Peter Adamson’s Rules for History of Philosophy

Just dashing this post off quickly on my way to seminar, I wanted to draw people’s attention to a series of posts by Peter Adamson outlining some rules for how to approach history of philosophy.

When I have more of a chance to read the rules he is outlining, I may post some thoughts on them, but for now I just wanted to bring the posts to people’s attention.

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Hackett to publish a teaching edition of Margaret Cavendish’s Observations

Given that Cavendish has been getting a lot of love around here (and rightly so!), I thought readers of this blog might like to know that there will be a teaching edition of Margaret Cavendish’s Observations upon Experimental Philosophy published by Hackett (and edited by me).

I alluded to this in an earlier post asking what early modern texts are most in need of teaching editions. And I’m glad to see that I don’t need to make the case for the value of such an edition, which would make it easier to include her in early modern survey courses. Unfortunately, though, it likely won’t be available until 2016.

And if you are unfamiliar with Hackett’s series of teaching editions of key early modern texts, I’d recommend taking a look!

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A few of the Philosophical Letters

After putting together a small set of extracts from Margaret Cavendish’s Philosophical Letters for a class, I figured that others might find it interesting or useful, so I posted it online: Some of the Philosophical Letters.

That page presents five of the letters in part 1 of Cavendish’s book: letter 1 (which is introductory), letter 4 (the first letter on Hobbes, on the views about perception in ch.1 of Leviathan), letter 30 (the first letter on Descartes, on body and motion), letter 35 (on the alleged real distinction between mind and body), and letter 36 (on reason and non-human animals, discussing Descartes’s arguments in Discourse part 5). Together, they give examples of Cavendish’s criticisms of Descartes and Hobbes, while also introducing important aspects of her own views.

Some more textual details below (as well as on the page itself):

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Steve Daniel’s Early Modern Philosophy Calendar

Steve Daniel’s extremely useful calendar of events in Early Modern Philosophy just got more useful!

Steve has added two new features to the Early Modern Calendar:

“Announced events”: a drop down listing of all posted events arranged in the order of posting. This will allow people to see what has been posted since the last time they consulted the Calendar (thus not having to go through the whole list all over again)

“Upcoming Submission Deadline Dates”: a drop down listing to remind visitors of upcoming deadlines for submitting papers or proposals

A lot of the things that make our lives easier in this profession are basically done as labors of love by people, and so, I want to take this opportunity to direct people to Steve’s really great calendar, and also to thank Steve for all the work he does making it easier for early modernists to know what events are going on and what the deadlines are for submitting to them.

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International Berkeley Essay Prize Competition

The University of Rochester invites submission to the International Berkeley Essay Prize competition:

http://www.rochester.edu/College/phl/prize.html

The deadline is November 1, 2014.

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Hume and his 18th Century Critics

John Wright has organized an exciting conference later in September, on Hume and his 18th Century Critics.

The website for the conference is humeandhiscritics.com, and perhaps most exciting for anyone interested who does not live in Michigan is that folks are encouraged to attend and be involved through the conference livestream.

Flyer

Program

 

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