Andreas Blank

Alpen-Adria Universität Klagenfurt
  •  110
    Bentham and Helvétius on the Morality of the Desire for Esteem
    Rivista di Filosofia 113 (2): 341-360. 2022.
    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 r…Read more
  •  323
    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 the views on illusions and happiness in Julien Offray de La Mettrie and Bernard de Fontenelle. I will argue for three claims: (1) Du Châtelet’s view that illusions are akin to perceptions that are favorable to us problematically generalizes La Mettrie’s insigh…Read more
  •  175
    The Morality of Self-Acceptance. La Rochefoucauld and the Augustinian Challenge
    Early Modern French Studies 45 (1): 131-149. 2023.
    This article argues that the reception of Augustinian ideas in Pascal and Nicole can be used to clarify what is distinctive in La Rochefoucauld’s treatment of self-relations. La Rochefoucauld does not share the Augustinian dichotomy between self-love at the price of forgetting God and love of God at the price of self-contempt that is prominent in both Pascal and Nicole. Rather, La Rochefoucauld develops a conception of an attitude towards the self that could be described as self-acceptance. As h…Read more
  •  86
    Cesalpino on Sensitive Powers and the Question of Divine Immanence
    In Fabrizio Baldassarri & Craig Martin (eds.), Andrea Cesalpino and Renaissance Aristotelianism, Bloomsbury. pp. 69-87. 2023.
    Nicolaus Taurellus (1547-1606) developed a detailed critique of Cesalpino’s cardiocentric physiology, challenging the causal roles that Cesalpino ascribed to the heart, blood, vital spirits and vital heat in the origin of sensitive powers. He also rejected Cesalpino’s view that a cardiocentric physiology of sensation could be used as an analogy to explain in what sense the universe could be understood as being animated. The central point of Taurellus’s critique is that Cesalpino’s treatment of v…Read more
  •  5
    Peter Harrison explains the disappearance of symbolic meanings of animals from seventeenth-century works in natural history through what he calls the “literalist mentality of the reformers.” By contrast, the present article argues in favor of a different understanding of the connection between hermeneutics and Protestant natural history. Martin Luther, Philipp Melanchthon, Johannes Brenz, Johannes Oecolampadius, and Jean Calvin continued to assign moral meanings to natural particulars, and moral…Read more
  •  335
    Marquard Freher and the presumption of goodness in legal humanism
    History of European Ideas 49 (3): 491-505. 2023.
    One of the most detailed early modern discussions of the morality of esteem can be found in the work of the reformed jurist and historian Marquard Freher (1565–1614). Since the question of how much esteem others deserve is fraught with a high degree of uncertainty, Freher relied on the work of other legal humanists, who discussed questions of esteem from the perspective of arguments from the presumption of goodness. The humanist approach to the presumption of goodness integrated considerations a…Read more
  • Leibniz, Spinoza y el Intelecto Agente
    In Leticia Cabanas and Oscar M. Esquisabel (ed.), Leibniz frente a Spinoza. Una interpretacíon panorámica, Editorial Comares. 2014.
  •  395
    The Analysis of Reflection and Leibniz’s Early Response to Spinoza
    In Mark Kulstad, Mogens Laerke & David Snyder (eds.), The philosophy of the young Leibniz, Steiner. pp. 161-175. 2009.
  •  98
    Aquinas and Soto on Derogatory Judgement and Noncomparative Justice
    History of Philosophy Quarterly 29 (4): 411-427. 2012.
  •  114
    This article examines some aspects of the natural philosophy of Juan Gallego de la Serna, royal physician to the Spanish kings Philip III and Philip IV. In his account of animal generation, Gallego criticizes widely accepted views: (1) the view that animal seeds are animated, and (2) the alternative view that animal seeds, even if not animated, possess active potencies sufficient for the development of animal souls. According to his view, animal seeds are purely material beings. This, of course,…Read more
  •  92
    Rezension von Martin Mulsow und Asaph Ben-Tov (eds), Knowledge and Profanation (review)
    Quellen Und Forschungen Aus Italienischen Archiven Und Bibliotheken 102 569-570. 2022.
  •  125
    How persuasive are Rousseau’s and Diderot’s objections against Helvétius’s view that it is always interest that guides our esteem? Against Helvétius’s view that we always esteem ourselves in others, Rousseau objects that we can esteem the ideas that we recognize to be superior to our own ideas; against Helvétius’s idea that particu-lar societies and nations can only esteem ideas that are useful for them, Diderot objects that we can experience and esteem the feeling of universal benevolence. Howe…Read more
  •  107
    Jacob Schegk on Plants, Medicaments, and the Question of Emergence
    In Antonio Clericuzio, Paolo Pecere & Charles Wolfe (eds.), Mechanism, Life and Mind in Modern Philosophy. pp. 27-47. 2022.
    The view that living beings as well as plant-based medicaments possess causal properties that are caused by the causal properties of their constituents, without being reducible to the combination of the causal properties of these constituents goes back to ancient thinkers such as Alexander of Aphrodisias and Johannes Philoponus. In the early modern period, this view was not only criticized by natural philosophers taking a reductionist stance; it was also criticized by Neo-Platonic thinkers such …Read more
  •  104
    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 ob…Read more
  •  185
    Julius Caesar Scaliger
    Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy. 2018.