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Leibniz and the AnimalculaIn Michael Alexander Stewart (ed.), Studies in seventeenth-century European philosophy, Oxford University Press. pp. 153--76. 1997.
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28Evolutionary ethicsIn Christopher Stephens & Mohan Matthen (eds.), Elsevier Handbook in Philosophy of Biology, Elsevier. pp. 219. 2004.
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14The Preferences of WomenIn Peggy DesAutels & Margaret Urban Walker (eds.), Moral Psychology: Feminist Ethics and Social Theory, Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 99. 2004.
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'Compossibility, Expression, Accommodation'In Donald Rutherford & J. A. Cover (eds.), Leibniz: nature and freedom, Oxford University Press. pp. 108--20. 2005.
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2Descartes and the Corporeal Mind: Some Implications of the Regius AffairIn Stephen Gaukroger, John Andrew Schuster & John Sutton (eds.), Descartes' Natural Philosophy, Routledge. pp. 659--79. 2000.
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10The cogito meant ‘no more philosophy’: Valéry's descartesHistory of European Ideas 9 (1): 47-62. 1988.
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65Savagery and the Supersensible: Kant's Universalism in Historical ContextHistory of European Ideas 24 (4-5): 315-330. 1998.
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16Enthusiasm and its critics: Historical and modern perspectivesHistory of European Ideas 17 (4): 461-478. 1993.
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61Darwin and Nietzsche: Selection, Evolution, and MoralityJournal of Nietzsche Studies 44 (2): 354-370. 2013.ABSTRACT This article discusses Nietzsche's interpretation of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection and the basis for his rejection of the major elements of Darwin's overall scheme on observational grounds. Nietzsche's further opposition to the attempt of Darwin and many of his followers to reconcile the “struggle for existence” with Christian ethics is the subject of the second half of the essay.
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6The Enlightenment Philosopher as Social CriticIntellectual History Review 18 (3): 413-425. 2008.No abstract
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31Ideas and Animals: The Hard Problem of Leibnizian MetaphysicsStudia Leibnitiana 37 (1). 2005.Die Ansicht, dass Leibniz urn 1700 oder einige Zeit danach ein überzeugter Idealist war oder wurde, der allein an die Realität der Geister und ihrer Ideen glaubte, hält sich merkwürdigerweise in der neueren Sekundärliteratur. In diesem Beitrag beurteilen wir die Textgrundlage für diese Behauptung nach von uns für solide gehaltenen Kriterien einer historischen Interpretation, wobei sich die Behauptung unserer Ansicht nach als unzureichend erweist. Obwohl Leibniz zur Überzeugung gelangt war, dass …Read more
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65What is the importance of Descartess meditation six?Philosophica 76 (2). 2005.In this essay, I argu e that Descartes considered his theory that the body is an inn ervated machine in which the soul is situated to be his most original contribution to philosophy. His ambition to prove the immortality of the soul was very poorly realized, a predictable outcome, insofar as his aims were ethical, not theological. His dualism accordingly requires reassessment.
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On Imlay's "Berkeley and Action"In Robert Muehlmann (ed.), Berkeley's Metaphysics: Structural, Interpretive, and Critical Essays, Pennsylvania State University Press. 1995.
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23Interaction with the Reader in Kant's Transcendental Theory of MethodHistory of Philosophy Quarterly 10 (1). 1993.
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109Literature and KnowledgePhilosophy 58 (226). 1983.There is probably no subject in the philosophy of art which has prompted more impassioned theorizing than the question of the ‘cognitive value’ of works of art. ‘In the end’, one influential critic has stated, ‘I do not distinguish between science and art except as regards method. Both provide us with a view of reality and both are indispensable to a complete understanding of the universe.’ If a man is not prepared to distinguish between science and art one may well wonder what he is prepared to…Read more
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1Kant and the speculative sciences of originsIn Justin E. H. Smith (ed.), The Problem of Animal Generation in Early Modern Philosophy, Cambridge University Press. 2006.
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1Is the history of philosophy good for philosophy?In Tom Sorell & Graham Alan John Rogers (eds.), Analytic philosophy and history of philosophy, Oxford University Press. 2005.
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106The role of a merit principle in distributive justiceThe Journal of Ethics 7 (3): 277-314. 2003.The claim that the level of well-beingeach enjoys ought to be to some extent afunction of individuals'' talents, efforts,accomplishments, and other meritoriousattributes faces serious challenge from bothegalitarians and libertarians, but also fromskeptics, who point to the poor historicalrecord of attempted merit assays and theubiquity of attribution biases arising fromlimited sweep, misattribution, custom andconvention, and mimicry. Yet merit-principlesare connected with reactive attitudes andi…Read more
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27Self-deception and psychological realismPhilosophical Investigations 3 (4): 47-60. 1980.Philosophers interested in the "paradox of self-Deception" have argued that self-Deception either (a) does not occur; (b) occurs but is unintelligible; or (c) can be explained by reference to sub-Components of a single personality. I argue that self-Deception can be explained as a variety of weakness of the will, Without the realist's mythology of dual or triple selves
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12The Invisible World: Early Modern Philosophy and the Invention of the MicroscopePrinceton University Press. 1995.In the seventeenth century the microscope opened up a new world of observation, and, according to Catherine Wilson, profoundly revised the thinking of scientists and philosophers alike. The interior of nature, once closed off to both sympathetic intuition and direct perception, was now accessible with the help of optical instruments. The microscope led to a conception of science as an objective, procedure-driven mode of inquiry and renewed interest in atomism and mechanism. Focusing on the earli…Read more
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27The Cambridge Companion to Malebranche (review)Philosophical Review 111 (1): 108. 2002.The French philosopher and theologian Nicholas Malebranche was one of the most important thinkers of the early modern period. A bold and unorthodox thinker, he tried to synthesize the new philosophy of Descartes with the religious Platonism of St. Augustine. This is the first collection of essays to address Malebranche's thought comprehensively and systematically. There are chapters devoted to Malebranche's metaphysics, his doctrine of the soul, his epistemology, the celebrated debate with Arnau…Read more
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9Descartes and Cartesianism: Essays in Honour of Desmond Clarke (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2017.This collection of original essays deals with Cartesian themes and problems, especially as these arise in connection with Cartesian natural science and the theory of perception, agency, mentality, divinity, and the passions. It focuses in particular on Desmond Clarke's important contributions to these aspects of Descartes's writings.
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30Reply to Cover’s 1993 Review of Leibniz’s MetaphysicsThe Leibniz Review 4 5-8. 1994.It is an honor to have been given the opportunity by the editor to reply to J.A. Cover’s review of Leibniz’s Metaphysics, and to have a chance to revisit, five years after the book’s publication, the still-active battleground of intrinsic and extrinsic properties, the extensionality and intensionality of perception, and the reality of aggregates and to say more, a little informally perhaps, about about some methodological questions in Leibniz scholarship. Cover’s review when it appeared gave me …Read more
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58Margaret Dauler Wilson: A Life in PhilosophyThe Leibniz Review 9 1-15. 1999.Margaret Wilson, who died last year, has been described as the most eminent English-language historian of early modern philosophy of her generation. She was President of the Leibniz Society of North America for four years, from 1986 to 1990. Within this organization she is remembered both for her contributions to Leibniz-studies and for her attention to and support of younger researchers and her governing role in the Society. Her Harvard Ph.D. dissertation on “Leibniz’s Doctrine of Necessary Tru…Read more
Catherine Wilson
CUNY Graduate Center
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CUNY Graduate CenterDistinguished Professor (Part-time)
Areas of Specialization
Meta-Ethics |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |
Social and Political Philosophy |