The Philosopher in Early Modern Europe
The Nature of a Contested Identity
Ian Hunter editor Conal Condren editor Stephen Gaukroger editor
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Cambridge University Press
Published:28th Sep '06
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
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- Paperback£39.99(9780521123891)
This collection of essays provides access to key early modern disputes over what it meant to be a philosopher.
This collection of essays by leading figures in 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, political and religious contexts in which such disputes took place.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.
“This is a thought-provoking collection. It fits a now-familiar scholarly mold of seeing knowledge as embedded in particular societies and their histories. In this case, contributors show how what counts as ‘philosophy’ in any time and place depends on these local particularities, detailing the assertion, for Early Modern Europe, via arguments both of wider temporal sweep and of intricate analysis of particular figures and their writings. At the same time, and for this reader more interestingly, some of its contributors explore how those who then carried out the tasks of philosophy did so within a context of changing experiences of personhood…This work is a major contribution to such a project.” Timothy J. Reiss, Metascience
ISBN: 9780521866460
Dimensions: 229mm x 152mm x 21mm
Weight: 610g
302 pages