Catharine Macaulay’s Letters on Education: What Constitutes a Philosophical System

2019 ◽  
pp. 17-46
Author(s):  
Catherine Villanueva Gardner
Keyword(s):  
2020 ◽  
pp. 7-18
Author(s):  
Marek Błaszczyk

The article aims to show the main aspects of Michel de Montaigne’s philosophy of man, exposing the existential themes presented in it. The paper presents Montaigne’s critique of speculative (academic) philosophy, his reluctance to construct a philosophical system, to describe and explain human life experience as a whole. The article emphasizes that the French philosopher appears as a defender of religious tolerance, a spokesman of dialogue and cultural relativism, and also – considering the existential themes of his work (the problem of loneliness, moral values or art of living) – that he may be considered a pioneer of existential philosophy.


Author(s):  
Victor Nuovo

Although Locke’s Essay is primarily a discourse in logic, he says enough about the physical nature of things to construct a theory of the nature of things. As a virtuoso, physics replaces metaphysics in his philosophical system. His ontology, however, includes not only bodies, but God and finite spirits, and its major achievement is to prove the existence of God and demonstrate his immateriality. Perhaps encouraged by reading Cudworth, Locke was confident that our faculty of reason is sufficient to refute materialism and atheism. As to the nature of bodies, Locke finds empirical evidence that solidity or impenetrability is their most evident quality. The idea of superaddition is central to Locke’s speculative or divine physics. But although such insights may elevate the mind to God, Locke’s physics is theoretically sterile, although it may have beneficial practical uses.


Author(s):  
Ursula Renz

The crucial interpretive hypothesis of the present book is that central parts of Spinoza’s theoretical philosophy, and in particular his philosophy of mind established in Part Two of the Ethics, can only be understood against the backdrop of the conviction that subjective experience is explainable, and that its successful explanation is ethically relevant because it makes us wiser, freer, and happier. The introduction discusses, in a general manner, what requirements a philosophical system that aims do this must fulfill. Such a system, it is argued, commits itself to a realist version of extreme rationalism that maintains the difference between thought and reality; it cannot, as is sometimes assumed, turn into some form of absolute idealism. Furthermore, in looking at how this fits with Spinoza’s approach in the Ethics, the book shows how the structure of Part Two, along with Spinoza’s proceeding in geometrical manner, must be comprehended.


Author(s):  
Gerard Mannion

This chapter explores Schopenhauer’s complex relationship with Christianity and Christian thought. It charts the development of his relationship with religion to the point where he shapes a critically interpretive and frequently comparative theory of religions in general and his lifelong studies of Christianity in particular. Schopenhauer’s writings about Christianity are numerous and varied in character and tone for in numerous ways he was both a critic and defender of religion—especially Christianity. The chapter outlines Schopenhauer’s interactions with and interpretations of major Christian doctrines and thinkers and also discusses those aspects of Christian thought that most significantly influenced his own writings, especially in terms of metaphysics, ethics, and soteriology. It concludes with some reflections on just how dependent his philosophical system was on Christianity and religion in general for his most significant ideas. Overall it seeks to demonstrate that an engagement with Schopenhauer’s relationship with Christianity and Christian thought can prove illuminating for understanding multiple aspects of his philosophy in general.


Author(s):  
José António Leite Cruz de Matos Pacheco ◽  

Marcel Proust is not known as a philosopher. Nevertheless, his monumental masterpiece, In Search for Lost Time, must be understood as a System - not a «philosophical System», but a System sustained and moved by a philosophy of existence: «System of existence itself»; «System of time» in its mere occurrence. Memory becomes here, in face of time, an almost sacred way of revealing sense: and sense - the sense that one can see and understand by this work of memory - somehow emerges like a perfect, platonical form, that brings happiness and is wisdom, not as if we have already seen it in a previous life of the soul, but in the process of making its own rememberance and comprehension.


Elenchos ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-230
Author(s):  
Francesco Verde

Abstract The focus of this paper is the analysis of the epistemological and practical role played by pathe/affections in Epicurus’ philosophy. Epicurus firstly considered the affections not as emotional/passional conditions, but as firm criteria of truth and more specifically as the third criterion of the canonic (i.e. the epistemological part of his philosophical system). In this article the critical reactions (in particular by the Peripatetic side: Aristocles of Messene) against the Epicurean position about the function of the affections will be investigated too. Finally, two parts of this paper are devoted to the Cyrenaic tripartition of pathe (in all likelihood, a subject criticized by Epicurus) and to the probable doctrinal relationship between Epicurus’ pathe and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics Book 2.


1998 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Anthony Anderson

§0. Alonzo Church's contributions to philosophy and to that most philosophical part of logic, intensional logic, are impressive indeed. He wrote relatively few papers actually devoted to specifically philosophical issues, as distinguished from related technical work in logic. Many of his contributions appear in reviews for The Journal of Symbolic Logic, and it can hardly be maintained that one finds there a “philosophical system”. But there occur a clearly articulated and powerful methodology, terse arguments, often of “crushing cogency”, and philosophical observations of the first importance.Many of the less formal philosophical contributions center around questions concerning meaning, but there are important clarifications and insights into matters of the epistemology and ontology of the sciences, especially the formal sciences.1.1. The logistic method. Church's writings on philosophical matters exhibit an unwavering commitment to what he called the “logistic method”. The term did not catch on and now one would just speak of “formalization”. The use of these ideas is now so common and familiar among logicians and logically-oriented philosophers that they are simply taken for granted. But they deserve to be celebrated and re-emphasized, for there are (still) philosophers who seriously underestimate and even consciously reject these techniques.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document