“A Rough Unsightly Sketch”

2020 ◽  
pp. 28-53
Author(s):  
Abigail Zitin
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Joseph Addison ◽  
Francis Hutcheson ◽  
Secondary Quality ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
Essay Concerning Human Understanding ◽  
Century Thought

This chapter surveys the manifestations of empiricist antiformalism in some early texts that ground the tradition of eighteenth-century thought on the subjects of taste and beauty, beginning with Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Locke argues for an attenuated version of form, one that eschews any trappings of scholastic or Platonic philosophy. After Locke, form cannot name anything related to substance or essence; Locke endorses its use only as a synonym for figure, that is, shape or pattern, extension in space or duration in time. Drawing on Locke's Essay, both Joseph Addison and Francis Hutcheson theorize beauty as a secondary quality that emanates from an object, distinct from form, which they understand as a primary quality residing in that object.

Cockburn, Catharine (1679–1749)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Hutton
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosopher ◽  
Francis Hutcheson ◽  
Successful Career ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Catharine Cockburn (Catharine Trotter) was a British moral philosopher who turned to philosophy after a successful career as one of the first woman playwrights. She wrote no substantial systematic treatise of her own, but intervened ably and anonymously in philosophical and theological debates of her day, in particular the debate on ethical rationalism triggered by Samuel Clarke’s 1704–5 Boyle lectures. Her adversaries included Thomas Rutherforth, William Warburton, Isaac Watts, Francis Hutcheson and Lord Shaftesbury. Her most famous contribution to the philosophy of her time was her able 1702 defence of Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Her letters, published posthumously, discuss a range of philosophical topics.

scholarly journals What the Women of Dublin Did with John Locke

2020 ◽  
Vol 88 ◽  
pp. 171-193
Author(s):  
Christine Gerrard
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Trinity College ◽  
Jonathan Swift ◽  
Philosophical Debate ◽  
The Public ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
Essay Concerning Human Understanding ◽  
Laetitia Pilkington ◽  
Philosophical Debates

AbstractWilliam Molyneux's friendship with John Locke helped make Locke's ideas well known in early eighteenth-century Dublin. The Essay Concerning Human Understanding was placed on the curriculum of Trinity College in 1692, soon after its publication. Yet there has been very little discussion of whether Irish women from this period read or knew Locke's work, or engaged more generally in contemporary philosophical debate. This essay focuses on the work of Laetitia Pilkington (1709–1750) and Mary Barber (1685–1755), two of the Dublin women writers of the so-called ‘Triumfeminate’, a literary and intellectual circle connected to Jonathan Swift which met and discussed ideas at the home of Patrick Delaney. Pilkington and Barber were particularly influenced by Locke's ideas on obstetrics and childhood in his Some Thoughts Concerning Education and especially by his discussion of memory in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Both authors engage playfully and imaginatively with Locke's theories, especially in a domestic context. Not all philosophical debates took place in the public male spaces of school, coffee house and university. This essay attempts to recreate the contexts in which intellectually curious women of the ‘middling sort’ encountered and engaged with philosophical ideas, especially those of Locke, and how these shaped their writing.

JOHN LOCKE ON THE CARE OF THE NEWBORN INFANT (1684)

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1979 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-237
Author(s):  
T. E. C.
Keyword(s):  
Olive Oil ◽  
Newborn Infant ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Red Wine ◽  
Weak Condition ◽  
Newborn Baby ◽  
Almond Oil ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
Essay Concerning Human Understanding ◽  
Medical Interest

John Locke (1632-1704), physician and philosopher, is best known for his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690). His reputation as a philosopher has overshadowed the extent of his medical interests. Locke's journals between 1678 and 1698 contain thousands of items of medical interest. An entry in his journal for September 1684 contained the following recommendations for the care of the newborn infant.1 1. Soon after birth the baby can be given 1 or 2 spoonfuls of syrup of violets with almond oil, to loosen the bowels and keep it from convulsive colic. Or else distilled olive oil can be mixed with sugar. 2. If the newborn baby is in a weak condition you can blow on it the smell of chewed onions and cloves; smear its nostrils and lips with Cinnamon water; press warm slices of meat on its head and anus; wrap in bandages soaked in red wine and place in a bath composed of water or beer and fresh butter. If the baby is lively give a little after a mixture of 1 spoonful of distilled almond oil and syrup of Cowslip flowers and ½ spoonful of wine tempered with sugar, so that it can purge itself properly. 3. As soon as it begins to feed on pap, give it for the first few days a little powder of Marchion. 4. If it is weak apply to the region of the heart a cloth coaked with warm Embryon. The best ways to stimulate its strength are baths, putting warm wine on its head, placing hot meat on its chest, smearing its nose and lips with cinnamon water, putting onions near its nostrils, etc.

Edwards and Hutcheson

1951 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Owen Aldridge
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Moral Sense ◽  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
Direct Result ◽  
Francis Hutcheson ◽  
General Plan ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Divine Beauty

Although traditionally regarded as an austere clergyman, rigidly circumscribed by narrow doctrinalism, Jonathan Edwards has the distinction of being America's pioneer esthetician. In a Dissertation concerning the Nature of True Virtue he brings together nearly all the theories prevalent in the early eighteenth century concerning the relation of beauty to virtue, and discusses the moral aspects of human passions and conduct. Francis Hutcheson is the philosopher whose influence is most pronounced. In the Dissertation he is mentioned by name three times; the general plan of his theory of moral sense is constantly suggested for comparison, contrast or illustration; fundamental doctrines and corollary principles from his system are specifically stated and attacked; and others of his notions are cited in support of Edwards' own views. It has long been known that Edwards read Hutcheson's work, but the close parallels in his own treatise, making it literally a commentary on Hutcheson, have not been generally recognized. Evidence of the extent of Hutcheson's influence may be found by comparing Edwards' dissertation with his earlier work on The Mind, a discussion of the essence of beauty or harmony in the realms of spirit and of sense. Written while its author was engaged in studying Locke, the discussion contains nearly all of Edwards' original ideas on natural and divine beauty. In the expanded and polished treatise some of the original ideas are modified as a direct result of Hutcheson's concepts, and a complete ethical and aesthetic system is developed to supplant the systems of Hutcheson and other moralists popular at the time.

scholarly journals Emotions vocabulary and the reconceptualisation of emotions in Ann Radcliffe’s “The Italian, or the Confessional of the Black Penitents”

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-58
Author(s):  
Elena D. Andonova-Kalapsazova
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Emotional Experience ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Emotional Experiences ◽  
Critical Studies ◽  
Francis Hutcheson ◽  
History Of

The article undertakes the analysis of Ann Radcliffe’s novel The Italian, or the Confessional of the Black Penitents (1797) from a history of literary emotions perspective which, I argue, yields insights into the attitudes towards emotions embedded in Radcliffe’s works. A reading of the novel from such a perspective also complements the critical studies of the artist’s engaging with the eighteenth-century cult of sensibility. The novel is read as a text that registered but also participated in the dissemination of an epistemology of emotional experience articulated in the idiom of eighteenth-century moral philosophers – Francis Hutcheson, David Hume and Adam Smith - at the same time as it retained some of the older, theology-based conceptions of passions and affections. The dynamic in which the two frameworks for understanding the emotions exist in the novel is explored through a close reading of the vocabulary in which Radcliffe rendered the emotional experiences of her fictional characters. In this reading it is the passions which are found to have been invested with a variety of meanings and attributed a range of moral valences that most noticeably foreground the movement from a generally negative towards a more complex appreciation of powerful emotions.

Locke—Religion—Equality

2005 ◽  
Vol 67 (3) ◽  
pp. 419-431 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael P. Zuckert
Keyword(s):  
Proper Understanding ◽  
The Past ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
Essay Concerning Human Understanding ◽  
Philosophical Writings

Jeremy Waldron's much noted book, God, Locke, and Equality, has put the topic of “God and Equality in Locke” at the center of many perhaps most, discussions of Locke these days. I am going to raise some critical objections to Waldron's interpretations, but all the more reason to begin by noting the very many things about this book that I admire.First, he rejects the insistence by many of the most outspoken Locke scholars that a proper understanding of Locke—or any philosopher of the past—must be purely historical—that it must have nothing to do with us or our concerns, questions, or problems. Professor Waldron cuts through this claim as mere arbitrary assertion.Second, many Locke scholars, often some of the same ones, insist that Locke's political writings must be understood in isolation from his philosophic writings, especially from his Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Locke's editor, Peter Laslett, set the tone long ago when he pronounced judgment: “Locke did not write as a philosopher, applying to politics the implications of his views of reality as a whole.” Rather, according to Laslett, Locke appealed to or drew off of preexisting “modes of discourse.” This approach makes it very difficult to understand Locke as an integral personality, much less as a coherent author or as a thinker to be taken seriously. Waldron thus reopens the lines of communication between Locke's political and his philosophical writings and makes Locke a significant thinker, not just a corpse for the historians.

Jonathan Edwards and “The Way of Ideas”

1966 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claude A. Smith
Keyword(s):  
John Locke ◽  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
History Of ◽  
Essay Concerning Human Understanding ◽  
The Way

That Jonathan Edwards was greatly influenced by the writings of John Locke scarcely needs asserting. Edwards himself regarded his reading of the Essay Concerning Human Understanding as the major intellectual event of his youth. His major writings and private notebooks abound with comments and reflections on matters discussed by Locke. What is fascinating concerning the history of Edwardsean scholarship, however, is that the decisive significance of Locke, for Edwards, has been elucidated only very recently, in the writings of the renowned Puritan scholar, the late Perry Miller.

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