Sensory Perception, History and Geology

William Molyneux's question to John Locke about whether a blind man restored to sight could name the difference between a cube and a sphere without touching them shaped fundamental conflicts in philosophy, theology and science between empirical and idealist answers that are radically alien to current ways of seeing and feeling but were born of colonizing ambitions whose devastating genocidal and ecocidal consequences intensify today. This Element demonstrates how landscape paintings of unfamiliar terrains required historical and geological subject matter to supply tactile associations for empirical recognition of space, whereas idealism conferred unmediated but no less coercive sensory access. Close visual and verbal analysis using photographs of pictorial sites trace vividly different responses to the question, from those of William Hazlitt and John Ruskin in Britain to those of nineteenth-century authors and artists in the United States and Australia, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thomas Cole, William Haseltine, Fitz Henry Lane and Eugene von Guérard.

Arendt’s Break with the Liberal Imaginary of Society

The first part of the article analyses the imaginary of the characteristics and form of (civil) society as developed in early modern liberal political philosophy, especially by John Locke and Thomas Paine. It uses different contemporary receptions of the key authors of this tradition, namely the liberal reception of John Keane, which emphasizes the theoretical distinction between civil society and the state, the materialist reception of Ellen Meiksins Wood, which contextualizes political ideas in the political struggles and class interests of the time, and the reception of Foucault, which focuses on the development of biopolitical governmentality. The article finds that the liberal tradition imagined (civil) society as a given and self-regulating sphere that does not require interference from the state. A socio-historical presupposition of this imaginary was the economic sovereignty of individuals, and it overlooked the relations of domination and exploitation. In its second part, the article presents Hannah Arendt’s critical concept of society. She did not conceptualize society as a given totality and in a spatial way, but used it as a qualifier of a specific, impoverished mode of being, in particular to analyse the situation and perspective of minorities.

John Locke Médico: a relação entre a filosofia e sua prática médica

O objetivo deste texto é investigar um aspecto pouco conhecido da obra de John Locke: a relação entre a filosofia e a sua prática médica. Este tema se justifica porque a sua concepção filosófica é largamente conhecida, mas seus estudos na área de medicina são, no Brasil, praticamente ignorados. Para levarmos a cabo tal tarefa, o artigo está dividido em três partes: na primeira, abordaremos o debate em torno da prática médica inglesa no século xvii; na segunda, o pendor de Locke pela medicina e, finalmente, na terceira, a prática médica de Locke. Esperamos que o presente texto possa colaborar com o avanço de pesquisas sobre John Locke no Brasil, especialmente na sua relação com a medicina.

Gobernar pese a las conciencias. Roger Williams en la frontera entre agustinismo y liberalismo

Roger Williams (1604-1683) es considerado uno de los principales autores que fundamentó el camino para ideas constitutivas de la vida política moderna como la libertad de conciencia, la tolerancia y la neutralidad del Estado en materia religiosa. Varias de ellas quedaron plasmadas en su famosa obra El sangriento dogma de la persecución por causa de conciencia (1644). Sin embargo, lo distintivo de Williams no reside únicamente en el hecho de su modernidad, sino en que sostuvo estas ideas recurriendo a la amplitud de la tradición bíblica como de pensamiento cristiano. Por lo anterior, la propuesta de este ensayo consiste en rescatar la dimensión cristiana de Williams y mostrar su continuidad con el pensamiento político de San Agustín en lo que refiere al orden y paz de la ciudad, mediante un análisis comparado de sus ideas. Para ello, se definirán los contornos de la tolerancia religiosa propuesta por Williams en relación con el problema de la libertad de conciencia en El sangriento dogma, a fin de compararlo con algunos rasgos generales del pensamiento agustiniano contenido en La ciudad de Dios. Por último, se mostrará cómo esta noción de tolerancia puede contrastarse con proposiciones de origen liberal, en específico tomando como ejemplo la Carta sobre la tolerancia de John Locke. Esto permitirá ilustrar la distancia que existe entre la posición cristiana y la liberal.

Editorial: E. J. Lowe’s Metaphysics and Philosophical Theology

Edward Jonathan Lowe was one of the most distinguished metaphysicians of the last 50 plus years. He made immense contributions to analytic philosophy in as diverse areas as metaphysics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, philosophical logic, history of Modern philosophy (especially on John Locke), and philosophy of religion

Natural Law Republicanism

By any metric, Cicero’s works are some of the most widely read in the history of Western thought. This book suggests that perhaps Cicero’s most lasting and significant contribution to philosophy lies in helping to inspire the development of liberalism. Individual rights, the protection of private property, and political legitimacy based on the consent of the governed are often taken to be among early modern liberalism’s unique innovations and part of its rebellion against classical thought. However, this book demonstrates that Cicero’s thought played a central role in shaping and inspiring the liberal republican project. Cicero argued that liberty for individuals could arise only in a res publica in which the claims of the people to be sovereign were somehow united with a commitment to universal moral law, which limits what the people can rightfully do. Figures such as Hugo Grotius, John Locke, and John Adams sought to work through the tensions in Cicero’s vision, laying the groundwork for a theory of politics in which the freedom of the individual and the people’s collective right to rule were mediated by natural law. This book traces the development of this intellectual tradition from Cicero’s original articulation through the American founding. It concludes by exploring how modern political ideas remain dependent on the conception of just politics first elaborated by Rome’s great philosopher-statesman.

Adams, Wilson, and the American Res Publica

This chapter considers the final stage of the Ciceronian tradition: the American founding. Insofar as the American founding is influenced by John Locke, it is indirectly indebted to Cicero. However, John Adams and James Wilson recognize the profoundly Ciceronian character of American liberal republicanism. Both argue that the prevailing understandings of natural law, justice, liberty, and what it means to be a republic derive from Cicero’s formulation. Moreover, Adams and Wilson see the American experiment as proving Cicero right, that a republic tethered to natural law could be realized. They also see the American Founding as contributing its own innovation to this tradition: written constitutionalism. The self-conscious writing of a regime’s constitution enables the principles of a natural law republic to be fixed and formalized in a way that Cicero’s original formulation did not provide for.

Locke’s Ciceronian Liberalism

This chapter considers how John Locke reunites the two strands of Ciceronian thought from the seventeenth century. Locke returns to Cicero’s original formulation of natural law republicanism and innovates on it. He derives from Cicero’s natural law a set of natural rights, corresponding to the duties Cicero claimed were imposed by natural law. Locke’s law of nature is a barely modified version of Ciceronian natural law, but his conception of natural rights allows him to solve a number of theoretical problems posed by Cicero’s construal of the issue. Locke also offers a solution to the puzzle of how a doctrine of natural law could meet the standard of skeptical epistemology.