Tom Sorell

`Modern' philosophy in the West is said to have begun with Bacon and Descartes. Their methodological and metaphysical writings, in conjunction with the discoveries that marked the seventeenth-century scientific revolution, are supposed to have interred both Aristotelian and scholastic science and the philosophy that supported it. But did the new or `modern' philosophy effect a complete break with what preceded it? Were Bacon and Descartes untainted by scholastic influences? The theme of this book is that the new and traditional philosophies have more in common than the orthodox account suggests. In two survey articles and thirteen essays on individual philosophers, the contributors show that the rise of modern philosophy was much more complicated and much more interesting than is usually thought. They consider not only metaphysics and the sciences but also claims of Machievelli, Hobbes and Spinoza to have invented `modern' ethics and politics. These two aspects of `modernity' in philosophy are connected for the first time. The book offers a broad view of the early modern philosophers, covering not only the much-studied major figures but also relatively neglected writers: Mersenne, Gassendi, White, and Sergeant.

In this chapter, I begin by taking issue with Rorty over what is involved in the idea of the world's intrinsic nature; then I ask whether it really is advisable to dispense with higher entities and, in Rorty's phrase 'dedivinize culture." I shall suggest that Rorty caricatures the ideas he seeks to discredit and that, in particular, he gives us no very compelling reason to dispense with the idea of the world's intrinsic nature. Turning from the bad onld divinity-worshipping philosophy, science and poetry to their dedivinized successors, I shall suggest that Rorty is without the resources to explain why they are better than what they replace.

The sense in which Hobbes produced a science of politics is often misunderstood. It was not a science because it was derived somehow from scientific psychology or mechanics. It was not a science in the sense that he broke down states into their component systems and their properties. Instead, it is a normative doctrine. It states precepts for citizens to escape the condition of total war, and it states precepts for sovereigns to legislate well (frame "good laws" in the sense of Leviathan, ch. 30.) The normativity of Hobbes's science is often missed. It contributes to what I call the "autonomy" of Hobbes politics within his system.

The freedom of A Hobbesian sovereign is limited by the freedom of other sovereigns but is otherwise extremely extensive. The other side of the coin of this wide latitude, however, are the huge responsibilities and practical challenges of seeing to the good of the people. This involves both the compulsion of obedience and the permission of enterprise on the part of the many. It also calls for equity in the application of law. Overall, the burdensomeness of sovereignty probably vastly outweighs the attractions of being above the law.

Descartes has an unofficial, as well as an official, philosophy of science. The unofficial philosophy of science can be detected in his letters, in some of the essays that he presented as specimens of his method in 1637, in the closing pages of the Discourse on Method itself, in parts of the Principles of Philosophy, and in his physics treatise, The World. The official philosophy of science is to be found elsewhere: in the Meditations, for example, and in Parts 2 and 4 of the Discourse. There are also expressions of it in the 1647 preface to the Principles. The unofficial philosophy of science is that of a practicing scientist; the official one is that of a metaphysician trying to prepare the ground among theologians for the safe publication of his physics. The unofficial philosophy takes problem solving to be the leading kind of scientific activity. It allows for the legitimate use in science of hypotheses, experiments, and extensive observation. The official philosophy of science, on the other hand, is concerned with the conditions for the rigorous demonstration of a large number of effects from highly evident principles. While not ruling out a scientific use for observation and experiment, it stresses the importance of a certain kind of first principle in physics, the deduction of physical explanations of a very high order of generality, and the possibility of basing principles of physics and physical explanations on principles about the nature and knowability of God. The two philosophies of science have something in common. Both connect science with finding a preferred order in a series of things, or considerations bearing on a particular problem or thing to be demonstrated. The preferred order is always from the “simple” ‐ in Descartes's sense of general and highly evident ‐ to the less simple. Again, both philosophies of science identify scientific understanding with being able to take in a given ordering in a continuous mental survey ‐ what Descartes calls a “deduction.”

Bankers have been slow to claim responsibility or apologise for the seismic damage of the 2008 financial crisis. How is this shortcoming to be spelled out? One possibility is by saying that the bankers failed to display what Susan Wolff calls "the nameless virtue" --the disposition to take responsibility for untoward events that occur in one's area of influence, even if we did not intend them or directly cause them. I think this diagnosis is unduly generous to leaders of banks at the centre of the crisis. Even where the nameless virtue has arguably been displayed, it is no substitute for submitting to criminal proceedings for recklessness in financial markets.

Rorty maintains that idealism and realism are dead ends and that somewhere beyond them is a better philosophy--a special kind of pragmatism--without the pretensions or illusions of what it supersedes. Unfortunately, the view of philosophy that Rorty puts forward is neither independently attractive nor easy to understand as a wholesome middle way between idealism and realism. In some ways it is hard to recognise as a view of philosophy at all. I argue for something closer to Thomas Nagel's view of philosophy, and Nagel's realism.

In this study, Tom Sorell seeks to rehabilitate views that are often instantly dismissed in analytic philosophy. His book serves as a reinterpretation of Cartesianism and responds directly to the dislike of Descartes in contemporary philosophy. To identify what is defensible in Cartesianism, Sorell starts with a picture of unreconstructed Cartesianism, which is characterized as realistic, antisceptical but respectful of scepticism, rationalist, centered on the first person, dualist, and dubious of the comprehensiveness of natural science and its supposed independence of metaphysics. Bridging the gap between history of philosophy and analytic philosophy, Sorell also shows for the first time how some contemporary analytic philosophy is deeply Cartesian, despite its outward hostility to Cartesianism.