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475Self-Deception and Illusions of Esteem: Contextualizing Du Châtelet’s ChallengeIn Ruth Edith Hagengruber (ed.), Époque Émilienne. Philosophy, Science and Culture in the Age of Émilie Du Châtelet. pp. 391-410. 2022.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
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440The Analysis of Reflection and Leibniz’s Early Response to SpinozaIn Mark Kulstad, Mogens Laerke & David Snyder (eds.), The philosophy of the young Leibniz, Steiner. pp. 161-175. 2009.
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369Antonio 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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347Henry 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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343Marquard Freher and the presumption of goodness in legal humanismHistory 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
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315Material souls and imagination in Late Aristotelian embryologyAnnals of Science 67 (2): 187-204. 2010.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 so…Read more
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314Julius 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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310D’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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301Mably on Esteem, Republicanism, and the Question of Human CorruptionJournal of Modern Philosophy 3 (1): 5. 2021.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 reinterpre…Read more
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300Striving Possibles and Leibniz’s Cognitivist Theory of VolitionJournal of Early Modern Studies 5 (2): 29-52. 2016.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 c…Read more
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297Definitions, 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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291Self-knowledge and varieties of human excellence in the French moralistsBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 27 (3): 513-534. 2019.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 a…Read more
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291D’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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273Composite Substance, Common Notions, and Kenelm Digby's Theory of Animal GenerationScience in Context 20 (1): 1. 2007.
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271Common 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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271Existential Dependence and the Question of Emanative Causation in Protestant Metaphysics, 1570–1620Intellectual History Review 19 (1): 1-13. 2009.
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263Wolff on duties of esteem in the law of peoplesEuropean Journal of Philosophy 29 (2): 475-486. 2021.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, th…Read more
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262Incomplete 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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260Sixteenth-Century Pharmacology and the Controversy between Reductionism and EmergentismPerspectives on Science 26 (2): 157-184. 2018.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 posses…Read more
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258Fortunio 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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251The morality of the desire for esteem: Gassendi and the Augustinian challengeHistory of European Ideas 47 (8): 1228-1242. 2021.ABSTRACT Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655) has not been perceived as one of the early modern philosophers who had something interesting to say about the role of the desire for esteem in social life and the moral duties connected with this desire. Nevertheless, in his Animadversiones in decimum librum Diogenis Laertii (1649) there are some scattered, but interrelated remarks about how the desire for esteem could be supportive of civic virtue. These remarks were written during the years when Jansenism b…Read more
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251Helvétius'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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243Anne‐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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240Leibniz's de summa rerum and the panlogistic interpretation of the theory of simple substancesBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 11 (2). 2003.
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237Daniel 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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235Nicolaus Taurellus on Forms and ElementsScience in Context 27 (4): 659-682. 2014.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 …Read more
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233Esteem and self-esteem in early modern ethics and politics. An overviewIntellectual History Review 32 (1): 1-14. 2022.The self-worth of political communities is often understood to be an expression of their position in a hierarchy of power; if so, then the desire for self-worth is a source of competition and conflict in international relations. In early modern German natural law theories, one finds the alternative view, according to which duties of esteem toward political communities should reflect the degree to which they fulfill the functions of civil government. The present article offers a case study, exami…Read more
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233Christian 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
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 |