Lennon The Battle of the Gods and Giants

The Legacies of Descartes and Gassendi, 1655-1715
Course Book
ISBN: 978-1-4008-6339-6
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 1 - PDF Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 436 Seiten

Reihe: Studies in Intellectual History and the History of Philosophy

By the mid-1600s, the commonsense, manifest picture of the world associated with Aristotle had been undermined by skeptical arguments on the one hand and by the rise of the New Science on the other. What would be the scientific image to succeed the Aristotelian model? Thomas Lennon argues here that the contest between the supporters of Descartes and the supporters of Gassendi to decide this issue was the most important philosophical debate of the latter half of the seventeenth century. Descartes and Gassendi inspired their followers with radically opposed perspectives on space, the objects in it, and how these objects are known. Lennon maintains that differing concepts on these matters implied significant moral and political differences: the Descartes/Gassendi conflict was typical of Plato's perennial battle of the gods (friends of forms) and giants (materialists), and the crux of that enduring philosophical struggle is the exercise of moral and political authority.

Lennon demonstrates, in addition, that John Locke should be read as having taken up Gassendi's cause against Descartes. In Lennon's reinterpretation of the history of philosophy between the death dates of Gassendi and Malebranche, Locke's acknowledged opposition to Descartes on some issues is applied to the most important questions of Locke exegesis.

Originally published in 1993.

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Autoren/Hrsg.

Lennon, Thomas M.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Geschichte der Westlichen Philosophie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface

Note on Documentation

I The Philosophical Terrain 3

1 The Gassendist Failure 3

2 The Gassendist Success 26

3 The Interminable Battle 34

4 Other Wars 52

II The Giants of the Seventeenth Century 63

5 Dramatis Personae 63

6 Mind versus Flesh 106

7 Gassendist Theories of Space: Apotheosis and Annihilation 117

8 Physical and Metaphysical Atomism 137

III Locke: Gassendist Anti-Cartesian 149

9 Locke and Gassendi 149

10 Locke and Descartes 163

11 Enthusiasm 169

IV The Gods of the Seventeenth Century 191

12 Descartes's Idealism 191

13 Malebranche's Realism 210

14 Malebranche's Idealism 229

V Ideas and Representation 240

15 Two Patterns of Ideas 240

16 Arguments for Representationalism 248

17 Two Versions of the Causal Argument 255

VI The Untouchable and the Uncuttable 274

18 Space and Solidity 276

19 Simple and Complex Ideas 288

20 Primary and Secondary Qualities 298

21 Powers 304

22 Matter and Creation 309

23 The Bestial Soul 314

VII Innateness, Abstraction, and Essences 334

24 Innateness 334

25 Essences and Abstraction 340

26 The Polemic with Stillingfleet 354

VIII Philosophy and the Historiography of Philosophy 367

27 Dissimulation and Meaning 368

28 What Locke Said 374

29 Two Camps of Historians 378

30 History and Interpretation 383

Works Cited 393

Index 411