Overview

This book sets out to convey the breadth of philosophical interest in life and death during the early modern period. It ranges over debates in metaphysics, the life sciences (as we now call them), epistemology, the philosophy of mathematics, philosophical psychology, the philosophy of religion, the philosophy of education, and ethics. At the same time, it aims to illuminate the relationships between the problems explored under these headings. Much of the fascination of early modern discussions of life and death lies in the way apparently disparate commitments merge into strange and unfamiliar outlooks, and challenge some of our most deeply rooted assumptions. In recent years there has been a wave of interest in the place of the life sciences within early modern natural philosophy, and biological questions about life and death form part of the subject matter discussed in these chapters. But Life and Death in Early Modern Philosophy has a further ambition: to link the predominantly theoretical preoccupations associated with the study of organisms to the practical aspect of philosophy. Instead of giving priority to themes that anticipate the preoccupations of modern science, the volume aims to remind us that philosophy, as our early modern predecessors understood it, was also about learning how to live and how to die--this, above all, is why life and death mattered to them.

Full Product Details

Author:   Susan James (Professor of Philosophy, Professor of Philosophy, Birkbeck College London)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press
Imprint:   Oxford University Press
Edition:   1
Dimensions:   Width: 16.30cm , Height: 2.40cm , Length: 24.00cm
Weight:   0.702kg
ISBN:  

9780192843616

ISBN 10:   0192843613
Pages:   368
Publication Date:   07 September 2021
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   To order  
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Table of Contents

Susan James: Introduction I Feeling Alive 1: Ursula Renz: The Consciousness of Being Alive as a Source of Knowledge II Immortality 2: Michael Moriarty: 'The Thought of Death Changes All our Ideas and Condemns our Plans': Early modern Christian philosophical perspectives on death 3: Matteo Favaretti Camposampiero: The Banishment of Death: Leibniz's Scandalous Immortalism III Learning to Live 4: Giuliana di Biase: Human Life as a State of Mediocrity in John Locke 5: Lisa Shapiro: Learning to Live a Human Life 6: Julie R. Klein: Spinozan Meditations on Life and Death IV Learning to Die 7: Michael Jaworzyn: 'Meditatio Mortis', Post-Cartesian Conceptions of Life and the Conjunction of Mind and Body 8: Piet Steenbakkers: Living Well, Dying Well: Life and Death in Spinoza's Philosophy and Biography 9: Piero Schiavo: Prevailing over Death: Democritus and the Myth of a Philosophical Death V Suicide 10: Sarah Tropper: When the Manner of Death Disagrees with the Status of Life. The Intricate Question of Suicide in Early Modern Philosophy 11: Teresa Tato Lima: David Hume's Philosophical Approach to Suicide 12: John J. Callanan: Less than Zero: Kant's Opposition to Suicide VI Inanimate and Animate 13: Barnaby R. Hutchins: 'Everyone knows what life is': Life as an Irreducible in and outside of Descartes' Metaphysics and Biology 14: Steph Marston: Affect and Effect: Spinoza on Life 15: Charles T. Wolfe: Vitalism and the Metaphysics of Life: The Discreet Charm of Eighteenth Century Vitalism

Reviews

A fascinating book * P. A. Streveler, CHOICE *

Author Information

Susan James is Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College London. Her main areas of interest are early modern philosophy, feminist philosophy, political philosophy, and the philosophy of art. Her publications include Passion and Action: The Emotions in Early-Modern Philosophy (Oxford, 1997), Spinoza on Philosophy Religion and Politics: The Theological-Political Treatise (Oxford, 2012); and Spinoza on Learning to Live Together (Oxford, 2020).

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