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This book explores a pivotal debate in seventeenth-century European philosophy about the nature of human beings--whether they are purely material things, or whether they have an immaterial soul that thinks and can survive the death of the body. It traces this debate from the work of the materialist philosopher Thomas Hobbes, through the responses of three of his critics--the Platonists Henry More and Ralph Cudworth, and the materialist Margaret Cavendish--to the discussion of materialism in John Locke's
Essay concerning Human Understanding. Stewart Duncan probes the thought and debates that originated in the seventeenth-century yet extended far beyond it, and it offers a distinctive, new understanding of Locke's discussion of the human mind.
Table des matières
- Introduction
- 1. Hobbes against Descartes
- 2. Hobbes's Materialism
- 3. More and Cudworth against Hobbes
- 4. Cavendish's Anti-Hobbesian Materialism
- 5. Locke against Descartes
- 6. Locke on Substance, Spirit, and the Idea of God
- 7. Locke, God, and Materialism
- 8. Locke's Inclinations
- Epilogue: Lockean materialism
- Bibliography
A propos de l'auteur
Stewart Duncan is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Florida, where he has taught since 2005. He is the author of numerous articles on Hobbes, Leibniz, and other seventeenth-century philosophers, and the editor (with Antonia LoLordo) of Debates in Modern Philosophy (Routledge, 2013).
Résumé
Are human beings purely material creatures, or is there something else to them, an immaterial part that does some (or all) of the thinking, and might even be able to outlive the death of the body?
This book is about how a series of seventeenth-century philosophers tried to answer that question. It begins by looking at the views of Thomas Hobbes, who developed a thoroughly materialist account of the human mind, and later of God as well. This is in obvious contrast to the approach of his contemporary René Descartes. After examining Hobbes's materialism, Stewart Duncan considers the views of three of his English critics: Henry More, Ralph Cudworth, and Margaret Cavendish. Both More and Cudworth thought Hobbes's materialism radically inadequate to explain the workings of the world, while Cavendish developed a distinctive, anti-Hobbesian materialism of her own. The second half of the book focuses on the discussion of materialism in John Locke's Essay concerning Human Understanding, arguing that we can better understand Locke's discussion if we see how and where he is responding to this earlier debate. At crucial points Locke draws on More and Cudworth to argue against Hobbes and other materialists. Nevertheless, Locke did a good deal to reveal how materialism was a genuinely possible view, by showing how one could develop a detailed account of the human mind without presuming it was an immaterial substance.
This work probes the thought and debates that originated in the seventeenth-century yet extended far beyond it. And it offers a distinctive, new understanding of Locke's discussion of the human mind.
Texte suppl.
... Stewart Duncan provides a lucid and judicious investigation of some central episodes in the history of materialism in seventeenth-century Britain... From the point of view of Locke scholarship, the book as a whole does a terrific job of succinctly supplying an illuminating context for considering Locke's connections to materialism and, via judicious distinctions and arguments, motivating a specific and original set of interpretive claims. More broadly, it is a book that carefully investigates some varieties of materialism and responses to it in seventeenth-century Britain, while also indicating the rich tangle of issues connected to materialism (physical, metaphysical, epistemological, and religious issues, among others) that propelled arguments for and against. It's a book that anyone interested in Locke or early modern materialism will want to read.
