1st Edition
Powers and Abilities in Early Modern Philosophy
This book explores different accounts of powers and abilities in early modern philosophy. It analyzes powers and abilities as a package, hopefully enabling us to better understand them both and to see similarities as well as dissimilarities.
While some prominent early modern accounts of power have been studied in detail, this volume covers lesser-known thinkers and several early modern women philosophers. The volume also investigates early modern accounts of powers and abilities in a more systematic fashion than has been previously done. By broadening its scope in these ways, the volume uncovers trends and tendencies in early modern thinking about powers and abilities that are easy to miss. The chapters explore how twenty-two early modern thinkers approached the following questions:
- What kind of entities are powers and abilities? Are they reducible to something categorical or not?
- What is the relation between powers and abilities? Is there a fundamental metaphysical difference between them or not?
- How do we know what powers objects have and what abilities agents have?
- Are human abilities in any way special? How do they relate to the abilities non-human animals have? And how do they relate to the powers of inanimate objects?
Powers and Abilities in Early Modern Philosophy will appeal to scholars and advanced students working in the history of early modern philosophy, in metaphysics, and in the history of science.
Introduction Sebastian Bender and Dominik Perler
1. Suárez on Powers and Abilities as Inner Causes Dominik Perler
2. Real Tendencies: Descartes on Dispositions and Powers in the Material World Jean-Pascal Anfray
3. Occasionalism, Powers, and Human Freedom in French Cartesianism Tad M. Schmaltz
4. Sergeant versus Le Grand on Forms and Causal Power Han Thomas Adriaenssen
5. Move your Body! Cavendish on Self-Motion Colin Chamberlain
6. Hobbes on Powers, Accidents, and Motions Stewart D. Duncan
7. Gravity, Occult Qualities, and Newton’s Ontology of Powers Patrick J. Connolly
8. Spinoza on Powers and Abilities Martin Lin
9. Locke on the Right Use of Our Abilities Jennifer Marušić
10. Forces and Abilities in Leibniz Stephan Schmid
11. Du Châtelet on the Powers of Bodies and Minds Marcy P. Lascano
12. Creatures of Habit: Condillac on the Abilities of Animals Jeremy Dunham
13. Moral Competence as a Distinctively Human Ability: Rousseau and Herder Anik Waldow
14. Watts and Trotter Cockburn on the Power of Thinking Ruth Boeker
15. Mental Faculties and Powers and the Foundations of Hume’s Philosophy Karl Schafer
16. Reid on Powers and Abilities M. Folescu
17. Kant on Abilities, Human Freedom, and Complete Determination Sebastian Bender
Biography
Sebastian Bender is Junior Professor of Philosophy at Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. He specializes in early modern philosophy, with a focus on the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century. He is the author of Leibniz’ Metaphysik der Modalität (2016) and co-editor of Causation and Cognition in Early Modern Philosophy (2020).
Dominik Perler is Professor of Philosophy at Humboldt-Universität, Berlin, and Co-Director of the Human Abilities Center. His research focuses on medieval and early modern philosophy. His books include Feelings Transformed. Philosophical Theories of the Emotions, 1270-1670 (author, 2018), The Faculties: A History (editor, 2015), and Causation and Cognition in Early Modern Philosophy (co-editor, 2020).
