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ISSN 0022-5053 (print)
E-ISSN 1538-4586 (electronic)

Last updated: January 2010

© Journal of the History of Philosophy, Inc.

Tables of Contents

The full texts of articles, discussions, and book reviews from volume 1 (1963) to the current issue are available here (via Project Muse).

Also available here are the contents and abstracts of forthcoming issues.

Forthcoming issue
July 2010 (vol. 48.3)

ARTICLES

The Ends of Weather: Teleology in Renaissance Meteorology
Craig Martin

Renaissance natural philosophers believed that meteorological phenomena were imperfect mixtures that lacked their own essences or substantial forms. This contention, along with the lack of any significant discussion of teleology in Aristotle’s Meteorology, left Renaissance natural philosophers with several options in discussions of the final causes of weather. Some, particularly Italian scholars, contended that there were no final causes for meteorological events. In contrast, Pietro Pomponazzi argued that, while meteorological phenomena were accidental, they were purposeful as part of God’s ordering of the universe, even though humans are unable to understand these purposes. Many Lutheran scholars believed that these ends could be known, arguing that their purpose derived from their being divine signs of the future and God’s will.

Descartes and the Augustinian Tradition of Devotional Meditation: Tracing a Minim Connection
Matt Hettche

Contemporary discussions on the literary format of Descartes’s Meditations typically focus on two issues. The first is whether Descartes’s text resembles and is possibly influenced by the genre of religious devotional exercises, and the second is whether the stylistic devices employed by Descartes are philosophically significant. Building upon the efforts of Gary Hatfield, Bradley Rubidge, and Martial Gueroult, I argue that Descartes is influenced by an Augustinian tradition of spiritual exercise and that this influence is philosophically important for how we understand the cogito. I examine, in particular, the relevance of Marin Mersenne’s recently rediscovered treatise L’usage de la raison (1623). This work exhibits features of an Augustinian style of religious meditation, and it is a text that can be easily connected to Descartes.

Apriority, Reason, and Induction in Hume
Houston Smit

I argue that Hume employs a notion of the a priori that, though unfamiliar today, was standard in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. On this notion of the a priori, to know something a priori is to know it from the grounds that make it true—that is, from grounds that do not merely establish that it is true, but explain why it is true. I am particularly concerned to show that Hume uses this notion of the a priori in discussing the nature of inductive—or in his terms, probable—reasoning in Section IV of the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. For recognizing this point helps to clarify the problem about the rational justification of induction that Hume develops over the course of this discussion.

Hegel’s Account of Contradiction in the Science of Logic Reconsidered
Karin de Boer

This article challenges the prevailing interpretations of Hegel’s account of the concept “contradiction” in the Science of Logic by arguing that it is concerned with the principle of Hegel’s method rather than with the classical law of non-contradiction. I first consider Hegel’s Doctrine of Essence in view of Kant’s discussion of the concepts of reflection in the first Critique. On this basis, I examine Hegel’s account of the logical principles based on the concepts “identity,” “opposition,” and “contradiction.” Finally, I point out how the principle Hegel derives from the concept of contradiction actually informs his own method.

The Original Ground of Self-Awareness in Schleiermacher’s Mature Philosophy
Jeffrey Hoover

Schleiermacher’s account of subjectivity and its unique relation to his predecessors’ transcendental views of subjectivity, as well as its relation to more recent criticisms of transcendental subjectivity, has been the subject of renewed interest recently within philosophical circles. Of particular interest has been Schleiermacher’s attempt to ground the subject’s ability to be reflectively aware of itself by appeal to an ego-less pre-reflective self-familiarity of consciousness. While the recent resurgence of interest in Schleiermacher’s philosophical thought has been primarily informed by his writings on hermeneutics and dialectics, the present essay will build on this work by attending also to Schleiermacher’s work in philosophical ethics, which has been less acknowledged in recent discussions of his account of subjectivity. The resulting analysis reveals more fully the origin and nature of immediate self-familiarity. In particular, it discloses its original ground in the natural uniqueness of particular thinking organisms. The rudimentary self-less self-familiarity of consciousness that is a prerequisite for self-awareness is, for Schleiermacher, fundamentally an embodied activity. This embodied nature of subjectivity not only serves to ground the activity of subjectivity in general, but also accounts for the non-transposable individuality that he thinks characterizes the reflective conscious life of subjects.