Human Nature, the Passions, and the Fall

2020 ◽  
pp. 174-190
Author(s):  
Christian Maurer
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Reformed Theology ◽  
Henry More

This chapter offers an overview of some major themes and developments in academic and non-academic moral philosophy in seventeenth-century Scotland, and it addresses several points of comparison between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It includes a discussion of the strong presence of themes from Reformed theology in the ethical sections of academic theses philosophicæ, the characterization of different paths of reception of classical philosophers and schools, and the analysis of reactions to major seventeenth-century figures such as Descartes, Hobbes, and Henry More. The chapter closes with a discussion of George Mackenzie’s moral essays, which are an exceptional attempt to combine Christian and Stoic themes.

Quakers, Christ, and the Enlightenment

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Madeleine Pennington
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Baruch Spinoza ◽  
Intellectual Engagement ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Intellectual Milieu ◽  
Henry More ◽  
Central Belief

The Quakers were by far the most successful of the radical religious groups to emerge from the turbulence of the mid-seventeenth century—and their survival into the present day was largely facilitated by the transformation of the movement during its first fifty years. What began as a loose network of charismatic travelling preachers was, by the start of the eighteenth century, a well-organized and international religious machine. This shift is usually explained in terms of a desire to avoid persecution, but Quakers, Christ and the Enlightenment argues instead for the importance of theological factors as the major impetus for change. In the first sustained account of the theological motivations guiding the development of seventeenth-century Quakerism, the volume explores the Quakers’ positive intellectual engagement with those outside the movement to offer a significant reassessment of the causal factors determining the development of early Quakerism. Tracing the Quakers’ engagement with such luminaries as Baruch Spinoza, Henry More, John Locke, and John Norris, the volume unveils the Quakers’ concerted attempts to bolster their theological reputation through the refinement of their central belief in the ‘inward Christ’, or ‘the Light within’. In doing so, the study challenges persistent stereotypes of early modern radicalism as anti-intellectual and ill-educated—and indeed, as defined either by ‘rationalist’ or ‘spiritualist’ excess. Rather, the theological concerns of the Quakers and their interlocutors point to a crisis of Christology weaving through the intellectual milieu of the seventeenth century, which has long been underestimated as significant fuel for the emerging Enlightenment

Henry More and William Petty: Revisiting an Early Modern Polemic

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 244-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mihnea Dobre
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Henry More ◽  
Epistolary Exchange

Abstract This paper explores an overlooked aspect of the brief but intense correspondence between William Petty and Henry More, making use of the Hartlib Papers Online. Traditionally, the brief epistolary exchange between More and Petty has been seen in the light of an opposition between Cartesian rationalism and Baconian empiricism. A look at the original manuscripts, however, shows that the opposition was not originally framed in those terms at all. This article draws attention to the actors’ original categories, and places this exchange in the evolving landscape of seventeenth-century natural philosophy.

Nietzsche

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. A. Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
The Other ◽  
Baruch Spinoza ◽  
Spiritual Dimension ◽  
Good And Evil ◽  
Genealogy Of Morals ◽  
Moral Philosophers

This chapter examines Friedrich Nietzsche's moral philosophy, first by explaining what makes him different from most of the other moral philosophers such as David Hume, Thomas Hobbes, the Greeks, and Baruch Spinoza. It then considers Nietzsche's notion of good and evil by addressing three questions: How do we find out what sort of creatures men are? How do we decide what sort of creature man ought to be? Is it possible for man to transform himself into that sort of creature. It also discusses the problem faced by Nietzsche in his attempts to assess human nature, namely: what is to count as health in the spiritual dimension, when is a soul diseased, what is mens sana. Finally, it analyzes the main arguments put forward by Nietzsche in his two books Beyond Good and Evil and The Genealogy of Morals.

Natural law

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annabel S. Brett
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Animal Behavior ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
Social Perspective ◽  
Individual Agency ◽  
The Social ◽  
Do So ◽  
Scholastic Tradition

This chapter explores the concept of natural law, turning first to the Protestant milieu. Alterity—what would in the seventeenth century come to be theorized, and problematized, as “sociability”—is the dominant mood of the humanist and Protestant handling of natural law. It is there even in Thomas Hobbes, whose natural law coincides with moral philosophy and concerns the sphere of one's actions in respect of others. However, the Catholic scholastic tradition presents a very different framing of natural law, one that centers on individual agency and regulates the behavior of individual agents in their aspect as beings of a particular kind. While authors in this tradition grapple equally with the question of animal behavior in relation to law, they do not do so from the social perspective that characterizes Protestant humanist Aristotelians and jurists.

Epilogue and Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 268-272
Author(s):  
Sarah Mortimer
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
The Church

This chapter draws together the themes of the book and looks forward to the later-seventeenth century. It argues that for much of the sixteenth century politics was subordinate to religion; temporal authorities needed the additional sanctions provided by religious belief if they were to exert any power over the consciences of individuals. The effect was to entangle temporal power in the deepening conflicts over religious truth, and thus to reveal the brittleness of any conception of political authority which relied on the support of the Church. At the same time, older traditions of political thought did not go away and often became stronger. The circulation of classical ideas, the discovery of new peoples, the growing interest in historical change and development all suggested alternative ways of legitimizing political power, often using natural law and avoiding any reliance on specifically Christian commitments. What happened in the early-seventeenth century, and most obviously in the writing of Hugo Grotius, was a move not only to ground political society in a particular conception of human nature (conceived of juridically, as a source of rights and obligations) but also to detach Christianity from that view of human nature. It was this understanding of human beings which enabled the development of a social contract tradition through the seventeenth century and beyond, and became an important source for modern liberalism. The questions it raised would help to shape the thought of the next century.

Aristotelianism in the 17th century

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Ariew
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Modern Philosophy ◽  
17Th Century

Aristotelians in the seventeenth century comprised a group of mostly anonymous textbook writers whose chief claim to fame is that their philosophy was opposed by such early moderns as Descartes and Galileo. In line with the characterization of them by their opponents, their philosophy has generally been depicted as conservative, monolithic and moribund. However, it is difficult to ratify such judgments. As Aristotelians, these philosophers do not seem particularly conservative; they appear to have assimilated many of the scientific developments of the seventeenth century, and the diversity and range of their views is quite broad. Some of the doctrines peculiar to them, or their particular developments of older views, can be seen as the background against which modern philosophy developed.

Conway, Anne (c.1630–79)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Hutton
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Henry More

Anne Conway (née Finch) was the most important of the few English women who engaged in philosophy in the seventeenth century. Her reputation derives from one work published after her death, Principia philosophiae antiquissimae et recentissimae (1690), which proposes a Neoplatonic system of metaphysics featuring a monistic concept of created substance. The work entails a critique of the dualism of both Descartes and Henry More, as well as of the materialism (as she saw it) of Hobbes and Spinoza. In her concept of the monad and her emphasis on the benevolence of God, Conway’s system has some interesting affinities with that of Leibniz.

Moral Philosophy at Seventeenth-Century Harvard: A Discipline in Transition

1982 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 687
Author(s):  
Alasdair MacIntyre ◽  
Norman Fiering
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Moral Philosophy

The Spark That Still Shines: John Calvin on Conscience and Natural Law

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Constance Y Lee
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
John Calvin ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Reformed Theology ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
Moral Discernment ◽  
Central Figure ◽  
Knowledge Of God ◽  
Sufficient Knowledge

Abstract John Calvin (1509–64), a central figure in Reformed theology, is perhaps best known for his bleak doctrine of total human depravity. This dismal view of human reason has commonly overshadowed his statement that ‘some sparks still shine’. This article proposes that Calvin’s account of conscience, by conserving an illuminated space in human nature, makes possible a formal doctrine of natural law. Calvin enlists the interconnectedness between the knowledge of God and human reason to frame his anthropology. According to this, human reason was originally created to perfectly access knowledge of God but after the Fall, can only attain imperfect access. Within this broader framework, by adopting a dialectic of dual perspectives, Calvin maintains that, however fallen, human nature still partially reflects the Imago Dei as first intended. As through a glass darkly, this divine image is reflected in human conscience endowing it with sufficient knowledge for moral discernment. Calvin’s emphasis on ‘common grace’ in the preservation of this knowledge allows him to simultaneously maintain human ignorance and their universal accountability to objective norms. In this way, Calvin’s account of conscience enables him to hold both apparent extremes in tension: the immanent fallibility of human beings with the external normative standards they ought to pursue.

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