E. E. Sheng

In 1500, speculative philosophy lay at the heart of European intellectual life; by 1700, its role was drastically diminished. The Kingdom of Darkness tells the story of this momentous transformation. Dmitri Levitin explores the structural factors behind this change: the emancipation of natural philosophy from metaphysics; theologians' growing preference for philology over philosophy; and a new conception of the limits of the human mind derived from historical and oriental scholarship, not least concerning China and Japan. In turn, he shows that the ideas of two of Europe's most famous thinkers, Pierre Bayle and Isaac Newton, were both the products of this transformation and catalysts for its success. Drawing on hundreds of sources in many languages, Levitin traces in unprecedented detail Bayle and Newton's conceptions of what Thomas Hobbes called The Kingdom of Darkness: a genealogical vision of how philosophy had corrupted the human mind. Both men sought to remedy this corruption, and their ideas helped lay the foundation for the system of knowledge that emerged in the eighteenth century.

This paper provides the first systematic interpretation of the moral theory developed in Newcome’s Enquiry Into the Evidence of the Christian Religion (1728, revised 1732). More importantly, it shows that Newcome’s views constitute a valuable but overlooked contribution to the development of utilitarianism. Indeed, she is arguably the first utilitarian. Her ethical views are considered in two stages. The paper first explores her hedonist approach to the good and then turns to her consequentialist account of right action. The paper then situates Newcome’s work within the context of the pre-Bentham utilitarian movement. Strikingly, Newcome lived and worked in close proximity to other prominent early utilitarians and was well-positioned to have exerted an influence on the development of their views. Newcome has never been discussed in connection with the history of ethics. This paper constitutes an argument for her inclusion in our narratives about the development of a major moral theory.

Discussion of the relations between ethics and aesthetics has tended to focus on issues concerning judgement: for example, philosophers have often asked whether, or to what extent, ethical considerations of one sort or another should inform aesthetic verdicts. Much less discussed, however, have been the relations between these two domains in their practical aspects. In this paper, I try to defuse a cluster of reasons for believing that practical competence in the ethical domain and practical competence in the aesthetic domain must be understood as importantly, or structurally, distinct from one another