Pedro Pricladnitzky

This book promotes entirely new insights into women’s contributions to the history of philosophy and boasts papers spanning the centuries from Antigone until twentieth century phenomenology, covering fields from logic to mysticism, stretching from Brazil to Early Modern Europe. The book is of interest for all scholars and students of the history of philosophy, but especially for those who are interested in women philosophers and in new narratives in the history of philosophy. The book is representative of the immense scope of academic discussion women were involved in over the centuries as well as their varying styles and methods. It features papers in logic and in mysticism, presents papers on female authors in Antiquity and in the twenty-first century and it includes papers on phenomenology and analytic philosophy. The chapters consider philosophical positions in literature and drama, in letters and in classical philosophical treatises, ensuring this book contributes significantly to research on the individual women authors, who are all to date still understudied figures.

The expression ‘rationalism’ is a historiographical category that refers to a set of views more or less shared by a number of philosophers active in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This period saw the heyday of metaphysical system-building, but the expression ‘rationalism’, as the term is understood in this entry, connotes primarily epistemological commitments. Since the early twentieth century, ‘rationalism’ has typically been presented in contrast with ‘empiricism’. By contrast to so-called ‘empiricism’, which traces (all) knowledge to sensory experience, ‘rationalists’ tend to rely upon the powers of reason to explain and justify what we know. This entry provides an account of the traditional narrative of early modern ‘rationalism’ while also extending that narrative to cover figures from typically under-represented backgrounds who hold commitments that can also plausibly be characterized as ‘rationalist’. The entry thus covers René Descartes (1596–1650), Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677), and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716), alongside Anton Wilhelm Amo (1703–1759), Margaret Cavendish (1623–1673), and Anne Conway (1631–1679). The entry also concludes by briefly suggesting future directions for scholarship on early modern rationalism involving the application of rationalist principles in topics such as social and political philosophy, as illustrated through the writings of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1645–1695) and François Poulain de la Barre (1647–1723).

This paper examines the press as a form of philosophical expression in nineteenth-century Brazil, focusing on the works of Josefina Álvares de Azevedo. Emerging in a postcolonial society that still upheld entrenched structures of exclusion, women’s periodicals provided a platform for articulating political claims. Azevedo, in A Família and A Mulher Moderna, advanced arguments for women’s emancipation through education, the recognition of intellectual equality, and the defense of suffrage. Her writings combined moral reasoning, metaphysical reflection, and historical analysis, framing gender equality as both a philosophical principle and a social necessity. By situating Azevedo within the broader women’s press, the paper demonstrates how female intellectuals challenged patriarchal norms and participated in shaping republican ideals. It also reflects on methodological approaches for integrating excluded perspectives into the history of philosophy, highlighting the decolonial significance of recognizing journalism as a legitimate form of philosophical production.

This paper intends to present a reconstruction of an argument for the inseparabilityInseparability of matter and motionMotion in Cavendish. Implicit in this argument is a critique of the mechanisticMechanistic definition of motion and its project as an explanatory model for natural phenomenaNatural phenomena. At first, I will attempt to show how the textual tension over the relationship between matter and motion originates in some of the relevant texts of Cavendish’s metaphysicsMetaphysics. After that, I will present how it is possible to reconstruct an argument for the conceptual inseparability between matter and motion and this is directly linked to her theory of complete blending. Once these steps have been taken, we are in a position to analyze Cavendish’s critiques of mechanism.

In this paper, the ontological status of individual bodies in Descartes is addressed. It is explicit in his works that extension designates a substance, however, it is not simple to determine whether this is applicable both to extension as whole as well for corporeal individuals that we observe in natural phenomena. This problem appears in the commentaries of Descartes’ philosophy as the dilemma between a pluralist or a monist interpretation of the material world. The core of the difficulty, will be proposed, can be traced back to a prior difficulty, namely, the complex cartesian theory of substance. Analyzing passages from different works in which Descartes uses the concept of substance linked to extension, the textual origin of the pluralist interpretation can be found. Its inconsistencies with some principles of cartesian dualism are pointed out; and, finally, will be introduced some elements that support the monist interpretation. Keywords: Descartes. Bodies. Substance.

The aim of this paper is to analyze some conceptual elements that compose the strucutre of scientific thinking in Descartes, specifically, the relations between theoretical principles and experience. An examination of the ways by which the author presents and sustains a model of a priori science that utilizes empirical cognitions is proposed. This investigation will lead to an intepretation that defends that science for Descartes is not a purely intellectual activity, empirical hypothesis and suppositions have an essential role on scientific reasoning. Keywords: Scientific reasoning; experience; hypothesis. Keywords: Method; Descartes; Scientific reasoning; experience; hypothesis

In this work, I offer an interpretation of the principle of individuation and the ontological status of individual bodies in the work of Margaret Cavendish. By proposing an alternative to the mechanical model of natural philosophy, Cavendish must approach the metaphysics of matter from a different angle. Such a perspective can offer fruitful elements to understand the complex and diverse landscape of natural philosophy in Early Modern Philosophy. I contextualize Cavendish’s natural philosophy and its relation to the developments of other early modern approaches. Section 1 is dedicated to an overview of Cavendish’s natural philosophy. In Sect. 2, I present the difficulty concerning the individuation of bodies in modern philosophy in order to reveal the background in which Cavendish develops her position. Before turning to the analysis of the central passages in which Cavendish explores the problem of individuation, in Sect. 4, I introduce the basic tenets of her metaphysics in Sect. 3. Finally, in Sect. 5, I turn to motion and its causes, given its fundamental role in individuation.

This book presents Latin American Perspectives on women philosophers, comprising selected articles from the First International Conference of Women in Modern Philosophy that took place in Rio de Janeiro City, Brazil, Latin America, in June of 2019. The conference brought together over twenty national, transnational, and international philosophers from seven countries, whose work combines historical and analytical insight to recover the philosophical legacy of women philosophers. Historical and analytical work on women’s philosophical thought constitute efforts to re-conceptualize what counts as philosophical knowledge and re-appraise the epistemic relevance of written material that women thinkers produced for most of history. This collection and the conference that gave origin to it are testimony to the enduring power of multinational and multicultural philosophical collaboration.

Remarks on the Structure of the Recherche de la Verité: The Role of Vision in God: The present article will discuss the argumentative context in which Nicolas Malebranche presents the doctrine of the vision in God in his work, Recherche de la Verité. Malebranche is known for this doctrine about human cognition, and also for his occasionalistic view of causality, and such positions are only properly understood when put in the argumentative context designed by the author, which is not usually seen in commentaries. With this goal, we intend to look into the precise position of the vision of God in the Recherche and to identify the argument of the work as a whole. Thus, by seeing how the malebranchean theory of cognition fits in his philosophical project, we will be able to adequately reconstruct this important and influential philosophical doctrine of the seventeenth century.Keywords: Nicolas Malebranche. Recherche de la Verité. Vision in God. Considerações sobre a Estrutura da Recherche de la Verité: O Papel da Visão em Deus Resumo: No seguinte artigo abordamos o contexto argumentativo em que se insere a doutrina da visão em Deus de Nicolas Malebranche na sua obra, Recherche de la Verité. Ainda que Malebranche seja conhecido tanto por essa doutrina acerca da cognição humana, quanto pela sua visão ocasionalista da estrutura causal, tais posições só são adequadamente compreendidas quando as colocamos no contexto argumentativo projetado pelo autor, o que costumeiramente não é feito. Com isso, pretendemos situar a posição da visão em Deus na Recherche partindo, em um primeiro momento, da análise do fio condutor da obra. Desse modo, ao vislumbrarmos de que modo uma teoria da cognição se encaixa no projeto filosófico malebranchista, seremos capazes de reconstruir adequadamente essa importante e influente doutrina filosófica do século XVII.Palavras-chave: Nicolas Malebranche. Recherche de la Verité. Visão em Deus. Remarques sur la Structure de la Recherche de la Verité: Le Rôle de la Vision em Dieu Résumé: Dans l’article suivant, nous abordons le context argumentative dans lequel la doctrine de la vision en Dieu de Nicolas Malebranche est insérée dans la Recherche de la Verité. Bien que Malebranche soit connu à la fois pour cette doctrine de la cognition humaine et pour sa perspective ocasionelle de la structure causale, de tells positions ne sont correctement comprises que lorsque nous les plaçons dans le context argumentative conçu par l’auteur; ce qui n’est généralement pas fait. Avec cela, nous avons l’intention de situer la position de la vision en Dieu dans la Recherche comme fil conducteur de l’oeuvre. De cette façon, lorsque nous entrevoirons comment une théorie de la cognition s’intègre dans le projet philosophique malebranchiste, nous serons en conditions de reconstruire correctement cette important et influent doctrine philosophique du XVIIe siècle.Mots-clés: Malebranche. Recherche de la Verité. Vision em Dieu. Data de registro: 04/05/2020Data de aceite: 26/08/2020

In this text, I intend to present one of Cavendish’s arguments for the thesis that nature, or all individuals that make up nature, have mental properties. Cavendish offered many arguments to show that matter has the capacity to think, but her central argument for the position is drawn from an observation that, for her, is evident and unquestionable: bodies, or the parts of matter that make up nature, behave in an orderly and variable way and this is only possible if they have sensitivity and rationality. Cavendish’s position is not just that matter has the capacity to think or that the view that some material beings can think. Her view that intends to explain the phenomena that occurs in nature rests on a stronger thesis: all matter, by its very nature, thinks.