Browse Items (123 total)
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The Passions of the Soul
Although this work has been overshadowed in the history of philosophy by Descartes’s more famous Meditations, it contains his most mature and influential discussion of mental states (specifically emotions) as the object of scientific (specifically…
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
The Essay marks an important moment in the prehistory of empirical psychology. Locke seeks to explain how we come to have certain mental states (“ideas”) while doggedly avoiding metaphysical speculation of the sort found in Descartes’s work. As a…
Christian Wolff’s Prolegomena to Empirical and Rational Psychology: Translation and Commentary
In this translation of a short selection of Wolff’s extremely influential Psychologia empirica (published in 1732, with a second edition released in 1738), he sets out some of his key assumptions regarding how to examine the human mind. The…
Critique of the Faculty of Judgment [Urteilskraft]
Received most often as Kant’s aesthetic treatise, but also understood as his mature political treatise (cf., Hannah Arendt’s “ectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy). Unlike most aesthetic treatises before and since, this one privileges natural over…
Tags: 18th century, aesthetic, citizenship, disciplines, Kant, philosophy
On the Aesthetic Education of Man
Deserves as much credit as any source for bringing the political implications of Kant’s Critique of Judgment into contemporary discourse. Despondent over the perceived failure of the French Revolution, Schiller asks, “Why are we still barbarians?” He…
Tags: 18th century, aesthetic, citizenship, disciplines, Kant, philosophy, Schiller
Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy
Argues that Kant’s Critique of Judgment represents his mature political philosophy. Judgment is important for Arendt as the faculty which mediates between particularity and universality, thereby providing the conditions for a uniquely human…
Tags: aesthetic, Arendt, citizenship, contemporary, disciplines, Kant, philosophy, Schiller
"Aesthetics and Civil Society: Theories of Art and Society, 1640–1790"
Shows how Kant wrote his Critique of Judgment as a synthesis of English theories of “taste” and civil society and German theories of “aesthetic.” Writers since Hobbes have used theories of art to advance theories of society. Kant sought a middle way…
Tags: 18th century, aesthetic, citizenship, disciplines, Kant, philosophy, Schiller
"Art and Democracy"
Interprets an “increasingly visible weariness and distrust towards democracy” and proposes the construction of contemporary “Academies of Art” to aid in the education of “mature” citizens. Lachenmann interpolates his remarks into two discourses.…
Tags: aesthetic, citizenship, contemporary, destruction, disciplines, Lachenmann, music, philosophy, Schiller
Emile, or on Education
Outlines a program for educating children according to the precepts of Nature. Heavily influenced by Locke's philosophy of human understanding, this 1762 treatise argues that parents should pursue a "negative education": avoid formal schooling and…
The Wild Girl, Natural Man, and the Monster: Dangerous Experiments in the Age of Enlightenment
Explores Enlightenment optimism about the perfectibility of mankind by looking at efforts to educate and "civilize" children. Chapters consider reactions to so-called "wild children"; utopian pedagogical schemes (including efforts to apply…
An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump
Captures the complicated attitude towards science during the Enlightenment. A man is suffocating a bird in an air pump, while (most of) his audience looks on in wonder and fear. Shows that scientific demonstrations could attract a considerable…
Tags: 18th century, disciplines, savage/civilized, science, violence
Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794) and His Wife (Marie Anne Pierrette Paulze, 1758-1836)
Reveals the gendered division of labor in many scientific households. Antoine, seated, is at work on a chemistry treatise; his wife, Marie-Anne, takes a break from her drawing board to look over his shoulder. Whereas Antoine is famous for his…
Tags: 18th century, disciplines, gender, science
Selected Philosophical and Scientific Writings
Brings together a collection of Du Châtelet's writing and shows that she was much more than Voltaire's mistress; she was a philosophe in her own right. This volume not only provides a good introduction to Du Châtelet but shows how ambitious…
Tags: 18th century, disciplines, education, female author, gender, science
Man a Machine
Julien Offray de La Mettrie was one of the earliest French Enlightenment materialists. Exiled from France after publishing a book (A Natural History of the Soul) arguing that psychical phenomena could be explained by examining bodily processes, he…
Tags: disciplines, ethics, materialism, medicine, philosophy, physics, physiology, science
The Paradox of the Automaton: From Diderot to Cybernetics
A concise and provocative history of the idea of automata from Diderot to the present. She argues that the automaton is the cornerstone of modern knowledge and its powers.
Tags: disciplines, materialism, mechanism, philosophy, physics, science
Machine and Organism
Canguilhem inverts the normal scientific question--what is the mechanism underlying this organic process?--and asks how machines are organic. He traces the history of the relationships between organism and machine from the ancient Greek political…
Tags: biology, disciplines, history, materialism, mechanism, philosophy, politics, science
Subjugated Animals: Animals and Anthropocentrism in Early Modern European Culture
Discusses early modern attitudes toward animals with an emphasis on anthropocentrism, and on interdisciplinary sources, including intellectual history, the history of science, literature and art.
The Civilizing Process, Nature, and Stadial Theory
Discusses the influence of Enlightenment stadial theory on the ideas of Norbert Elias, particularly as these relate to the utilization of natural resources.
The Guillotine and the Terror
A very original if somewhat disturbing book on the imaginary of the French Revolution. Arasse, a historian of art, discusses the stories that were created about and around the guillotine. He shows how the machine was invested with the values and…
Tags: art, destruction, disciplines, revolution, science
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