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The focus of the present work is Leibniz's middle period and the core themes and core texts from his multilingual correspondence are presented in English from the following subject areas: mathematics, natural philosophy, physics (and cosmology), power technology (including mining and transport), engineering and engineering science, projects (scientific, technological and economic projects), alchemy and chemistry, geology, biology and medicine.
The focus of the present work is Leibniz's middle period and the core themes and core texts from his multilingual correspondence are presented in English from the following subject areas: mathematics, natural philosophy, physics (and cosmology), power technology (including mining and transport), engineering and engineering science, projects (scientific, technological and economic projects), alchemy and chemistry, geology, biology and medicine.
Gučetić’s Commentary gives a precious glimpse into the transformative character of Aristotle’s Rhetoric in the Renaissance, demonstrating the profound influence this ancient text had not only on leading Humanist scholars and renowned Renaissance philosophers, but also on lesser-known thinkers who depended on the art of persuasion in their political and judicial careers.
Gučetić’s Commentary gives a precious glimpse into the transformative character of Aristotle’s Rhetoric in the Renaissance, demonstrating the profound influence this ancient text had not only on leading Humanist scholars and renowned Renaissance philosophers, but also on lesser-known thinkers who depended on the art of persuasion in their political and judicial careers.
This book aims to develop just such an idea by thoroughly analyzing the most representative works of the reform of the mind in the early modern period: Francis Bacon’s New Organon (1620), René Descartes’ Discourse on the Method (1637), and Baruch Spinoza’s Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (1677). From this analysis it will emerge that these modern works fully deserve to be counted among the tradition of philosophy as way of life. On closer inspection, the inquiries about method elaborated in these works are fully understandable only when read in the light of a broader and more complex philosophical need: to establish the spiritual conditions for accessing truth and aspiring to full self-realization.
This book aims to develop just such an idea by thoroughly analyzing the most representative works of the reform of the mind in the early modern period: Francis Bacon’s New Organon (1620), René Descartes’ Discourse on the Method (1637), and Baruch Spinoza’s Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (1677). From this analysis it will emerge that these modern works fully deserve to be counted among the tradition of philosophy as way of life. On closer inspection, the inquiries about method elaborated in these works are fully understandable only when read in the light of a broader and more complex philosophical need: to establish the spiritual conditions for accessing truth and aspiring to full self-realization.
Abstract
Following Hadot and Foucault, philosophy seems to arise from a question that drives personal self-examination: Can I change? This equally embraces the epistemic question of the necessary conditions to access true knowledge; the practical question of the rules of life that must be assumed to effectively appropriate this knowledge; and the soteriological question of the highest expectations for said process of self-transformation. From these three issues, it is possible to do an interwoven reading of the early modern works analyzed in the previous chapters of the book, to compare their different positions. From this reading, we might say that it is time to stop understanding the analyzed early modern works just as specific theories dedicated to scientific method, and instead read them in a considerably more complex way, as “philosophical investigations,” in the Hadotian sense, i.e., as projects of self-reformation. For this reason, each of the three theories of self-reformation developed by these works becomes hardly comprehendible if the essentially practical aspect grounding them is not considered.
Abstract
In the Discourse on the Method Descartes calls us to free ourselves from subjection to external and internal preceptors, to become true subjects of knowledge and of action. The Discourse is sustained by an underlying conviction: we can and, to some extent, should, change. The intricate composition of appetitive, rational, sensory, and intellectual powers, which makes up every real human being, does not constitute a fixed but a dynamic structure. By practicing adequate discipline, we can acquire new habits, emending our previous ones. Towards this goal we are guided by rules, those from method and those from morality. However, the condition of possibility to change one’s own judgements and have different attitudes towards one’s appetites is found in the fact that there is something in us that transcends our sensory limits. This self-transcendency is discovered in the provisional moral code, where we experience the properly metaphysical dimension of our freedom. Such an experience is further substantiated by the ontological independence of the mind from the body, appearing with the cogito, and is finally founded upon the existence of God, which warrants our effective knowledge of the world.