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14Lectures de Descartes ed. by Frédéric de Buzon, Élodie Cassan, and Denis KambouchnerJournal of the History of Philosophy 54 (1): 168-169. 2016.A fair number of recent monographs and essay collections on Descartes cover the same old ground, rehashing well-worn problems and taking us for another tour in Cartesian circles. Much to be preferred are those studies that go beyond the familiar and truly advance our understanding of Cartesian metaphysics, epistemology, science, ethics, and philosophical theology, especially with new insights into their complex relationships. The best anthologies will also contain original essays by both well-es…Read more
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11Spinoza and Medieval Jewish Philosophy (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2014.Over the last two decades there has been an increasing interest in the influence of medieval Jewish thought upon Spinoza's philosophy. The essays in this volume, by Spinoza specialists and leading scholars in the field of medieval Jewish philosophy, consider the various dimensions of the rich, important, but vastly under-studied relationship between Spinoza and earlier Jewish thinkers. It is the first such collection in any language, and together the essays provide a detailed and extensive analy…Read more
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15Berkeley’s Ideas and the Primary/Secondary DistinctionCanadian Journal of Philosophy 20 (1): 47-61. 1990.Part of Berkeley's strategy in his attack on materialism in the Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous is to argue that the epistemological distinction between ideas of so-called primary qualities and ideas of secondary qualities, especially as this distinction is found in Locke, is untenable. Both kinds of ideas-those presenting to the mind the quantifiable properties of bodies and those which are just sensations -are equally perceptions in the mind, and there is no reason to believe that …Read more
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23Francis X. J. Coleman, "Neither Angel nor Beast. The Life and Work of Blaise Pascal" (review)Journal of the History of Philosophy 26 (3): 489. 1988.
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9Review of Adam Sutcliffe, Judaism and Enlightenment (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2003 (5). 2003.
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Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy Volume V (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2010.Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy presents 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.
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1Doctrines of explanation in late scholasticism and in the mechanical philosophyIn Daniel Garber & Michael Ayers (eds.), The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy, Cambridge University Press. pp. 2--513. 1998.
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13Pierre-Francois Moreau, Spinoza: L'experience et l'eterniteJournal of the History of Philosophy 34 (1): 143-144. 1996.
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4Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy: Volume Iii (edited book)Oxford University Press UK. 2006.Table of Contents Note from the Editors 1. Deflating Descartes’ Causal Axiom, Tad Schmaltz 2. The Dustbin Theory of Mind: A Cartesian Legacy?, Lawrence Nolan and John Whipple 3. Is Descartes a Libertarian?, C. P. Ragland 4. The Scholastic Resources for Descartes’ Concept of God as Causa Sui, Richard Lee 5. Hobbesian Mechanics, Doug Jesseph 6. Locks, Schlocks, and Poisoned Peas: Boyle on Actual and Dispositive Qualities, Dan Kaufman 7. Atomism, Monism, and Causation in the Natural Philosophy of M…Read more
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138Spinoza on Lying and SuicideBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 24 (2): 257-278. 2016.Spinoza is often taken to claim that suicide is never a rational act, that a ‘free’ person acting by the guidance of reason will never terminate his/her own existence. Spinoza also defends the prima facie counterintuitive claim that the rational person will never act dishonestly. This second claim can, in fact, be justified when Spinoza's moral psychology and account of motivation are properly understood. Moreover, making sense of the free man's exception-less honesty in this way also helps to c…Read more
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185"No Necessary Connection": The Medieval Roots of the Occasionalist Roots of HumeThe Monist 79 (3): 448-466. 1996.In the not too distant past, it was common to treat Hume's skeptical doubts regarding the justification of our beliefs in causal connections—understood as necessary connections between objects or events—as having appeared per conceptionem immaculatam in his post-Cartesian mind. Thanks to recent efforts by scholars in early modern philosophy, however, we are now more informed about the roots of Hume's conclusions in Cartesian thought itself, especially the influence of Malebranche and his argumen…Read more
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275. Spinoza in the Garden of Good and EvilIn Michael J. Latzer & Elmar J. Kremer (eds.), The Problem of Evil in Early Modern Philosophy, University of Toronto Press. pp. 66-80. 2001.
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2Chapter 8. The PortraitIn Steven M. Nadler (ed.), The philosopher, the priest, and the painter: a portrait of Descartes, Princeton University Press. pp. 174-198. 2013.
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Theo Verbeek: Spinoza's Theological-political Treatise: Exploringthe Will of God'British Journal for the History of Philosophy 11 (2): 347-349. 2003.
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50Malebranche and ideasOxford University Press. 1992.Nicolas Malebranche's account of the nature of ideas and their role in knowledge and perception has been greatly misunderstood by both his critics and commentators. In this work, Nadler examines Malebranche's theory of ideas and the doctrine of the vision in God with the aim of replacing the standard interpretation of Malebranche's account with a new reading. He argues that Malebranche's ideas should be seen as essences or logical concepts, and that our apprehension of them is thus of a purely i…Read more
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31Scripture and Truth: A Problem in Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (review)Journal of the History of Ideas 74 (4): 623-642. 2013.
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10The Light of the Soul: Theories of Ideas in Leibniz, Malebranche, and Descartes. Nicholas JolleyIsis 82 (4): 747-748. 1991.
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3IllustrationsIn Steven M. Nadler (ed.), The philosopher, the priest, and the painter: a portrait of Descartes, Princeton University Press. 2013.
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54Arnauld, Descartes, and Transubstantiation: Reconciling Cartesian Metaphysics and Real PresenceJournal of the History of Ideas 49 (2): 229. 1988.
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14De summa rerum: Metaphysical Papers, 1675-1676. G. W. Leibniz, G. H. R. ParkinsonIsis 84 (3): 577-578. 1993.
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32Radical enlightenmentBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 10 (2). 2002.This Article does not have an abstract
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28Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy Volume 2 (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2005.Oxford University Press is proud to present the second 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 will also publish papers on thinkers or movements outside of that framework, provided they are impo…Read more
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10The Breakdown of Cartesian Metaphysics (review)International Studies in Philosophy 22 (3): 153-154. 1990.
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252Deduction, Confirmation, and the Laws of Nature in Descartes's Principia philosophiaeJournal of the History of Philosophy 28 (3): 359-383. 1990.
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34The Jewish SpinozaJournal of the History of Ideas 70 (3): 491-510. 2009.The seventeenth-century Dutch-Jewish philosopher, Baruch Spinoza, was expelled from the Amsterdam Portuguese- Jewish community when he was a young man, and in his philosophy he adopts a critical, even hostile attitude toward sectarian religions. Scholars have debated the extent to which Spinoza's thought, despite his own fraught relationship to Judaism, belongs to the history of Jewish philosophy. This review article looks at various trends in scholarship on Spinoza and Judaism, and particularly…Read more
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158On Spinoza's 'Free Man'Journal of the American Philosophical Association 1 (1): 103-120. 2015.In this paper, I examine Spinoza's 'model of human nature' in the Ethics, and especially his notion of the 'free man'. I argue that, contrary to usual interpretations, the free man is not an individual without passions and inadequate ideas but rather an individual who is able consistently to live according to the guidance of reason. Therefore, it is not an impossible and unattainable ideal or incoherent concept, as has often been claimed, but a very realizable goal for the achievement of human w…Read more
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Areas of Interest
Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |