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238Julius Caesar Scaliger on Plants, Species, and the Ordained Power of GodScience in Context 25 (4): 503-523. 2012.ArgumentThe sixteenth-century physician and philosopher Julius Caesar Scaliger suggests that in particular cases plants can come into being that belong to a plant species that did not exist before. At the same time, he holds that God could not have created a more perfect world. However, does the occurrence of new species not imply that the world was not the best possible world from the beginning? In this article, I explore a set of metaphysical ideas that could provide Scaliger with the means of…Read more
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231Julius Caesar Scaliger, Renaissance Reformer of Aristotelianism: A Study of His Exotericae Exercitationes by Kuni Sakamoto (review)Journal of the History of Philosophy 55 (3): 543-544. 2017.Julius Caesar Scaliger was a natural philosopher and literary theorist whose work was widely discussed throughout the second half of the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth centuries. After this period, it fell into oblivion, only to be rediscovered during the last three decades or so. His natural philosophy has triggered a series of specialized studies on particular aspects of his thought, especially those aspects that were influential in the development of early modern corpusculari…Read more
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230Justice and the Eclecticism of Protestant Ethics, 1580-1610Studia Leibnitiana 40 (2). 2008.Theorien von Gerechtigkeit als einer ethischen Tugend spielen eine große Rolle in der protestantischen Ethik vor dem Dreißigjährigen Krieg. Eines der hervorstechenden Merkmale dieser Theorien ist ihr eklektischer Charakter: Sie verbinden Elemente aus verschiedenen Traditionen der antiken Tugendethik, vor allem der platonischen, aristotelischen und stoischen. Die Gerechtigkeitstheorien von protestantischen Philosophen wie Rudolph Goclenius, Clemens Timpler und Bartholomäus Keckermann illustrieren…Read more
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182Johannes von Felden on Usucaption, Justice, and the Society of StatesJournal of the History of Ideas 74 (3): 403-423. 2013.
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328Julius Caesar Scaliger on corpuscles and the vacuumPerspectives on Science 16 (2). 2008.This paper investigates the relationship between some corpuscularian and Aristotelian strands that run through the thought of the sixteenth-century philosopher and physician Julius Caesar Scaliger. Scaliger often uses the concepts of corpuscles, pores, and vacuum. At the same time, he also describes mixture as involving the fusion of particles into a continuous body. The paper explores how Scaliger’s combination of corpuscularian and non-corpuscularian views is shaped, in substantial aspects, by…Read more
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206Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe (review)Berichte Zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 37 (2): 170-171. 2014.
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274Incomplete Entities, Natural Non-separability, and Leibniz’s Response to François Lamy’s De la Conoissance de soi-mêmeThe Leibniz Review 13 1-17. 2003.Robert M. Adams claims that Leibniz’s rehabilitation of the doctrine of incomplete entities is the most sustained effort to integrate a theory of corporeal substances into the theory of simple substances. I discuss alternative interpretations of the theory of incomplete entities suggested by Marleen Rozemond and Pauline Phemister. Against Rozemond, I argue that the scholastic doctrine of incomplete entities is not dependent on a hylomorphic analysis of corporeal substances, and therefore can be …Read more
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365Henry More on Spirits, Light, and Immaterial ExtensionBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 21 (5). 2013.According to the Cambridge Platonist Henry More, individual spirits--the souls of humans and non-human animals--are extended but cannot be physically divided. His contemporaries and recent commentators have charged that More has never given an explication of the grounds on which the indivisibility of spirits is based. In this article, I suggest that exploring the usage that More makes of the analogy between spirits and light could go some way towards providing such an explication. More compares …Read more
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273Fortunio Liceti on Mind, Light, and Immaterial ExtensionPerspectives on Science 21 (3): 358-378. 2013.In the history of seventeenth-century philosophy, the distinction between material and immaterial extension is closely associated with the Cambridge Platonist Henry More (1614–1687). The aspect of More’s conception of immaterial extension that proved most influential is his theory of absolute divine space. Very plausibly, the Newtonian conception of space owes a great deal to More’s views on space. More’s views on space in turn were closely linked to his views on the nature of individual spirits…Read more
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220Instrumental causes and the natural origin of souls in Antonio Ponce Santacruz's theory of animal generationAnnals of Science 76 (2): 184-209. 2019.ABSTRACT This article studies the theory of animal seeds as purely material entities in the early seventeenth-century medical writings of Antonio Ponce Santacruz, royal physician to the Spanish king Philipp IV. Santacruz adopts the theory of the eduction of substantial forms from the potentiality of matter, according to which new kinds of causal powers can arise out of material composites of a certain complexity. Santacruz stands out among the late Aristotelian defenders of eduction theory becau…Read more
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259Helvétius's challenge: Moral luck, political constitutions, and the economy of esteemEuropean Journal of Philosophy 28 (2): 337-349. 2019.This article explores a historical challenge for contemporary accounts of the role that the desire of being esteemed can play in exercising social control. According to Geoffrey Brennan and Philip Pettit, the economy of esteem normally has two aspects: it is supportive of virtuous action and it occurs spontaneously. The analysis of esteem presented by the 18th‐century materialist Claude‐Adrien Helvétius challenges the intuition that these two aspects go together unproblematically. This is so bec…Read more
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304D’Holbach on (Dis-)Esteeming TalentJournal of Modern Philosophy 2 (1): 10. 2020.Rousseau argues that holding the talented in high public esteem leads the less talented to esteem their natural virtues less highly and therefore to neglect the cultivation of these virtues. D’Holbach’s response to Rousseau indicates a sense in which esteeming talent can avoid these detrimental consequences. The starting point of d’Holbach’s defense of the sciences and arts is an analysis of the impact that despotic regimes have on esteeming talent. He argues that there is not only a problem of …Read more
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171Dalgarno, Wilkins, Leibniz and the Descriptive Nature of Metaphysical ConceptsIn P. Phemister & S. Brown (eds.), Leibniz and the English-Speaking World, Springer. pp. 51--61. 2007.
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320D’Holbach on self-esteem and the moral economy of oppressionBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 25 (6): 1116-1137. 2017.Recently, the idea that our desire for the esteem of others could function as a regulative principle of social life has been criticized because the economy of esteem could reinforce oppressive structures due to expressions of mutual esteem within oppressing groups with deviant group norms. This article discusses this problem from a historical point of view, focusing on the moral and political writings of the eighteenth-century French materialist Paul Thiry d’Holbach. D’Holbach’s thoughts are rel…Read more
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283Existential Dependence and the Question of Emanative Causation in Protestant Metaphysics, 1570–1620Intellectual History Review 19 (1): 1-13. 2009.
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306Definitions, Sorites Arguments, and Leibniz’s Méditation sur la notion commune de la justiceThe Leibniz Review 14 153-166. 2004.As Leibniz points out in the Méditation sur la notion commune de la jus tice, justice—defined as charity of the wise and universal benevolence—belongs “to the necessary and eternal truths about the nature of things, as numbers and proportions.” According to the interpretation of Patrick Riley, from this perspective the two manuscripts usually regarded as belonging to the Méditation should be seen as complementary parts of a unitary Platonizing work. According to Riley, the manuscript that now co…Read more
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251Daniel Sennert on Poisons, Epilepsy, and Subordinate FormsPerspectives on Science 19 (2): 192-211. 2011.As Peter Niebyl has documented, one of the issues in which the Wittenberg-based physician and philosopher Daniel Sennert (1572–1637) departed from Paracelsus and his followers was the concept of disease. Paracelsus and some of his followers regarded diseases as real beings—so-called “disease-entities” (entia morbis) that can enter into the body of a living being and thereafter possess a clearly defined location in the affected organism. 1 For Sennert, such a view is a dangerous confusion between…Read more
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289Composite Substance, Common Notions, and Kenelm Digby's Theory of Animal GenerationScience in Context 20 (1): 1. 2007.
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281Common usage, presumption and verisimilitude in sixteenth-century theories of juridical interpretationHistory of European Ideas 43 (5): 401-415. 2017.ABSTRACTThe question of how common usage could be constitutive for the meaning of linguistic expressions has been discussed by Renaissance philosophers such as Lorenzo Valla, and it also played an important role in Renaissance theories of juridical interpretation. An aspect of the analysis of common usage in Renaissance theories of juridical interpretation that concerns the role of presumption has not yet found much attention. Renaissance jurists such as Simone de Praetis, Nicolaus Everardus, an…Read more
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30Die kategoriale Unbestimmtheit der Gegenstände in Wittgensteins TractatusGrazer Philosophische Studien 60 (1): 197-215. 2000.This paper has two aims: In the first part it is argued, that - contrary to a predominant line of interpretation in recent literature - Wittgenstein holds no implicit (positive or negative) assumptions conceming the categorial status of objects in the Tractatus. The second part tries to explain the categorial indeterminacy of Tractarian objects as a consequence of Wittgenstein's concept of logic and his distinction between "logic" and "application of logic".
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129Catherine Wilson. Epicureanism at the Origins of Modernity. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2008. Pp. 304. $75.00 ; $35.00 (review)Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 2 (1): 200-203. 2012.
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2Der Logische Aufbau von Leibniz' Metaphysikde Gruyter. 2001.Für das gegenwärtige Bild von Leibniz' Metaphysik ist das Urteil von Catherine Wilson charakteristisch, die in ihr ein Beispiel für „revisionäre" Metaphysik im Sinne Strawsons sieht: eine Metaphysik, die das alltägliche Verständnis der Welt durch ein ganz anderes ersetzt, im Gegensatz zu einer „deskriptiven" Metaphysik, die die impliziten Strukturen unseres alltäglichen Verständnisses der Welt offenlegt. Auch Strawson stellt Leibniz im wesentlichen auf die Seite der revisionären Metaphysik. Die …Read more
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241Christian Wolff on Common Notions and Duties of EsteemJournal of Early Modern Studies 8 (1): 171-193. 2019.While contemporary accounts understand esteem and self-esteem as essentially competitive phenomena, early modern natural law theorists developed a conception of justified esteem and self-esteem based on naturally good character traits. This article explores how such a normative conception of esteem and self-esteem is developed in the work of Christian Wolff. Two features make Wolff’s approach distinctive: He uses the analysis of common notions that are expressed in everyday language to provide a…Read more
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251Anne‐Thérèse de Lambert on Aging and Self‐EsteemHypatia 33 (2): 289-304. 2018.This article studies Madame de Lambert's early eighteenth-century views on aging, and especially the aging of women, by contextualizing them in a twofold way: It understands them as a response to La Rochefoucauld's skepticism concerning aging, women, and the aging of women; It understands them as being closely connected to a long series of scattered remarks concerning esteem, self-esteem, and honnêteté in Lambert's moral essays. Whereas La Rochefoucauld describes aging as a decline of intellectu…Read more
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376Antonio Ponce de Santacruz on Nutrition and the Question of EmergenceIn Giouli Korobili & Roberto Lo Presti (eds.), Nutrition and Nutritive Soul in Aristotle and Aristotelianism, De Gruyter. pp. 355-378. 2020.
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127Atoms and minds in Walter Charleton's theory of animal generationIn Justin E. H. Smith (ed.), The Problem of Animal Generation in Early Modern Philosophy, Cambridge University Press. 2006.
Andreas Blank
Alpen-Adria Universität Klagenfurt
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Alpen-Adria Universität KlagenfurtResearcher
Areas of Specialization
History of Western Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
History of Western Philosophy |
20th Century Philosophy |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |