Andreas Blank

The role that the desire for self‐worth plays in international relations has become a prominent topic in contemporary political theory. Contemporary accounts are based on the notion of national self‐worth as a function of status; therefore, the desire for national self‐worth is seen as a source of anxiety and conflict over status. By contrast, according to Christian Wolff, there exists a duty to take care that both one's own and other political communities deserve to be esteemed. In his view, this duty is grounded in the duty of self‐perfection because the qualities for which communities deserve to be esteemed are those that promote the self‐perfection of individuals. From this perspective, he argues that duties of esteem toward political communities should not be seen as an outcome of power relations but rather as an outcome of the fulfillment of functions of the law of peoples. Wolff's line of argument draws attention to the possibility that anger over a violation of the desire for honor could be mistaken for an expression of specific culture‐specific sensitivities, while what really may be expressed is a diverging interpretation of the implications of dependence in international relations.

According to Wittgenstein, internal relations are such that, once their terms are given, it is unthinkable that they do not hold. In his early philosophy, the concept of internal relation plays a central role in his views on meaning. The present paper addresses the question of how Wittgenstein's views about internal relations develop during his years of transition (1930-32). In particular, it investigates the connections between the concepts of internal relation, logical multiplicity, and aspect seeing in two thematic fields: (1) Wittgenstein's discussion of the relation between an expectation and what fulfils it, and (2) his discussion of the relation between a sign and an action guided by it.

Abstract This article examines the little-explored remarks on verification in Wittgenstein's notebooks during the period between 1930 and 1932. In these remarks, Wittgenstein connects a verificationist theory of meaning with the notion of logical multiplicity, understood as a space of possibilities: a proposition is verified by a fact if and only if the proposition and the fact have the same logical multiplicity. But while in his early philosophy logical multiplicities were analysed as an outcome of the formal properties of simple objects and simple signs, Wittgenstein in the early 1930s connects the notion of logical multiplicity with the notion of ways of seeing. I will argue that the relevant ways of seeing are closely similar to seeing-as or aspect seeing. According to Wittgenstein's view in the early 1930s, logical multiplicities are part of our perceptual experience of propositions and facts. In this sense, the verification relation depends on how we experience propositions and facts as being surrounded by a logical space of possibilities. Strikingly, Wittgenstein's way of thinking about the verification relation offers solutions to a set of seemingly intractable problems connected with the versions of verificationism developed by members of the Vienna Circle

Neuere Interpretationen von Leibniz' Notizen zur Metaphysik aus den Jahren 1675-1676 tendieren dazu, diese Texte im Licht eines spinozistischen Substanz-Monismus zu lesen. Obwohl es für eine solche Interpretation überzeugende Anhaltspunkte gibt, vertritt Leibniz jedoch in denselben Texten auch einen Substanzen-Pluralismus in Bezug auf geistige Substanzen. Substanz-Monismus und Substanzen-Pluralismus scheinen miteinander vereinbar zu sein, weil für Leibniz, ähnlich wie für Descartes in den Principia philosophiae, der Terminus ‚Substanz‛ nicht in univoker Weise von Gott und von Gegenständen in der Welt ausgesagt werden kann

Leibniz’s claim that possibles strive towards existence has led to diverging interpretations. According to the metaphorical interpretation, only the divine will is causally efficacious in bringing possibles into exisence. According to the literal interpretation, God endows possibles with causal powers of their own. The present article suggests a solution to this interpretative impass by suggesting that the doctrine of the striving possibles can be understood as a consequence of Leibniz’s early cognitivist theory of volition. According to this theory, thinking the degree of goodness of something is identical with wanting it to this degree. Arguably, this analysis of volition is relevant not only for Leibniz’s early analysis of the human mind but also for his early analysis of the divine mind.

ABSTRACT: This article explores Wittgenstein's little known remarks on colour from his notebooks of the early 1930s. It emphasizes the importance of the notion of logical multiplicity contained in these remarks. The notion of logical multiplicity indicates that Wittgenstein, as in the years of the Tractatus, is committed to a theory of logical space in which every colour is embedded. However, logical multiplicities in his remarks of the early 1930s do not depend on an apparatus of simple objects, states of affairs, and elementary propositions. I suggest that, in this period, the logical multiplicity of colour space is a matter of how we see colours.RÉSUMÉ: Cet article examine les remarques trap peu connues de Wittgenstein sur les couleurs dans ses cahiers du début des années 1930. Je souligne l'importance qu'y prend la notion de multiplicité logique, qui est le signe que Wittgenstein souscrivait alors, tout autant que dans les années du Tractatus, à une théorie de l'espace logique propre à chaque couleur. Dans ces remarques du début des années 1930, les multiplicités logiques ne dépendent toutefois pas du dispositif conceptuel constitué par les objets simples, les états de choses et les propositions élémentaires. Mon propos est de montrer que, dans cétte periode, la multiplicité logique de l'espace chromatique est relative à la manière dont nous voyons les couleurs.

Sixteenth century pharmacology was still very much under the influence of a distinction going back to ancient medicine: the distinction between effects of medicaments that were taken to be explainable by the elementary qualities, their mutual modification in mixture, and the combination of these modified elementary qualities on the one hand, and the effects of medicaments that were taken not to be explicable in this manner.1 Galen coined the expression that a medicament of the latter kind possesses the capacity of acting "by its whole substance,"2 and the question of how actions of the whole substance could be explicated gave rise to heated controversies in early modern pharmacology. Did Galen just...

ABSTRACTContemporary accounts of knowing one’s own mental states can be instructively supplemented by early modern accounts that understand self-knowledge as an important factor for flourishing human life. This article argues that in the early modern French moralists, one finds diverging conceptions of how knowing one’s own personal qualities could constitute a kind of human excellence: François de la Rochefoucauld argues that the value of knowing one’s own character faults could contribute to an attitude of self-acceptance that liberates one from the effort of deceiving oneself and others. Madeleine de Scudéry argues that knowing one’s own character faults could be an incentive for self-cultivation that leads to the development of character traits that are naturally good. Anne-Thérèse de Lambert concurs with Scudéry’s insight and develops it further. According to Lambert, self-knowledge is crucial for developing character traits that give rise to the natural right of bei...

Gabriel Bonnot de Mably takes up the republican commonplace that the desire for esteem is what could motivate the fulfilment of duties of civic virtue. This commonplace, however, has become problematic through the discussion of the problem of human corruption in philosophers such as Blaise Pascal and Nicolas Malebranche. In this article, I will show that Mably takes this problem seriously. However, his critique of Malebranche’s solution to this problem and his critique of the economic reinterpretation of Malebranche’s concept of natural order in the work of Le Mercier de la Rivière motivate his own republican defense of the moral value of the desire for esteem. What makes this defense plausible is his argument that distorted esteem derives from imagination that is distorted, not only as a result of natural factors, but in many cases rather as a result of misguided politics. If some cases of distorted esteem derive from misguided politics, Mably argues, then they can be modified by republican constitution building that modifies the imagination of citizens.

ArgumentThis article examines the conception of elements in the natural philosophy of Nicolaus Taurellus (1547–1606) and explores the theological motivation that stands behind this conception. By some of his early modern readers, Taurellus may have been understood as a proponent of material atoms. By contrast, I argue that considerations concerning the substantiality of the ultimate constituents of composites led Taurellus to an immaterialist ontology, according to which elements are immaterial forms that possess active and passive potencies as well as motion and extension. In Taurellus's view, immaterialism about elements provides support for the theological doctrine of creationex nihilo. As he argues, the ontology of immaterial forms helps to explicate a sense in which creatures are substances, not accidents of the divine substance. In particular, he maintains that immaterial forms stand in suitable relations of ontological dependence to God: creation dependence (since forms would not exist without the divine act of creation), but neither subsistence dependence (since forms continue to exist without continued divine agency) nor activity dependence (since forms are active without requiring divine concurrence).

In an influential article, Gerd Grasshoff has argued for the identification of the objects in Wittgenstein's Tractatus with the ultimate constituents of reality in Heinrich Hertz's Principles of Mechanics. Grasshoff's interpretation is based on two interrelated claims: The specific determination of the objects in the world and the relation among them is the primary theme in Wittgenstein's early philosophy, because it is the primary theme for Hertz. Wittgenstein did not assume the existence of simple objects on purely logical grounds without having specific examples of simple objects in mind, because Hertz did not do this.

Summary This article explores some continuities between Late Aristotelian and Cartesian embryology. In particular, it argues that there is an interesting consilience between some accounts of the role of imagination in trait acquisition in Late Aristotelian and Cartesian embryology. Evidence for this thesis is presented using the extensive biological writings of the Padua-based philosopher and physician, Fortunio Liceti (1577–1657). Like the Cartesian physiologists, Liceti believed that animal souls are material beings and that acts of imagination result in material images that can be transmitted by means of medical spirits to the embryo. Moreover, while the Cartesian embryologists accepted such a view in a quite speculative way, one finds penetrating criticism of imagination theories of trait acquisition in the Late Aristotelian tradition. Evidence for this thesis is presented using the no less extensive biological writings of Liceti's contemporary, Emilio Parisano (1567–1643). In conclusion, the Late Aristotelian tradition itself provides the theoretical tools for excising immaterial formative forces from embryology and at the same time evinces a much more acute sense for the problems inherent in imagination theories of trait acquisition than the Cartesian tradition.

SUMMARYThis article investigates the context of a side line in Leibniz's critique of Locke on maxims. In an enigmatic and little-explored remark, Leibniz objects that Locke has overlooked some legal maxims that fulfil the function of ‘constituting the law’. I propose to read this remark against the background of the divergence between conceptions of legal maxims in the common law tradition and conceptions of legal maxims in the Roman law tradition. In a few remarks, Locke seems to echo the common law emphasis on customs and conventions expressed by legal maxims. According to such a conception, reason would mainly fulfil the function of subsuming particular norms under more general conventional norms. By contrast, Leibniz uses the Roman law idea that some ‘rules of law’ express demands of natural reason and, thereby, express principles constitutive of natural law. This is why he proposes to reform vague and confused ‘brocards’ used by jurists in order to identify sound maxims that provide a natural-law foundation for legal institutions.

In this discussion note, I defend four claims: (1) The interpretation of Leibniz's theory of simple substances as a philosophy of panpsychism has no direct support from Leibniz's texts. (2) According to Leibniz there is a perfect continuity between perceptions of different degrees of distinctness. (3) Nevertheless, due to the reflective structure of sensation, there is a discontinuity between the perceptions of bare simple substances and sensations, which are characteristic of souls. (4) Finally, Leibniz's principle of continuity leaves room for this kind of discontinuity between different kinds of simple substances

In den Elementa juris naturalis behauptet Leibniz, dass es rational ist zu präsumieren, dass eine gegebene Handlung gerecht ist. Diese Behauptung scheint in Widerspruch zu seiner Auffassung zu stehen, dass das, was präsumiert wird, einfacher ist als sein Gegenteil. Nach Leibniz ist einfacher, was weniger Voraussetzungen hat als etwas anderes, wobei er zwischen logischen und ontologischen Voraussetzungen unterscheidet. Dieser Diskussionsbeitrag versucht zu zeigen, dass Voraussetzungen auf der ontologischen Ebene eine oft übersehene Rolle für die Präsumption der Gerechtigkeit einer Handlung spielen und dass sich der scheinbare Widerspruch auf dieser Ebene auflösen lässt. Nach Leibniz ist eine gerechte Handlung eine spezielle Art von Möglichkeit: eine Handlung, die für eine moralische Person möglich ist. Ihm zufolge hat aber ein mögliches Ereignis weniger ontologische Voraussetzungen als ein unmögliches Ereignis, weil die ontologischen Voraussetzungen eines möglichen Ereignisses ein Teil der Voraussetzungen eines unmöglichen Ereignisses sind. Die Präsumption zu Gunsten der Gerechtigkeit einer Handlung lässt sich als Spezialfall der Präsumption zu Gunsten der Möglichkeit eines Ereignisses auffassen