Andreas Blank

Why did Julius Caesar Scaliger critically discuss Theophrastus’s views on plant degeneration? This article argues that the motivation behind Scaliger’s critique can be found in his rejection of the emergentist view that substantial forms and their powers cannot be reduced to the causal powers of the constituents of the composite bodies on which they depend. The phenomenon of plant degeneration challenges Scaliger’s anti-emergentism because it suggests that sufficiently complex material composites can bring forth substantial forms that belong to new species. Moreover, Scaliger interpreted Theophrastus’s account of plant degeneration as being committed to the occurrence of powers irreducible to the powers of plant parts. Scaliger’s analysis of plant degeneration can be understood as an attempt at reconciling a version of species constancy with a version of species mutability that is not committed to emergentism.

Les juristes humanistes du xvi e siècle ont développé une épistémologie sociale des opinions communes en établissant une analogie entre la formation d’un consensus parmi les juristes et la formation de l’opinion publique. L’analogie visait à indiquer que les deux types de croyances de groupe devaient être analysés en termes de témoignage collectif. D’une part, ces deux formes de consensus sont menacées par des pathologies du témoignage. D’autre part, on estime qu’elles conduisent dans le meilleur des cas à des présomptions qui nous aident à agir sur le fondement de ce qui est provisoirement tenu pour vrai. Les croyances collectives des deux types sont considérées comme rationnelles lorsqu’elles possèdent une « vraisemblance » (c’est-à-dire un lien fort avec les hypothèses admises concernant la nature humaine).

This article takes a comparative approach to a positive function that Hobbes and Nicole ascribe to dissimulation: Following the norms of civility leaves the self-esteem of others intact, even when one does not believe it is well-founded. This can be understood as a kind of recognition in the sense of supporting the self-image of others. However, Nicole goes beyond Hobbes in analyzing the detrimental effects that complaisance with self-related acts of imagination can have on social life. While Hobbes takes an uncritical attitude toward identifying with acts of conquest driven by inflated feelings of self-worth, Nicole is aware of the destructive effects of inflated self-esteem. Nicole’s analysis of the limits of the usefulness of dissimulation leads him to develop a complementary conception of recognition based on an insight into shared human weakness.

The striving for self-worth is recognized as a driving force in international relations; but if self-worth is understood as a function of status in a power hierarchy, this striving often is a source of anxiety and conflict over status. The quasi-international relations within the early modern German Empire have prompted seventeenth-century natural law theorists such as Samuel Pufendorf and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz to reflect about this problem. In his De statu imperii Germanici (1667), Pufendorf regards the power differences and dependencies between the Reichsstände to be an expression of the deficits of constitutional structure of the Empire—a structure that, in his view, causes internal division because it leads to distorted practices of esteem between the estates. Against Pufendorf, Leibniz argues De jure suprematus ac legationis (1671) that political actors such as the German princes who are not Electors could fulfill functions under the law of nations such as forming confederations and peace keeping. Incoherently, however, Leibniz excludes less powerful estates such as the Imperial cities and the Hanseatic cities from the ensuing duties of esteem. This shortcoming, in turn, is arguably remedied in Pufendorf’s later considerations concerning duties of esteem in diplomatic relations.

In his discussion of simple esteem—one of the moral entities meant to regulate human actions—Pufendorf invokes a juridical commonplace: the rule that, before evidence to the contrary, we should presume others to be good. This argumentative strategy is an illuminating example for understanding his method of commonplaces. The present paper has three goals: (1) to analyze how Pufendorf adopted from legal humanism the view that presumptions should be based on considerations of what comes about most easily in nature; (2) to show that Pufendorf’s inclusion of ethical aspects in the juridical presumption of goodness is an application of this view of forming presumptions; (3) to argue that Pufendorf did not regard juridical and philosophical commonplaces as expressions of a particular stage of intellectual history but rather as the result of reflection about human needs and abilities.

Did allegorical interpretations of animals disappear from Protestant natural histories due to what has been described as the literalist mentality of the Reformers? This paper uses histories of animals by (or deriving from) the Zurich-based naturalist Conrad Gessner to argue for two claims: First, that not every instance of the disappearance of allegorical meanings can be explained through the emphasis on literal meanings in Reformed hermeneutics; this is so because moral and mystical interpretations of the wild animals of the Book of Job can be found in the commentary by Gessner’s teacher, Conrad Pellikan. Secondly, this paper argues that moral interpretations of ants persist in Insectorum sive minimorum animalium theatrum, a work based on Gessner’s unpublished notes. Such interpretations are compatible with Pellikan’s moral and mystical interpretations of the ants of the Solomonic Proverbs. What does disappear are the eschatological interpretations of ants found in Catholic natural histories such as those of Ulisse Aldrovandi. I conjecture that the repudiation of the notion of personal merit in Reformed theology could explain this divergence.

Michael Della Rocca has claimed that using intuitions expressed in everyday language for philosophical purposes leads to a “taming of philosophy.” The present article uses an aspect of Christian Wolff's arguments from common notions as a test case for this claim. It is argued that arguments from common linguistic usage in Wolff's analysis of imputation allow for reasoned choices between competing philosophical theories and provide insights into aspects of social reality that are expressed in common notions. This is so because Wolff does not analyze everyday concepts one by one but rather explores their mutual connections.

This article discusses Du Châtelet’s challenging claim that entertaining illusions, especially illusions of being esteemed by posterity, is conducive to happiness. It does so by taking a contextualizing approach, contrasting her views with some Epicurean aspects of the views on illusions and happiness in Bernard de Fontenelle and Julien Offray de La Mettrie. I will argue for three claims: (1) Du Châtelet’s comparison between self-related illusions and illusions in the theater is vulnerable to objections deriving from some distinctions that Fontenelle’s poetics draws between the role of illusions in the theater and the role of illusions in real life. (2) Examining Fontenelle’s analysis of the detrimental effects of self-related illusions indicates several respects in which Du Châtelet has underestimated the ambivalent nature of illusions. (3) Du Châtelet’s view that illusions are akin to sensations that are favorable to us problematically generalizes La Mettrie’s insight that some acts of the imagination have a quasi-perceptual nature.

Gabriel Bonnot de Mably (1709–1785) adopts the republican commonplace that social esteem is the suitable reward for civic virtue. At the same time, he emphasizes that distorted imagination makes it difficult to discern what is good for human beings. This combination of views is puzzling because distorted imagination seems to impair the ability to recognize what deserves to be esteemed. I will argue that the coherence of Mably’s position is due to his emphasis on factors explaining distorted imagination that do not derive from human nature but, rather, from external factors. One such factor is historiography. Historians’ distorted imaginations can mislead readers’ imaginations and make them ready to esteem despotic regimes and a politics of conquest. But such pathologies of the imagination can be cured through historiography that is informed by the positive experiences arising from ancient and early modern republican constitutions and the negative experiences arising from ancient and early modern despotic regimes. In Mably’s view, republican historiography is one of the factors capable of modifying the imagination of citizens and, hence, their conceptions of what deserves social esteem.

This article discusses some reasons for taking a reconstructive approach to the argumentative structure of Leibniz’s metaphysics. One reason is the fragmentary nature of the countless notes and letters that constitute by far the largest part of Leibniz‘s philosophical output. Another reason is that conjecturing how the many isolated arguments proposed by Leibniz fit into a large-scale argumentative structure could yield insights into how Leibniz made use of the method of intuition – both in his analysis of mind and in his analysis of matter. Contemporary critics have objected that the method of intuition leads to philosophical conservatism, arbitrary choices between conflicting intuitions, and a preoccupation with psychological facts rather than with reality. By contrast, reconstructing the methodology behind Leibniz’s metaphysics could indicate how intuitions could be used in a way that sidesteps these problems. Leibniz gives priority to intuitions concerning the structure of mental operations over intuitions concerning the structure of material objects; this is why intuitions concerning the structure of material objects can be replaced by innovative philosophical theories; these theories, however, make use of metaphysical concepts implied by the analysis of mind and, thereby, can capture facts both about psychology and about the structure of extra-mental reality.

This chapter addresses prominent considerations both for and against the confessionalization thesis—the view that theological contents specific to the Catholic, Lutheran, and Reformed creeds had an influence on the theoretical contents of early modern natural philosophy. In this article, I present four case studies that indicate some senses in which the confessionalization thesis seems to be well-founded, as well as some senses in which existing criticisms seem to be persuasive. Some of the source materials point to the conclusion that one ought to be cautious about making too general claims concerning the pervasive role of confessionalization in early modern natural philosophy.

The present article draws attention to some specific similarities between Helvétius and Bentham in their treatments of the morality of the desire for esteem. These similarities can be observed in three fields: (1) Helvétius and Bentham integrate the desire for esteem into more general accounts of how sensible interest motivates human action; (2) they analyse various everyday situations in which the desire for esteems has consequences that are detrimental for social life; and (3) they emphasize republican constitution building as an instrument for making the desire for esteem virtue-supporting.