This book explores different accounts of powers and abilities in early modern philosophy. It analyzes powers and abilities as a package, hopefully enabling us to better understand them both and to see similarities as well as dissimilarities. While some prominent early modern accounts of power have been studied in detail, this volume also covers lesser‐known thinkers and several early modern women philosophers. The volume also investigates early modern accounts of powers and abilities in a more systematic fashion than has been previously done. By broadening its scope in these ways, the volume uncovers trends and tendencies in early modern thinking about powers and abilities that are easy to miss. Chapters in this book explore how 22 early modern thinkers approached the following questions: What kind of entities are powers and abilities? Are they reducible to something categorical or not? What is the relation between powers and abilities? Is there a fundamental metaphysical difference between them or not? How do we know what powers objects have and what abilities agents have? Are human abilities in any way special? How do they relate to the abilities non‐human animals have? And how do they relate to the powers of inanimate objects? Powers and Abilities in Early Modern Philosophy will appeal to scholars and advanced students working in the history of early modern philosophy, in metaphysics, and in the history of science.

This is the first edited collection dedicated to demonstrating Hume’s relevance to contemporary debates in epistemology. It features original essays by Hume scholars and epistemologists that address a wide range of important questions, including the following: What does a Humean conception of knowledge look like? How do Hume’s understanding of belief and suspension of judgement bear on current debates about doxastic attitudes? Is there a Humean way of uniting reasons in the epistemic and practical domains? What is the proper role of reason at the foundations of ethics and epistemology from a Humean point of view? What contribution might an examination of Humean scepticism make to understanding of current sceptical hypotheses? Is Hume a hinge epistemologist? Does naturalized epistemology trace back to Hume? Does Hume have an ethics of belief? What can Hume contribute to virtue and vice epistemology? Some chapters try to bring historically accurate interpretations of Hume’s ideas into contact with current issues, while others will take ideas merely suggested by Hume and demonstrate their philosophical usefulness. Together, they demonstrate Hume’s enduring relevance for debates about knowledge, belief, inquiry and suspension, reasons, modal knowledge, scepticism, hinge epistemology, naturalized epistemology, the ethics of belief and moral epistemology, virtue and vice epistemology, and the epistemology of testimony. Hume and Contemporary Epistemology will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working on Hume, epistemology, and the history of philosophy.

"This volume examines some of the main twists and turns in the fascinating history of the philosophical concept of powers or dispositions. It focuses on what one might call the metaphysical sense of 'powers'-that is, the powers that are invoked in the explanation of natural changes and activities. The volume's chapters discuss, among others, the philosophical views of Anaxagoras, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Plotinus, Ibn Gabirol, Avicenna, Abelard, Anselm, Henry of Ghent, John Duns Scotus, René Descartes, Nicolas Malebranche, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Margaret Cavendish, Ralph Cudworth, Henry More, John Locke, David Hume, Thomas Reid, Mary Shepherd, Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, David Lewis, David Armstrong, and George Molnar. In addition, the volume contains four short reflection essays that examine the concept of powers from the perspective of disciplines other than philosophy, namely, history of music, West African religions, history of chemistry, and history of art"--

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 43 philosophers, including traditionally taught figures such as Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, as well as less familiar writers such as Lord Shaftesbury, Anton Amo, Julien Offray de La Mettrie, and Denis Diderot. It also highlights the contributions of women philosophers, including Margaret Cavendish, Anne Conway, Gabrielle Suchon, Sor Juana Inéz de la Cruz, and Emilie Du Châtelet.

This book offers a novel interpretation of Spinoza’s basic metaphysics of God, body, and mind. It considers the fundamental question of how finite things, especially human minds, are in God. Moreover, because for Spinoza God is identical with the universe, the question becomes how finite things are in the universe. This book shows that for Spinoza finite things are closer to God than what is thought in most contemporary Spinoza studies. It claims that the essences of finite things are degrees or, in a very specific sense of the term “part,” parts of the infinite essence of God. This book also shows how Spinoza’s basic metaphysics attempts to give us the possibility to unite with God so that we can share some of God’s perspective with the world. This new knowledge, Spinoza claims, provides the mind with eternity and a kind of individual salvation that is deeply meaningful. This book is not only a study of Spinoza’s basic concepts, but it also takes seriously what kind of epistemic attitude is required for experiencing the world truly. It is difficult to see and experience oneself in Spinoza’s monistic system where God is the only existing substance. This book offers a novel and engaging interpretation of the Ethics that takes seriously the ontological experience of Spinoza’s philosophy. Spinoza, Metaphysics, and the Possibility of Salvation is an essential resource for scholars and graduate students working on Spinoza, early modern philosophy, and metaphysics.

Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy is an annual series, presenting a selection of the best current work in the history of early modern philosophy. It focuses on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries - the extraordinary period of intellectual flourishing that begins, very roughly, with Descartes and his contemporaries and ends with Kant. It also publishes papers on thinkers or movements outside of that framework, provided they are important in illuminating early modern thought. The articles in OSEMP will be of importance to specialists within the discipline, but the editors also intend that they should appeal to a larger audience of philosophers, intellectual historians, and others who are interested in the development of modern thought.

People have always been xenophobic, but an explicit philosophical and scientific view of human racial difference only began to emerge during the modern period. Why and how did this happen? Surveying a range of philosophical and natural-scientific texts, dating from the Spanish Renaissance to the German Enlightenment, Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference charts the evolution of the modern concept of race and shows that natural philosophy, particularly efforts to taxonomize and to order nature, played a crucial role. Smith demonstrates how the denial of moral equality between Europeans and non-Europeans resulted from converging philosophical and scientific developments, including a declining belief in human nature's universality and the rise of biological classification. The racial typing of human beings grew from the need to understand humanity within an all-encompassing system of nature, alongside plants, minerals, primates, and other animals. While racial difference as seen through science did not arise in order to justify the enslavement of people, it became a rationalization and buttress for the practices of trans-Atlantic slavery. From the work of François Bernier to G. W. Leibniz, Immanuel Kant, and others, Smith delves into philosophy's part in the legacy and damages of modern racism. With a broad narrative stretching over two centuries, Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference takes a critical historical look at how the racial categories that we divide ourselves into came into being.

The Handbook Philosophy of Technology and Engineering Sciences addresses numerous issues in the emerging field of the philosophy of those sciences that are involved in the technological process of designing, developing and making of new technical artifacts and systems. These issues include the nature of design, of technological knowledge, and of technical artifacts, as well as the toolbox of engineers. Most of these have thus far not been analyzed in general philosophy of science, which has traditionally but inadequately regarded technology as mere applied science and focused on physics, biology, mathematics and the social sciences. - First comprehensive philosophical handbook on technology and the engineering sciences - Unparalleled in scope including explorative articles - In depth discussion of technical artifacts and their ontology - Provides extensive analysis of the nature of engineering design - Focuses in detail on the role of models in technology

From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, new anatomical investigations of the brain and the nervous system, together with a renewed interest in comparative anatomy, allowed doctors and philosophers to ground their theories on sense perception, the emergence of human intelligence, and the soul/body relationship in modern science. They investigated the anatomical structures and the physiological processes underlying the rise, differentiation, and articulation of human cognitive activities, and looked for the "anatomical roots" of the specificity of human intelligence when compared to other forms of animal sensibility. This edited volume focuses on medical and philosophical debates on human intelligence and animal perception in the early modern age, providing fresh insights into the influence of medical discourse on the rise of modern philosophical anthropology. Contributions from distinguished historians of philosophy and medicine focus on sixteenth-century zoological, psychological, and embryological discourses on man; the impact of mechanism and comparative anatomy on philosophical conceptions of body and soul; and the key status of sensibility in the medical and philosophical enlightenment.

Contemporary Perspectives on Early Modern Philosophy is a collection of essays dedicated to Vere Chappell, one of the most respected scholars in the field of early modern philosophy. Seventeen distinguished scholars have contributed essays to this collection on topics including dualism, identity and essence, causation, theodicy, free will, perception, abstraction, and the moral law.