Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy, Volume VIII


Book Description

Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy is an annual series, presenting a selection of the best current work in the history of early modern philosophy. It focuses on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries--the extraordinary period of intellectual flourishing that begins, very roughly, with Descartes and his contemporaries and ends with Kant. It also publishes papers on thinkers or movements outside of that framework, provided they are important in illuminating early modern thought. The articles in OSEMP will be of importance to specialists within the discipline, but the editors also intend that they should appeal to a larger audience of philosophers, intellectual historians, and others who are interested in the development of modern thought.







The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy in Early Modern Europe


Book Description

A team of leading scholars survey the development of philosophy in the period of extraordinary intellectual change from the mid-16th century to the early 18th century. They cover metaphysics and natural philosophy; the mind, the passions, and aesthetics; epistemology, logic, mathematics, and language; ethics and political philosophy; and religion.




Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy, Volume VII


Book Description

Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy is an annual series, presenting a selection of the best current work in the history of early modern philosophy. It focuses on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—the extraordinary period of intellectual flourishing that begins, very roughly, with Descartes and his contemporaries and ends with Kant. It also publishes papers on thinkers or movements outside of that framework, provided they are important in illuminating early modern thought. The articles in OSEMP will be of importance to specialists within the discipline, but the editors also intend that they should appeal to a larger audience of philosophers, intellectual historians, and others who are interested in the development of modern thought.




Conflict and Resolution: The Ethics of Forgiveness, Revenge, and Punishment


Book Description

Given the current climate of political division and global conflict it is not surprising that there has been an increasing interest in how we ought to respond to perceived wrongdoing, both personal and political. In this volume, top scholars from around the world contribute all new original essays on the ethics of forgiveness, revenge, and punishment. This book draws on both historical and contemporary debates in order to answer important questions about the nature of forgiveness, the power of apology, the relationship between punishment and revenge, the path to reconciliation, the morality of blame, and the role of forgiveness in political conflict. Chapter 16 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.




Deleuze and the Immanent Sublime


Book Description

What becomes of the sublime today, in a philosophy that discards the old oppositions between body and mind and embeds human reason in the creative evolution of life? In this book, Louis Schreel shows how Gilles Deleuze's life-long engagement with the Kantian sublime grappled with just this question. Its core argument centres on Deleuze's understanding of the sublime in terms of psychic individuation – a creative, self-organizing process that animates cognitive systems from within. Exploring Deleuze's transcendental philosophy through central concepts of self-organization, psychic individuation, passibility and infinity, this book shows how a new notion of the sublime emerges in a timely and novel way. In this way, Deleuze and the Immanent Sublime opens up an innovative perspective on transcendental philosophy, shedding new light on Deleuze's transcendental empiricism both in relation to Kant and to contemporary cognitive science. Engagement with previously untranslated writings from thinkers including Jean Petitot, Gilbert Simondon, Henri Maldiney and Erwin Straus adds further breadth to the development of Deleuze's ideas on the sublime in this systematic study.




System and Freedom in Kant and Fichte


Book Description

This book investigates various aspects of freedom as developed in the philosophical systems of Kant and Fichte. Freedom, both Kant and Fichte insist, does not mean that we can choose or think independently from all rules or necessity, but rather that we willingly accept a certain kind of submission under these rules. Therefore, the conditions of our knowledge affect and inform our self-understanding, our willing, and the ways we justify our practical choices. The essays in this volume explore both philosophers’ conceptions of human freedom as they relate to art, history, politics, and religion. They reveal how integrating freedom into a system of thought is crucial for our understanding of modern philosophy. System and Freedom in Kant and Fichte will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working on Kant, modern philosophy, and German Studies.




A Geometry of Sufficient Reason


Book Description

This book explores and compares the reflections on space and quantity found in the works of five philosophers: Spinoza, Leibniz, Bergson, Whitehead, and Deleuze. What unites these philosophers is a series of metaphysical concerns rooted in 17th-century rationalism and embraced in 20th-century philosophies of process and difference. At the heart of these concerns is the need for a comprehensive metaphysical account of the diversity and individuality of things. This demand leads to a shared critique of Cartesian and Newtonian conceptions of space. The most problematic aspect of those notions of space is homogeneity. In essence, uniform space fails to explain the differences between locations, thus violating the Principle of Sufficient Reason. Cartesian and Newtonian theories of space thereby fail to meet the metaphysical requirement for explaining diversity and individuality. The traditional concept of quantity faces similar issues. Motivated by these problems, these five philosophers developed an alternative conception of space and quantity. By examining these theories, the book sheds new light on an unexplored relation between rationalism and 20th-century Continental philosophy. A Geometry of Sufficient Reason will appeal to scholars and graduate students working in Continental philosophy, history of philosophy, metaphysics, and the history and philosophy of science.




Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy Volume 10


Book Description

Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy showcases the best scholarly research in this flourishing field. The series covers all aspects of medieval philosophy, including the Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew traditions, and runs from the end of antiquity into the Renaissance. It publishes new work by leading scholars in the field, and combines historical scholarship with philosophical acuteness. The papers will address a wide range of topics, from political philosophy to ethics, and logic to metaphysics. OSMP is an essential resource for anyone working in the area.




The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America


Book Description

The essays in this Handbook, written by leading scholars working in the rapidly developing field of witchcraft studies, explore the historical literature regarding witch beliefs and witch trials in Europe and colonial America between the early fifteenth and early eighteenth centuries. During these years witches were thought to be evil people who used magical power to inflict physical harm or misfortune on their neighbours. Witches were also believed to have made pacts with the devil and sometimes to have worshipped him at nocturnal assemblies known as sabbaths. These beliefs provided the basis for defining witchcraft as a secular and ecclesiastical crime and prosecuting tens of thousands of women and men for this offence. The trials resulted in as many as fifty thousand executions. These essays study the rise and fall of witchcraft prosecutions in the various kingdoms and territories of Europe and in English, Spanish, and Portuguese colonies in the Americas. They also relate these prosecutions to the Catholic and Protestant reformations, the introduction of new forms of criminal procedure, medical and scientific thought, the process of state-building, profound social and economic change, early modern patterns of gender relations, and the wave of demonic possessions that occurred in Europe at the same time. The essays survey the current state of knowledge in the field, explore the academic controversies that have arisen regarding witch beliefs and witch trials, propose new ways of studying the subject, and identify areas for future research.