17th- and 18th-century Philosophy

Im Rahmen dieses Citizen-Science-Forschungsprojekts wurde die sogenannte LeVasseur-Chiffre, ein verschlüsselter Text aus dem frühen 18. Jahrhundert, vollständig transliteriert und sprachlich interpretiert. Ziel war es zu prüfen, ob mithilfe der kabbalistischen Codier-/Decodiermatrix von Agrippa von Nettesheim (De Occulta Philosophia, Libri III) eine systematische Entschlüsselung möglich ist.

In Phase I wurde eine vollständige Transliteration aller 17 Zeilen der Chiffre vorgenommen, basierend auf einem zeichenbasierten Koordinatensystem und symbolischen Sonderzeichen. Es konnte gezeigt werden, dass sich daraus eine kohärente poetisch-phonetische Struktur rekonstruieren lässt, die auf einen französisch-englischen Mischtext mit autobiographischen Elementen hindeutet.

Die Analyse legt nahe, dass es sich bei dem codierten Text nicht – wie oft behauptet – um eine Schatzkarte handelt, sondern vielmehr um ein poetisch-rituelles Ruhestandsgedicht, möglicherweise aus dem Umfeld des Freibeuters Kapitän Olivier LeVasseur (La Buse). Die hohe Verschlüsselungstiefe, der literarische Stil und der semantische Aufbau sprechen für ein komplexes, interdisziplinäres Codiersystem mit biografischem Hintergrund.

Enthalten in dieser Publikation:

Methodische Erläuterung der Transliteration (Agrippa-Matrix)

Satzweise Rekonstruktion und spekulative Übertragung der Inhalte

Linguistisch-topographische Kontextualisierung

Einordnung der Chiffre als historisches und kulturelles Dokument

Ergänzende Anhänge: Symbolkoordinatensystem, Transliterationstabellen



Hinweis:
Die vorliegende Arbeit versteht sich nicht als endgültige Decodierung der LeVasseur-Chiffre, sondern als konsistente, methodisch begründete Arbeitshypothese. Sie soll der weiteren Forschung eine fundierte Grundlage bieten, von der aus das Chiffriersystem in seiner Tiefe weiter untersucht und die hier vorgelegte spekulative Rekonstruktion überprüft oder falsifiziert werden kann.

Lizenz: CC BY-NC 4.0
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.15377989
Veröffentlichungsdatum: 10. Mai 2025

This volume deals with original mystical initiatives and related artistic realizations, which were created in the circle of the outstanding Silesian poet and theologian, Johannes Scheffler, known as Angelus Silesius, abbot of the Cistercian monastery in Krzeszów, Bernhard Rosa and the most outstanding Silesian artist, Michael Willmann. Although the 17th century Silesian mysticism is now very popular worldwide, we know very little about the relationship between mysticism and art in former Silesia. This issue has never been the subject of a comprehensive study. It is not surprising, therefore, that the research so far overlooked the unusual and unique joint initiative mentioned above by two outstanding Silesian mystics and the best Silesian artist of the Baroque era. Its aim was to combine elements of mystical experience with various forms of mass piety of a counter-Reformation nature. Importantly, all forms of mass mystical piety were closely linked to the use of devotional works of art, which were designed primarily by Michael Willmann. They became the most popular images in the religious culture of Silesia until the end of the 18th century. Just as the literary and philosophical achievements of Silesian mystics led by Angelus Silesius, so also works of art serving mystical piety, which were created by Willmann, we can safely consider as a kind of event and an important contribution of Silesia to the culture of European Baroque.

nómico de Centroamérica en los últimos seis años, las tensiones sociales no muestran señales de disminuir. Al contrario, están aumentando. El crecimiento económico per se puede ser algo muy conveniente, pero el crecimiento que no se acompaña de un aumento en el bienestar general es un factor poderoso para crear situaciones revolucionarias. Después de todo, la revolución mexicana de 1010, y la cubana de 1958, no ocurrieron en sociedades económicamente estancadas, sino en ottas en que el crecimiento para la obtención de beneficios de los empresarios estaba a la orden del día. Todavía no podemos saber si se olvidará en Centroamérica la lección de estos dos sucesos históricos.

Ośrodek Myśli Politycznej on human-made systems. Throughout history, natural law has evolved, from the reflections of Plato and Aristotle to the Christian Aristotelianism of the Middle Ages, particularly in the works of Thomas Aquinas, who merged faith and reason to argue that natural law reflects eternal, divine principles. In early modern philosophy, natural law's influence resurfaced through the works of thinkers like Grotius, Hobbes, and Pufendorf, who secularised the concept, enabling critiques of state power and the defence of universal human rights. Despite of the later challenges from positivism, exemplified by figures like Bentham and Kelsen, natural law remains a potent remedy against the erosion of human dignity, particularly in the face of totalitarian ideologies such as communism, Nazism, and radical Islam. These systems, which prioritise collective or ideological goals over the individual ones, have historically led to atrocities and the degradation of human worth. Natural law's universalism provides a robust defence against moral relativism and totalitarianism, reaffirming the inherent dignity of all individuals. Its principles, reflected in key legal documents such as the US Declaration of Independence and the UN Declaration of Human Rights, serve as enduring safeguards against the inflation or devaluation of human dignity in legal and political discourse.

In this article, I go against some interpretations of the "Träume eines Geistersehers" that read this work as the outcome of a profound crisis in Kant’s thought, triggered by the reading of Swedenborg and ending with the complete abandonment of his entire philosophical production. To do so, I highlight the continuity, on the methodological level, between the Träume and the texts of the 1760s that precede it, in particular with the "Deutlichkeit". Having clarified some of the principles of the analytical method developed by Kant in the latter text of 1762, especially the role played by language in determining the content of the concept, I show how, in the "Träume", Kant employs this method for analyzing the concept of spirit. Nevertheless, I take into account the specific epistemology adopted by Kant in the "Träume" and the effect it has on the relationship between method and metaphysics, the reconfiguration of which can be observed in the pages of the "Träume". In contrast to the narrative that paints Kant as skeptical about metaphysics, I thus show how metaphysics was rather subject to a conceptual transformation that prepares the outcomes of Kant’s later thought.

This paper identifies a veiled system of order in symbolic Rosicrucian thought. It is part of a continuing inductive argument, testing predictions based on a semiotic study regarding the meaning of the least-corrupted ancient Egyptian texts. To understand the seventeenth-century Rosicrucian phase of esoteric thought, occurring between the Renaissance and the scientific revolution, this paper examines the alchemical Hermetic-Kabbalist tradition and its roots in ancient Egypt circa 2500 BCE. In The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (1972), historian Frances Yates explains that John Dee's Monas hieroglyphica and Michael Maier's alchemical movement conceal a silent element of nature that is unexplored. The question is-what were the esoteric Rosicrucian advances that Yates did not explore, that is, the silent element of specialized knowledge revealing natural science? With this question in mind, this preliminary paper tests the hypothesis that a complex science of regeneration streamed from Egypt through the alchemical Hermetic-Kabbalist tradition that influenced seventeenth-century Rosicrucianism. Using a narrative approach to qualitative inquiry, this paper examines John Dee's mathematical Monas, Michael Maier's mythoalchemical Atalanta Fugiens, Jewish magic (where the word magic means "beyond known material science"), the evocation of light, the conjunction of opposites, and the allegory of Osiris, supporting Rosicrucian knowledge of quantum biology. The biological signs suggest quantum regenerative evolution of human DNA related to horizontal gene transfer (HGT), the exchange of DNA between two different species. It may be that the creative potentiality of a humble microbe in the quantum world gives human beings the evolutionary biopower of regeneration at death or transition, as it is called in Rosicrucian terminology.

Übersetzung der in Deutschland damals weitgehend unbekannten Schrift An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690/1700) bei einem Antiquitätenhändler. 1 Als ich mich lange mit der traurigen Überzeugung von meiner Unfähigkeit gequält habe, kömmt einmal ein alter Büchertrödler zu mir […], und bringt mir […] Peter Costens französische Übersetzung von Lockens Werke über den menschlichen Verstand in einem braunledernen altväterischen Bande. […] Ich fieng an zu lesen und zitterte schon zum voraus, daß ich nichts begreifen würde. Drollich ! ich begriff alles: der Mann machte mir freylich oft Langeweile, die aber, wie ich nunmehr bemerke, von seiner gedehnten Manier zu denken und der weitschweifigen Schreibart herkommen möchte; gleichwohl las ich emsig, so viel es meine Geduld zuließ. Das war mein cursus philosophiae: er zündete in meinem Kopfe ein Licht an, als wann ich vorher nur geträumt hätte, und ihm nebst einer Recension von Unzers Physiologie in der allgemeinen Bibliothek hab' ich mein ganzes philosophisches System zu danken[.] 2 1 John Locke: Essai philosophique concernant l'entendement humain […]. Traduit de l'Anglois […] par Pierre Coste, Sur la Quatriéme Edition, revûë, corrigée, & augmentée par l'Auteur, Amsterdam 1700. Locke betreute die Übersetzung im Jahr des Erscheinens der vierten, erweiterten Originalauflage. Eine deutsche Übersetzung von Engelhard Poley war seit 1757 auf dem Markt.

It is commonly assumed that Spinoza’s account of therapy runs into a problem of motivation: Given his necessitarianism, the principle of alternative possibili-ties is ruled out from the get-go. Short of this principle, all we seem to be left with is to understand more about our restraining place in nature. But, it is ob-jected, this understanding is cold comfort, leaving us with no sense of choosing which path to take and thus with a problem of motivation. Why bother chang-ing my ways when every step and even the decision to change is determined? As I shall argue, this charge is somewhat beside the point when it comes to repetitive behaviour, which arguably makes up a lot of our lives. Even if we cannot choose between alternative ways, there are different causal antecedents for the same behaviour. The reason for this is that certain effects commonly can have more than one cause. This means, such behaviour is causally overdetermined. I drink orange juice in the morning because it tastes nice and because it’s good for my health. It’s not that just one of these reasons is the actual cause or one reduces to the other. They can both be causes. If this is correct, I can’t choose what to do, but I can choose on which of the causes involved I focus. This changes the way in which I perform my action and how I relate to my (social and physical) environment.

This PhD dissertation analyses the role that occasionalism plays in projects of philosophical grounding in early modern natural philosophy. Occasionalism is the doctrine that in its strongest and most universal form maintains that only God has causal power, and that finite beings—typically, both minds and bodies—are purely passive. The main historical and conceptual focus is on the dissemination of occasionalism in early modern Germany. Besides enquiring into the connection between occasionalism and grounding, this dissertation provides an account of why occasionalism—en vogue in continental philosophy in the second half of the seventeenth century—slowly faded into oblivion in eighteenth-century German philosophy. This dissertation argues that this shift occurred because occasionalism began to look increasingly outdated in light of the growing importance afforded to causal, rather than metaphysical, explanations.

This article discusses Descartes's preferred focus on morally and theologically neutral subjects and points out the impact of this focus on the scientific status of theology. It does so by linking Descartes's method to his transformation of the notion of substance. Descartes's Meditations centred around epistemological questions rather than non-human intelligences or the life of the mind beyond this world. Likewise, in his early works, Descartes consistently avoided referring to causal operators. Finally, having first redefined the notion of substance in the Principia, Descartes would completely abandon making use of this notion in his later years. Indeed, in contrast to many authors before and after him, Descartes never showed any interest in the long-established metaphysical interpretation of substances as being causal factors of natural change. With God, nature, and mind commonly serving as instances of substantial causality, Descartes's philosophy had a huge impact on the place of God in science and discreetly excluded theology as a subject to which his method might be applied.

Corneille ne s'est pas caché de vouloir séduire, par ses pièces, le public le plus large. Il s'en explique notamment dans la préface de La Suivante (1634) : Puisque nous faisons des poèmes pour être représentés, notre premier but doit être de plaire à la Cour et au peuple, et d'attirer un grand monde à leurs représentations. Il faut, s'il se peut, y ajouter les règles, afin de ne déplaire pas aux savants, et recevoir un applaudissement universel, mais surtout, gagnons la voix publique 1 . Cette formule de l'« applaudissement universel », courante dans les éloges d'oeuvres dramatiques, est prise à rebours un peu plus d'un siècle plus tard par Rousseau qui, dans son Discours sur les sciences et les arts, se dit résolu à énoncer des vérités déplaisantes au mépris de l'hostilité publique :

Philosophy as a way of life (PWL) is an emerging field of study which in the last decades has experienced a vibrant and multifaceted development. Particularly proliferous in the areas of metaphilosophy and the history of philosophy, PWL has also been applied to a wide variety of knowledge domains beyond the academic world. Ever more prominent in contemporary debates, PWL has become a banner under which a very diversified work is being developed by scholars with originally very different areas of research and expertise, who gather under PWL by their dissatisfaction with what has become of philosophy (an abstract and purely theoretical undertaking) and their hopes about what philosophy can be (a way of thinking about and transforming one’s life). Despite the dynamic development of PWL and the wealth of literature it has inspired in recent years – or precisely because of it – there is still no consensus on what it precisely means. What exactly does this expression contain? What does it entail? To what extent is it clear and univocal? And how clear and univocal should it be?

The present article aims to contribute to ongoing scholarly debates by examining the similarities and differences between the conceptualization of the soul-body relationship in early philosophical traditions and the formulation of the mind-body problem in the post-Cartesian framework. To achieve this objective, the article is organized into two primary sections. The first section presents the central arguments of scholars who assert that the soul-body problem of ancient and medieval philosophy is distinct from the mind-body problem emerging in the modern period. The second section of the article critically evaluates these arguments, highlighting the continuities between the soul-body relationship in ancient-Hellenistic and medieval thought and the mind-body relationship in modern and contemporary philosophy. This article contends that the soul-body and mind-body problems, alongside the various approaches developed across different historical periods, should be understood as exhibiting a problematic continuity. It argues that, despite differing terminologies, a persistent duality problem can be traced from antiquity through to the modern era.

El concepto ‘sistema’, central en filosofía, sobre todo a partir de Brucker, tuvo un especial impulso con Leibniz, quien lo concibió como un conjunto de postulados organizado según principios taxonómicos que seguían el modelo del cálculo. En el sistema de Leibniz, Dios jugó un papel central al tratarse del ser que posibilitaba comprender el mundo y construir el conocimiento humano. Este artículo se propone mostrar, mediante un panorama amplio, qué se entiende por sistema leibniziano, cómo está configurado dicho sistema y por qué es pertinente hablar de Leibniz como un filósofo sistemático.

Philosophy significantly contributes to the inheritance of human thought and the humanistic spirit. Traditional explorations in philosophy, often rational and abstract, may struggle to engage deeply with human emotions and experiences. This article delves into the expression of philosophical ideas through vocal music, particularly during the Romantic era, to bridge this gap. By examining the integration of philosophical concepts into 19th-century vocal compositions, the study highlights how vocal music can serve as a potent medium for philosophical discourse. It explores the symbiotic relationship between vocal music and philosophy, analyzing how arias express and pursue philosophical inquiries. This research evaluates the role of vocal music in philosophical exploration through three dimensions: emotional expression, conceptual communication and inspirational impact. The findings aim to demonstrate the transformative power of music to convey philosophical thoughts, inspiring deeper contemplation of life, existence and values, and encouraging a reevaluation of the unique capacity of vocal music to communicate profound ideas.

Making Physicians is the first part of a two-volume study of Galenic university medical education in the nascent Dutch Republic. Galenists have long been used as foils in standard narratives of the development of modern science and medicine. Like the Aristotelians of the universities, they have been depicted as the hidebound purveyors of old-fashioned forms of knowledge that were swept aside by the practitioners of the new science of the seventeenth century. In this work, Evan R. Ragland demonstrates that many commonly held beliefs about the forms of medical knowledge and practice that were supposedly dispatched during the seventeenth century are misplaced. His central point is that Galenism has simply not been studied in sufficient detail. A collective failure to engage with its intellectual content and its knowledge-making, therapeutic, and pedagogic practices, has given rise to a series of misapprehensions about this tradition. To remedy this situation, Ragland provides a detailed reappraisal of the nature of Galenism in one specific institution, the University of Leiden, during the period 1575-1639. Although primarily based on this relatively limited example, Ragland deftly places his case study in a wider context and uses it to provide an alternative narrative of not only the history of early modern medicine but also the history of scientific experimentalism. At the core of Ragland's argument, lies the contention that historians have misunderstood and misrepresented the nature of Galenic theory, its subsequent interpretations, and the diagnostic and therapeutic practices built upon it, with significant consequences for understanding the history of medical development. Returning to the sources, Ragland shows that the received historical interpretation represents not only a misreading of early modern Galenism but also of the aims and intentions of Galen himself. Notably, he demonstrated that the university professors who worked at Leiden and the physicians whom they trained did not conceive of health as an imbalance of fluid humours that affected the whole body, but instead believed that disease had specific 'seats' that could be located in the individual parts of the body. In this system, the humours contributed to the imbalance within the internal constitution of specific bodily parts including individual organs. Building on the work of previous historians, Ragland shows that far from being anomalous, the ideas taught and developed in Leiden typified early modern Galenism. Indeed, the ideas and practices taught in the medical school were characteristic of a style of Galenism revivified in Italy, especially at the University of Padua, in the later fifteenth century. Having revised the historical picture of Galenic theory in this manner, Ragland proceeded to criticise many of the cliches that populate standard accounts of the history of medicine. Therapeutics provides a good example. The current understanding of Galenic medicine has led to a historiographical emphasis on the maintenance of overall humoral balance within the body and therefore has privileged accounts of the management of health, rather than interventions designed to alleviate particular afflictions. As Ragland demonstrates, the physicians trained in Galenic medicine at Leiden received instruction on how to produce medicines that targeted specific parts of the body rather than help restore overall balance and how to use interventions such as bloodletting to improve the humoral balance of individual parts of the body. Ragland also showed how Galenists adapted to and incorporated innovation. For example, although their healing practices were rooted in Galenic traditions, the university masters of Leiden incorporated chymical cures into their teaching and practice. Perhaps most significantly, Ragland shows how understanding contemporaries' emphasis on locating seats of disease can cast new light on the practice of anatomy. Older accounts have argued that while the development of anatomy from the late fifteenth century transformed understandings of the body, it had little impact on either the understanding of disease or therapeutics. Ragland demonstrates that, from the late sixteenth century, physicians at Leiden were using postmortem anatomies to identify causes of

Dans le champ de l'histoire de la philosophie, le travail de Pierre-François Moreau se distingue par sa fidélité à quatre exigences méthodologiques fondamentales : la nécessité du travail philologique en amont du travail philosophique ; l'établissement d'une dialectique complexe entre la constitution interne du sens systématique et l'ouverture vers le contexte de composition ; l’intérêt porté aux réceptions, en particulier du spinozisme et à la richesse philosophique des textes au-delà de leur contexte premier ; l’ouverture constante vers les traditions historiographiques étrangères, enfin. Ces exigences ont fait école et ont été le moteur d’un renouveau spectaculaire d’une histoire rationnelle des idées et du spinozisme, en France comme à l’étranger. Ce premier volume d’hommages, rassemblant des contributions inédites, s’attache à cerner les contours de cette école dont Pierre-François Moreau est l’inlassable promoteur. Le second volume est consacré plus spécifiquement aux travaux de Pierre-François Moreau sur Spinoza et le spinozisme.

Some recent scholars have argued that Spinoza's conception of causation should be understood in terms of the Aristotelian notion of a formal cause. I argue that while they are right to identify causation in Spinoza as a relation of entailment from an essence, they are mistaken about its philosophical pedigree. I examine three suggested lines of influence: (a) the late scholastic conception of emanation; (b) early modern philosophy of mathematics; and (c) Descartes's notion of the causa sui. In each case, the evidence indicates that causation in Spinoza should be categorized in Aristotelian terms as efficient and not formal.

Faire la police, le policier, se policer : la déclinaison du terme « police » le montre, ce dernier ne saurait seulement être entendu au sens institutionnel, mais aussi à travers ses nombreux systèmes signifiants. Ce volume réunit ainsi des contributions qui s'essayent à cette prospection : peut-on faire jouer cette idée de « police » comme opérateur de savoir ? Des ordonnances de La Reynie, premier lieutenant général de la police sous Louis XIV, à la fiction française contemporaine, en passant par des auteurs comme Bertereau, Sade, Potocki, Balzac ou Konaté, comment la police peut faire oeuvre de machine à produire du sens ? Parce que la police est autorité et régulation, elle repose sur des constellations de symboles, de conventions, de modalités poétiques : la police peut être pensée, aussi bien dans la vie urbaine que dans la fiction littéraire ou encore dans ses modalités de constitution historique. La police est alors production signifiante, créatrice d'énoncés et de symboles. On peut aussi faire du « policier » une force de structuration textuelle et d'ordre systémique. Enfin, le policier est un régime d'enquête, de détection et de lecture. C'est par ces trois empans que les contributions de ce volume se saisissent de la question du « policier » pour en éprouver les possibilités interprétatives et créatrices de sens.

Spinoza’s approach, with its rationalist underpinnings, sometimes diverges from the theological
implications of our sacred texts. However, his critical examination of language and scripture does
illuminate certain aspects of Hebrew grammar that merit consideration. The precision he seeks in
language reflects an essential endeavor in the study of philosophy and theology.

Machine, Mind and Language in Post-Cartesian Natural History of Animals Claude Perrault (1613-1688) and the Early Parisian Académie Royale des Sciences Nunzio Allocca Corps et nature à la transition du XVII e au XVIII e siècle. La cohérence des médecins Jackie Pigeaud "As coisas que a Natureza me ensina" O contributo cartesiano para um conceito moderno de Natureza Maria Luísa Ribeiro Ferreira O corpo humano segundo Robert Boyle: considerações a partir da noção de 'doença'

I n the correspondence with Arnauld, Leibniz contends that each corporeal substance has a substantial fonn. In support he argues that to be real a corporeal substance must be one and indivisible, a true unity. I will show how this argument precludes a tempting interpretation of corporeal substances as composite unities. Rather it mandates the interpretation that each corporeal substance is a single monad. Thus I will be supporting the by-now traditional interpretation ofLeibniz on these matters, that of Russell; call this the "Monadological view." Some important recent commentators, following Broad, have questioned the tradition, and have found an Aristotelian strain in Leibniz's thought. They hold that in at least some of his writings Leibniz defends a view that corporeal substances are composite unitiescomposites of soul and matter while yet being true unities; call this the "Composite Unity view. " The Monadological view is that each corporeal substance is just a soul. The Composite Unity view is that no corporeal substance is just a soul. My contribution is meant to be threefold: First, I want to explicate Leibniz's argument that, given corporeal substances are real, there are substantial fonns (souls, monads). CaB it the "True Unity" argument. It rests on the principle that anything with numerically distinct parts is many things, not one thing, and on the principle that nothing that is many things is rea\. The main part of the argument in brief is: Anything divisible has parts, so is not a unity, so is not real. Corporeal substances are real. So, corporeal substances are not divisible. Anything material is divisible. So, corporeal substances are not material. The argument entails that only souls are real. Nothing else. Only the Monadological view can be a correct interpretation of Leibniz. Second, I want to account for the extraordinarily compelling evidence in favor of the Composite Unity view. The view has two sub-views as itturns out, so I consider evidence for each. What divides the view is Leibniz' s use of the distinction between primary matter and secondary matter. Thus a corporeal substance is a composite of soul and primary matter on the one hand, and of soul and secondary matter on the other. For Leibniz a corporeal substance's secondary matter is an aggregate of other corporeal substances united, in some sense, by the soul of the first. These other

Quand on évoque les relations entre les armées et les départements militaires, il est d’usage de rappeler le vieil antagonisme qui depuis l’origine aurait opposé l’armée de terre et la marine, la rue Saint-Dominique et la rue Royale, jusqu’à ce que les réformes opérées au début de la Ve République opèrent autoritairement un rapprochement des deux armées et des deux ministères.
La réalité est plus complexe. Mon propos d’aujourd’hui est de remonter aux premières années des départements de la Guerre et de la Marine pour montrer que, si antagonisme il y a, on trouve aussi des phénomènes de mimétisme, voire des origines communes.

This chapter aims to review two different accounts of the relationship between perception and apperception, namely the higher-order thought theory and the first-order thought theory. It will show that these accounts are missing an essential point in Leibniz’s theory of apperception that may lead to misunderstanding his gnoseology. This point centres on the synthetic character of apperception, an idea that Leibniz consistently recalls in his New Essays. This text thus demonstrates that apperception plays a crucial role in what we will call “nonconscious sensation,” a spot of oversight in the aforementioned interpretations.

Ця стаття досліджує епістемологічні основи індивідуалізму в контексті філософії Декарта, особливо з акцентом на його методологічний сумнів і концепцію "Cogito ergo sum". Автор розглядає, чому пізнання, на перший погляд, може здаватись виключно індивідуальним процесом, де інший не грає центральної ролі. Декарт підкреслював важливість критичного мислення і самостійної побудови знання без опори на суспільні інституції чи авторитети. Проте, у статті ставиться під сумнів радикальний індивідуалізм, і стверджується, що інший, хоча й може бути об'єктом сумніву, все ж має цінність для пізнання, оскільки може стати джерелом аналітичного матеріалу та стимулом до критичного осмислення.

The main aim of this paper is to provide an account of Leibniz’s engagement with the doctrine of cosmic dualism in his Theodicy, i.e., the view that there are two distinct fundamental principles that are responsible for the existence of the created world, one good and the other evil. Leibniz’s discussion is primarily a response to arguments in favour of cosmic dualism that he finds in the writings of Pierre Bayle. However, in addition, he presents a genealogical argument that appears to be intended to provide reasons to reject the view. The paper also contains a critical discussion of Leibniz’s case, and finishes by drawing attention to some issues which arise that are worthy of further consideration.

O problema de determinar os fatores que motivaram a virada crítica de Kant em 1769-70 é histórico. Acerca dele, pelo menos dez diferentes teses já foram defendidas. Neste trabalho, pretendemos fazer um exame detalhado de uma dessas teses, tomando-a como nossa hipótese de trabalho, especificamente a proposta de Klaus Reich, de que o problema do comércio psicofísico foi um dos motivadores. Para isso, apresentamos no primeiro capítulo o horizonte teórico do qual Kant partia. Analisamos três teorias, concebidas no século XVIII alemão como respostas canônicas ao problema do comércio psicofísico: ocasionalismo, harmonia preestabelecida e influxo físico, com foco nas últimas duas. Mostramos como elas se desenvolveram no contexto alemão começando com Leibniz e Wolff, e terminando com Knutzen, Baumgarten e Crusius. A partir desse panorama, analisamos, no segundo capítulo, as respostas que foram oferecidas ao problema por Kant, desde seu primeiro trabalho até a Dissertação. Desse modo, expomos nesse capítulo uma Entwicklungsgeschichte, metodologia amplamente empregada pela Kant-Forschung. Mostramos não só que Kant sempre dedicou atenção a esse problema, mas que há um desenvolvimento interno das respostas que lhe são oferecidas, cuja culminação é a virada crítica. Nesse contexto, argumentamos que o problema do comércio psicofísico desempenhou um papel tanto teórico quanto prático na virada crítica de 1769-70. No terceiro capítulo, expomos outras dez teses desenvolvidas na literatura secundária acerca da virada crítica e localizamos nossa hipótese em meio a elas. Mostramos também quais são as premissas de boa parte dessa literatura e como podemos questioná-las, abrindo espaço para uma concepção mais realista e frutífera do desenvolvimento de Kant.

In 1753, the Berlin Academy announced that the focus of the prize essay contest of 1755 would be optimism, with entrants required (among other things) 'to put forward arguments that will be thought most fitting to confirm or destroy this system'. In line with these instructions, entrants submitted essays that were either pro-or anti-optimism. This was to the dismay of one of the judges of the contest, André-Pierre Le Guay de Prémontval (1716-1764), who had, by his own admission, surreptitiously attempted to influence the entrants by sketching out a 'middle point' between the polarized pro-and anti-optimist positions in a series of books published between 1754 and 1755, namely Thoughts on Freedom, The Diogenes of d'Alembert, and On Chance under the Rule of Providence. The aim of this essay is to elucidate and historically contextualize Prémontval's highly original 'middle point', as outlined implicitly in the aforementioned books and much more explicitly in a series of essays published after the essay contest had concluded.

The concept of "monad" is vast and broad. In this essay, the Leibnizian concept of "monad" ([1714] (2016)) will be presented. For Leibniz, the monad is a part as well as the entire universe. However, here, a single point of your Monadology, namely, the monad in potentia (in power). That is, how do these simple substances form transform in composites?. Our method is phenomenological. And the objective is to clarify a little more about the process of these substances.

Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure has proven a challenge to classify. Cases for this novel's literary value-that is, as anything beyond a device for sexual stimulation-have had to address accusations of a paucity of character development, an inelegant style, a lack of social insight, and, in particular, a limited emotional range at a time when so many other writers were exploring human sentiment in unprecedented ways. As Leo Braudy pointed out in 1970, not long after Memoirs first became widely available, the story of Fanny Hill on the one hand has "too much erotic content for the literary historian to treat it with much seriousness," but on the other cannot be dismissed as entirely a "pornotopia." 1 Since Braudy's important essay, Memoirs has become a legitimate object of study, partly as a result of a broader transformation in literary studies to include a wide range of texts previously dismissed as marginal, such as travel narratives, crime stories, pirate tales, and periodical writing, among others. Scholarly attention to women, gender, and the history of sexuality has also prompted new interest in the adventures of the period's most famous literary prostitute. Yet the problem that Braudy originally identified remains part of the discussion, and in this essay I am going to suggest that it can be productively addressed by suspending the search for moral analysis of sexual ECL432_08Rosenthal_1pp.indd 76 1/9/19 10:27 AM

In his essay 'Of the Standard of Taste', Hume identifies two standards of taste: the general rules of art and the joint verdict of true judges. From this the following questions arise: Why did Hume present two standards? And, how should we understand the relation between them? We must first get a firmer grasp on each of the standards that Hume presents. Hence, this paper has two main goals. The first is to understand the general rules of art in the light of Hume's philosophical method, which is consonant with Newtonian methods of analysis and synthesis. The second is to provide a new interpretation of what Hume takes to be the joint verdict of true judges. In my interpretation, the joint verdict of true judges constitutes the standard of taste, not because their verdicts converge, but because their verdicts encompass blameless differences. With this new foundation for understanding the two standards, I will present my own reading of the relation between them. 1 Citations are given according to book, part, section, and paragraph. 2 An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (Hume, 1998). Citations are given according to section and paragraph.

This article aims to provide a philosophical elucidation of the concept of divine atemporality (i.e. divine timelessness and immutability), found within the theological trajectory of Classical Theism, and a philosophical model-termed Aspectival Pluralism-that demonstrates its compatibility with the further notion of Divine Preservation. To achieve this end, an original interpretation of the concept is formulated within the Aspectival Account and the thesis of Theistic Ontological Pluralism, as extended by the temporal ontology of Priority Presentism, introduced by Sam Baron, and the Exdurantist view of persistence, introduced by Theodore Sider, which will ultimately enable the notion to be elucidated in a clear and consistent manner and help to answer an important conceptual question concerning it.