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472Instrumental or Immersed Experience: Pleasure, Pain and Object Perception in LockeIn CT Wolfe & O. Gal (eds.), The Body as Object and Instrument of Knowledge: Embodied Empiricism in Early Modern Science, Springer. pp. 265--285. 2010.
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282Princess Elizabeth and Descartes: The union of soul and body and the practice of philosophyBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 7 (3). 1999.(1999). Princess Elizabeth and Descartes: The union of soul and body and the practice of philosophy. British Journal for the History of Philosophy: Vol. 7, No. 3, pp. 503-520. doi: 10.1080/09608789908571042
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248Descartes passions of the soul and the union of mind and bodyArchiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 85 (3): 211-248. 2003.I here address Descartes' account of human nature as a union of mind and body by appealing to The Passions of the Soul. I first show that Descartes takes us to be able to reform the naturally instituted associations between bodily and mental states. I go on to argue that Descartes offers a teleological explanation of body-mind associations (those instituted both by nature and by artifice). This explanation sheds light on the ontological status of the union. I suggest that it affords a way of und…Read more
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179Descartes’s Moral TheoryPhilosophical Review 110 (2): 270-272. 2001.John Marshall aims, in Descartes’s Moral Theory, to “introduce Descartes’s moral thought to an anglophone audience”. He provides such an introduction not only in that he surveys Descartes’s writings on ethics from the Discourse, through his correspondence, to The Passions of the Soul, but also in that he presents a sustained argument for a reading of how these writings all fit together.
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155Descartes’s Passions of the SoulPhilosophy Compass 1 (3): 268-278. 2006.While Descartes’s Passions of the Soul has been taken to hold a place in the history to human physiology, until recently philosophers have neglected the work. In this research summary, I set Descartes’s last published work in context and then sketch out its philosophical significance. From it, we gain further insight into Descartes’s solution to the Mind--Body Problem -- that is, to the problem of the ontological status of the mind--body union in a human being, to the nature of body--mind causat…Read more
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115Early Modern Philosophy: An Anthology (edited book)Broadview Press. 2021.This new anthology of early modern philosophy enriches the possibilities for teaching this period by highlighting not only metaphysics and epistemology, but also new themes such as virtue, equality and difference, education, the passions, and love. It contains the works of forty-three philosophers, including traditionally taught figures such as Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant, as well as less familiar writers such as Lord Shaftesbury, Anton Amo, Julien Offray de La M…Read more
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104The Correspondence Between Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia and René Descartes (edited book)University of Chicago Press. 2007.Between the years 1643 and 1649, Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia and René Descartes exchanged fifty-eight letters—thirty-two from Descartes and twenty-six from Elisabeth. Their correspondence contains the only known extant philosophical writings by Elisabeth, revealing her mastery of metaphysics, analytic geometry, and moral philosophy, as well as her keen interest in natural philosophy. The letters are essential reading for anyone interested in Descartes’s philosophy, in particular his account of…Read more
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79Revisiting the Early Modern Philosophical CanonJournal of the American Philosophical Association 2 (3): 365-383. 2016.ABSTRACT:I reflect critically on the early modern philosophical canon in light of the entrenchment and homogeneity of the lineup of seven core figures: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant. After distinguishing three elements of a philosophical canon—a causal story, a set of core philosophical questions, and a set of distinctively philosophical works—I argue that recent efforts contextualizing the history of philosophy within the history of science subtly shift the centra…Read more
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71The health of the body-machine? Or seventeenth century mechanism and the concept of healthPerspectives on Science 11 (4): 421-442. 2003.. The concept of bodily health is problematic for mechanists like Descartes, as it seems that they need to appeal to something extrinsic to a machine, i.e., its purpose, to determine whether the machine is working well or badly, and so healthy or unhealthy. I take issue with this claim. By drawing on the history of medicine, I suggest that in the seventeenth century there was space for a non-teleological account of health. I further argue that mechanists can and did appeal to structural integrit…Read more
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68Spinoza on Imagination and the AffectsIn Sabrina Ebbersmeyer (ed.), Emotional Minds, De Gruyter. pp. 89. 2012.
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65Memory in the MeditationsRes Philosophica 92 (1): 41-60. 2015.This paper considers just how memory works throughout the Meditations to adduce Descartes’s conception of memory. Examining the meditator’s memory at work raises some questions about the nature of Cartesian memory and its epistemic role. What is the distinction between remembering and repeating a thought? If remembering is not simply repeating a thought, then what is involved in properly remembering? Can we remember properly while adding or shifting content, say, in virtue of articulating relati…Read more
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55Descartes and Spinoza on the Primitive PassionsIn Noa Naaman Zauderer (ed.), Freedom Action and Motivation in Spinoza's Ethics, Routledge Press. pp. 62-81. 2019.Motivating my discussion is a puzzle in Spinoza’s account of the primary affects – his shift away from adopting Descartes’s list of six primitive passions in the Short Treatise to the three primary affects in the Ethics. I lay out this puzzle in Section 1. In Section 2, I approach this puzzle by considering the taxonomy offered by Descartes of the basic or primitive passions. In considering Descartes, I will also briefly consider Aquinas’s view since Descartes positions himself as rejecting the …Read more
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55Descartes’s EthicsIn Janet Broughton & John Carriero (eds.), A companion to Descartes, Blackwell. pp. 445-463. 2008.I begin my discussion by considering how to relate Descartes’s more general concern with the conduct of life to the metaphysics and epistemology in the foreground of his philosophical project. I then turn to the texts in which Descartes offers his developed ethical thought and present the case for Descartes as a virtue ethicist. My argument emerges from seeing that Descartes’s conception of virtue and the good owes much to Stoic ethics, a school of thought which saw a significant revival in the …Read more
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51Emotion and cognitive life in Medieval and early modern philosophy (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2012.This volume explores emotion in medieval and early modern thought, and opens a contemporary debate on the way emotions figure in our cognitive lives.
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51Descartes’s Moral Theory (review)Philosophical Review 110 (2): 270-272. 2001.John Marshall aims, in Descartes’s Moral Theory, to “introduce Descartes’s moral thought to an anglophone audience”. He provides such an introduction not only in that he surveys Descartes’s writings on ethics from the Discourse, through his correspondence, to The Passions of the Soul, but also in that he presents a sustained argument for a reading of how these writings all fit together.
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41The Routledge Handbook of Women and Early Modern European Philosophy (edited book)Routledge. 2023.An outstanding reference source for the wide range of philosophical contributions made by women writing in Europe from about 1560 to 1780. It shows the range of genres and methods used by women writing in these centuries in Europe, thus encouraging an expanded understanding of our historical canon.
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37XIV—Assuming Epistemic Authority, or Becoming a Thinking ThingProceedings of the Aristotelian Society. forthcoming.
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37The Outward and Inward Beauty of Early Modern WomenRevue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 138 (3): 327-346. 2013.I explore some early modern philosophical thought about the relation of beauty and wisdom, a theme first expressed in Plato's Symposium. The thinkers I consider most centrally are two women, Lucrezia Marinella and Mary Astell, though I also consider the writers Aphra Behn and Sarah Scott. While women in particular might have a special interest in appropriating the Platonic image of the ladder of desire, this ought not to be conceived as a 'women's issue'. Rather, I suggest, this strand of though…Read more
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30Review of Deborah J. brown, Descartes and the Passionate Mind (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2007 (3). 2007.
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29Descartes on human nature and the human goodIn Smith Justin & Fraenkel Carlos (eds.), The Rationalists, Springer/synthese. pp. 13--26. 2011.
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28Revisiting the Early Modern Philosophical Canon—ADDENDUMJournal of the American Philosophical Association 3 (1): 127-127. 2017.
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26The Outward And Inward Beauty Of Early Modern WomenRevue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 138 (3): 327-346. 2013.I explore some early modern philosophical thought about the relation of beauty and wisdom, a theme first expressed in Plato's Symposium. The thinkers I consider most centrally are two women, Lucrezia Marinella and Mary Astell, though I also consider the writers Aphra Behn and Sarah Scott. While women in particular might have a special interest in appropriating the Platonic image of the ladder of desire, this ought not to be conceived as a 'women's issue'. Rather, I suggest, this strand of though…Read more
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23Pleasure: A History (edited book)Oxford University Press, Usa. 2018.For many, the word 'pleasure' conjures associations with hedonism, indulgence, and escape from the life of the mind. However little we talk about it, though, pleasure also plays an integral role in cognitive life, in both our sensory perception of the world and our intellectual understanding. This previously important but now neglected philosophical understanding of pleasure is the focus of the essays in this volume, which challenges received views that pleasure is principally motivating of acti…Read more
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23How We Experience the World: Passionate Perception in DescartesIn Martin Pickavé & Lisa Shapiro (eds.), Emotion and cognitive life in Medieval and early modern philosophy, Oxford University Press. pp. 193. 2012.
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15L’Amour, L’Ambition and L’Amitié: Marie Thiroux D’Arconville on Passion, Agency and VirtueIn Eileen O’Neill & Marcy P. Lascano (eds.), Feminist History of Philosophy: The Recovery and Evaluation of Women’s Philosophical Thought, Springer. pp. 175-191. 2019.In this paper, I examine Marie Thiroux D’Arconville’s moral psychology as presented in two of her works: Des Passions [On the Passions] and De L’Amitié [On Friendship]. This moral psychology is somewhat unique as it centers human action on three principal sentiments: l’amour, which is best understood as lust or a physical love; l’ambition, the principal human vice; and l’amitié, a characteristic friendship proper to the truly virtuous. I aim to show that these three passions tell a story of mora…Read more
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15Princess Elisabeth and the Challenges of PhilosophizingIn Sabrina Ebbersmeyer & Sarah Hutton (eds.), Elisabeth of Bohemia (1618–1680): A Philosopher in Her Historical Context, Springer Verlag. pp. 127-141. 2021.This paper explores Elisabeth’s remark that ruling and studying each demands an entire person, with the aim of understanding why she might think ruling and intellectual pursuits like philosophy are incompatible with one another. While Elisabeth identifies several barriers to philosophizing, she does not suggest that time constraints are an impediment to both philosophizing and ruling. Situating Elisabeth with respect to Plato, Machiavelli, and Aristotle suggests that she holds there are many sim…Read more
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9On the inseparability of reasoning and virtue: Madame de Maintenon's Maison royale de Saint‐LouisMetaphilosophy 54 (2-3): 254-267. 2023.This paper engages with the curriculum at Madame de Maintenon's school for girls at Saint‐Cyr to raise and address a set of questions: What is it to teach someone to reason? The curricular materials of Saint‐Cyr suggest that learning to reason is a matter of practice. How is one to distinguish autonomous reason giving from habituation or automatic trained responses? How can practices in reason giving informed by social mores have objective validity? Moreover, if we think of the role of a philoso…Read more
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9Descartes's EthicsIn Janet Broughton & John Carriero (eds.), A Companion to Descartes, Blackwell. 2007.This chapter contains section titled: Cartesian Philosophy and the Conduct of Life Putting the Pieces of Descartes's Ethical Writings Together: Cartesian Virtue Ethics Key Texts The “Perfect Moral System” and the Morale Par Provision Cartesian Virtue Descartes's Virtue Ethics and His Metaphysics and Epistemology, Revisited Conclusion Notes References and Further Reading.
Areas of Specialization
17th/18th Century Philosophy |
Philosophical Traditions |
History of Western Philosophy |