•  6
    Pensées Imperceptibles in Arnauld and Nicole
    Revue Internationale de Philosophie 4 39-58. 2023.
    Dans cet article, nous nous concentrons sur les réflexions qu’Antoine Arnauld et Pierre Nicole consacrent au concept de « pensées imperceptibles », en soulignant à quel point ces réflexions sont liées à leur doctrine de la grâce et de la condition postlapsaire. Nous montrons à cet égard combien les débats métaphysiques de la première modernité sont inséparables d’un certain nombre d’engagements éthiques et politiques. En particulier, les préjugés de nos penseurs sur les capacités intellectuelles…Read more
  •  13
    Joanna Stephens and the Stone: credibility economy in the history of medicine
    Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 66 (2): 267-283. 2023.
    ABSTRACT:In 1740, Joanna Stephens (fl. 1720–1741) produced a recipe for a tonic that she claimed cured bladder stones. Although she had the support of some notable and powerful men in the medical community and empirical evidence that her tonic worked, it took two years of petitioning, discussing, and even (unsuccessfully) crowd-sourcing before Parliament relented and awarded her the sum she requested to take her tonic public. Stephens’s interaction with the scientific community serves as a case …Read more
  •  12
    Gabrielle Suchon, Philosopher Queen of the Amazons
    Humanities: The Magazine of the National Endowment for the Humanities 44 (1). 2023.
    Women philosophers were not common in the seventeenth century. Many obstacles stood in the way of women being able to pursue the intellectual life. Deeply entrenched prejudices about women’s moral, intellectual, and physical inferiority generated economic, political, and cultural structures that excluded them from education, civic life, travel, and, most importantly, from freely deciding the trajectory of their adult lives. A notable and noteworthy exception is Gabrielle Suchon. Without any supp…Read more
  •  35
    Self-Love or Diffidence? Malebranche and Hume on the Love of Fame
    Journal of Modern Philosophy 4 (1): 2. 2022.
    Hume’s discussion of pride and sympathy in the _Treatise_ shows direct engagement with Malebranche’s discussion of ‘imitation’ in the _Search_. For Malebranche, imitation—both of passions and belief—and our tendency to judge ourselves by comparison, generate the passion of pride or grandeur, which plays a useful social role. However, as both cause and effect of the admiration of others, grandeur is ungrounded and thus imaginary. Hume disagrees. He invokes the principle of sympathy to explain how…Read more
  •  35
    In recent years, Early Modern Philosophy has seen frequent and urgent calls for more diverse, equitable, and inclusive teaching and research. These are calls fo.
  •  22
    Cross-Year Peer Mentorship in Introductory Philosophy Classes in advance
    with Sara M. Fulmer and Sarah Pociask
    American Association of Philosophy Teachers Studies in Pedagogy 5 144-168. 2019.
    Philosophical writing is challenging for students new to philosophy. Many philosophy classes are populated, for the most part, by students who have never taken philosophy before. While many institutions offer general writing support services, these services tend to be most beneficial for helping to identify problems with style and grammar. They are not equipped to help students with the particular challenges that come with writing philosophy for the first time. We implemented the “Home Base” Men…Read more
  •  47
    Absential Suspension: Malebranche and Locke on Human Freedom
    with Thomas M. Lennon
    Journal of Modern Philosophy 1 (1): 1-17. 2019.
    This paper treats a heretofore-unnoticed concept in the history of the philosophical discussion of human freedom, a kind of freedom that is not defined solely in terms of the causal power of the agent. Instead, the exercise of freedom essentially involves the non-occurrence of something. That being free involves the non-occurrence, that is, the absence, of an act may seem counterintuitive. With the exception of those specifically treated in this paper, philosophers tend to think of freedom as in…Read more
  •  52
    Gabrielle Suchon, Freedom, and the Neutral Life
    International Journal of Philosophical Studies (5): 1-28. 2019.
    A central project of Enlightenment thought is to ground claims to natural freedom and equality. This project is the foundation of Suchon’s view of freedom. But it is not the whole story. For, Suchon’s focus is not just natural freedom, but also the necessary and sufficient conditions for oppressed members of society, women, to avail themselves of this freedom. In this paper I, first, treat Suchon’s normative argument for women’s right to develop their rational minds. In Section 2, I consider Suc…Read more
  •  14
    Review: Another Mind Body Problem (review)
    Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 3. 2019.
    At the outset of this book, John Harfouch tells his reader that he intends for his study to "engage and overturn the philosophy of mind" (xxxii). He aims to do this by excavating the "historical roots of a mind-body problem," which reveals another mind-body problem, a problem of, as Harfouch puts it, racial non-being (xxxiii). This excavation, in his view, displaces the traditional mind-body problem typically associated with René Descartes, which, as a result, displaces the traditional solutions…Read more
  • Locke and Limborch
    In Jessica Gordon-Roth & Shelley Weinberg (eds.), The Lockean Mind, Routledge. 2021.
    Philippus van Limborch was a friend and correspondent of Locke’s for twenty years. The aspect of their correspondence that interests us here unfolds across 1700–1702 on the topic of human freedom. In Section 1, I outline Limborch’s view of freedom, which is one of indifference. In Section 2, I describe why, despite Limborch’s insistence that their positions were similar, Locke could not agree with Limborch’s view and even modified his account to make the difference more apparent. I conclude in S…Read more
  •  1
    Locke on Power and Freedom
    In Jessica Gordon-Roth & Shelley Weinberg (eds.), The Lockean Mind, Routledge. 2021.
    In this chapter, I make three main points. First, I argue that, on Locke’s view, the power of human freedom is good because it allows us to be determined by the goods we have chosen for ourselves. Under ideal conditions, this power allows intellectual beings to attain happiness. There is, however, ample evidence that many intellectual beings are unhappy. This observation leads me to my second point. For Locke, bad choices are no less freely made than good ones. This is because bad decisions come…Read more
  •  81
    Amo on the Heterogeneity Problem
    Philosophers' Imprint 19 (41): 1-18. 2019.
    In this paper, I examine a heretofore ignored critic of Descartes on the heterogeneity problem: Anton Wilhelm Amo. Looking at Amo’s critique of Descartes reveals a very clear case of a thinker who attempts to offer a causal system that is not a solution to the mind-body problem, but rather that transcends it. The focus of my discussion is Amo’s 1734 dissertation: The Apathy [ἀπάθεια] of the Human Mind or The Absence of Sensation and the Faculty of Sense in the Human Mind and their Presence in ou…Read more
  • Malebranche on Mind
    In Rebecca Copenhaver & C. Shields (eds.), The History of the Philosophy of Mind, 6 Volumes. 2018.
    This chapter analyses Malebranche’s theory that the human, finite mind participates in two separate and, at least prima facie, incompatible unions: one with the body to which it is joined and one with God. By looking at the way that Malebranche borrows from both the mechanical philosophy as articulated by Descartes and Augustine’s dictum that we are not “lights unto” ourselves, the unique, difficult, and at times problematic Malebranchean philosophy of mind is revealed. This discussion is divide…Read more
  •  66
    Continental Rationalism
    with Shannon Dea and Thomas M. Lennon
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2008.
    The expression “continental rationalism” refers to a set of views more or less shared by a number of philosophers active on the European continent during the latter two thirds of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth. Rationalism is most often characterized as an epistemological position. On this view, to be a rationalist requires at least one of the following: (1) a privileging of reason and intuition over sensation and experience, (2) regarding all or most ideas as innate…Read more
  •  67
    Locke's Last Word on Freedom: Correspondence with Limborch
    Res Philosophica 95 (4): 637-661. 2018.
    JohnLocke’s 1700–1702 correspondencewith Dutch Arminian Philippus van Limborch has been taken by commentators as the motivation for modifications to the fifth edition of “Of Power,” the chapter in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding that treats freedom. In this paper, I offer the first systematic and chronological study of their correspondence. I argue that the heart of their disagreement is over how they define “freedom of indifference.” Once the importance of the disagreement over indiffer…Read more
  •  44
    The Protestant and the Pelagian
    American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 93 (3): 497-526. 2019.
    One of the longest and most acrimonious polemics in the history of philosophy is between Antoine Arnauld and Nicolas Malebranche. Their central disagreements are over the nature of ideas, theodicy, and, the topic of this paper, grace. We offer the most in-depth English language treatment of their discussion of grace to date. Our focus is one particular aspect of the polemic: the power of finite agents to assent to grace. We defend two theses. First, we show that as the debate progresses, the dif…Read more
  •  25
    Toleration and Understanding in Locke by Nicholas Jolley
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 56 (2): 374-375. 2018.
    Jolley argues that paying close attention to Locke’s Epistola de Tolerentia, as well as the later letters on toleration occasioned by Jonas Proast’s response to the Epistola, reveals that “a different Locke emerges from the one who is familiar to us today; it is a Locke who is more single-mindedly devoted to the project of promoting the cause of religious toleration than has been realized”. Jolley argues that Locke is a more systematic thinker than we think, and that the theme that unites his th…Read more
  •  35
    Arnauld, Power, and the Fallibility of Infallible Determination
    History of Philosophy Quarterly 33 (3): 237-256. 2016.
    Antoine Arnauld is well known as a passionate defender of Jansenism, specifically Jansen’s view on the relation between freedom and grace. Jansen and, early in his career Arnauld, advance compatibilist views of human freedom. The heart of their theories is that salvation depends on both the irresistible grace of God and the free acts of created things. Yet, in Arnauld’s mature writings, his position on freedom seems to undergo a significant shift. And, by 1689, his account of freedom no longer s…Read more
  •  81
    Malebranche, the Quietists, and Freedom
    with Thomas M. Lennon
    British Journal for the History of Philosophy 20 (1). 2012.
    The Quietist affair at the end of the seventeenth century has much to teach us about theories of the will in the period. Although Bossuet and Fénelon are the names most famously associated with the debate over the Quietist conception of pure love, Malebranche and his erstwhile disciple Lamy were the ones who debated the deep philosophical issues involved. This paper sets the historical context of the debate, discusses the positions as well as the arguments for and against them, and opens up inve…Read more
  • Malebranche, Freedom, and the Divided Mind
    In P. Easton & K. Smith (eds.), Gods and Giants in Early Modern Philosophy, Brill. pp. 194-216. 2015.
    In this paper I argue that according to Malebranche mental attention is the corrective to epistemic error and moral lapse and constitutes the essence of human freedom. Moreover, I show how this conception of human freedom is both morally significant and compatible with occasionalism. By attending to four distinctions made by Malebranche throughout his writings we can begin to understand first, what it means for human beings to exercise their freedom in a way that has some meaningful consequence,…Read more
  •  23
    Locke’s Ethics
    Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2014.
    Locke: Ethics The major writings of John Locke are among the most important texts for understanding some of the central currents in epistemology, metaphysics, politics, religion, and pedagogy in the late 17th and early 18th century in Western Europe. His magnum opus, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding is the undeniable starting point for … Continue reading Locke’s Ethics →.
  •  3
    Confusing Faith and Reason? Malebranche and Academic Scepticism
    In Sébastien Charles & Plínio Junqueira Smith (eds.), Academic Scepticism in the Development of Early Modern Philosophy, Springer Verlag. pp. 181-213. 2016.
    When we consider early modern philosophers who engage with sceptical arguments, Nicolas Malebranche is not usually among the first names to come to mind. But, while Malebranche does not spend much time with this topic, the way in which he responds to it when he does is nevertheless valuable. This is because his response underlines the central role of a particular principle in his system: the utter dependence of all created things on God. In this paper, I argue that the end of Malebranche’s engag…Read more
  •  64
    Malebranche on the Metaphysics and Epistemology of Particular Volitions
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 54 (2): 227-255. 2016.
    among nicolas malebranche’s most influential contributions to philosophy are his defense of occasionalism, his highly original theodicy, and his philosophical method elaborated in greatest detail in his magnum opus De la Recherche de la vérité. In his account of occasionalism, Malebranche argues that finite things have no causal power and that God is the only true causal agent. Malebranche’s theodicy—his attempt to reconcile the existence of evil in the world with the existence of an all-good and …Read more
  •  45
    Descartes’s Ballet: His Doctrine of the Will and His Political Philosophy
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 47 (1). 2008.
    Richard Watson’s Descartes’s Ballet engages three main questions uncommon to traditional Cartesian scholarship: Did Descartes script La Naissance de la Paix, the ballet performed in honor of Queen Christina’s twenty-third birthday in December 1649? Did Descartes have a political philosophy? Did Descartes read the French dramatist Pierre Corneille? Watson answers no, yes, and yes.By emphasizing the complete lack of evidence that Descartes wrote La Naissance de la Paix, Watson disarms the suggesti…Read more
  •  2
    Espace et métaphysique de Gassendi à Kant: Anthologie (review)
    Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 140 (2): 246-248. 2015.
  •  341
    'Things for Actions': Locke's Mistake in 'Of Power'
    Locke Studies 10 85-94. 2010.
    In a letter to William Molyneux John Locke states that in reviewing his chapter 'Of Power' for the second edition of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding he noticed that he had made one mistake which, now corrected, has put him "into a new view of things" which will clarify his account of human freedom. Locke says the mistake was putting “things for actions” on p.123 of the first edition, a page on which the word 'things' does not appear (The Correspondence of John Locke. E.S. de Beer, ed. (O…Read more