The institutional setting

Method and the study of nature

INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND Determinism, broadly speaking, is the doctrine that whatever happens in the world is brought about by causes other than itself. In this sense, all the major philosophers of the seventeenth century – with the possible exception of Male-branche – were determinists. But these same philosophers also believed in human freedom. It follows that each of them (again, perhaps excepting Malebranche) was a compatibilist with respect to freedom and determination: each held that being free is logically compatible with being causally determined. Yet their specific teachings on this subject are very different from one another. For they had very different views on the nature and scope of human freedom, and different conceptions of causation. This chapter concentrates on the teachings of these major figures: Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Malebranche, Locke, and Leibniz. There were, of course, other seventeenth-century thinkers who concerned themselves with freedom and determinism – this was one of the most frequently debated issues of the age. And some of these others, in opposition to the philosophers, were incompatibilists. They held that an action logically cannot both be causally determined and be free, in any proper sense of ‘free’. An incompatibilist has two options: adhere to determination and deny that anything or anyone is free (this is hard determinism) or admit free actions and claim that these are undetermined, and thereby reject the doctrine of determinism (this is libertarianism). We know of no seventeenth-century thinker who took the hard determinist position, but quite a few were libertarians.

Determinism and human freedom

Ideas and objective being

INTRODUCTION That the passions are both wayward and destructive is one of the commonplaces of seventeenth-century thought. Plays, religious tracts, meditational manuals, educational handbooks, maxims, and philosophical treatises all emphasise this conviction, remorselessly probing the hazards posed by our emotions and desires. To be passionate is to be blinkered and impressionable, vulnerable and a threat to others. At the same time, it is part of our natural condition, an endowment with which we are born and which we rarely escape. This fundamental fact about human nature is held to be compatible with a vast diversity of temperaments. Among the many factors that may have a hand in shaping our individual emotional dispositions are the circumstances of a child’s conception, the social position of its family, its experiences in the womb, the climate in which it grows up, its education, the chance associations and repetitions of events it encounters, and the presence or absence of divine grace. But the processes by which our passions are channelled or modified do not usually create well-rounded and balanced personalities. On the contrary, adults are often left with powerful contradictory affections and thus remain vulnerable to destructive conflicts of emotion. Sometimes, as seventeenth-century drama vividly reminds us, this flaw in human nature can be the cause of tragedy; and at a less apocalyptic level its effect is to make people inconstant and restless, driven from one emotion to the next as waves on the sea are driven by the wind.

Reason, the passions, and the good life

Volume 1 Introduction by Rev.Richard Acworth Selections from: A Collection of Miscellanies: Consisting of Poems, Essays, Discourses and Letters (1687) and Christian Blessedness: Or Discourses upon the Beatitudes of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to which are added, Reflections upon a Late Essay Concerning Human Understanding with a Reply to the Remarques made upon them by the Athenian Society (3rd ed., 1694) c. 300pp Volume 2 The Theory and Regulation of Love: A Moral Essay to which are added Letters Philosophical and Moral between the Author and Dr. Henry More (1688) 264pp Volume 3 Reflections upon the Conduct of Human Life: With Reference to the Study of Learning and Knowledge. In a Letter to the... Lady Masham (1690) 204pp Volume 4 Reason and Religion: Or, the Grounds and Measures of Devotion, Consider'd from the Nature of God, and the Nature of Man (2nd ed., 1693) 280pp Volume 5 An Account of Reason and Faith: In Relation to the Mysteries of Christianity (1697) 364pp Volumes 6 & 7 An Essay Towards the Theory of the Ideal or Intelligible World Design'd for Two Parts (1701-1704) 488pp / 608pp Volume 8 A Philosophical Discourse Concerning the Natural Immortality of the Soul... Occasion'd by Mr. Dodwell's Late Epistolatory Discourse (1708) 138pp

The theory and regulation of love : a moral essay

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The theory and regulation of love : a moral essay