Early Modern Philosophers And The Renaissance Legacy

When does Renaissance philosophy end, and Early Modern philosophy begin? Do Renaissance philosophers have something in common, which distinguishes them from Early Modern philosophers? And ultimately, what defines the modernity of the Early Modern period, and what role did the Renaissance play in shaping it? The answers to these questions are not just chronological. This book challenges traditional constructions of these periods, which partly reflect the prejudice that the Renaissance was a literary and artistic phenomenon, rather than a philosophical phase. The essays in this book investigate how the legacy of Renaissance philosophers persisted in the following centuries through the direct encounters of subsequent generations with Renaissance philosophical texts. This volume treats Early Modern philosophers as joining their predecessors as ‘conversation partners’: the ‘conversations’ in this book feature, among others, Girolamo Cardano and Henry More, Thomas Hobbes and Lorenzo Valla, Bernardino Telesio and Francis Bacon, René Descartes and Tommaso Campanella, Giulio Cesare Vanini and the anonymous Theophrastus redivivus.

This volume examines the distinctive and important role played by humanism in the development of early modern philosophy. Focusing on individual authors as well as intellectual trends, this collection of essays aims to portray the humanist movement as an essential part of the philosophy of the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries.

In this volume leading contemporary philosophical historians of the Renaissance and Early Modern periods examine the works of important figures of the fifteenth through the eighteenth century. While Midwest Studies in Philosophy has produced other volumes devoted to historical periods in philosophy, this is the first to offer such extensive and focused original materials on specific crucial figures as this volume. Original papers by twenty contemporary philosophers writing about the works of the major philosophers of the Fifteenth through the Eighteenth centuries This historically and philosophically broad collection extends from such fifteenth century figures as Ficino, Machiavelli, and Pompanazzi to the work of Montesquieu in the eighteenth century

While the transmission of Greek philosophy and science via the Muslim world to western Europe in the Middle Ages has been closely scrutinized, the fate of the Arabic philosophical and scientific legacy in later centuries has received less attention, a fault this volume aims to correct. The authors in this collection discuss in particular the radical ideas associated with Averroism that are attributed to the Aristotle commentator Ibn Rushd (1126-1198) and challenge key doctrines of the Abrahamic religions. This volume examines what happened to Averroes’s philosophy during the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Did early modern thinkers really no longer pay any attention to the Commentator? Were there undercurrents of Averroism after the sixteenth century? How did Western authors in this period contextualise Averroes and Arabic philosophy within their own cultural heritage? How different was the Averroes they created as a philosopher in a European tradition from Ibn Rushd, the theologian, jurist and philosopher of the Islamic tradition?

This Encyclopedia offers a fresh, integrated and creative perspective on the formation and foundations of philosophy and science in European modernity. Combining careful contextual reconstruction with arguments from traditional philosophy, the book examines methodological dimensions, breaks down traditional oppositions such as rationalism vs. empiricism, calls attention to gender issues, to ‘insiders and outsiders’, minor figures in philosophy, and underground movements, among many other topics. In addition, and in line with important recent transformations in the fields of history of science and early modern philosophy, the volume recognizes the specificity and significance of early modern science and discusses important developments including issues of historiography (such as historical epistemology), the interplay between the material culture and modes of knowledge, expert knowledge and craft knowledge. This book stands at the crossroads of different disciplines and combines their approaches – particularly the history of science, the history of philosophy, contemporary philosophy of science, and intellectual and cultural history. It brings together over 100 philosophers, historians of science, historians of mathematics, and medicine offering a comprehensive view of early modern philosophy and the sciences. It combines and discusses recent results from two very active fields: early modern philosophy and the history of (early modern) science. Editorial Board EDITORS-IN-CHIEF Dana Jalobeanu University of Bucharest, Romania Charles T. Wolfe Ghent University, Belgium ASSOCIATE EDITORS Delphine Bellis University Nijmegen, The Netherlands Zvi Biener University of Cincinnati, OH, USA Angus Gowland University College London, UK Ruth Hagengruber University of Paderborn, Germany Hiro Hirai Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands Martin Lenz University of Groningen, The Netherlands Gideon Manning CalTech, Pasadena, CA, USA Silvia Manzo University of La Plata, Argentina Enrico Pasini University of Turin, Italy Cesare Pastorino TU Berlin, Germany Lucian Petrescu Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium Justin E. H. Smith University de Paris Diderot, France Marius Stan Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, USA Koen Vermeir CNRS-SPHERE + Université de Paris, France Kirsten Walsh University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Experimental philosophy was an exciting and extraordinarily successful development in the study of nature in the seventeenth century. Yet experimental philosophy was not without its critics and was far from the only natural philosophical method on the scene. In particular, experimental philosophy was contrasted with and set against speculative philosophy and, in some quarters, was accused of tending to irreligion. This volume brings together ten scholars of early modern philosophy, history and science in order to shed new light on the complex relations between experiment, speculation and religion in early modern Europe. The first six chapters of the book focus on the respective roles of experimental and speculative philosophy in individual seventeenth-century philosophers. They include Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle, Margaret Cavendish, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Isaac Newton. The next two chapters deal with the relation between experimental philosophy and religion with a special focus on hypotheses and natural religion. The penultimate chapter takes a broader European perspective and examines the paucity of concerns with religion among Italian natural philosophers of the period. Finally, the concluding chapter draws all these individuals and themes together to provide a critical appraisal of recent scholarship on experimental philosophy. This book is the first collection of essays on the subject of early modern experimental philosophy. It will appeal to scholars and students of early modern philosophy, science and religion.

The Routledge Handbook of Women and Early Modern European Philosophy is 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. Comprising 46 chapters by a team of contributors from all over the globe, including early career researchers, the Handbook is divided into the following sections: I. Context II. Themes A. Metaphysics and Epistemology B. Natural Philosophy C. Moral Philosophy D. Social-Political Philosophy III. Figures IV. State of the Field The volume is essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy who are interested in expanding their understanding of the richness of our philosophical past, including in order to offer expanded, more inclusive syllabi for their students. It is also a valuable resource for those in related fields like gender and women’s studies; history; literature; sociology; history and philosophy of science; and political science.

While the transmission of Greek philosophy and science via the Muslim world to western Europe in the Middle Ages has been closely scrutinized, the fate of the Arabic philosophical and scientific legacy in later centuries has received less attention, a fault this volume aims to correct. The authors in this collection discuss in particular the radical ideas associated with Averroism that are attributed to the Aristotle commentator Ibn Rushd (1126-1198) and challenge key doctrines of the Abrahamic religions. This volume examines what happened to Averroes’s philosophy during the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Did early modern thinkers really no longer pay any attention to the Commentator? Were there undercurrents of Averroism after the sixteenth century? How did Western authors in this period contextualise Averroes and Arabic philosophy within their own cultural heritage? How different was the Averroes they created as a philosopher in a European tradition from Ibn Rushd, the theologian, jurist and philosopher of the Islamic tradition?