideas by the English deists and freethinkers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. One of the most important English philosophers of all time, Hobbes’s theories have had an enduring impact on modern political and religious thought. This book offers a new perspective on the afterlife of Hobbes’s philosophy, focusing on the readers who were most sympathetic to his critical and radical ideas in the decades following his death. It investigates how Hobbes’s ideas shaped the English anticlerical campaign that peaked in the early eighteenth century and that was essential for the emergence of the early Enlightenment. The book shows that a large number of writers – Charles Blount, John Toland, Anthony Collins, Matthew Tindal, Thomas Morgan, and many others – were more Hobbesian than has ever been appreciated. Not only did they engage consistently with Hobbes’s ideas, they even invoked his authority at a time when doing so was highly unpopular. Most fundamentally, they carried on Hobbes’s war against the kingdom of darkness and used various Hobbesian weapons for their own war against priestcraft. Analysing the ways in which the deists and freethinkers developed their nuanced theories and conducted their heated dialogues with the orthodoxy, they emerge from this study as sophisticated and valuable theorists in their own right. The case of Hobbes and his successors demonstrates that anticlericalism was a key component of a much larger programme whose primary aim was to secure civil harmony, peace, and stability.
Download or read book Fifty Years of Philosophy of Religion A Select Bibliography 1955 2005 written by Andy Sanders and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2007-06-28 with total page 660 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The bibliography lists about 10.000 titles of monographs, collections and articles in the field of the philosophy of religion and philosophical theology that appeared between 1955 and 2005. The majority of them are in the English language but publications in German, Dutch and French are listed as well. Though it is not claimed to be exhaustive, the bibliography offers a fairly representative survey of scholarly work on the main topics of interest. *** Publications have been systematically classified according to eleven main categories: Introductions, Surveys and Historical Issues (Part I), Religious Language (Part II), Religious Experience (Part III), Religious Epistemology (Part IV) , Theism (Part V), Hermeneutics (Part VI), Religion and Science (Part VII), Religion and Aesthetics (Part VIII), Religion and Morality (Part IX), Religious Pluralism (Part X) and Feminist Philosophy of Religion (Part XI). Part III has been subdivided into Religious Experience and Mystical Experience, Part VII into The Concept of God, (arguments for) The Existence of God, The Problem of Evil and Atheism, and Part VII into General and Historical Issues, Theological Issues and (implications of) Modern Physics, Cosmology and Biology. *** The bibliography will particularly be useful to scholars, teachers and students in the philosophy of religion, philosophical theology and systematic theology as well as to those who are interested, professionally or otherwise, in the results of academic scholarship in those fields.
Download or read book British Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century written by Sarah Hutton and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2015-06-04 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sarah Hutton presents a rich historical study of one of the most fertile periods in modern philosophy. It was in the seventeenth century that Britain's first philosophers of international stature and lasting influence emerged. Its most famous names, Hobbes and Locke, rank alongside the greatest names in the European philosophical canon. Bacon too belongs with this constellation of great thinkers, although his status as a philosopher tends to be obscured by his status as father of modern science. The seventeenth century is normally regarded as the dawn of modernity following the breakdown of the Aristotelian synthesis which had dominated intellectual life since the middle ages. In this period of transformational change, Bacon, Hobbes, Locke are acknowledged to have contributed significantly to the shape of European philosophy from their own time to the present day. But these figures did not work in isolation. Sarah Hutton places them in their intellectual context, including the social, political and religious conditions in which philosophy was practised. She treats seventeenth-century philosophy as an ongoing conversation: like all conversations, some voices will dominate, some will be more persuasive than others and there will be enormous variations in tone from the polite to polemical, matter-of-fact, intemperate. The conversation model allows voices to be heard which would otherwise be discounted. Hutton shows the importance of figures normally regarded as 'minor' players in philosophy (e.g. Herbert of Cherbury, Cudworth, More, Burthogge, Norris, Toland) as well as others who have been completely overlooked, notably female philosophers. Crucially, instead of emphasizing the break between seventeenth-century philosophy and its past, the conversation model makes it possible to trace continuities between the Renaissance and seventeenth century, across the seventeenth century and into the eighteenth century, while at the same time acknowledging the major changes which occurred.
Download or read book Deism in Enlightenment England written by Jeffrey R Wigelsworth and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2013-07-19 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first complete study of English deists as a group in several decades and it argues for a new interpretation of deism in the English Enlightenment. While there have been many recent studies of the deist John Toland, the writings of other contemporary deists have been forgotten. With extensive analysis of lesser known figures such as Anthony Collins, Matthew Tindal, Thomas Chub, and Thomas Morgan, in addition to unique insights into Toland, Deism in Enlightenment England offers a much broader assessment of what deism entailed in the eighteenth century. Readers will see how previous interpretations of English deists, which place these figures on an irreligious trajectory leading towards modernity, need to be revised. This book uses deists to address a number of topics and themes and theme in English history and will be of particular interest to scholars of Enlightenment history, history of science, theology and politics, and the early modern era.
Download or read book The Book That Changed Europe written by Lynn Hunt and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2010-07-31 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two French Protestant refugees in eighteenth-century Amsterdam gave the world an extraordinary work that intrigued and outraged readers across Europe. In this captivating account, Lynn Hunt, Margaret Jacob, and Wijnand Mijnhardt take us to the vibrant Dutch Republic and its flourishing book trade to explore the work that sowed the radical idea that religions could be considered on equal terms. Famed engraver Bernard Picart and author and publisher Jean Frederic Bernard produced The Religious Ceremonies and Customs of All the Peoples of the World, which appeared in the first of seven folio volumes in 1723. They put religion in comparative perspective, offering images and analysis of Jews, Catholics, Muslims, the peoples of the Orient and the Americas, Protestants, deists, freemasons, and assorted sects. Despite condemnation by the Catholic Church, the work was a resounding success. For the next century it was copied or adapted, but without the context of its original radicalism and its debt to clandestine literature, English deists, and the philosophy of Spinoza. Ceremonies and Customs prepared the ground for religious toleration amid seemingly unending religious conflict, and demonstrated the impact of the global on Western consciousness. In this beautifully illustrated book, Hunt, Jacob, and Mijnhardt cast new light on the profound insight found in one book as it shaped the development of a modern, secular understanding of religion.
Download or read book Scripture and Scholarship in Early Modern England written by Ariel Hessayon and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2006 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume of essays is the first to embrace both orthodox and heterodox treatments of scripture in early modern England, and in the process to question, challenge and redefine what historians mean when they use these terms. The collection dispels the myth that a critical engagement with sacred texts was the preserve of radical figures: anti-scripturists, Quakers, Deists and freethinkers. While the work of these people was significant, it formed only part of a far broader debate incorporating figures from across the theological spectrum engaging in a shared discourse.
Download or read book Paolo Sarpi A Servant of God and State written by Jaska Kainulainen and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2014-03-13 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an intellectual biography of the Venetian historian and theologian Paolo Sarpi (1552-1623). It analyses Sarpi's natural philosophy, religious ideas and political thought. Kainulainen argues that Sarpi was influenced by Neostoicism, Neoepicureanism and the sixteenth-century scientific revolution; that Sarpi was a fideist and Christian mortalist who, while critical of the contemporary Church of Rome, admired the purity of the early church. Focusing on Sarpi’s separation between church and state, his use of absolutism, divine right of kings and reason of state, the book offers a fresh perspective on medieval and reformation traditions. It will be of interest to those interested in early-modern intellectual history and the interplay between science, religion and politics in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century political discourse.
