The history of philosophy and the persona of the philosopher*

Modern Intellectual History

Volumn 4, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 571-600

  Hunter, Ian ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND   (Australia)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 84979499500     PISSN: 14792443     EISSN: 14792451     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S1479244307001424     Document Type: Article

References (50)

1. C. Thomasius, Cautelen zur Erlernung der Rechtsgelehrtheit repr. Hildesheim, 2006; first published Halle, 1713) 92.
2. For an overview see D. R. Kelley, “What is Happening to the History of Ideas”, Journal of the History of Ideas 51 (1990), 3 – 25.
3. For examples see L. S. Kramer, “Literature, Criticism and Historical Imagination: The Literary Challenge of Hayden White and Dominick LaCapra”, in L. Hunt, ed., The New Cultural History (Berkeley, 1989), 97 - 128; and D. Harlan, “Intellectual History and the Return of Literature”, American Historical Review 94, 581 – 609.
4. For a more detailed discussion see I. Hunter, “The History of Theory”, Critical Inquiry 32, 78 – 112. R. Rorty, J. B. Schneewind and Q. Skinner, eds., Philosophy in History: Essays on the Historiography of Philosophy (Cambridge, 1984).
5. C. Taylor, “Philosophy and its History”, in Rorty, Schneewind, and Skinner, Philosophy in History,. 17 – 30
6. H. MacIntyre, “The Relationship of Philosophy to its Past”, in Rorty, Schneewind, and Skinner, Philosophy in History, 31 – 48.
7. R. Rorty, “The Historiography of Philosophy: Four Genres”, in Rorty, Schneewind, and Skinner, Philosophy in History, 49 – 75. See, in particular, Q. Skinner, “Interpretation, Rationality and Truth”, in idem, Visions of Politics, 1: Regarding Method (Cambridge, 2002), 27 – 56. For an invaluable commentary see J. G. A. Pocock, “Quentin Skinner: The History of Policics and the Politics of History”, Common Knowledge 10, 532 – 50.
8. J. Tully, ed. Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and his Critics (Princeton NJ, 1988).
9. See J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, Volume Two: Narratives of Civil Government (Cambridge, 1999); J. C. Laursen, ed.,Histories of Heresy in Early Modern Europe: For, Against, and Beyond Persecution and Toleration (Houndmills, 2002); and I. Hunter, J. C. Laursen, and C. J. Nederman, eds.,Heresy in Transition: Transforming Ideas of Heresy in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Aldershot, 2005).
10. For a convenient locus, see Thomasius, Cautelen zur Erlernung der Rechtsgelehrtheit, chap. 6, “Precautions Regarding the History of the Philosophical Sects”, 108 – 36.
11. See J. G. A. Pocock, “Gibbon and the History of Heresy”, in Laursen, ed., Histories of Heresy, 205 - 20; D. R. Kelley, The Descent of Ideas: The History of Intellectual History (Aldershot, 2002), 141 - 68; I. Hunter, “Christian Thomasius on the Right of Protestant Princes regarding Heretics”, Eighteenth-Century Thought 2, 39-98; and I. Hunter, “Christian Thomasius and the Desacralization of Philosophy”, Journal of the History of Ideas 61, 1–16. A. MacIntyre, “The Relationship of Philosophy to Its Past”, in Rorty, Schneewind, and Skinner, Philosophy in History, 35.
12. Docock, “Quentin Skinner”, 534.
13. For a revealing historical discussion of the philosophical debate over incommensurabilty in its Kuhnian form see J. H. Zammito, A Nice Derangement of Epistemes: Post-positivism in the Study of Science from Quine to Latour (Chicago, 2004), 60 – 89.
14. MacIntyre, “Relationship”, 39 – 41.
15. C. Taylor, “The Hermeneutics of Conflict”, in Tully, Meaning and Context, 218 – 28. Rortu, “Historiography of Philosophy”, 49 – 56.
16. MacIntyre, “Relationship”, 42–43.
17. Taylor, “Philosophy and Its History”, 22–28.
18. Rorty, “Historiography of Philosophy” 49 – 56.
19. Rorty, “Historiography of Philosophy” 56 – 61. C. Scheibler, Opus metaphysicum, duobus libris universum hujus scientiae systema comprehendens (Giessen, 1617).
20. Scheibler, Opus metaphysicum, bk. I, chap. 1, ti. iii, 9 – 10.
21. Scheibler, Opus metaphysicum, bk. I, chap. 1, ti. v, 22. On the conception of philosophy as an office occupied through the cultivation of a particular philosophical persona see C. Condren, “The Persona of the Philosopher and the Rhetorics of Office in Early Modern England”, In C. Condren, S. Gaukroger, and I. Hunter, eds., The Philosopher in Early Modern Europe: The Nature of a Contested Identity (Cambridge, 2006), 66 – 89. D. Kimmich, “Lob der ‘ruhigen Belusting’: Zu Thomasius’ kritischer Epikur-Rezeption”, in F. Vollhardt, ed., Christian Thomasius (1655-1728): Neue Forschungen im Kontext der Frilhaufklarung (Tubingen, 1997), 379 – 394.
22. See RH. Hafner, “Jacob Thomasius und die Geschichte der Haresien”, in Vollhardt, Christian Thomasius, 141 - 64; and I. Hunter, “Thomasius on the Toleration of Heresy”, in Hunter, Laursen, and Nederman, Heresy in Transition, 155 – 68.
23. I. Hunter, Rival Enlightenments: Civil and Metaphysical Philosophy in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge, 2001), 223 – 34. H. Dreitzel, “Christliche Aufklarung durch furstlichen Absolutismus. Thomasius und die Destrhabaxauktion des fruhneuzeitlichen Konfessionsstaates”, in Vollhardt, Christian Thomasius, 17 – 50.
24. H. Dreitzel, “Zur Entwicklung und Eigenart der “Eklektischen Philosophic””, Zeitschrift fur Historische Forschung 18, 281 – 343, at 306.
25. See C. Thomasius, Drey Bucher der Gottlichen Rechtsgelahrtheit (Institutiones jurisprudentiae divinae, 1688), (Halle, 1709), I.ii.97, 73.
26. For an account of this conflict over the sociability principle, which lasted well into the eighteenth century, see M. Kempe, “Geselligkeit im Widerstreit: Zur Pufendorf-Kontroverse um die socialitas als Grundprinzip des Naturrechts in der Disputations-literatur in Deutschland urn 1700”, Jahrbuch fur Recht und Ethik 12, 57 – 70. Skinner, “Interpretation, Rationality and Truth”, 43.
27. For a recent exposition of this Kantian-Hegelian conception of philosophy and the history of philosophy see L. Braun, Geschichte der Philosophiegeschichte (Darmstadt, 1990). Originally published as Histoire de l'histoire de la philosophic, (Paris, 1973).
28. I. Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft (2nd edn, 1787) (hereafter Kritik), in Kants Werke: Akademie Textausgabe (hereafter AK) (Berlin, 1902-), 3: 541 – 3 English translation Immanuel Kant: Critique of Pure Reason, ed. and trans. P. Guyer and A. W. Wood (Cambridge, 1998), 693 – 5. Kant, Kritik, AK 3: 541; Guyer and Wood, Critique, 693.
29. For this see A. Simmons, “Jesuit Aristotelian Education: The De anima Commentaries”, in J. W. O’Malley, SJ, G. A. Bailey, S. J. Harris and T. F. Kennedy, SJ, eds., The Jesuits: Cultures, Sciences, and the Arts 1540 – 1773 (Toronto, 1999), 522 – 37.
30. Monita Philosophiae tyronibus opportuna (Ferrara, 1636). Cited in P. R. Blum,Philosophenphilosophie und Schulphilosophie. J. C. Scotti, Typen des Philosophierens in der Neuzeit (Stuttgart, 1998) 142 – 3. Thomasius, Cautelen zur Erlernung der Rechtsgelehrtheit, 113.
31. See C. Thomasius, Grund-Lehren des Natur- und Volcker-Rechts, nach dem sinnlichen Begriff aller Menschen vorgestellet (Halle, 1709), bk I, chap. 1, “On the Moral Nature of Man”. M. Foucault, The Use of Pleasure (Harmondsworth, 1985), 29.
32. Kant, Kritik, AK, 3: 308; Guyer and Wood, Critique, 484.
33. Kant, Kritik, AK, 3: 367; Guyer and Wood, Critique, 536.
34. See Kant, Kritik, AK, 3: 291 - 3; Guyer and Wood, Critique, 468 – 9. See Kant, Kritik, AK, 3: 237; Guyer and Wood, Critique, 386.
35. See, for example, Scheibler’s account of God as spontaneously self-acting spiritual being in the Opus metaphysicum, bk. II, 496 – 8.
36. Kant, Reflexionen, AK, 17: 704–705.
37. Cf. also S. Al-Azm, The Origins of Kant’s Arguments in the Antinomies (Oxford, 1972). For more on this see H. Holzhey, cc Der Philosoph im 17. Jahrhundert”, in J.-P. Schobinger, ed., Die Philosophic des 17. Jahrhunderts, Band 1: Allgemeine Themen, Iberische Halbinsel, Italien (Basle, 1998), 3 - 30; and C. Condren, S. Gaukroger, and I. Hunter, “Introduction”, in Condren, Gaukroger, and Hunter, The Philosopher in Early Modern Europe, 1 – 16.
38. This, broadly, is the conception of the political whose history is charted in Skinners agenda-setting The Foundations of Modern Political Thought (Cambridge, 1978). See the helpful discussions in J. Tully, “The Pen is a Mighty Sword: Cuentin Skinner’s Analysis of Politics”, in Tully, Meaning and Context, 7 - 25; and Pocock, “Quentin Skinner”
39. I. Hunter, “Christian Thomasius and the Desacralization of Philosophy” Journal of the History of Ideas 61, 1–16. This viewpoint remains current, as we can see in Braun, Geschichte der Philosophiegeschichte 217 – 36.
40. I. Kant, “Lose Blatter zu den Fortschritten der Metaphysik” AK, 20: 343.
41. Kant, “Lose Blatter”, AK, 20: 341. Kant, Kritik, AK, 3: 550 - 52; Guyer and Wood, Critique, 702 – 4.
42. The exemplary modern English rendition of this history is L. W. Beck, Early German Philosophy: Kant and His Predecessors (Cambridge, MA, 1969). But see also Braun, Geschichte der Philosophiegeshichte, where Hegel is presented as completing the revolution begun by Kant. MacIntyre, “Relationship”, 39 – 40.
43. Rorty, “Historiography af Philosophy” 49 – 56. Tully, “The Pen is a Mighty Sword”, 22.
44. See H. Jaumann, “Friihe Aufklarung als historische Kritik: Pierre Bayle und Christian Thomasius” in S. Neumeister, ed., Fruhe Aufklarung (Munich, 1994), 149 – 70.
45. This is the central argument of C. Thomasius and E. R. Brenneisen, Das Recht evangelischer Fursten in theologischen Streitigkeiten (Halle, 1696).
46. MacIntyre, “Relationship”, 35. See the illuminating discussion in C. Ltithy, “What to do with Seventeenth-Century Natural Philosophy? A Taxonomic Problem”, Perspectives on Science 8, 164 – 95.
47. MacIntyre, “Relationship”, 45.
48. Rorty, “Historiography of Philosophy”, 66 – 7. S. Gaukroger, Francis Bacon and the Transformation of Early-Modern Philosophy (Cambridge, 2001); and S. Gaukroger, “The Persona of the Natural Philosopher”, in Condren, Gaukroger, and Hunter, The Philosopher in Early Modern Europe, 17 – 34.
49. Rorty, “Historiography of Philosophy” 60.
50. See P. Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire (Madison, 1988), 35 - 70; and PV. Hadot,Plotinus, or The Simplicity of Vision (Chicago, i993)> 97 - 113.