The Philosopher in Early Modern Europe: The Nature of a Contested Identity

Front Cover
Conal Condren, Stephen Gaukroger, Ian Hunter
Cambridge University Press, 2006 M09 28
In this groundbreaking collection of essays the history of philosophy appears in a fresh light, not as reason's progressive discovery of its universal conditions, but as a series of unreconciled disputes over the proper way to conduct oneself as a philosopher. By shifting focus from the philosopher as proxy for the universal subject of reason to the philosopher as a special persona arising from rival forms of self-cultivation, philosophy is approached in terms of the social office and intellectual deportment of the philosopher, as a personage with a definite moral physiognomy and institutional setting. In so doing, this collection of essays by leading figures in the fields of both philosophy and the history of ideas provides access to key early modern disputes over what it meant to be a philosopher, and to the institutional and larger political and religious contexts in which such disputes took place.
 

Contents

The university philosopher in early modern Germany
35
The persona of the philosopher and the rhetorics of
66
things on his terms and unsurprisingly he provides a resolution85
89
the
90
Hobbes the universities and the history of philosophy
113
historical knowledge such as the Royal Society which Hobbes
139
the case of
140
reaching a legal determination Ronald Dworkin would then rescue the
159
Althusius on the formation of
160
spiritual askesis in Cartesian
182
The natural philosopher and the virtues
202
John Locke and polite philosophy
254

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