JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY最新文献

{"title":"JHP Announcements","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/hph.2024.a916724","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hph.2024.a916724","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>JHP</em> Announcements <!-- /html_title --></li> </ul> <h2><em>JHP</em> S<small>ummer</small> S<small>eminar</small></h2> <p>Mindful of the challenges facing young scholars working in the history of philosophy, the Board of Directors of the <em>Journal of the History of Philosophy</em> has established a program of Summer Seminars in the History of Philosophy. The central idea of the program is that a senior scholar who works primarily in some area of the history of philosophy undertakes to direct an intensive week of classes for the benefit of a small group of recent PhDs whose main research and teaching are in the relevant area. Normally, the classes will focus on one or more texts that are typically not part of the material that the participants would have studied as graduate students. The goal of the program is the enhancement of the expertise and understanding of the young scholars in their area of specialization.</p> <p>Topic: \"Heidegger on the Essence of Truth\"</p> <p>Instructor: Daniel O. Dahlstrom (Boston University)</p> <p>Dates: June 3–7, 2024</p> <p>Location: Boston University</p> <p>Course Description: In a note appended to the second edition (1949) of Heidegger's essay \"On the Essence of Truth\" (first delivered as a lecture in 1930), he contends that the answer to the question of the essence of truth is to be found in the proposition: <em>The essence of truth is the truth of essence</em>. The aim of the seminar is to shed light on the meaning and soundness of this proposition. To this end, this seminar will give a close reading of the essay, against the backdrop of (a) Heidegger's treatment of the medieval conception of <em>essentia</em> in his 1927 lectures and (b) his critical appropriation of traditional concepts of essence and truth in <em>Being and Time</em> and later works.</p> <p>The <em>JHP</em> will select up to six individuals from among those who apply to participate in five days of intense classes on the announced subject. Travel, housing, and food for the duration of the classes will be paid by the <em>JHP</em> up to $2,000. Applicants should submit a letter of interest along with a CV.</p> <p>Application: Applicants should send a letter of interest along with a CV to Prof. Eileen Sweeney (eileen.sweeney@bc.edu). The deadline for applications is February 1, 2024. Notifications will be made by March 1, 2024. <strong>[End Page 167]</strong></p> <p>Qualifications: Applicants with a PhD in philosophy received no earlier than January 1, 2018 as well as advanced doctoral students in philosophy who are writing their dissertations are welcome to apply.</p> <p>AOS: This seminar will be useful to those interested in the development of Heidegger's philosophy, the history of early twentieth-century German philosophy, phenomenology, Continental philosophy, and the metaphysics of essence and truth. <strong>[En","PeriodicalId":46448,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-01-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139376662","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Philosophy and Religion in Plato's Dialogues by Andrea Nightingale (review)","authors":"Marina Berzins McCoy","doi":"10.1353/hph.2024.a916715","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hph.2024.a916715","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Philosophy and Religion in Plato's Dialogues</em> by Andrea Nightingale <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Marina Berzins McCoy </li> </ul> Andrea Nightingale. <em>Philosophy and Religion in Plato's Dialogues</em>. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. Pp. 308. Hardback, $39.99. <p>Andrea Nightingale has written a scholarly work that will prove indispensable to restoring the centrality of religion and theology to Platonic philosophy. She demonstrates that Plato uses the language of Greek religion to inform his metaphysics and his very conception of philosophy. She deftly interweaves classical scholarship with close readings of a wide range of texts in order to build her claims. She gives especially good treatments of Eleusinian mysteries and Orphic ritual. She also explores the way in which the epiphanic nature of the encounter with the Forms has a transforming influence on the philosopher's soul.</p> <p>In the introduction, Nightingale presents an overview of key \"divinity markers\" (8–23) present in the dialogues—occurrences in which the Forms are described as godlike, references to Eleusinian and Orphic mysteries, poetic narratives of epiphanic encounters, and references to the sacred spectacle. She also assesses why these references are so often overlooked in contemporary scholarship, noting many contemporary scholars' unfamiliarity with the specific nature of Greek religion, and a general movement toward secularism in philosophy. She acknowledges some notable exceptions (e.g. Mark McPherran's work), but she might have given attention to others as well. Specifically, Jill Gordon's <em>Plato's Erotic World: From Cosmic Origins to Human Death</em> (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012) characterizes Platonic philosophy in terms of both striving for and alienation from the divine, and Ross Romero's <em>Without the Least Tremor: The Sacrifice of Socrates in Plato's</em> Phaedo (Albany: SUNY Press, 2009) on religious sacrifice in the <em>Phaedo</em> is another example. Still, Nightingale is accurate in her assessment of the field's tendency to ignore religious language or to assimilate it too quickly to later monotheistic traditions. Her book convincingly argues that religious language can serve a philosophical purpose in suggesting how union with Beauty and the Good is experienced. The book as a whole provides precious information about many connections between Greek religion and culture that add depth and richness to particular Platonic passages.</p> <p>Chapter 1 sketches out a theory of the Forms and argues that as a group they are treated as \"divine.\" The <em>Phaedo</em> connects the Forms to concepts of eternality, unchangingness, and intelligibility (50). Human beings can connect with the Forms through contemplation (51). Similarly, the <em>Republic</em> describes the Forms as divin","PeriodicalId":46448,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-01-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139373630","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Between Pluralism and Objectivism: Reconsidering Ernst Cassirer's Teleology of Culture","authors":"Katherina Kinzel","doi":"10.1353/hph.2024.a916714","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hph.2024.a916714","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>abstract:</p><p>This paper revisits debates on a tension in Cassirer's philosophy of culture. On the one hand, Cassirer describes a plurality of symbolic forms and claims that each needs to be assessed by its own internal standards of validity. On the other hand, he ranks the symbolic forms in terms of a developmental hierarchy and states that one form, mathematical natural science, constitutes the highest achievement of culture. In my paper, I do not seek to resolve this tension. Rather, I aim to arrive at a better understanding of how it arises, and of the different options that it presents for understanding the development of culture. I discuss three recent attempts at resolving the tension, put forward by Sebastian Luft, Samatha Matherne, and Simon Truwant, respectively. Based on a reconstruction of Cassirer's system of symbolic forms that centralizes the concept of function, I show that the most promising of these attempts, formulated by Truwant, is not successful. I then turn to Cassirer's philosophy of the cultural sciences, the implications of which for the present problem have not yet been sufficiently explored. I argue that in this context, Cassirer develops the contours of an alternative to the function-based view of cultural development. I conclude that this alternative does not resolve the tension either, but that it allows for a reconceptualization of the teleology of culture as open.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":46448,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-01-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139373669","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Mill on Moral Rules in \"Whewell on Moral Philosophy\"","authors":"Jonathan Sarnoff","doi":"10.1353/hph.2024.a916713","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hph.2024.a916713","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>abstract:</p><p>Interpreters of John Stuart Mill's moral philosophy have long disagreed about whether he was an act or rule utilitarian. Though debate has often focused on <i>Utilitarianism</i>, this paper instead analyzes a less studied work, \"Whewell on Moral Philosophy,\" which contains a more detailed and systematic discussion of moral rules. \"Whewell,\" I argue, favors reading Mill as an act utilitarian: it understands the importance of rules in moral reasoning to arise from the uncertainty under which human action occurs, not from any direct role that rule compliance plays in determining right action.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":46448,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-01-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139373571","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Women and Philosophy in Eighteenth-Century Germany ed. by Corey W. Dyck (review)","authors":"Julia Borcherding","doi":"10.1353/hph.2024.a916718","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hph.2024.a916718","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Women and Philosophy in Eighteenth-Century Germany</em> ed. by Corey W. Dyck <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Julia Borcherding </li> </ul> Corey W. Dyck, editor. <em>Women and Philosophy in Eighteenth-Century Germany</em>. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. 272. Hardback, $85.00. <p>In more ways than one, this volume constitutes an important contribution to ongoing efforts to reconfigure and enrich our existing philosophical canon and to question the narratives that have led to its current shape. To start, while there is a growing amount of research dedicated to recovering the contributions of women to early modern philosophy, much of this work focuses on the seventeenth century, and geographically centers on England, France, and Italy. By turning the spotlight on eighteenth-century Germany, this volume broadens the scope of these efforts in an important way. Further, with the historiography of this period still shaped by a long-standing dismissive treatment of post-Leibnizian German philosophy and by the long shadow cast by the success of Kant's Critical philosophy, which eclipsed many of the thinkers opposed to it, challenges to its traditional narratives seem especially important. The editor's earlier collection (coedited with Falk Wunderlich) on Kant and his German contemporaries already succeeded in mounting such a challenge by showing that German philosophy throughout the eighteenth century in fact presents us with an extraordinarily rich tableau of intellectual life (<em>Kant and His German Contemporaries. Vol. 1: Logic, Mind, Epistemology, Science and Ethics</em> [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018]).</p> <p>The present volume stands as a further valuable contribution to relativizing the still dominant narrative of German philosophy as the story of a select few brilliant minds. It successfully dispenses not only with the idea that those minds were few, but also with the equally persistent one that they were exclusively male. Already in the nineteenth century, we find historians such as Karl Joël explicitly casting the new age of German philosophy inaugurated by Kant as its \"masculine epoch\"—an image undoubtedly furthered by its main protagonist, who cast philosophical acumen in decidedly male terms when he observed that \"[a] woman who has a head full of Greek, like Madame Dacier, or one who engages in debate about the intricacies of mechanics, like the Marquise du Châtelet, might just as well have a beard; for that expresses in a more recognizable form the profundity for which she strives\" (Karl Joël, <em>Die Frauen in der Philosophie</em> [Hamburg, 1896], 48; Immanuel Kant, <em>Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen</em> [Königsberg, 1764], translation in Londa Schiebinger, <em>The Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science</em> [Cambridge, M","PeriodicalId":46448,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-01-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139373673","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Brethren of Purity on Justice for Animals and the Moral Demands of Rational Hierarchy","authors":"Bligh Somma","doi":"10.1353/hph.2024.a916710","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hph.2024.a916710","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>abstract:</p><p>This paper intervenes in a contemporary debate on the animal ethics of the Brethren of Purity's (Iḫwān al-Ṣafāʾ) epistle on animals. I argue that they present a case for justice for animals by rejecting the fallacious link between ontological superiority and moral superiority. Since human beings are vice-regents of God and since the rational soul is the vice-regent, the Brethren's account of human beings as superior in virtue of their rationality establishes a moral obligation toward animals. The Brethren develop this account partially under the influence of the Muʿtazilī theological tradition, and as a result, their position falls in line with other positions on justice for animals found during their time. Even on the issue of animal use, the Brethren maintain that the human need for animal labor emphasizes the obligation to treat animals justly. In the end, the greater rational capacity of human beings entails greater moral responsibility toward animals, not moral impunity.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":46448,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-01-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139373875","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Kant and the Possibility of Progress: From Modern Hopes to Postmodern Anxieties ed. by Paul T. Wilford and Samuel A. Stoner (review)","authors":"Benedikt Brunner","doi":"10.1353/hph.2024.a916720","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hph.2024.a916720","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Kant and the Possibility of Progress: From Modern Hopes to Postmodern Anxieties</em> ed. by Paul T. Wilford and Samuel A. Stoner <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Benedikt Brunner </li> </ul> Paul T. Wilford and Samuel A. Stoner, editors. <em>Kant and the Possibility of Progress: From Modern Hopes to Postmodern Anxieties</em>. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021. Pp. 328. Hardback, $65.00. <p>Our present does not invite, let alone suggest, particularly optimistic expectations for the future. This volume, edited by Paul Wilford and Samuel Stoner, not only analyzes the historical foundations of Kant's idea of progress but also explores contemporary reflections on such questions as the following: Do we still believe in the possibility of progress? And if not, why has this ability been lost? What about liberal democracy, which is contested from many sides?</p> <p>In addition to a lucid introduction, which clarifies the concepts of modernity and postmodernity, the volume assembles thirteen chapters. While the first seven chapters deal with the idea of progress in Kant, the remaining six contributions shed light on the history of that idea after Kant. Within the framework of this review, only selected articles can be discussed. In chapter 1, Oliver Sensen examines the idea of moral progress in the individual. In chapter 2, Kate Moran asks the fundamental question: should we believe in moral progress? According to Kant, the human being possesses \"a duty to avoid despondency\" (46). Following Kant, she encourages us not to go down the road of misanthropy as a consequence of one's own or others' moral failure, but \"to be generous in our assessments of others\" (46). In chapter 3, Jens Timmermann takes up this aspect again and illustrates clearly how complex Kant's concept of moral progress is. Moreover, he highlights that moral progress has a double meaning for Kant: \"first in a fundamental change of priorities—privileging morality over self-interest—and then in an ever-closer approximation to a perfectionist ideal of virtue\" (61). Like some of the other contributors to this volume, however, Timmermann remains rather vague regarding possible avenues for further research. Two other contributions deal specifically with Kant's relationship to religion. In chapter 5, Naomi Fisher asks how God, teleology, and progress are connected in the third <em>Critique</em>. She argues that in the 1790s, Kant made concrete new efforts to integrate different strands of his philosophy \"and to develop a more unified view of the human being as free and natural\" (93). Chapter 6 is a joint contribution by the two editors of this volume entitled \"Realizing the Ethical Community.\" Their focus is on Kant's religious writings and their role in the context of a \"Reformation of Culture.\" They notice—an observation as impo","PeriodicalId":46448,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-01-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139373763","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Aristotle on How Animals Move: The De incessu animalium. Text, Translation, and Interpretative Essays ed. by Andrea Falcon and Stasinos Stavrianeas (review)","authors":"Pavel Gregorić","doi":"10.1353/hph.2024.a916716","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hph.2024.a916716","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Aristotle on How Animals Move: The</em> De incessu animalium. <em>Text, Translation, and Interpretative Essays</em> ed. by Andrea Falcon and Stasinos Stavrianeas <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Pavel Gregorić </li> </ul> Andrea Falcon and Stasinos Stavrianeas, editors. <em>Aristotle on How Animals Move: The De incessu animalium. Text, Translation, and Interpretative Essays</em>. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. Pp. xv + 315. Hardback, $120.00. <p>Aristotle was deeply fascinated by animals on account of their self-motion—that is, animals move themselves from one place to another in response to their needs and desires rather than in mechanical or chemical reaction to things in their environment, as inanimate things and plants do. This ability requires sensory awareness of one's environment and sophisticated control of one's body. Moreover, Aristotle was intrigued by the sheer variety of ways animals move themselves and of the parts they employ to do so. Indeed, this variety was something Aristotle systematically observed and held in need of scientific explanation, which is precisely what he delivers in the short treatise, <em>On Progression of Animals</em> (<em>De incessu animalium</em>, henceforth <em>IA</em>).</p> <p>To explain the variety of animal locomotion and their locomotory parts, Aristotle relied on three very general principles: first, nature does nothing in vain; second, there are six functionally determined spatial directions; and third, pushing and pulling are the most basic mechanical actions of locomotion. He also developed a relevant taxonomy (two-footed/four-footed/many-footed/footless) and devised a highly abstract notion of the bodily architecture of animals (single origin of motion in the middle of the body; a certain number of peripheral \"points of motion\"; bending as the fundamental operation of limbs). Aristotle's enterprise is likely to strike us as alien because it is entirely disconnected from Linnaean taxonomy and evolutionary theory, as well as from the essentials of biomechanics. However, we cannot fail to be impressed by his achievement in terms of generality, systematicity, and explanatory power—all this in the absence of anyone's shoulders to stand on.</p> <p>Although <em>IA</em> provides an excellent glimpse into Aristotle's scientific methodology, from antiquity to the present day it has been one of his least studied works. This volume—the first book-length study of <em>IA</em> in any modern language—takes a first step toward correcting this unfortunate situation. It is, quite simply, the only companion to <em>IA</em> that we have, and it is likely to remain the best one for many years to come. This volume contains a critical edition of the Greek text, an accompanying English translation, and a commentary in the form of nine sections that discuss one or","PeriodicalId":46448,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-01-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139376269","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Dark Matters: Pessimism and the Problem of Suffering by Mara van der Lugt (review)","authors":"Stefano Brogi","doi":"10.1353/hph.2024.a916723","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hph.2024.a916723","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Dark Matters: Pessimism and the Problem of Suffering</em> by Mara van der Lugt <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Stefano Brogi </li> </ul> Mara van der Lugt. <em>Dark Matters: Pessimism and the Problem of Suffering</em>. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2021. Pp. xi + 450. Hardback, $37.00. <p>Mara van der Lugt's book (awarded Honorable Mention for the <em>JHP</em> Book Prize in 2022) has the merit of bringing attention to some crucial yet often overlooked topics by providing a contribution that cannot fail to elicit broad interest. Her book does not simply discuss the theodicy and anti-theodicy of the modern age; against this background, she also brings out the often-ignored tradition of philosophical pessimism. What interests van der Lugt, however, is not \"future-oriented\" pessimism, which is opposed to \"progressivist\" theories of history, but an ontological or \"value-oriented\" pessimism that stresses \"the terrible side of <strong>[End Page 163]</strong> life\" in order to answer a series of crucial questions in a way very different from Leibniz's or Pope's approaches: Are there more evils than goods in our lives? Is life worth living for all of us, for any of us? Why do some people choose death despite their blessings? Why do some people choose life despite their sufferings? Do animals suffer as we do? Are we responsible for our own happiness? Is it better never to have been? According to van der Lugt, \"The various ways in which these questions have been answered throughout the centuries have created the competing philosophical traditions known as optimism and pessimism. This book traces the intersection of the debate on the problem of evil with the debate on pessimism from the late seventeenth century onwards, seeking throughout to evaluate pessimism on its own terms\" (20).</p> <p>A reassessment of this kind of pessimism serves an explicitly theoretical and moral purpose: van der Lugt herself states that her book is not exclusively a contribution to the history of philosophy, but \"partly ethical or evaluative\" (18). Indeed, pessimism and optimism \"go hand in hand\": they stem from a moral need and aim to respond to the evil present in the world by opening up glimmers of \"<em>hope, compassion</em>, and <em>consolation</em>\" (12, emphasis in original). Pessimism, in particular, is not intended to be \"a philosophy of despair\"; rather, it draws its strength from an \"ethical commitment.\" Stemming from the latter is a tradition that \"may be reinterpreted as a moral source\" (22) and which \"has not only its own epistemological and methodological concerns and presuppositions but, crucially, its own sets of virtues and moral aims\" (13).</p> <p>The theoretical/moral purpose of <em>Dark Matters</em> is evident through its unfolding, even though eight of its nine chapters are roughly devoted to provi","PeriodicalId":46448,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-01-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139373631","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Descartes on What We Can Hardly Do","authors":"Thomas M. Lennon","doi":"10.1353/hph.2023.a909125","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hph.2023.a909125","url":null,"abstract":"abstract: Descartes makes apparently contradictory claims about what we are able to do in response to clear and distinct perception of truth or goodness. An altogether novel interpretation of his concept of moral possibility has recently been advanced, aimed at resolving the contradiction. The argument here is that the basic text from which the interpretation is launched involves a serious mistranslation, and that in any case, the interpretation itself is implausible. The thrust is not merely corrective, however, for the issues raised have systematic repercussions on Descartes's views concerning freedom and the will, and on his method of doubt. They particularly affect libertarian interpretations of Descartes, three of which are discussed here, one in some detail. At the end, a more plausible account is indicated.","PeriodicalId":46448,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135661156","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}