Daniel Garber

Pierre Gassendi was a major figure in seventeenth-century philosophy whose philosophical and scientific works contributed to shaping Western intellectual identity. Among "new philosophers", he was considered Descartes’ main rival, and he belonged to the first rank of those attempting to carve out an alternative to Aristotelian philosophy. Given the importance of Gassendi for the history of science and philosophy, it is surprising to see that he has been largely ignored in the Anglophone world. This collection of essays constitutes the first book on Gassendi that comprehensively covers his biography, bibliography, and all aspects of his philosophy. The book is divided into four parts. It begins with a brief sketch of the intellectual world of seventeenth-century France, Gassendi’s early attacks on Aristotle, and a bibliographical essay on early-modern publications of Gassendi’s writings. Part II explores Gassendi’s contributions to logic, natural philosophy, and astronomy and cosmology. Part III addresses Gassendi as a humanist and participant in seventeenth-century philosophical and scientific debates, including his advocacy of Epicurean philosophy and his relation to the sceptical tradition. The fourth and final part involves a brief discussion of the reception of Gassendi’s thought, including the paraphrases of his works published in France and England. This book is an essential resource for scholars and upper-level students of early modern philosophy, intellectual history, and the history of science who want to get acquainted with Pierre Gassendi as a major philosopher and intellectual figure of the early modern period.

This paper discusses the Aristotelian notions of matter and form as they are treated in the philosophy of Leibniz. The discussion is divided into three parts, corresponding to three periods in Leibniz's development. In the earliest period, as exemplified in a 1669 letter to his former mentor Jakob Thomasius, Leibniz argues that matter and form can be given straightforward interpretations in terms of size and shape, basic categories in the new mechanical philosophy. In Leibniz's middle years, on the other hand, as exemplified in the Discourse on Metaphysics and the correspondence with Arnauld, Leibniz seems to hold a more orthodox Aristotelian view of matter and form as the constituents of the corporeal substances that ground the reality of the physical world. In Leibniz's latest years, as discussed in the letters with Des Bosses, matter and form enter once again in connection with the vinculum substantiale, the substantial bond that is supposed to bind monads together to form corporeal substances.

These volumes contain Descartes's main works in their first English translations, as well as critiques of his philosophy both in English and translated from other languages. Other works in the set bring together writings by Cartesians in English translation, works by English thinkers influenced by Descartes, and the standard seventeenth-century Descartes biographies in their English translations. As a whole, this set provides a group of rare and largely inaccessible works vital to understanding the impact of Cartesian thought on his contemporary Anglophone world.

This essay is an exploration of how to conceptualize the so-called scientific revolution. A central figure in this discussion is Thomas Kuhn, whose Structure of Scientific Revolutions has shaped much recent discussion of scientific change in the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. It is argued that the simple model of a revolution—an old orthodoxy, followed by a period of instability until it is replaced by a new orthodoxy—does not actually represent how change happened in scientific thought in this crucial period. The essay then suggests a different model for understanding change in the period, the Protestant Reformation. Just as in the Reformation the Catholic Church persisted, so Aristotelian natural philosophy persists through much of the so-called scientific revolution. And just as there were multiple sects of protestants who coexisted with one another, there were many alternatives to the dominant Aristotelianism that coexisted and fought as much with one another as with Aristotelian natural philosophy. Without the master narrative provided by the theme of the scientific revolution, the writing of the history of this period is going to be a very open-ended process.

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.

This chapter aims to reexamine the question of consciousness in Spinoza. It begins by surveying the relatively few places in the Ethics where Spinoza explicitly uses the language of consciousness. The significance of the complexity of the human body goes back to the discussion of the human body and the human mind immediately after the account of the mind as the idea of the body in E2p13 and its scholium. In E5p39, Spinoza seems to relate the complexity of the body to its consciousness of itself, of God, and of things. The chapter presents what seem to be the three principal uses of the terms conscius and conscientia in the Ethics: sensory consciousness, reflexive consciousness, and intuitive consciousness. The search for a theory of consciousness in Spinoza seems to end in disappointment.

It is difficult to overestimate the influence of Descartes on his contemporaries and following generations. While still alive he had followers and detractors, and after his death, numerous books and pamphlets, with his name prominently featured in their titles, adopted and developed his ideas, twisted them to fit into a wide variety of intellectual agendas, or argued passionately against them. While he may not deserve the title of father of modern philosophy, in many circles he was considered the iconic modern philosopher from the 1640s on.The subject of Tad Schmaltz's book is Cartesianism, philosophy and science as done by Descartes and his followers. But from the beginning, Schmaltz appreciates the difficulty...

Oxford University Press is proud to present the third volume in a new annual series, presenting a selection of the best current work in the history of philosophy. Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy 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.