The history of philosophy. Vol. V—The eighteenth century

1968 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 241
Author(s):  
Denis Leigh
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
History Of

SYMPATHY, DIFFERENCE, AND EDUCATION: SOCIAL UNITY IN THE WORK OF ADAM SMITH

2006 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-111 ◽  
Author(s):  
JACK RUSSELL WEINSTEIN
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Psychological Distance ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Biological Difference ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
Social Unity ◽  
History Of ◽  
Do So

In this article, I examine Adam Smith's theory of the ways individuals in society bridge social and biological difference. In doing so, I emphasize the divisive effects of gender, race, and class to see if Smith's account of social unity can overcome such fractious forces. My discussion uses the metaphor of “proximity” to mean both physical and psychological distance between moral actors and spectators. I suggest that education – both formal and informal in means – can assist moral judgment by helping agents minimize the effects of proximity, and, ultimately, learn commonality where difference may otherwise seem overwhelming. This article uses the methods of the history of philosophy in order to examine an issue within contemporary discourse. While I seek to offer an authentic reading of Smith representative of his eighteenth-century perspective, I do so with an eye towards determining the extent to which Smith anticipated central issues in modern multiculturalism.

HOW THE STOICS BECAME ATHEISTS

2006 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 387-402 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRISTOPHER BROOKE
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Critical History ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ralph Cudworth ◽  
The Way

In the middle of the seventeenth century, scholarship on ancient Stoicism generally understood it to be a form of theism. By the middle of the eighteenth century, Stoicism was widely (though not universally) reckoned a variety of atheism, both by its critics and by those more favourably disposed to its claims. This article describes this transition, the catalyst for which was the controversy surrounding Spinoza's philosophy, and which was shaped above all by contemporary transformations in the historiography of philosophy. Particular attention is paid to the roles in this story played by Thomas Gataker, Ralph Cudworth, J. F. Buddeus, Jean Barbeyrac, and J. L. Mosheim, whose contributions collectively helped to shape the way in which Stoicism was presented in two of the leading reference works of the Enlightenment, J. J. Brucker's Critical History of Philosophy and the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d'Alembert.

The Phoenix of Hermes, or the Rebirth of Plato in the Eighteenth Century

1995 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-86
Author(s):  
Richard Marback
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Direct Response ◽  
Ancient Athens ◽  
Marsilio Ficino ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Phoenix

Abstract: In this paper 1 provide a reading of the conflict between allegorical and philosophie interpretations of Plato that resulted in the shift of authority from the former to the latter, signalling the decline of rhetoric. The specifie text 1 focus on is Jacob Brucker's eighteenthcentury revision of the history of philosophy. I show that Brucker conceives of Plato as rational and philosophie in direct response to Renaissance and early modem Neoplatonists like Marsilio Ficino, who read Plato's writings as allegory and who revered Plato as a divine sage of Egyptian wisdom. Identifying Brucker's argument for a philosophie Plato as a response to Neoplatonism, 1 argue that Brucker fashions his Plato from eighteenth-eentury attitudes isolating Egypt from Athens, so as to ally ancient Athens more closely to modem Europe. 1 conclude by considering the implications of my reading of Brucker for current histories of rhetoric, drawing parallels between Brucker's discussion of Plato and that of Brian Vickers.

scholarly journals Materialism, Politics, and the History of Philosophy

2021 ◽  
pp. 293-312
Author(s):  
Ayşe Yuva
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
The Political ◽  
History Of

The aim of this chapter is to analyse the political uses of the categorization of eighteenth-century French materialism as mechanistic and reductionist. Regardless of the current or outdated character of these materialisms, their rejection and the narratives that endorsed such judgments appear as partly ideological. Using several examples, this chapter will examine how this reductionist image of eighteenth-century French materialism was formed in the nineteenth century. It aims to show that the quarrels about materialism focused at that time on the question of a society’s dominant beliefs.

Diderot, the Self, and the Science of Dreaming

2021 ◽  
pp. 212-232
Author(s):  
Charly Coleman
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Human Subject ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
The Self ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Philosophy And Religion ◽  
Science Philosophy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Dream State ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter presents Denis Diderot’s philosophy of the self in light of debates over the neuroscientific turn in historical research. Recent literature features an ideal of self-ownership that the history of philosophy shows to be radically contingent. Situating Diderot’s articles on dreaming and distraction in the Encyclopédie within the context of eighteenth-century theological and medical reflections on the self’s command over its ideas and actions, the chapter interrogates the relationship between science, philosophy, and religion. The dream state fascinated Diderot precisely because its structure and content allowed his contemporaries to reflect upon the fate of the human subject in a materially determined world.

The Account and the Explanation of the Historical Development

2021 ◽  
pp. 106-114
Author(s):  
Michael Frede
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Focus Of Attention ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
History Of ◽  
Way Of Thinking

This chapter explores the account and the explanation of the historical development of philosophy. It was only at the end of the eighteenth century that this development itself became the focus of attention, and thus the phrase ‘history of philosophy’ came to take on the now familiar meaning of an account of the historical development of philosophy from its beginning to the present day. What characterizes the historian’s approach to the historical development of philosophy is that they refuse to resort to such philosophical assumptions about philosophy, about history, and about the history of philosophy to understand and to explain this historical development. The historian tries to understand and to explain it, as well as it can be explained, purely in terms of historical facts, facts which can be ascertained on the basis of the available historical evidence. Meanwhile, if one is concerned with the factual development of philosophy, one should focus on the fact that sometimes, when a philosopher does something, this affects other philosophers, who take notice of what he or she is doing in such a way that, as a result of their taking note of what the philosopher is doing, they modify their way of thinking about things philosophically, which, in turn, might make some difference to the further course of the history of philosophy. In this way, later philosophical activity is shaped or influenced by earlier activity.

Emotions, philosophy of

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert C. Solomon
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Working Together ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ancient Times ◽  
The Right

Emotions have always played a role in philosophy, even if philosophers have usually denied them centre stage. Because philosophy has so often been described as first and foremost a discipline of reason, the emotions have often been neglected or attacked as primitive, dangerous or irrational. Socrates reprimanded his pupil Crito, advising that we should not give in to our emotions, and some of the ancient Stoic philosophers urged a life of reason free from the enslavement of the emotions, a life of apatheia (apathy). In Buddhism, too, much attention has been given to the emotions, which are treated as ‘agitations’ or klesas. Buddhist ‘liberation’, like the Stoic apatheia, becomes a philosophical ideal, freedom from the emotions. Philosophers have not always downgraded the emotions, however. Aristotle defended the view that human beings are essentially rational animals, but he also stressed the importance of having the right emotions. David Hume, the eighteenth-century empiricist, insisted that ‘reason is, and ought to be, the slave of the passions’. In the nineteenth century, although Hegel described the history of philosophy as the development of reason he also argued that ‘nothing great is ever done without passion’. Much of the history of philosophy can be told in terms of the shifting relationship between the emotions (or ‘passions’) and reason, which are often at odds, at times seem to be at war, but ideally should be in harmony. Thus Plato painted a picture of the soul as a chariot with three horses, reason leading the appetites and ‘the spirited part’, working together. Nietzsche, at the end of the nineteenth century, suggested that ‘every passion contains its own quantum of reason’. Nietzsche’s suggestion, that emotion and reason are not really opposites but complementary or commingled, has been at the heart of much of the debate about emotions since ancient times. Are emotions intelligent, or are they simply physical reactions? Are they mere ‘feelings’, or do they play a vital role in philosophy and in our lives?

Different Forms of the Historiography of Philosophy

2021 ◽  
pp. 9-18
Author(s):  
Michael Frede
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Actual Practice ◽  
History Of

This chapter discusses the different forms of the historiography of philosophy. Among the large variety of projects and enterprises that are pursued under the heading ‘history of philosophy’ there are, in particular, three which deserve to be distinguished. These are ‘philosophical doxography’, ‘philosophical history of philosophy’, and ‘historical history of philosophy’. The conceptual or ideal difference between the three enterprises is clear enough if one looks at the history of the historiography of philosophy. Up to the end of the eighteenth century, concern with the history of philosophy is almost exclusively doxographical. But the assumptions on which the doxography of the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries rests come to be questioned at the end of the eighteenth century, and their rejection gives rise, in the final decade of the eighteenth century, to the philosophical history of philosophy. This in turn rests on very strong philosophical assumptions concerning the history of philosophy. And so its principles come to be questioned in the first half of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, all three enterprises continue to be pursued in one form or another. And for a variety of reasons, there is little awareness of their difference and they tend in actual practice to shade into each other and to be confused, though in principle they are quite different.

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