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Towards the end of the fourth century CE Nemesius, bishop of Emesa in Syria, composed his treatise On Human Nature (Περὶ φύσεως ἀνθρώπου). The nature of the soul and its relation to the body are central to Nemesius’ treatment. In developing his argument, he draws not only on Christian authors but on a variety of pagan philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics and the great physician-cum-philosopher Galen of Pergamum. This paper examines Nemesius’ references to Aristotle’s biology in particular, focusing on a few passages in the light of Aristotle’s Generation of Animals and History of Animals as well as the doxographic tradition. The themes in question are: the status of the intellect, the scale of nature and the respective roles of the male and female in reproduction. Central questions are: Exactly which impact did Aristotle make on his thinking? Was it mediated or direct? Why does Nemesius cite Aristotle and how? Long used as a source for earlier works now lost, Nemesius’ work may provide intriguing glimpses of the intellectual culture of his time. This paper is designed to contribute to this new approach to his work.

The category of sympathy marks a number of basic divisions in early modern approaches to action explanations, whether for human agency or for change in the wider natural world. Some authors were critical of using sympathy to explain change. They call such principles “unintelligible” or assume they involve “mysterious” action at a distance. Others, including Margaret Cavendish, Anne Conway, and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, appeal to sympathy to capture natural phenomena (yawn contagion, magnetism), or to supply a backbone to their metaphysics. Here I discuss how concerns about sympathetic actions form at least a partial background for differing seventeenth-century conceptions of what it is to explain action. I argue that critics of sympathy generally insist on an “atomistic” approach to action explanation, which makes primitively relational phenomena come out as problematic. Proponents of sympathy, by contrast, allow for a more holistic approach to action explanation, which allows for such basic connections. Hence, divergent attitudes toward sympathetic action in part explain differences in approaches to explanation. I conclude by showing how some of these core concerns fade into the background when in the eighteenth-century sympathy gets psychologised and individualised.

According to the Dutch colonizers in Suriname, leprosy (or Hansen’s disease) was highly contagious and transmitted from human-to-human. A “cordon sanitaire” was constructed around the patients, mainly African slaves and Asian indentured laborers and their descendants. They were tracked down and incarcerated in remote leprosy settlements located in the rainforest. Some patients obeyed the authorities while others resisted and rebelled. Their narratives, revealing conceptual entanglement of the disease with their culture and the Surinamese natural environment, contain important information for understanding their world and their life inside and outside of leprosy settlements. They combined traditional health practices and medicinal plants from their natural habitat with biomedical treatments (practicing medical pluralism). They believed in a diversity of disease explanations, predominantly the taboo concepts treef, tyina, and totem animals associated with their natural habitat (the Surinamese biome). Some of their imaginary explanations (e.g., “leprosy is carried and/or transmitted through soil and certain animals”) show a surprising analogy with recent findings from leprosy scientists. Our research shows that nature contributes to shaping the world of Hansen’s disease patients. An ecological approach can make a valuable contribution to understanding their world. Comparative historical and anthropological research needs to be conducted to map the influence of different biomes on local explanatory models. The now deserted Hansen’s disease settlements and their natural environments are interesting research sites and important places of cultural heritage.

A popular narrative about the history of modern biology has it that Ernst Mayr introduced the distinction between “typological thinking” and “population thinking” to mark a contrast between a metaphysically problematic and a promising foundation for (evolutionary) biology, respectively. This narrative sometimes continues with the observation that, since the late-20th century, typological concepts have been making a comeback in biology, primarily in the context of evolutionary developmental biology. It is hard to square this narrative with the historical and philosophical literature on the typology/population distinction from the last decade or so. The conclusion that emerges from this literature is that the very distinction between typological thinking and population thinking is a piece of mere rhetoric that was concocted and rehearsed for purely strategic, programmatic reasons. If this is right, it becomes hard to make sense of recent criticisms (and sometimes: espousals) of the purportedly typological underpinnings of certain contemporary research programs. In this article, I offer a way out of this apparent conflict. I show that we can make historical and philosophical sense of the continued accusations of typological thinking by looking beyond Mayr, to his contemporary and colleague George Gaylord Simpson. I show that before Mayr discussed the typology/population distinction as an issue in scientific metaphysics, Simpson introduced it to mark several contrasts in methodology and scientific practice. I argue that Simpson's insightful discussion offers useful resources for classifying and assessing contemporary attributions of typological thinking.

Galen is criticized for combining Plato’s tripartition-cum-trilocation of the soul, in which each part constitutes its own source of motivation, with the demand that the faculty of voluntary motion is limited to the rational part, being the only one located in the brain and having access to the relevant nerves. While scholars have concentrated on small nerves as connective organs, this paper focuses on thepneuma, blood and innate heat. When the latter is increased, the irrational parts can affect the brain’s function to such an extent that the rational part’s volitions are reduced to their own desires.

In the study of the history of biblical scholarship, there has been a tendency among historians to emphasize biblical philology as a force which, together with the new philosophy and the new science of the seventeenth century, caused the erosion of universal scriptural authority from the mid-seventeenth century onwards. A case in point is Jonathan Israel's impressive account of how biblical criticism in the hands of Spinoza paved the way for the Enlightenment. Others who have argued for a post-Spinozist rise of biblical criticism include Frank Manuel, Adam Sutcliffe, and Travis Frampton. These scholars have built upon longer standing interpretations such as those of Hugh Trevor-Roper and Paul Hazard. However, scholars in the past two decades such as Anthony Grafton, Scott Mandelbrote and Jean-Louis Quantin have altered the picture of an exegetical revolution inaugurated by Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), Spinoza (1632–1677), and Richard Simon (1638–1712). These heterodox philosophers in fact relied on philological research that had been largely developed in the first half of the seventeenth century. Moreover, such research was carried out by scholars who had no subversive agenda. This is to say that the importance attached to a historical and philological approach to the biblical text had a cross-confessional appeal, not just a radical-political one.

Ps.Plutarch Plac. ch. 4.11 is an abridged Aëtian chapter. Material that has been cut can be identified. In its original shape the chapter not only provided information on the perception of external objects but also, presumably, on inner perception, i.e. self-awareness. The mind of the newborn infant is not a mere tabula rasa, but a tabula capable of constructing faithful and lasting images of what is perceived. The two final lemmata of the chapter show how Placita literature could be updated, and so date the account.

Abstract In the Platonic Alcibiades, Socrates raises two central philosophical questions: Who are we? and: How ought we to take care of ourselves? He answers these questions, I argue, in his famous comparison between eyes and souls. Both answers hinge upon dialectic: self-care functions through dialectic because we are communicating beings. I adduce arguments for this from the set-up and language of the comparison passage. Another important indication is that Socrates expressly refers back to an earlier, aborted attempt to describe who we are in terms of using discourse. Rather than recommending to Alcibiades a life of contemplation apart from interpersonal exchange, Socrates presents such exchange as central to our self-improvement and identity.

The current categorization of digitized newspaper archives prevents optimal use of the range of newspaper article types. Drawing examples from close reading research into the reputation of morphine in Dutch newspapers from 1880-1914, this article discusses how further specifying the article types can benefit different ways of historical research into digitized newspapers. Based on this discussion, the article argues that the interface of Delpher should allow researchers to search specifically for headings. Furthermore, the semi-automatic categorization of article types based on headings and matching newspaper sections should also be investigated, supported by crowd sourcing and niche sourcing.

This article examines the immediate Dutch reception of the Tractatus theologico-politicus. Using newfound archival sources it demonstrates that the anti-Spinoza activity of the Cartesians in Utrecht extends far beyond the well-known writings of Lambertus van Velthuysen and Regnerus van Mansveld. Their Cartesian network not only produced the very first public refutation to appear, but also formed a center for coordinating much of the Dutch response to Spinoza. This engagement, it is argued in closing, must be accounted for in Spinoza reception history, and forms the background to the mysterious visit Spinoza paid to Utrecht in the summer of 1673.

The image of Plato captured in Raphael’s School of Athens as the champion of contemplative life has been celebrated for centuries. Such a description of Plato, however, would probably be surprising for most readers who are used to a very different Plato. For many current readers, Plato is a political philosopher. The contrast could not be sharper. The goal of this paper is to reconstruct the origins of the political interpretation of Plato’s thought. Prior to Popper, this interpretation was first developed into a mainstream presentation by some important Hellenists in Germany (such as Wilamowitz and Jaeger) in the first 30 years of the twentieth century, and it quickly became dominant outside the universitiies. One interesting example of the attempts to popularize Plato’s political thought is that of K. Hildebrandt, a member of the George Kreis, who sought to harmonize Plato and Nietzsche in order to derive a new politics of the German state.

The history of the introduction of exotic therapeutic drugs in early modern Europe is usually rife with legend and obscurity and Peruvian bark is a case in point. The famous antimalarial drug entered the European medical market around 1640, yet it took decades before the bark was firmly established in pharmaceutical practice. This article argues that the history of Peruvian bark can only be understood as the interplay of its trajectories in science, commerce, and society. Modern research has mostly focused on the first of these, largely due to the abundance of medico-historical data. While appreciating these findings, this article proposes to integrate the medical trajectory in a richer narrative, by drawing particular attention to the acculturation of the bark in commerce and society. Although the evidence we have for these two trajectories is still sketchy and disproportionate, it can nevertheless help us to make sense of sources that have not yet been an obvious focus of research. Starting from an apparently isolated occurrence of the drug in a letter, this article focuses on Paris as the location where medical and public appreciation of the bark took shape, by exploring several contexts of knowledge circulation and medical practice there. These contexts provide a new window on the early circulation of knowledge of the bark, at a time when its eventual acceptance was by no means certain.

Galen talks about tension,tonos, in a physiological sense, which seems to be related to either the innate heat of the living being, the good mixture of its humors, or the body’spneuma. This paper shows that Galen, with some important distinctions concerning the substance of the soul, derives this use oftonosfrom the Stoics. But beyond that, it shows that Galen usestonosin a strict psychological sense derived from Plato as well, and integrates it in his characterization of the operations of the spirited part of the soul (thumos).

In this study, we will show how a Dutch pharmaceutical consortium of cinchona producers and quinine manufacturers was able to capitalize on one of the first international public health campaigns to fight malaria, thereby promoting the sale of quinine, an antimalarial medicine. During the 1920s and 1930s, the international markets for quinine were controlled by this Dutch consortium, which was a transoceanic cinchona-quinine enterprise centered in the Cinchona Bureau in the Netherlands. We will argue that during the interwar period, the Cinchona Bureau became the decision-making center of this Dutch cinchona-quinine pharmaceutical enterprise and monopolized the production and trade of an essential medicine. In addition, we will argue that capitalizing on the international public health campaign in the fight against malaria by the Dutch cinchona-quinine enterprise via the Cinchona Bureau can be regarded as an early example of corporate colonization of public health by a private pharmaceutical consortium. Furthermore, we will show how commercial interests prevailed over scientific interests within the Dutch cinchona-quinine consortium, thus interfering with and ultimately curtailing the transoceanic circulation of knowledge in the Dutch empire.

According to many, the genetic technology used in cancer is a promising test case of twenty-first century ‘genomic medicine’. However, it is important to realize that accounting for the genetic or hereditary factors in cancer medicine is not new. Since at least the eighteenth century, medical doctors and patients have tried to establish links between heredity and cancer. Following the excitement over the rediscovery of Gregor Mendel’s theory of hereditary transmission (1900), there was renewed interest in the question of a linkage between heredity and cancer. Researchers began to pay attention to the statistical use of family studies as a means to calculate Mendelian ratios of disease inheritance. In 1913, the Michigan University pathologist Aldred Scott Warthin (1866–1931) published his first study of a pedigree with a so-called inherited susceptibility for cancer. Family G’s susceptibility was associated with the risk of creating an ‘inferior stock’. Given the number of studies on heredity and disease and the vogue for eugenics at the beginning of the twentieth century, one would have expected strong support for Warthin’s study. Family G (one of the longest systematically studied cancer genealogies in the world and currently associated with Lynch syndrome) might have been accepted (if not for purely scientific reasons) as part of the eugenics gospel as an exemplary case of a degenerative stock. After all, Warthin was a rising star within the American medical establishment and had become part of John Kellogg’s eugenic priesthood in Michigan. Ultimately, none of these likely scenarios materialized. I will show in this chapter how the cancer idiom of heredity that was associated with shame, fatalism and stigmatization came to be regarded as counterproductive in the fight against cancer and was suppressed at the time by the powerful American Society for the Control of Cancer.

Why would a small country like the Netherlands become active in space? The field was monopolized by large countries with large military establishments, especially in the early years of spaceflight. Nevertheless, the Netherlands established a space program in the late 1960s. In this paper I will analyze the backgrounds of Dutch space policy in international post-war politics, national industrial policy, and science. After the Second World War, European space activities were shaped by the interplay between transatlantic and European cooperation and competition, limited by American Cold War diplomacy. At the national level, the Dutch space program was shaped firstly by two powerful companies, Philips electronics and Fokker Aircraft. As I will demonstrate, these two firms sought to gain crucial management skills as well as technological ones. Meanwhile, the nation's astronomers were able to capitalize on an advantageous confluence of political, economic and scientific ambitions to forward their own agenda. They succeeded in obtaining two of the most expensive scientific instruments ever built in the Netherlands: the Astronomical Netherlands Satellite (ANS, launched 1974) and the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS, 1983). Both were joint Dutch-American missions, but the nature of the cooperation on each was very different, reflecting the changing relationship between America and Western Europe from the 1950s until the 1980s. © 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.

In this article I engage with Foucault’s reading of the Platonic dialogue Alcibiades in his Hermeneutics of the Subject, developing his view that this text offers a model of the self-constitution of the subject. Foucault’s reading is part of his larger aim to find alternative conceptualizations of subjectivity besides the Cartesian ones that he thinks have dominated modern thought. His reading has been contested; but I argue that the Alcibiades does indeed develop a notion of subjectivity as reflexive and self-constituting. Moreover, two aspects of the text that Foucault misrepresents make even clearer the distance of its notion of subjecthood from a Cartesian view. First, the reflexive subject of the Alcibiades, though viewed as essentially intellectual, is the result of an ascetic practice of self-constitution. Second, this practice is essentially interpersonal, operating through reciprocal and equal dialectic.

A standard account of how the sciences developed around 1900 tends to identify specialization and an increasingly strong pragmatic orientation as the driving forces shaping the sciences in this period. We want to oppose this account: Focussing on a number of inaugural lectures delivered at Dutch universities around 1900, we emphasize the prominence of integrative ideals, and the equally notable absence of references to specialization. The notion of unity upon which these ideals are based is extremely rich: the unity of a person, unity of education and research and unity within the system of the sciences all are aimed at simultaneously. Remarkably, this attitude is not a reactionary one, but is intimately related precisely to the emergence of new disciplines. The main goal of this paper is to establish the presence and the relevance, across the disciplines, of these integrative ideals. This leads to a number of important questions that need to be asked with respect to the dynamics of science in this period: how can the relevant notions of unity and harmony be conceptualized? and – a question not to be pursued here – how, then, did the ideal of specialization become as dominant as it appears to be today?

Alexander Numan and the improvement of the Dutch sheep breeds Alexander Numan’s life and work provide a splendid illustration of the early nineteenth-century Dutch scientist’s view of the role of science and scientists in society. As a professor at the Utrecht veterinary school he spent a substantial part of his time on a practical endeavour: the improvement of the wool quality of the Dutch sheep breeds. He did not confine his activities to the scientific aspects only, but aimed to obtain the active involvement of all relevant stakeholders in his project: the government, the sheep farmers and the wool industry. In the literature, Numan’s project is seen as a failure: the stakeholders were skeptical about his project from the beginning, as wool improvement was seen as a misguided aim. The Dutch wool industry was perfectly satisfied with the quality of the Dutch wool, and the trend among sheep breeders was to improve their sheeps’ meat meat quality rather than their wool. Eventually, the government withdrew its indispensable support. Nevertheless, Numan clung doggedly to the aim he had set himself, and the question we want to answer is this paper is why. We argue that the answer is to be found in Numan’s view of the role of science in society. His motives were not merely economic, but, first and foremost, of a moral nature. Wool quality, for him, was a measure of the level of civilization a country had reached. Social and cultural progress went hand in hand with the availability of higher quality clothing, the raw materials for which the Dutch sheep were as yet unable to provide. By providing these materials Numan was convinced to contribute directly to the well-being and cultural enhancement of the Dutch population, an objective that was characteristic of the self-fashioned private and public persona of the early nineteenth-century Dutch scientist.

‘As if by magic’. The reorganisation and renewed prosperity of Leyden Observatory, 1918-1924In 1918, Leyden Observatory was a somewhat backward institute, but by 1928 it had transformed itself into a prominent international scientific centre. This article describes the reorganisation and expansion of the Observatory between 1918 and 1924 under the leadership of W. de Sitter, starting with the appointment of De Sitter and E. Hertzprung and the rejection, for political reasons, of A. Pannekoek. It also presents a reconstruction of the reorganisation. The article also describes the changes in Dutch astronomy in the 1920s: its expansion, the establishment of national organisations, and the extension of international contacts, especially with Anglo Saxon countries. Leyden became a centre in the international astronomer’s network, partly thanks to the influence of the Groningen astronomer J.C. Kapteyn. After the First World War, it played an important role as the link between scientists from the former Allied and Central countries. The thorough theoretical and practical training given at Leyden Observatory produced young astronomers that were highly valued all over the world. Combined with the international contacts and diplomatic skills of De Sitter, this formed the foundation from which the Observatory went on the prosper. One curious aspect is that the Observatory’s scientific findings played a minor role in this success.

The lack of public trust in the pharmaceutical sector (i.e. industry, authorities and doctors) could compromise the future of drug development and the regulatory system. Public trust integrates two important components, namely the vulnerability of the truster and the competence of the trustee. Because trust appears to have eroded as a result of drug safety controversies, this paper analyzes the role of public trust during the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) and suicidality controversy focusing on the aforementioned trust components. Because the competence component of trust is argued to be paramount in determining and maintaining public trust, the SSRI case shows that this component is a part of public trust where these institutions can build on, and might therefore be better used to substantiate and reinforce, public trust. Efforts to build trust should rely on the ethical, professional (competence) and societal commitment of institutions and individuals to protect the vulnerability of the public during controversies. Because shared values can create trust or increase its levels within a specific environment, industry, authorities and physicians ought to develop novel and cooperative strategies to highlight their shared values and motivations. Rules, regulations and settlements are indispensable tools but undue regulation is costly and can backfire on the rather sensitive trust relationships in the pharmaceutical sector.

This study shows how control over delicately balanced supply chains from raw material to the final product shifted from one national industry to another. By 1920, Dutch cinchona producers and quinine manufacturers dominated the international cartel that controlled the worldwide production and distribution of quinine (an antimalarial), quinine sulphate (a semi-finished product) and cinchona (the raw material). Twenty years earlier, however, this cartel had been controlled by the German pharmaceutical industry. How can we understand the shift of power in the world’s first pharmaceutical cartel? We argue that the internal shift of power was largely the result of the following three factors: a global industrial laboratory revolution; the vertical integration of a transoceanic network of cinchona producers, quinine manufacturers, (colonial) scientists and state officials across the Dutch Empire; and Germany’s economic isolation during the First World War.

The aim of this paper is to examine the extent to which Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment (CPoJ) can be, or otherwise ought to be, regarded as a transcendental phenomenology of hope. Kant states repeatedly that CPoJ mediates between the first two Critiques, or between the theoretical knowledge we arrive at on the basis of understanding and reason’s foundational role for practical philosophy. In other words, exercising the power of judgment is implicated whenever we try to bring together the ethical issue of strictly determining our actions on the one hand and the necessity to act in the physical world on the other. We will argue that this mediating function is properly understood only if the ideations produced by self-understanding are characterized as objects of rationally required hope or fear.

The current medical approach to erectile dysfunction (ED) consists of physiological, psychological and social components. This paper proposes an additional framework for thinking about ED based on phenomenology, by focusing on the theory of sexual projection. This framework will be complementary to the current medical approach to ED. Our phenomenological analysis of ED provides philosophical depth and illuminates overlooked aspects in the study of ED. Mainly by appealing to Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception, we suggest considering an additional etiology of ED in terms of a weakening of a function of sexual projection. We argue that sexual projection can be problematized through cognitive interferences, changes in the ‘intentional arc’, and modifications in the subject’s ‘body schema’. Our approach further highlights the importance of considering the ‘existential situation’ of patients with ED. We close by reflecting briefly on some of the implications of this phenomenological framework for diagnosis and treatment of ED.

Is it possible for an individual that has gone out of being to come back into being again? The English Aristotelian, Thomas White, argued that it is not. Thomas Hobbes disagreed and used the case of the Ship of Theseus to argue that individuals that have gone out of being may come back into being again. This paper provides the first systematic account of their arguments. It is doubtful that Hobbes has a consistent case against White. Still, his criticism may have prompted White to clarify his views on identity over time in his later work.

It has long been thought that Augustine holds that corporeal objects cannot act upon incorporeal souls. However, precisely how and why Augustine imposes limitations upon the causal powers of corporeal objects remains obscure. In this paper, the author clarifies Augustine’s views about the causal and dependence relations between body and soul. He argues that, contrary to what is often thought, Augustine allows that corporeal objects do act upon souls and merely rules out that corporeal objects exercise a particular kind of causal power (that of efficient or sustaining causes). He clarifies how Augustine conceives of the kind of causal influence exercised by souls and bodies.

Derrida’s philosophy is usually known as a form of critique of metaphysics. This article, however, argues that Derrida’s deconstructions do not only dismantle metaphysics from within, but also remain in themselves thoroughly, and problematically, metaphysical. Its goal is to determine exactly where the metaphysical features of Derrida’s work can be found. The article starts with an analysis of Derrida’s understanding of metaphysics, as well as its deconstruction, by explaining the working of différance, mainly focusing on its temporality. Further, it will demonstrate how in the temporization or deferral of différance a metaphysical desire for purity remains effective. In readings of several texts, the mutual interdependence of metaphysics and deconstruction will be sketched. Then the ethical side of deconstruction will be highlighted, both in Derrida’s early work as well as in the slightly different elaboration of différance in the later ethical notions like justice, the gift and the messianic. This results in a distinction of three versions of différance. Finally, a critical discussion of the metaphysical side of deconstruction will be followed by a comparison of different readings of deconstruction and différance.

Although natural philosophy underwent dramatic transformations during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, studying its evolution as a whole remains problematic. In this paper, we present a method that integrates traditional reading and computational tools in order to distil from different resources (the four existing Dictionaries of early modern philosophers and WorldCat) a representative corpus (consisting of 2,535 titles published in Latin, French, English, and German) for mapping the evolution of natural philosophy. In particular, we focus on gathering authors and works that were (directly or indirectly) engaged with the teaching of natural philosophy in the early modern academic milieu. We offer a preliminary assessment of the relevance of our corpus by investigating one aspect of this evolution, namely the trends in the acknowledgments of authorities linked with different and competing approaches to natural philosophy (scholastic, Cartesian, and Newtonian). The results not only corroborate existing knowledge, but they also show distinctive features and differences within these trends that were not observed previously, thus illustrating the heuristic potential of our computational method for corpus collection.

This paper examines the significance and originality of Hobbes’s use of ‘mind’, rather than ‘soul’, in his writings on human nature. To this end, his terminology in the discussion of the ‘faculties of the mind’ in The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic (1640) is considered in the context of English-language accounts of the ‘faculties of the soul’ in three widely-read works from the first half of the seventeenth century: Thomas Wright’s The Passions of the Minde in Generall (1604), Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), and Edward Reynolds’s A Treatise of the Passions and Faculties of the Soule of Man (1640). For Hobbes’s contemporaries, man’s soul conveyed God-like powers to human beings; for Hobbes this is a dangerous idea. Accordingly, he establishes a sharp divide between ‘soul’ and ‘mind’, understanding the two terms to be concerned with two very different things: one with soteriology, the other with mental abilities. Like his contemporaries, Hobbes thought that understanding the faculties reveals the way to live a good life. But unlike them, his moral and political philosophy relies on citizens accepting that they are not like God, rather than looking to restore the ‘divine’ within themselves.

Ancient philosophers were often critical of the epistemic features of democratic institutions. In this chapter, I first offer a critical review of the principal institutions of Athenian democracy. I then clarify what I take to be Plato’s central argument against democracy, which turns upon its epistemic failings. I then examine Aristotle’s views about democracy and knowledge and his views concerning the epistemic powers of groups. Finally, I conclude by examining what Hellenistic and post-Hellenistic philosophers had to say about democracy and knowledge.

It is widely thought that Augustine thinks perception is, in some distinctive sense, an active process and that he takes conscious awareness to be constitutive of perception. I argue that conscious awareness is not straightforwardly constitutive of perception and that Augustine is best understood as an indirect realist. I then clarify Augustine’s views concerning the nature and role of diachronically unified conscious awareness and mental representation in perception, the nature of the soul’s intentio, and the precise sense(s) in which perception is an active process.

For Margaret Cavendish, every single part of matter has self-knowledge, and almost every part has perceptive knowledge. This paper asks what is at stake for Cavendish in ascribing self-knowing and perceptive properties to matter. Whereas many commentators take perception and self-knowledge to be guides to Cavendish’s epistemology, this paper takes them to be guides to her metaphysics, in that it shows that these categories account for individual specificity and for relationality. A part of matter is a unique individual insofar as it is self-knowing – and it is a part in relation to other parts, and to the whole of matter, insofar as it is a perceptive part. This is so because self-knowledge is purely self-referential and complete, while perceptive knowledge is purely relational.

In the course of discussing the nature of justice in the first book of the Republic, a number of claims are made concerning the nature of technê and what it is to be skilful or to have an ability. Nawar shows how three of these claims, which do significant conceptual work in both Plato and Aristotle, can be explained and defended. The first claim, by Socrates, concerns the ‘two-way’ nature of certain skills. For instance, the person who is skilful at hitting is not only proficient at hitting well, but also proficient at avoiding being hit. The second claim, by Thrasymachus, is that the practitioner of a technê is, in a certain way, infallible and cannot fail to bring about what they intend. The third claim, made by Socrates, is that technai are not value-neutral, but rather are directed at the good of their object. Namar examines these claims, clarifies them, and attempts to explain them (so far as possible). Furthermore, he shows that these claims play an important role in Aristotle’s thought and examines how Aristotle aims to incorporate or adapt these claims in his own discussion of the modal and teleological aspects of skills and rational capacities.

This dissertation investigates the debate between Karl Löwith, Hans Blumenberg and Carl Schmitt on the issue of ‘secularization’ and the problematic place of religion in modernity. Besides reconstructing their philosophical positions, this study also analyzes and evaluates the significance of their contributions in the historical development of the broader German secularization debate. It explores how ‘secularization’ functioned as a key concept in the German societal-intellectual discourse from the 1950s to the 1980s and how their accounts were involved in a grand intellectual struggle to either ‘re-root’ modern society in a religious past or to break free’ from past traditions. As it traces the development of the German secularization debate, this study also focusses on how, after the turbulent year of 1968, this discourse became more overtly political, centering now on Schmitt’s notion of political theology. The political-theological stage of the secularization debate will be exemplified in this investigation by an analysis of the dispute between Jacob Taubes and Odo Marquard. Finally, this study also aims to reflect on the philosophical significance of the contributions of these protagonists for any kind of theorizing on the issue of secularization and modernity. It does so by examining parallels between the German secularization debate and the more recent discourse of postsecularism, and by reflecting on what contemporary (post)secularization theories might gain from knowledge of this German debate.

This special issue brings to the attention of the scholarly community some of the common features and some of the subtle, but important, differences between Francis Bacon's and Giovan Battista Della Porta's ways of dealing with the reading, selecting, enacting, and recording of recipes. Focusing on questions of genre, intellectual and material context, strategies of research, and strategies of performing recipes, the four papers of this special issue address two major issues. First, they shed new light on the relationship between Della Porta'sMagia naturalisand Francis Bacon'sSylva sylvarum. Second, they show that in the recording of their experimental practices, Bacon and Della Porta depart from the traditional "recipe format" and discover new avenues of experimental research.

Icelandic politics are analysed from the perspectives of three normative models of democracy: the liberal, republican and deliberative democratic theories. While the Icelandic constitution is rooted in classical liberal ideas, Icelandic politics can be harshly criticized from a liberal perspective, primarily because of the unclear separation of powers of government and for the extensive involvement of politics in other social sectors. Despite strong nationalist discourse which reflects republican characteristics, rooted in the struggle for independence from Denmark, republicanism has been marginal in Icelandic politics. In the years before the financial collapse, Icelandic society underwent a process of liberalization in which power shifted to the financial sector without disentangling the close ties that had prevailed between business and politics. The special commission set up by the Icelandic Parliament to investigate the causes of the financial collapse criticized Icelandic politics and governance for its flawed working practices and lack of professionalism. The appropriate lessons to draw from this criticism are to strengthen democratic practices and institutions. In the spirit of republicanism, however, the dominant discourse about Icelandic democracy after the financial collapse has been on increasing direct, vote-centric participation in opposition to the system of formal politics. While this development is understandable in light of the loss of trust in political institutions in the wake of the financial collapse, it has not contributed to trustworthy practices. In order to improve Icelandic politics, the analysis in this paper shows, it is important to work more in the spirit of deliberative democratic theory

In defending the view that justice is the advantage of the stronger, Thrasymachus puzzlingly claims that rulers never err and that any practitioner of a skill or expertise (τέχνη) is infallible. In what follows, Socrates offers a number of arguments directed against Thrasymachus’ views concerning the nature of skill, ruling, and justice. Commentators typically take a dim view of both Thrasymachus’ claims about skill (which are dismissed as an ungrounded and purely ad hoc response to Socrates’ initial criticisms) and Socrates’ latter arguments (which are deemed extremely weak). In this paper, I clarify Thrasymachus’ views (and those of several other ancients) concerning qua locutions and the nature of skill and ability and I reconstruct Socrates’ arguments against Thrasymachus’ views concerning skill and justice. I argue that Thrasymachus’ views are not ungrounded or ad hoc and that Socrates’ arguments are rather different (and significantly stronger) than often supposed.

Scott Davison has raised an epistemic challenge to the doctrine of petitionary prayer. Roughly, the challenge is that we cannot know or have reason to believe that a prayer has been answered. Davison argues that the epistemic challenge undermines all the extant defenses of petitionary prayer. I argue that it does not.

This paper studies Antoine Le Grand's account of organic identity over time in human bodies. In response to Aristotelian critics who argued that the Cartesian rejection of the Aristotelian ontology of matter and form had put in jeopardy the diachronic identity of material substances in general and of living bodies in particular, Le Grand argued that the identity over time of the human body could be accounted for without the traditional notions of matter and form. The paper shows how he drew on both the Cartesian metaphysics of mind and body and contemporary views on human anatomy and organic generation to develop a unique account of bodily identity over time in human animals.

Spinoza’s notion of freedom confronts us with a paradoxical idea: on the one hand, freedom requires us to act with rational insight into the causally determined order of the natural world. On the other hand, grasping this order seems to leave us with the insight that there is nothing that could be justly termed a human person. As I see it, the key to resolving this tension is to be sought within a special reading of Spinoza’s theory of the striving for selfpreservation (conatus): I shall argue that Spinoza’s conatus doctrine entails an appropriation thesis: according to Spinoza’s account, we ought to re-describe our personal histories in terms of a gradual appropriation of the natural order and take supposedly external causes as our own reasons for action. The present paper tries to set out this solution and its difficulties against the background of the contemporary debate on freedom.

This thesis investigates the accounts of human understanding proposed by Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, the Abbé de Condillac, Claude-Adrien Helvétius and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and explores the consequences of their epistemologies for their theories of morality and natural law. In response to the ethical question how humans may determine the morality of their conduct by means of reason, the five thinkers we will investigate draw normative conclusions from a descriptive account of human nature. We will thus see that their descriptive account of the role of both the passions and reason in the determination of our actions provides the basis for a normative account of moral judgment. For the five thinkers we will investigate, reason is thus not merely the ability to produce knowledge by comparing disparate ideas, but also a faculty involved in practical deliberation, which not only allows us to determine whether our actions are prudent, but ultimately also whether they are moral. Accordingly, their account of human understanding not only constitutes their epistemology, but is also an integral part of their moral philosophy. As the epistemology of these five thinkers is clearly empirical in outlook, this thesis will thus document the impact of the empirical turn on early-modern moral philosophy. This enquiry will provide grounds to reconsider some prevailing scholarly opinions on the relation between reason and the passions in early-modern moral philosophy. In addition, our discussion will aim to clarify the relation between facts and values in the theories of several early-modern thinkers predating Hume. Finally, this thesis will trace the development of early-modern consequentialist accounts of normative judgment towards more explicit formulations of utilitarianism, and discuss the objections of one of the most important early-modern opponents of consequentialism – Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

In the final book of Logical Investigations from 1901, Husserl develops a theory of knowledge based on the intentional structure of consciousness. While there is some textual evidence that Husserl considered this to entail a critique of Kantian philosophy, he did not elaborate substantially on this. This paper reconstructs the covert critique of Kant’s theory of knowledge which LI contains. With respect to Kant, I discuss three core aspects of his theory of knowledge which, as Husserl’s reflections on Kant indicate, Husserl was familiar with. These are (i) the cooperation of two faculties for the justification of beliefs; (ii) the concept of a priori structures of knowledge Kant operated with; and (iii) the delivered transcendental proof of these structures. Regarding Logical Investigations, I first briefly outline the intentional structure of consciousness as presented in the fifth book and then turn to the theory of knowledge in the sixth book. I then clarify, partially on the basis of manuscripts and lecture notes, the covert critique of the three core aspects of Kant’s theory which the sixth book contains.

Augustine famously claims every word is a name. Some readers take Augustine to thereby maintain a purely referentialist semantic account according to which every word is a referential expression whose meaning is its extension. Other readers think that Augustine is no referentialist and is merely claiming that every word has some meaning. In this paper, I clarify Augustine’s arguments to the effect that every word is a name and argue that ‘every word is a name’ amounts to the claim that for any word, there exist tokens of that word which are autonymous nouns. Augustine takes this to be the result of universal lexical ambiguity or equivocity (that is, the fact that every word has more than one literal meaning) and I clarify how Augustine’s account of metalinguistic discourse, which is one of the most detailed to have survived from antiquity, differs from some ancient and modern theories.

This paper discusses Husserl’s theory of intentionality and compares it to contemporary debates about intentionalism. I first show to what extent such a comparison could be meaningful. I then outline the structure of intentionality as found inIdeas I. My main claims are that – in contrast with intentionalism – intentionality for Husserl (i) covers just a region of conscious contents; that it is (ii) essentially a relation between act-processes and presented content; and that (iii) the side of act-processes contains non-representational contents. In the third part, I show that Husserl also (iv) offers resources against intentionalism’s exclusive concern with propositional content.

In this paper, I clarify some central aspects of Stoic thought concerning identity, identification, and so-called peculiar qualities (qualities which were seemingly meant to ground an individual’s identity and enable identification). I offer a precise account of Stoic theses concerning the identity and discernibility of individuals and carefully examine the evidence concerning the function and nature of peculiar qualities. I argue that the leading proposal concerning the nature of peculiar qualities, put forward by Eric Lewis, faces a number of objections, and offer two constructive suggestions which turn upon reconsidering the nature and function(s) of peculiar qualities. Finally, I examine a simple but potent Academic argument against the view that identification requires detecting some attribute(s) unique to the relevant individual. Such an argument is, I argue, largely successful and may have encouraged later Stoics not to think that peculiar qualities enable identification.

Although several of Descartes's disciples established occasionalism as the natural outcome of Cartesianism, Pierre-Sylvain Regis forcefully resisted this conclusion by developing an account of secondary causes in which God does not immediately intervene in the natural world. In order to understand this view, it has been argued that Regis melds Aquinas's concurrentism with the new, mechanist natural philosophy defended in Cartesian physics. In this paper, I contend that such a reading of Regis's position is misleading for our understanding of both his account of secondary causality and the relationship between medieval debates and seventeenth century natural philosophy. I show that Regis's account of secondary causality denies two fundamental features at the core of the account proposed by Aquinas, namely that God acts immediately in nature and that secondary causes are per se causes. I contend that Regis's view more closely resembles a specific account of artificial instrumental causality developed by Duns Scotus. The comparison with Scotus shows that Regis is still dealing with conceptual tools that can be traced back to the scholastic tradition. Yet, Regis implements these tools to establish an account of causation that is fundamentally irreconcilable with scholastic natural philosophy. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Recent years have seen the rise of “post-secularism,” a new perspective that criticizes the dominant secularization narrative according to which “modernity” and “religion” are fundamentally antagonistic concepts. Jurgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, and Gianni Vattimo are the most prominent defenders of such a post-secularist account. But though post-secularism presents itself as a necessary rectification of the secularization story, it has not been able to come up with a credible and generally accepted alternative account. In this article I will explain why, arguing that the use of “essentially contested concepts” such as “Christianity” and “modernity” rest on normative standpoints of the narrators that are incompatible with one another. To show this I will analyze the position of three older voices in the debate, namely those of Hans Blumenberg, Peter Berger, and Marcel Gauchet. These authors seem to agree in understanding the modern disenchanted worldview in relation to Christian transcendence, but I will show that beneath their similar narratives lie incompatible normative beliefs on which their use of the concepts of “Christianity” and “modernity” is founded. After having laid bare the roots of the contemporary debate by exploring these three fundamental positions, I will finally argue that we should not take their accounts as objective, historical descriptions but as what Richard Rorty has called “Geistesgeschichte“: a speculative history that is aimed at conveying a moral, in which essentially contested concepts play a constitutive role. Each author draws his own moral, and consequently each author will construct his own corresponding history. This lesson can then be applied to the contemporary debate on secularization. The value of the debate does not lie in its historical claims but in the visions of the protagonists; at the end of this article I will explain how we can capitalize on this value.

This paper offers a case for recognizing the Alcibiades i as a contribution to political philosophy. In so doing, it also shows that the dialogue is much more unified than it is usually considered to be in the scholarly literature. The paper focuses on the connection between two passages: the apparently aporetic passage of 124e1–127d5, in which Socrates questions Alcibiades about the content of political expertise; and Socrates’ exhortation to Alcibiades to get to know himself as his soul (127e9–133c6). The section on self-knowledge provides central conceptual tools that help us articulate the political philosophy that is implicit in the aporetic passage. First, knowledge of one’s humanity is key to politics, understood as an expertise that has people as its proper object. Second, politics deals with human beings qua human beings, not in accidental specialisations. Third, the section on self-knowledge instantiates political rule in the conversation between Socrates and Alcibiades. Fourth, the later section helps resolve the dilemma between friendship as unanimity and friendship as justice that brought 124e-127d to its aporetic close. Finally, the combination of the two passages yields two scenarios of political rule: one of education and one of cooperation. It shows, in essence, what is involved in Alcibiades’ description of politics as an expertise that deals with people: it is rule of fellow rulers.