Six Discourses on the Distinction Between the Body and the Soul and Treatises on Metaphysics

Six Discourses on the Distinction Between the Body and the Soul and Treatises on Metaphysics PDF Author: Géraud de Cordemoy
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Six Discourses on the Distinction Between the Body and the Soul and Treatises on Metaphysics

Six Discourses on the Distinction Between the Body and the Soul and Treatises on Metaphysics PDF Author: Géraud de Cordemoy
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Six Discourses on the Distinction Between the Body and the Soul and Treatises on Metaphysics

Six Discourses on the Distinction Between the Body and the Soul and Treatises on Metaphysics PDF Author: Géraud de Cordemoy
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198713312
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 163

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Book Description
Steven Nadler presents the first English translation of a seminal early modern text, accompanied by a full introduction. Geraud de Cordemoy's Six Discourses on the Distinction Between the Soul and the Body (1666) offers a groundbreaking account of the mind and body, and one of the earliest arguments for an occasionalist account of causation.

Géraud de Cordemoy: Six Discourses on the Distinction between the Body and the Soul

Géraud de Cordemoy: Six Discourses on the Distinction between the Body and the Soul PDF Author: Steven Nadler
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191022314
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 163

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Book Description
Steven Nadler presents the first English translation of a seminal work in the history of early modern philosophy. Géraud de Cordemoy's Six Discourses on the Distinction Between the Soul and the Body (originally published in French in 1666) offers an account of the mind and the body in a human being. Cordemoy is an unorthodox Cartesian who opts for an atomist conception of body and matter. In this groundbreaking treatise, he also presents one of the earliest arguments for an occasionalist account of causation, with God serving as the true cause of bodily motions in the world and of ideas in the mind. Nadler also includes the first English translation of Cordemoy's short Treatises on Metaphysics, which were probably written soon after the Discourses, and extend his discussion of mind-body union with consideration of human freedom and happiness. The introduction provides a biographical and historical context for Cordemoy's work and a study of his main philosophical doctrines, including his influence on later thinkers (such as Leibniz and Malebranche).

Being and Reason

Being and Reason PDF Author: Martin Lin
Publisher:
ISBN: 0198834152
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 211

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Book Description
In Spinoza's metaphysics there is only one substance, God or nature. Martin Lin offers a new interpretation, arguing against idealist readings where the metaphysical is grounded in something epistemic, logical, or psychological. In Lin's realist interpretation, finite natural creatures stand to God or nature as waves stand to an ocean.

One True Cause

One True Cause PDF Author: Andrew R. Platt
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190941804
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 397

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Book Description
Occasionalism is the thesis that God alone is the true cause of everything that happens in the world, and created substances are merely "occasional causes." This doctrine was originally developed in medieval Islamic theology, and was widely rejected in the works of Christian authors in medieval Europe. Yet despite its heterodoxy, occasionalism was revived in the 1660s by followers of the philosophy of René Descartes, perhaps the most famous among them the French philosopher Nicolas Malebranche, who popularized this doctrine. What led Cartesian thinkers to adopt occasionalism? Since the 1970s has there been a growing body of literature on Malebranche and the movement he engendered. There is also a new and growing body of work on the Cartesian occasionalists before Malebranche--including Arnold Geulincx, Geraud de Cordemoy, and Louis de la Forge. But to date there has not been a systematic, book-length study of the reasoning that led Cartesian thinkers to adopt occasionalism, and the relationship of their arguments to Descartes' own views. This book expands on recent scholarship to provide the first comprehensive account of seventeenth century occasionalism. Part I contrasts occasionalism with a theory of divine providence developed by Thomas Aquinas, in response to medieval occasionalists; it shows that Descartes' philosophy is compatible with Aquinas' theory, on which God "concurs" in all the actions of created beings. Part II reconstructs the arguments of Cartesians--such as Cordemoy and La Forge--who used Cartesian physics to argue for occasionalism. Finally, the book shows how Malebranche's case for occasionalism combines philosophical theology with Cartesian metaphysics and mechanistic science.

The Oxford Handbook of Descartes and Cartesianism

The Oxford Handbook of Descartes and Cartesianism PDF Author: Steven Nadler
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019251721X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 849

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Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of Descartes and Cartesianism comprises fifty specially written chapters on René Descartes (1596-1650) and Cartesianism, the dominant paradigm for philosophy and science in the seventeenth century, written by an international group of leading scholars of early modern philosophy. The first part focuses on the various aspects of Descartes's biography (including his background, intellectual contexts, writings, and correspondence) and philosophy, with chapters on his epistemology, method, metaphysics, physics, mathematics, moral philosophy, political thought, medical thought, and aesthetics. The chapters of the second part are devoted to the defense, development and modification of Descartes's ideas by later generations of Cartesian philosophers in France, the Netherlands, Italy, and elsewhere. The third and final part considers the opposition to Cartesian philosophy by other philosophers, as well as by civil, ecclesiastic, and academic authorities. This handbook provides an extensive overview of Cartesianism - its doctrines, its legacies and its fortunes - in the period based on the latest research.

Causation and Cognition in Early Modern Philosophy

Causation and Cognition in Early Modern Philosophy PDF Author: Dominik Perler
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351379380
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 343

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Book Description
This book re-examines the roles of causation and cognition in early modern philosophy. The standard historical narrative suggests that early modern thinkers abandoned Aristotelian models of formal causation in favor of doctrines that appealed to relations of efficient causation between material objects and cognizers. This narrative has been criticized in recent scholarship from at least two directions. Scholars have emphasized that we should not think of the Aristotelian tradition in such monolithic terms, and that many early modern thinkers did not unequivocally reduce all causation to efficient causation. In line with this general approach, this book features original essays written by leading experts in early modern philosophy. It is organized around five guiding questions: What are the entities involved in causal processes leading to cognition? What type(s) or kind(s) of causality are at stake? Are early modern thinkers confined to efficient causation or do other types of causation play a role? What is God's role in causal processes leading to cognition? How do cognitive causal processes relate to other, non-cognitive causal processes? Is the causal process in the case of human cognition in any way special? How does it relate to processes involved in the case of non-human cognition? The essays explore how fifteen early modern thinkers answered these questions: Francisco Suárez, René Descartes, Louis de la Forge, Géraud de Cordemoy, Nicolas Malebranche, Thomas Hobbes, Baruch de Spinoza, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Ralph Cudworth, Margaret Cavendish, John Locke, John Sergeant, George Berkeley, David Hume, and Thomas Reid. The volume is unique in that it explores both well-known and understudied historical figures, and in that it emphasizes the intimate relationship between causation and cognition to open up new perspectives on early modern philosophy of mind and metaphysics.

Occasionalism and the Debate about Causation in Early Modern Germany

Occasionalism and the Debate about Causation in Early Modern Germany PDF Author: Christian Henkel
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040012426
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
This is the first book to focus on occasionalism in early modern German philosophy. It demonstrates that occasionalism provided a strong foundation for the thought of four important yet underexamined German philosophers: Erhard Weigel, Johann Christoph Sturm, Christian Wolff, and Gottfried Ploucquet. Occasionalism is most often associated with Cartesian early modern Christian philosophers, the most famous of whom is perhaps Nicolas Malebranche. Early modern German occasionalism has received very little scholarly attention, leaving us with an incomplete picture of the German causation debate from Leibniz to Kant. This book combines a chronological investigation of four influential and historically connected cases of occasionalism in early modern Germany with a reconstruction of arguments to address specific problems in metaphysics, natural philosophy, philosophy of language, and philosophy of psychology. Providing a sufficient ground for nature and human beings’ mental and physical existence is a pressing issue for Weigel, Sturm, Wolff, and Ploucquet. In examining the thought of these four understudied German philosophers, this book helps us rethink the relation between metaphysics of nature and science of nature and better understand the development of early modern debates about causation. Occasionalism and the Debate about Causation in Early Modern Germany is an important resource for scholars and advanced students working on the history of early modern philosophy and the history of metaphysics and causation.

Early Modern Cartesianisms

Early Modern Cartesianisms PDF Author: Tad M. Schmaltz
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190495227
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
This new comparative study considers the impact of Descartes's thought on early modern philosophy, theology and science. This consideration reveals that competing Cartesianisms emerged in the Netherlands and France during a period dating from the last decades of Descartes's life to the century or so following his death in 1650.

Philosophical Selections

Philosophical Selections PDF Author: Nicolas Malebranche
Publisher: Hackett Publishing
ISBN: 9780872201521
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
Features the selections that provide the student of modern philosophy with both a view of Malebranche's philosophical system and a picture of his most important doctrines. This title presents Malebranche's occasionalism, his theory of knowledge and the 'vision in God', and his writings on theodicy and freedom.