• Hume and German philosophy
    In Angela Coventry & Alex Sager (eds.), _The Humean Mind_, Routledge. 2019.
  • This volume explores the philosophy of Étienne Bonnot de Condillac. It presents, for the first time, English-language essays on Condillac's philosophy, making the complexity and sophistication of his arguments and their influence on early modern philosophy accessible to a wider readership. Condillac's reflections on the origin and nature of human abilities, such as the ability to reason, reflect and use language, took philosophy in distinctly new directions. This volume showcases the diversity …Read more
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    In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reply to My CriticsExperience Embodied: Early Modern Accounts of the Human Place in NatureAnik Waldow (bio)I would like to thank Dario Perinetti and Hynek Janoušek for their thoughtful comments and the time and effort they invested into my work. Their reflections drive attention to important questions and make helpful suggestions about how some of the arguments of the book can be further developed and clarified. In what follows, I wi…Read more
  •  13
    Reply to My Critics
    International Journal of Philosophical Studies 31 (2): 253-265. 2023.
    In this article, I engage with the queries, comments, and suggestions raised by my commentators. I proceed in the order of the original contributions, which more or less follows the order to the ch...
  •  9
    Précis: Experience Embodied
    International Journal of Philosophical Studies 31 (2): 192-195. 2023.
    By examining the concept of experience in the theorizing of Descartes, Locke, Hume, Rousseau, Herder and Kant, Experience Embodied ventures to provide a re-evaluation of one of the most firmly esta...
  •  19
    Condillac on being human: Language and reflection reconsidered
    European Journal of Philosophy 29 (2): 504-519. 2020.
    In the Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge, Condillac argues that humans develop reason only once they have discovered the function of signs and the use of language in their encounters with others. Commentators like Hans Aarsleff and Charles Taylor believe that a precondition for this discovery is the presence of a special human capacity: the capacity to reflectively relate to what is given in experience. The problem with this claim is that it returns Condillac to a form of innatism from whic…Read more
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    Triggers of Thought: Impressions within Hume’s Theory of Mind
    History of Philosophy & Logical Analysis 13 (1): 105-121. 2010.
    This essay argues that Humean impressions are triggers of associative processes, which enable us to form stable patterns of thought that co-vary with our experiences of the world. It will thus challenge the importance of the Copy Principle by claiming that it is the regularity with which certain kinds of sensory inputs motivate certain sets of complex ideas that matters for the discrimination of ideas. This reading is conducive to Hume’s account of perception, because it avoids the impoverishmen…Read more
  •  29
    Justice Through a Multispecies Lens
    with Danielle Celermajer, Sria Chatterjee, Alasdair Cochrane, Stefanie Fishel, Astrida Neimanis, Anne O’Brien, Susan Reid, Krithika Srinivasan, and David Schlosberg
    Contemporary Political Theory 19 (3): 475-512. 2020.
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    By investigating conceptions of experience from Descartes to Kant, this book shows that one of the central questions of the early-modern period was how humans can instantiate in their actions the principles of rational moral agency, while at the same time responding with their bodies to the causal play of nature. Through the analysis of this question, the book draws attention to the bodily underpinnings of the ability to experience thoughts and feelings. It thus challenges overly subjectivist in…Read more
  •  13
    Descartes, Malebranche, and the Crisis of Perception, by OttWalter. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. 272.
  •  37
    The language of sympathy: Hume on communication
    British Journal for the History of Philosophy 28 (2): 296-317. 2020.
    By placing Hume’s account of communication in the context of some less known seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French resources on rhetoric and language, this essay argues that Hume based his und...
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    Empathy--our capacity to cognitively or affectively connect with other people's thoughts and feelings--is a concept whose definition and meaning varies widely within philosophy and other disciplines. Philosophical Perspectives on Empathy advances research on the nature and function of empathy by exploring and challenging different theoretical approaches to this phenomenon. The first section of the book explores empathy as a historiographical method, presenting a number of rich and interesting ar…Read more
  •  32
    Herder: Philosophy and Anthropology (edited book)
    Oxford University Press. 2017.
    Thirteen scholars offer new essays exploring the question at the heart of J. G. Herder's thought: How can philosophy enable an understanding of the human being not simply as an intellectual and moral agent, but also as a creature of nature who is fundamentally marked by an affective openness and responsiveness to the world and other persons?
  •  1
    The Self
    In Jorge Secada & Cecilia Wee (eds.), The Cartesian Mind, Routledge. 2019.
  • Personal Identity
    In Dana Jalobeanu & Charles T. Wolfe (eds.), Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences, Springer. forthcoming.
  • Hume and German philosophy
    In Angela Coventry & Alex Sager (eds.), _The Humean Mind_, Routledge. 2019.
  •  3
    Descartes on Self-Knowledge
    In Stephen Hetherington (ed.), Knowledge: From Antiquity to the Present, Bloomsbury. forthcoming.
  •  5
    Introduction
    In Waldow Vinicius & DeSouza Nigel (eds.), Herder: Philosophy and Anthropology, Oxford University Press. pp. 1-9. 2017.
    Herder brings the entire human being into focus by tracing its connections with the natural, cultural, and historical world. The first part of the volume examines the various dimensions of Herder’s philosophical understanding of human nature through which he sought methodologically to delineate a genuinely anthropological philosophy. This includes his critique of traditional metaphysics and its revision along anthropological lines; the metaphysical, epistemological, and physiological dimensions …Read more
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    Between History and Nature: Herder’s Human Being and the Naturalisation of Reason
    In Waldow Anik & DeSouza Nigel (eds.), Herder: Philosophy and Anthropology, Oxford University Press. pp. 147-165. 2017.
    This essay argues that Herder’s conception of history as a form of natural growth is grounded in his claim that humans are a part of nature and develop historically situated forms of reason in communication with the features of their natural and social environments. By stressing this developmental aspect of human reason, Herder not only helps us to correct an overly universalistic conception of reason that ignores the importance of situational contexts in the shaping of cognitive structures; he …Read more
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    n his 1785 review of Herder’s Ideen zur Geschichte der Menschheit Kant stresses the negative effects of sensibility and imagination in undermining philosophy. This essay will offer a defence of Herder against Kant in order to gesture towards a more positive account of the cognitive function of these capacities. I will argue that the eighteenth-century fascination with the experimental sciences and the demand to engage in anti-speculative philosophy in fact called for the integration of sensibili…Read more
  •  6
    Nature and Norms in Thought
    In Anik Waldow & Martin Lenz (eds.), Contemporary Perspectives on Early Modern Philosophy, Springer. pp. 1-12. 2013.
    The present volume joins contributions to early modern debates on nature and norms in thought with decidedly contemporary perspectives, thereby hoping to shed new light on developments in early modern philosophy as well as enrich current discussions on the relation between nature and norms. Clearly, the relation between mind and world poses perennial problems and debates. How do we explain that thoughts and other mental states have content? What makes it the case that some thought is about this …Read more
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    Natural History and the Formation of the Human Being: Kant on Active Forces
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 58 67-76. 2016.
    In his 1785-review of the Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, Kant objects to Herder's conception of nature as being imbued with active forces. This attack is usually evaluated against the background of Kant's critical project and his epistemological concern to caution against the “metaphysical excess” of attributing immanent properties to matter. In this paper I explore a slightly different reading by investigating Kant's pre-critical account of creation and generation. The aim…Read more
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    Bridging the Gap: Can Conceptual Analysis solve the Problem of Other Minds
    Anthropology and Philosophy 11 133-147. 2014.