Justin E. H. Smith

Georg Ernst Stahl y la curiosa historia del “Vitalismo” Leibniziano

[I Congreso Iberoamericano Leibniz, San José, Costa Rica, 10-12 Julio, 2012. Gracias a Leon Garcia Garagarza y Rafael Nájera por la traducción]

Hasta la fecha, los estudiosos sólo han tenido un acceso muy limitado a los documentos relacionados con el amargo debate que G. W. Leibniz y Georg Ernst Stahl mantuvieron acerca del papel del alma en el cuerpo y sobre las fuentes de la movilidad corporal. Las únicas dos o menos traducciones completas del latín –la de Blondin de 1864 y la de Carvallo del 2004--, adolecen, cada una a su manera, de fallas y no son enteramente confiables. En ambas, la falla más significativa es que las dos toman como base de sus propias publicaciones la edición de la correspondencia mediada titulada Negotium otiosum, seu Skiamachia [Una contienda fatigosa, o: Boxeo de sombra] que Stahl diera a la luz en 1720, a pesar de que, como sabemos ahora –y como pudiera adivinarse a partir del temerario título que escogió—el mismo Stahl presentó un recuento completamente distorsionado del debate, tanto en el modo en el que enmarcó el debate en su prefacio, como en las notas y en las interpolaciones que añadió a las partes del debate dedicadas a representar las opiniones de Leibiniz, por no mencionar las frecuentes alteraciones de las propias palabras de Leibiniz. Si acaso Stahl creía que “boxeaba con la sombra” de su enemigo, esto es porque éste ya llevaba cuatro años muerto, y no estaba pues en condiciones de realizar un contraataque.

Sin embargo, un examen de los manuscritos que Leibiniz le enviara al intermediario Carl Hildebrand von Canstein entre 1709 y 1711, nos muestra la mente filosófica de Leibiniz en su punto más sutil, y constituye la expresión más madura de sus ideas fisiológicas y filosóficas acerca de la estructura y la función de los cuerpos vivos., Cada participante en la contienda epistolar enarbola ideas opuestas sobre la naturaleza de la vida y sobre el sistema de los principios que rigen el mundo de los fenoménos. Stahl rebate la perspectiva micro-mecanicista en los intentos contemporáneos por explicar los procesos fisiológicos, mientras que Leibiniz se erige por su parte como un firme partidario de tal perspectiva, y se empeña en establecer una mathesis specialis aplicable a los cuerpos orgánicos, capaz de correlacionar las inferencias empíricas con los modelos mecanicistas y de eslabonar el conocimiento práctico con el teórico. Stahl y Leibiniz exponen concepciones divergentes sobre la conexión entre el cuerpo y el alma y sobre el papel que los principios psíquicos tienen en la formación, organización y funcionamiento de las “máquinas de la naturaleza.” Ambos difieren asimismo en su evaluación de la relevancia que tiene la teleología para explicar las funciones y las disfunciones, así como los comportamientos normales y patológicos de los animales y de los seres humanos.

En este trabajo se argumentará, en primer lugar, que el prolongado argumento de Lebniz contra la opinión de Stahl acerca del papel del alma en el cuerpo constituye su más enérgico rechazo a la doctrina que poco tiempo después vendría a denominarse 'vitalismo', según la cual la vida es, a fin de cuentas, una fuerza no corporal que juega un papel causal en el ámbito corporal, en particular, el papel de preservar la estructura del cuerpo a través del tiempo. Para el Leibniz maduro, por otro lado, la vida es solamente percepción, y por lo tanto incumbe sólo a sustancias simples. Los cuerpos animales, en contraste, tienen su organización y funcionalidad como resultado de 'sólo su estructura vegetativa', es decir, como resultado de factores estrictamente no vitales y micromecánicos. Tal y como bromea Leibniz, si el alma tuviera la responsabilidad de mantener unido el cuerpo, entonces, como Crísipo había observado antes que él, realmente no estaría haciendo nada más de lo que hace la sal en un jamón curado. 



Sin embargo, desde las décadas inmediatemente posteriores a la publicación del Negotium otiosum y hasta el día de hoy, persiste la impresión de que la teoría leibniziana del cuerpo orgánico constituye al menos una concesión parcial al 'vitalismo' tras el evidente fracaso del mecanicismo austero de un Descartes o un Borelli. De hecho, algunos han visto en la teoría de Leibniz sobre la estructura orgánica del cuerpo una anticipación de ese tipo de vitalismo materialista que caracterizaría mucha de la filosofía natural francesa del siglo 18, un vitalismo según el cual toda la materia está viva y no existen individuos vivientes discretos. Fue en parte en vista de este aspecto del legado de Leibniz que Jacques Roger se quejaría de que "en general, el siglo 18 no comprendió muy bien la metafísica de Leibniz". ¿Cómo podemos explicar esta pobre comprensión? En este trabajo se argumentará, en segundo lugar, que el variado legado de Leibniz en el siglo 18 tiene mucho que ver con el hecho de que no hubo un sólo Leibniz en ese periodo sino varios Leibnizes locales. El Leibniz escoriado en Halle por ser un mecanicista impío no le habría sido para nada familiar a los científicos naturales franceses que, como mínimo, habrían pensado que Leibniz no era lo suficientemente impío. En general, podríamos decir que éste último grupo se enfocó en el pan-organicismo de Leibniz, según el cual todo en el mundo tiene una estructura orgánica, y lo confundió con pan-vitalismo, mientras que Stahl se enfocó en la doctrina leibniziana de la armonía preestablecida y correctamente comprendió una importante consecuencia de ella: que, a pesar de que todo el mundo está estructurado orgánicamente, nada en el mundo, al menos si se considera desde el punto de vista fenomenal, está vivo.



En tercer lugar, finalmente, se argumentará aquí que los argumentos de Leibniz contra Stahl no alcanzan a ser una concesión al vitalismo, sino que, en efecto, son una radicalización del anti-vitalismo que Leibniz había heredado de la tradición mecanicista: Descartes, después de todo, había dejado abierta la posibilidad de que al menos algo de la percepción estaría fundamentada en órganos y procesos corporales. Si se quiere entender el verdadero carácter del anti-vitalismo de Leibniz se debe primero, sin embargo, dirigir la atención a la preocupación con que Leibniz se opone a lo que él considera como involuntaria impiedad de los pietistas de Halle, incluyendo a Stahl, quien creía que Dios permite entidades 'vice-gerentes' para manejar la estructura y movimiento de los cuerpos. Al final, para Leibniz, el vitalismo de Stahl, así como la teoría de Newton del 'sensorium', es, de hecho, una variedad de animismo, y Leibniz, quizás mucho más que cualquier otro mecanicista, es extremadamente sensible al peligro de lo que él considera un incipiente culto a la naturaleza. En este sentido ha sido un error entre algunos de los seguidores y comentadores de Leibniz el suponer que la introducción del concepto de organismo de parte Leibniz tiene algo que ver con rechazo al mecanicismo: de hecho, tal y como el debate con Stahl muestra, este concepto permitió a Leibniz ofrecer una versión de mecanicismo adecuada para la tarea de explicar la estructura y movimiento de los cuerpos animales sin tener que hacer referencia a lo que el veía como la noción transcendental de 'vida'.

*


Bibliografía

T. Blondin, Œuvres medico-philosophiques et pratiques de G.E. Stahl, Tome VI, Paris: J.-B. Baillière & fils, 1864. 



Sarah Carvallo, La Controverse entre Stahl et Leibniz sur la vie, l’organisme et le mixte, Paris: Vrin, 2004.

François Duchesneau and Justin E. H. Smith, The Leibniz-Stahl Controversy, in The Yale Leibniz Series, Yale University Press, forthcoming.

L.J. Rather and J.B. Frerichs, “The Leibniz-Stahl Controversy, I: Leibniz’s opening objections to the Theoria medica vera”, Clio Medica, 3 (1968), 21-40.



L.J. Rather and J.B. Frerichs, “The Leibniz-Stahl Controversy, II: Stahl’s Survey of the Principal Points of Doubt”, Clio Medica, 5 (1970), 53-67. 



Georg Ernst Stahl, Skiamachia, sive, Negotium otiosum, Halle: Litteris & Impensis Orphanotrophei, 1720.

Classical Indian Philosophy

Vocabulary List, Week 4

Advaita -- अद्वैत -- non-dualism, non-duality; one of the branches of Vedānta philosophy.

Avidyā -- अविद्य -- ignorance; according to Advaita, the true nature of things.

Dvaita -- द्वैत -- dualism, duality; one of the branches of Vedānta philosophy.

Itihāsa -- इतिहास -- history; literally, 'so it was'; a subcategory of kāvya, which includes the Rāmāyana and the Mahābhārata.

Jīva -- जीव  -- living being; similar to but distinct from atman, which refers to the 'cosmic self', as he individual living being.

Kāma -- काम -- desire, wish, longing.

Kāvya -- काव्य -- epic poetry.

Kṛṣṇa -- कृष्ण  --  the eighth, complete avatar of Lord Vishnu (the supreme God of the Vaishnavites, one of the three principal branches of Hinduism); the one who reveals knowledge to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gītā.

Māya -- माय -- Illusion; the physical and mental reality of everyday consciousness.   

Mokṣa -- मोक्ष -- liberation, release (specifically, liberation from saṅsāra).

Pramāņa -- प्रमाण -- means of obtaining knowledge; as contrasted with the pramātŗ, the knower or subject of knowledge; and prameya, the thing known or the object of knowledge.

Mīmāṃsā -- मीमांसा -- also known as 'Purva Mīmāṃsā' or 'Prior Investigation'; one of the Orthodox schools of Hindu philosophy, explicates the mantras of the Samhita and the Brahmanas.

Saṅsāra -- संसार -- continuous flow; cycle of birth and death; reincarnation.  

Tat tvam asi -- तत्त्वमसि -- 'that thou art'; a central idea of the Chandogya Upanishad, holding that the self is identical with the whole.

Triguṇa -- त्रिगुण -- the three primary qualities of Prakṛti, namely sattva, the truth that attaches to happiness and knowledge; rajas, the instinct associated with action; tamas, the darkness arising from ignorance.

Vedānta -- वेदान्त -- literally, 'the end of the Vedas'; also known as Uttarā Mīmāṃsā or 'Posterior Investigation'; one of the Orthodox schools of Hindu philosophy, explicates the Aranyakas and the Upanishads.

Classical Indian Philosophy, Week 3

Notes on the canonical śruti literature (Part 1)

There are four Vedas:

1. The Ṛgveda: consisting mostly in hymns to the deities.

2. The Sāmaveda: more liturgical hymns, many derived from the Ṛgveda.

3. The Yajurveda: liturgy for the performance of ritual sacrifices.

4. The Atharvaveda: consisting mostly in formulas to counteract evil and disease; and other practical teachings. 

Each Veda is divided into four parts, according roughly to the order of composition. These are: 

A. The Saṃhita: literally, 'collection'; the collected hymns that are chanted by an officiating priest at a Hindu ritual.

B. The Brāhmaṇas: commentaries on the hymns, explaining the rules for the proper performance of rituals.

C. The Āraṇyakas: literally, the 'forest writings', continuing in the style of the Brāhmaṇas and outlining the rules for the proper performance of sacrifices.

D. The Upaniṣads: literally, upa-, 'near' + ni-, 'down' + sad, 'to sit' = 'sitting down next to'. The philosophical elaboration of the content of the Vedas. The end of the Vedas and the basis of the Vedānta (from veda + anta, 'end').

Each of A-D includes several, individually named works. Thus for example we have the Chandogya Upaniṣad, which is sāmavedic, or one of the Upaniṣads of the Sāmaveda. It would be no small feat to learn the names of all of these works, let alone to master their content! But it is important to at least be familiar with the structure and immensity of the śruti corpus.

The Ṛgveda is the oldest of the four Vedas. The Saṃhita component consists in hymns, divided into ten cycles or Mandalas. These are of varying length, but there are 1028 hymns in total.

The Mandalas were composed at different times (and likely by different authors, over the course of several centuries in the second millennium BCE. The order in which we have them today is likely not the original order of their appearance. The oldest extant manuscript dates only to the mid-15th century CE.

Each of the Mandalas consists in humns that are principally addressed to one or two gods or groups of gods. These include a number of personified natural forces and entities, which would become largely archaic in the later development of Hinduism. The important ones to remember are:

• Agni: god of fire and receiver of sacrifices.
• The Aśvins: twin horsemen representing sunrise and sunset.

• The Adityas: 'solar-class deities', sons of Aditi. There are seven in all, including:

• Mitrā: divinity associated with loyalty and friendship.
• Varuṇa: protector of Ṛta, associated with water and the celestial elements.
• Indra: lord of heaven, god of war.

The important divinities that are more straightforwardly the personification of natural elements or principles of reality include:

• Āpas: the Waters
• Pṛthivī: the Earth
• Soma: a ritually consumed plant (taxonomy disputed)
• Sūrya: the Sun
• Vāc: the Word, Speech, Voice

One noteworthy divinity of this class, given its relation to Indo-European cognates such as theos and Deus, is Dyauṣ Pitā: the Latin equivalent would be Deus Pater, i.e., 'Sky Father'. The consort of Pṛthivī (also known as Pṛthivī Mātṛ, 'Earth Mother').

Vocabulary List

Ātman -- आत्मन् -- 'Breath'; the substrate of the individual self; individual reality (identical with brahman in Advaita Vedanta).

Brahmā -- ब्रह्मा -- God of creation.

Brahman -- ब्रह्मन् -- Ultimate reality; cosmic whole; objective reality; the world.

Brāhmaṇas -- ब्राह्मणम् -- Part of the Vedas, following the Saṃhitas and preceding the
                Āraṇyakas and the Upaniṣads, consisting in prose treatises describing
                the significance of sacrificial rites.

Brahmin (this is an Anglicized, though accepted form; the Sanskrit is 'brāhmaṇa')-- ब्राह्मण -- Member of the highest, priestly caste of Indian society.

Dharma -- धर्म -- Law, natural law; merit, righteousness; duty, goal. From verbal root dhṛ-, 'to establish, uphold'.

Guṇa -- गुण -- Quality, property, kind; literally, 'thread'.

Īśvara --  ीश्वर -- God, lord, supreme being.

Karma -- कर्म -- Action, deed (from verbal root kṛ-, 'to do', thus karma : kṛ- :: deed : to do);
                rite; cause and effect; the accumulated effect of past deeds.

Prakṛti --  प्रकृति -- Nature; the primordial creatrix; that from which qualities come. 

Ṛta -- ऋतं -- Law, order; truth; what is naturally right.

Classical Indian Philosophy: Logic, Epistemology, and Metaphysics

Department of Philosophy, Concordia University

Winter, 2012

T 18:00-20:15

PR-100, SGW

Professor Justin E. H. Smith

Office: PR-402, SGW

E-Mail: justismi@alcor.concordia.ca

Telephone: 514-848-2424 x 2504

Office Hours: T 12:00-14:00, or by appointment.

Course Description. An intensive, text-based survey of the main schools of systematic philosophy in the various classical Indian traditions, with some attention to the historical and cultural context in which these texts were produced. Specific topics of interest include theories of inference, causation, negation, knowledge, being, monism, dualism, skepticism and materialism. The primary focus of the course is on the traditions of orthodox or āstika commentary on the Vedas, but we will also consider the so-called non-orthodox or nāstika philosophical schools which do not recognize the authority of the Vedas, such as Buddhism and the materialist and atheist Cārvāka school. We will also be considering the prephilosophical, mythological and linguistic substratum that partially unites the European and Indian traditions in deep antiquity, as well as the much more recent impact of Indian philosophy in Europe in the 17th-19th centuries in the work of August Wilhelm Schlegel, Arthur Schopenhauer and others.

Throughout, it will be one of our foremost purposes to understand the various Indian traditions in a demystified and de-exoticized way: not as some timeless, absolute opposite of Western thought, but rather as emerging out of the same broad context of the Eurasian 'Axial Age' that also gave rise to classical Greek philosophy at a time when 'the West' and 'Europe' meant nothing like what they mean today. Although we will be surveying a vast range of schools and epochs, the main philosophical concentration of the course, towards which much of our early work in the semester will be leading, will be on the systematic and analytic school of Nyāya, focusing principally on logic and theory of inference, as well as the closely related atomist school of Vaiśeṣika, concerned mostly with metaphysics and natural philosophy.

No knowledge of Sanskrit is required to take this course (not to mention Pali, Tamil, Tibetan, Malayalam, etc.). However, you must be prepared to memorize a very large amount of Sanskrit technical vocabulary (many Indian philosophical terms have no precise English translation, so it's best to just learn the original), on which you will be tested at some point during the term.

Prerequisites: Advanced or graduate standing in philosophy, or instructor's approval. For students from outside philosophy, preference will be given to those who have completed coursework in Indology, South Asian comparative religion, or related fields. This is, above all, a course for students with an interest in doing serious, scholarly work on the history of systematic Indian philosophy. It is not for students who have yet to master the basics of scholarly writing, nor is it for students who are simply curious about India or about 'Eastern wisdom'.

If there are any students of Sanskrit in the course, we might wish to form a separate group to meet and read together one or two of the assigned readings in the original language.

Required Texts:

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and Charles A. Moore, A Sourcebook in Indian Philosophy, Princeton University Press, 1957.

In addition, a packet will be available at Copies Concordia (on Maisonneuve between Guy and Mackay).

Means of Evaluation:

• One midterm exam (40%)
• One final research paper on an approved topic, 12-15 pages (undergraduates)/15-20 pages (graduates) (50%)
• Class participation and discussion (10%)

SCHEDULE OF CLASSES

PART I: INTRODUCTION AND CONTEXT

Week 1: January 4.

What is philosophy? Is Philosophy by definition Western? Is there a clearly defined body of doctrines that we can characterize as 'Eastern'? How do we distinguish between philosophy and other related cultural spheres such as mythology and religion? And should we distinguish?

Readings: Karl Jaspers, Way to Wisdom: An Introduction to Philosophy (1981); G. E. R. Lloyd, The Ambitions of Curiosity: Understanding the World in Ancient Greece and China (1983); Jack Goody, The Logic of Writing and the Organisation of Society (1986); Goody, The Theft of History (2006) (all in packet).

Week 2: January 10

Who are the Indians? What do we know from Indo-European historical linguistics and archaeology? Common themes in Indo-European mythology and material culture. The place of Sanskrit within the Indo-European family, and its role in Indian history. The Sanskrit tradition: written or spoken? Pāṇini and the primacy of grammar in the Sanskrit system of learning.

Readings: Wendy Doniger, The Hindus: An Alternative History (2009); Richard B. Onians, The Origins of European Thought about the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time, and Fate (1951); Kirk, Raven, and Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers (selections) (all in packet).

Week 3: January 17

The Beginnings. The life and world of the early Vedic authors; cosmological speculation in the Rig Veda (c. 1800 BCE); the priority of grammar in ancient Indian thought.

Readings: Rig Veda I.1, I.154. I.143, X.68, V.84, I.185, X.125,  VIII.41, X.82, X.90, X.129, IV.23, X.190 (all in Radhakrishnan and Moore); Pāṇini, Aṣṭādhyāyī, Bk. 4 (excerpts, in packet).

Week 4:  January 24

Epic Poetry and Codes of Law (c. 600 BCE-200 CE). Some difficulties of 'extracting' philosophy from works written in not-straightforwardly philosophical genres; God and the world in the Bhagavad-Gītā; dharma and mokṣa in the Laws of Manu; Vedanta philosophy in the Chāndogya Upaniṣad.

Readings: Radhakrishnan and Moore 129-145; 173-184; 192; Chāndogya Upaniṣad (excerpts in packet)

PART II: THE NĀSTIKA SCHOOLS

Week 5:  January 31

The CĀrvĀka School.  Why begin with the Nāstika Schols? The dialogue between orthodoxy and anti-orthodoxy. The doctrine of lokāyata (skeptical materialism).

Readings: the Sarvadarśanasaṃgraha (14th century CE, Radhakrishnan and Moore, 228- 234); the Sarvasiddhāntasaṃgraha (10th century CE, Radhakrishnan and Moore, 234-235); the Tattvopaplavasiṃha (c. 8th century CE, Radhakrishnan and Moore, 236-246).

Week 6:  February 7

Buddhism: Some General Themes

Readings: Nāgārjuna, the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (2nd-3rd centuries CE); The Dhammapada (Radhakrishnan and Moore, 290-328).

Week 7: February 14

Buddhist Logic

Readings: Nāgārjuna, the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (2nd-3rd centuries CE); Dharmakīrti, the Pramāṇavārttikakārika (7th century CE);  Fyodor Shcherbatskoy, Buddhist Logic (1930-32) (all in packet).

PART III: THE ĀSTIKA SCHOOLS

Week 8: February 21

Sāṃkhya ['enumeration of elements'] and Yoga

Readings: The Sāṃkhya-Kārikā (3rd century CE, Radhakrishnan and Moore 426-445; the Sāṃkhya-Pravacana Sūtra (14th century CE, Radhakrishnan and Moore 446-452).

Week 9: February 28

Mīmāṃsā (Pūrva Mīmāṃsā) [Critical reflection; 'pūrva' indicates 'prior'] and Vedānta (Uttarā Mīmāṃsā) ['Vedānta' indicates 'the end of the Vedas; 'uttarā' indicates 'later'. Thus Uttarā Mīmāṃsā is the critical reflection that comes later, namely, at the end of the Vedas]; the non-dualist philosophical system of Śaṅkara (788-c. 820 CE).

Readings: The Mīmāṃsā Sūtra (1st century BCE, Radhakrishnan and Moore 487-498); The Vedānta Sūtras of Śaṅkarākārya (8th century CE, Radhakrishnan and Moore 509-543).

Week 10: March 6

 Nyāya ['Inference, recursion, syllogism'].

Readings: The Nyāya Sūtra (3rd century CE, Radhakrishnan and Moore 358-379).

Week 11: March 13

Nyāya, continued. Navya-Nyāya; the doctrine of negation.

Readings: the Tattvacintāmaṇi of Gaṅgeśa Upādhyāya (13th century CE); Bimal Krishna Matilal, The Navya-Nyāya Doctrine of Negation. The Semantics and Ontology of Negative Statements in Navya-Nyāya Philosophy (both in packet).

Week 12: March 20

Vaiśeṣika

Readings: the Vaiśeṣika Sūtra of Kaṅāda (c. 2nd century BCE, Radhakrishnan and Moore, 387); the Padārthadharmasaṃgraha (4th century CE, Radhakrishnan and Moore, 397-410).

Week 13: March 27

Vaiśeṣika, continued.

Readings: the Padārthadharmasaṃgraha (Radhakrishnan and Moore, 410-423).

PART IV: THE EUROPEAN RECEPTION OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

Week 14: April 3

The reception of Indian philosophy in Europe in the 17th-19th centuries

Readings: François Bernier, Travels in the Mughal Empire (1670); August Wilhelm Schlegel, excerpts from the Indische Bibliothek (1823, my translation); Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation (excerpts) (all in packet).

Additional Preparatory Reading:

Kisor Kumar Chakrabarti, Classical Indian Philosophy of Mind: The Nyaya Dualist Tradition, SUNY Press, 1999.

Ainslie T. Embree (Ed.), Sources of Indian Tradition, vol. I: From the Beginning to 1800, Columbia University Press, 1988.

Jonardon Ganeri, Semantic Powers: Meanings and the Means of Knowing in Classical Indian Philosophy, Oxford University Press, 1999.

Jonardon Ganeri, Philosophy in Classical India: An Introduction and Analysis, Routledge, 2001.

Stephen J. Laumakis, An Introduction to Buddhist Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Bimal Krishna Matilal, The Navya-Nyāya Doctrine of Negation: The Semantics and Ontology of Negative Statements in Navya-Nyāya Philosophy, Harvard University Press, 1968.

Bimal Krishna Matilal, The Character of Logic in India, SUNY Press, 1998.

Jitendranath N. Mohanty, Classical Indian Philosophy, Rowman and Littlefield, 2001.

Sanskrit Language Instruction:

Michael Coulson, Teach Yourself Sanskrit, McGraw-Hill, 1976.

Madhav M. Deshpande, A Sanskrit Primer, Michigan Papers on South and Southeast Asian Studies No. 47, Centers for South and Southeast Asian Studies of the University of Michigan, 1997.

Robert P. Goldman and Sally J. Sutherland Goldman, Devavāṇīpraveśikā: An Introduction to the Sanskrit Language, University of California Press, 1999.

Sanskrit-English Dictionaries:

Vaman Shivram Apte, The Student's English-Sanskrit Dictionary,  Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 1884 [1993] [ideal for learners].

Otto von Böhtlingk, Sanskrit-Wörterbuch in kürzerer Fassung, Saint-Petersburg, 1879-1889 [repr. Buske Verlag, 2003].

M. Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary, Etymologically and Philologically Arranged, with special reference to Cognate Indo-European Languages, Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 1899 [2002].

PHIL 226: Animal Minds and Human Morals

Concordia University

Winter, 2012

 TR 10:15-11:30

 Professor Justin Smith

justismi@alcor.concordia.ca

Office: PR-402

Office Hours: R 12-2

 Course Description:

 What is going on in the minds of animals? How do we know what is going on in there? Do our ethical responsibilities towards animals, if we have any, flow from what is going on in there? That is, is there something about the inner lives of animals that compels us to take them seriously as beings with some moral status? If our knowledge of the cognitive capacities of the various species of animals is in fact the basis of our moral commitments to them, then why do we treat some animals (e.g., dogs) so much more gently than others (e.g., pigs), even though the scientific evidence tells us that the latter are no less intelligent than the former? Might our sense of what our varying moral commitments to various animals be based on something other than our knowledge (if in fact we have any) of the richness of their inner lives? On the basis of what, if anything, should we be seeking to ground our moral commitments to animals? In this class, we will try to answer all of these very difficult questions, with the help of a number of readings from some of the most influential recent philosophers to engage with the problem of animal minds and human morals. 

 Means of evaluation:

• One midterm exam consisting in short answer and essay questions (25%).
• One final exam consisting in short answer and essay questions (30%).
• 10 one-page précis of the week’s assigned texts, due in class each Wednesday  (30%).
• Class attendance and participation (15%).
  

Required Texts:

• Cass R. Sunstein and Martha C. Nussbaum, Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions (Oxford University Press, 2005).
• J. M. Coetzee, The Lives of Animals (Princeton University Press, 1999).
• A packet of readings will be available at Copies Concordia (on de Maisonneuve between Guy and Mackay).

Grading Policy

A         A grade in the ‘A’ range indicates that the student has done truly superior work, that he or she has not only thoroughly mastered all of the material, but also shows a true and rare talent in her or his engagement with it. Typically, only one or two A+ grades will be given in a semester.

 B         A grade in the ‘B’ range indicates that the student shows an above-average, but not rare and exceptional, grasp of the course material.  A grade in the ‘B’ range is a grade that indicates solid work by a dedicated student, even if in certain respects it shows room for improvement.

 C         A grade in the ‘C’ range indicates satisfactory work, while at the same time showing room for considerable improvement.

 D         A grade in the ‘D’ range is assigned to students who have completed a bare minimum of the course requirements, but who show no great talent for, and typically no interest in, thinking, writing, and talking about the subject at hand.

 F          An ‘F’ indicates that the student has not done the required course work, or has done it with such a degree of indifference that he or she may as well have not done it.

 Schedule of Classes:

Part I: Current Debates in Philosophy

Tuesday, 4 January: Introduction 

Thursday, 5 January: Cora Diamond, “Eating Meat and Eating People” (SN).

Tuesday, 10 January: Diamond, “Eating Meat and Eating People” (cont.).  

Thursday, 12 January: Richard Posner, “Animal Rights: Legal, Philosophical, and Pragmatic Perspectives” (SN). 

Tuesday, 17 January: Posner, “Animal Rights” (cont.).

Thursday, 19 January: Peter Singer, “A Response to Richard Posner” (SN).

Tuesday, 24 January: Martha Nussbaum, “Beyond Compassion and Humanity” (SN)

Thursday, 26 January: Nussbaum, “Beyond Compassion and Humanity” (cont.).

Tuesday, 31 January: Leslie J. Rogers and Gisela Kaplan, “All Animals Are Not Equal” (SN).

Thursday, 2 February: Rogers and Kaplan, “All Animals Are Not Equal” (cont.).

Tuesday, 7 February: Elizabeth Anderson, “Animal Rights and the Values of Nonhuman Life” (SN).

Thursday, 9 February: Elizabeth Anderson, "Animal Rights and the Values of Nonhuman Life" (cont). MIDTERM EXAM!

PART II: Engaging the Problem in Literature

Tuesday, 14 February (DM): J. M. Coetzee, The Lives of Animals

Thursday, 16 February: Coetzee, The Lives of Animals (cont.).

Tuesday, 21 February, Coetzee, The Lives of Animals (cont.).

Thursday, 23 February Coetzee, The Lives of Animals (cont.).

PART III: The History of the Problem

Tuesday, 28 February: Empedocles (fragments, in packet); Ovid, Metamorphoses (excerpt, in packet).

Thursday, 1 March: Porphyry, On Abstinence from Animal Flesh (excerpts, in packet).

Tuesday, 6 March: Laws of Manu (excerpts, in packet); Acaranga Sutra (excerpts, in packet); Mohandas Gandhi, “Letter to the Natal Mercury” (excerpt, in packet).

Thursday, 8 March: Lankavatara Sutra (excerpts, in packet); Lankavatara Sutra (excerpts, in packet).

Tuesday, 13 March: Pierre Gassendi, “Letter to J.-B. van Helmont” (1629) (in packet).

Thursday, 15 March: Correspondence between Edward Tyson and John Wallis, published in the Philosophical Transactions (1699) (excerpts, in packet).

Tuesday, 20 March: Arthur Schopenhauer, On the Basis of Morality (1840) (excerpts, in packet).

Thursday, 22 March: Lev Tolstoy, article in The Vegetarian (1889) (in packet).

PART IV: Conclusions

 Tuesday, 27 March: Steven M. Wise, “Animal Rights: One Step at a Time” (SN).

Thursday, 29 March: Wise, “Animal Rights: One Step at a Time” (cont.).

 Tuesday, 3 April: Review

Thursday, 5 April: FINAL EXAM!

Towards a General Science of the Past: Abductive Inference and Inductive Consilience in Paleontology, Archeology, and History

Annual Lecture Series of the Center for the Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh

November 18, 2011.

Abstract. What are the special epistemological problems that arise in the sciences that aim to know the past? And is there a problem with calling these sorts of inquiry 'sciences' at all, to the extent that they are concerned with non-present and non-repeatable states of affairs? It was in large part in view of its pastness that Karl Popper qualified evolutionary theory as a 'metaphysical research programme'. Carl Hempel was more or less alone among 20th-century philosophers of science in making the case for the possible scientificity of history, yet for him history was to be conceived first and foremost as involving the subsumption of particular events under 'general historical laws'. For Hempel, the study of the past need no more be concerned with particular events or things than theoretical physics is. Yet even if the record of past events reveals patterns and regularities, those who study them must confront and explain irreducible singularities --why this outcropping of rock looks just like this and not some other way, or why this burial mound is exactly the size it is-- that sharply divide the sciences of the past from the sciences, like physics, to which Hempel hoped to assimilate them. It is this distinguishing feature that led G. W. Leibniz to define history, whether natural or civil, as nothing other than the science of res singulares, and that since the time of Leibniz has led many thinkers to suggest that criteria for truth and knowledge in the historical sciences must be established differently than in other fields. Two notable examples of such suggestions are, first, C. S. Peirce's notion of abduction, as distinct from both induction and deduction, which, though he did not propose it mainly for this purpose, has been particularly well suited in such fields as paleontology and archeology to the task of reasoning back to a particular event from its particular traces; and, second, William Whewell's description of evolutionary theory as a 'consilience of inductions'. In this paper, I would like, first of all, to describe the early development of a methodology for the 'science of singular things' in the work of Leibniz and his contemporaries, particularly in their effort to reconstruct the earth's biotic past based on fossil evidence. Next, I will move on to consider more recent reflections, from the evolutionary biologist George Gaylord Simpson and others, on some of the inherent epistemological difficulties in the classification of extinct species, and how this sets the project of paleontological taxonomy apart from the taxonomy of living species. Then I will turn to a consideration of the theoretical engagement with the epistemological obstacles confronted in the project of knowing the past as this has developed in archeological theory over the course of the 20th century, focusing particularly on the processualist school, which attempts to apply Hempelian ideas about history as science within a concrete domain of empirical inquiry. In all of the areas of inquiry we consider --evolutionary theory, paleontology, archeology, and civil history--, I hope to show, first of all, that the same basic difficulties are confronted: a fact that strongly favors an approach to any one of these fields as a branch, along with all the others, of a general science of the past. Second, I aim to show that the unifying thread in all of these was most clearly discerned in the 17th-century notion of 'natural history', and in particular in the insight of the natural historians that the distortive effect of the passage of time in the vestiges history studies --as when the onion-like layers of a mammoth tusk erode-- might be approached not as an impediment to real knowledge of the past, but rather as the very key to its reconstruction.

Philosophy and Its History: Workshop Programme

A Workshop on Methods, Aims, and New Directions in the Scholarship of Early Modern Philosophy

Concordia University, Montreal, Canada

October 29-30, 2011

Programme

Saturday, October 29 (Room MB 15.224, in the John Molson School of Business)

Session I

Chair: TBA

11:30-11:50 Welcome and Introduction (Mogens Laerke, Eric Schliesser, and Justin Smith)

11:50-12:40 Michael Della Rocca (Yale University): "The Taming of Philosophy"

12:40-1:30 Mary Domski (University of New Mexico): "Difference, Disunity, and the Dialogue Between Past and Present"

1:30-2:30 Lunch

Session II

Chair: Hasana Sharp (McGill University)

2:30-3:20 Eric Schliesser (University of Ghent): "True Philosophic Prophecy"

3:20-4:10 Alan Nelson (University of North Carolina): "Philosophical Systems and their History"

Session III

Chair: Justin Smith (Concordia University)

4:15-5:05 Julie R. Klein (Villanova University): "The Dialectics of Philosophy and Its History"

5:10-6:00 Delphine Kolesnik (École Normale Supérieure, Lyon): "On the Construction of Models and Counter-Models in the History of Cartesian Philosophy: Régius and Malebranche"

7:00 Dinner for participants at La Sala Rosa (4848 Blvd. St. Laurent)

Sunday, October 30 (Room 769, Hall Building)

Session IV

Chair: Calvin Normore (McGill University and UCLA)

9:00-9:50 Roger Ariew and Joanne Waugh (University of South Florida):  "Confronting Evil Demons: The Contingency of Philosophical Problems"

9:50-10:40 Leo Catana (University of Copenhagen): "The Internal-External Distinction in the Historiography of Philosophy"

Session V

Chair: Mogens Laerke (University of Aberdeen)

10:50-11:40 Yitzhak Melamed (The Johns Hopkins University): "The Political Domestication of Spinoza, or, Benedict in the Land of the Secular Imagination"

11:40-12:30 Tad M. Schmaltz (University of Michigan): "What Has History of Science to Do with History of Philosophy?"

12:30-1:30 Lunch

Session VI

Chair: François Duchesneau (Université de Montréal)

1:30-2:20 Mogens Laerke (University of Aberdeen and Fondation Marie Curie): "The Anthropological Analogy and the Constitution of Historical Perspectivism"

2:20-3:10 Justin E. H. Smith (Concordia University): "The History of Philosophy as Past and as Process: The Archaeological Analogy"

3:20-4:10 Koen Vermeir (CNRS, Paris): "A Plea for Philosophical Promiscuity"

4:10-5:00 Dan Garber (Princeton University): Discussion

*

This event is being made possible with generaous support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and from the Matchette Foundation.

For more information please contact Justin Smith: justismi@alcor.concordia.ca

Please note, there is limited seating in the meeting rooms, and priority will be given to participants and to auditors who have given the organizers advance notice of their intention to attend.

Classical Indian Philosophy: Logic, Epistemology, and Metaphysics

Department of Philosophy, Concordia University, Winter, 2012

Professor Justin E. H. Smith (justismi@alcor.concordia.ca)

T 18:00-20:15, PR-100, SGW

*

Course Description. An intensive, text-based survey of the main schools of systematic philosophy in the various classical Indian traditions, with some attention to the historical and cultural context in which these texts were produced. Specific topics of interest include theories of inference, causation, negation, knowledge, being, monism, dualism, skepticism and materialism. The primary focus of the course is on the traditions of orthodox or āstika commentary on the Vedas, but we will also consider the so-called non-orthodox or nāstika philosophical schools which do not recognize the authority of the Vedas, such as Buddhism and the materialist and atheist Cārvāka school. We will also be considering the prephilosophical, mythological and linguistic substratum that partially unites the European and Indian traditions in deep antiquity, as well as the much more recent impact of Indian philosophy in Europe in the 17th-19th centuries in the work of August Wilhelm Schlegel, Arthur Schopenhauer and others.

Throughout, it will be one of our foremost purposes to understand the various Indian traditions in a demystified and de-exoticized way: not as some timeless, absolute opposite of Western thought, but rather as emerging out of the same broad context of the Eurasian 'Axial Age' that also gave rise to classical Greek philosophy at a time when 'the West' and 'Europe' meant nothing like what they mean today. Although we will be surveying a vast range of schools and epochs, the main philosophical concentration of the course, towards which much of our early work in the semester will be leading, will be on the systematic and analytic school of Nyāya, focusing principally on logic and theory of inference, as well as the closely related atomist school of Vaiśeṣika, concerned mostly with metaphysics and natural philosophy.

 No knowledge of Sanskrit is required to take this course (not to mention Avestan, Pali, Tamil, Tibetan, Chinese, etc.). However, you must be prepared to memorize a very large amount of Sanskrit technical vocabulary (many Indian philosophical terms have no precise English translation, so it's best to just learn the original), on which you will be tested at some point during the term. 

Prerequisites: Advanced or graduate standing in philosophy, or instructor's approval. For students from outside philosophy, preference will be given to those who have completed coursework in Indology, South Asian comparative religion, or related fields. This is, above all, a course for students with an interest in doing serious, scholarly work on the history of systematic Indian philosophy. It is not for students who have yet to master the basics of scholarly writing, nor is it for students who are simply curious about India or about 'Eastern wisdom'.

 Required Texts:

• Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and Charles A. Moore, A Sourcebook in Indian Philosophy, Princeton University Press, 1957
• In addition, a packet will be available at Copies Concordia (on Maisonneuve between Guy and Mackay).

 Means of Evaluation:

• One midterm exam (40%)
• One final research paper on an approved topic, 12-15 pages (50%)
• Class participation and discussion (10%)

PART I: INTRODUCTION AND CONTEXT

Week 1. What is philosophy? Is Philosophy by definition Western? Is there a clearly defined body of doctrines that we can characterize as 'Eastern'? How do we distinguish between philosophy and other related cultural spheres such as mythology and religion? And should we distinguish? Readings: Karl Jaspers, Way to Wisdom: An Introduction to Philosophy (1951); G. E. R. Lloyd, The Ambitions of Curiosity: Understanding the World in Ancient Greece and China (1983); Jack Goody, The Logic of Writing and the Organisation of Society (1986); Goody, The Theft of History (2006) (all in packet).

Week 2. Who are the Indians? What do we know from Indo-European historical linguistics and archaeology? Common themes in Indo-European mythology and material culture. The place of Sanskrit within the Indo-European family, and its role in Indian history. The Sanskrit tradition: written or spoken? Pāṇini and the primacy of grammar in the Sanskrit system of learning. Readings: Wendy Doniger, The Hindus: An Alternative History (2009); Richard B. Onians, The Origins of European Thought: About the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the World, TIme, and Fate (1951); Kirk, Raven, and Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers (selections) (all in packet).

Week 3. The Beginnings. The life and world of the early Vedic authors; cosmological speculation in the Rig Veda (c. 1800 BCE). Readings: Rig Veda I.1, I.154. I.143, X.68, V.84, I.185, X.125,  VIII.41, X.82, X.90, X.129, IV.23, X.190 (all in Radhakrishnan and Moore).  

Week 4. The Epic Period (c. 600 BCE-200 CE). God and the world in the Bhagavad-Gītā; dharma and mokṣa in the Laws of Manu. Readings: Radhakrishnan and Moore 129-145; 173-184; 192.

PART II: THE ĀSTIKA SCHOOLS

Week 4. Sāṃkhya ['Enumeration of elements']. Readings: The Sāṃkhya-Kārikā (3rd century CE, Radhakrishnan and Moore 426-445; the Sāṃkhya-Pravacana Sūtra (14th century CE, Radhakrishnan and Moore 446-452).

Week 5. Mīmāṃsā (Pūrva Mīmāṃsā) ['Critical reflection'; 'pūrva' indicates 'prior'] and Vedānta (Uttarā Mīmāṃsā) ['Vedānta' indicates 'the end of the Vedas; 'uttarā' indicates 'later'. Thus Uttarā Mīmāṃsā is the critical reflection that comes later, namely, at the end of the Vedas]; the non-dualist philosophical system of Śaṅkara (788-c. 820 CE). Readings: The Mīmāṃsā Sūtra (1st century BCE, Radhakrishnan and Moore 487-498); The Vedānta Sūtras of Śaṅkarākārya (8th century CE, Radhakrishnan and Moore 509-543).

Week 6. Nyāya ['Inference, recursion, syllogism']. Readings: The Nyāya Sūtra (3rd century BCE, Radhakrishnan and Moore 358-379).

Week 7. Nyāya, continued. Navya-Nyāya; the doctrine of negation. Readings: the Tattvacintāmaṇi of Gaṅgeśa Upādhyāya (13th century CE); Bimal Krishna Matilal, The Navya-Nyāya Doctrine of Negation. The Semantics and Ontology of Negative Statements in Navya-Nyāya Philosophy (both in packet).

Week 8. Vaiśeṣika. Readings: the Vaiśeṣika Sūtra of Kaṅāda (c. 2nd century BCE, Radhakrishnan and Moore, 387); the Padārthadharmasaṃgraha (4th century CE, Radhakrishnan and Moore, 397-410).

Week 9. Vaiśeṣika, continued. Readings: the Padārthadharmasaṃgraha (Radhakrishnan and Moore, 410-423).

PART III: THE NĀSTIKA SCHOOLS

 Week 10. The CĀrvĀka School. The doctrine of lokāyata (skeptical materialism). Readings: the Sarvadarśanasaṃgraha (14th century CE, Radhakrishnan and Moore, 228- 234); the Sarvasiddhāntasaṃgraha (10th century CE, Radhakrishnan and Moore, 234-235); the Tattvopaplavasiṃha (c. 8th century CE, Radhakrishnan and Moore, 236-246).

Week 11. Buddhism: Some General Themes. Readings: The Dhammapada (Radhakrishnan and Moore, 290-328).

Week 12. Buddhist Logic. Readings: Nāgārjuna, the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (2nd-3rd centuries CE); Dharmakīrti, the Pramāṇavārttikakārika (7th century CE);  Fyodor Shcherbatskoy, Buddhist Logic (1930-32) (all in packet).

 PART IV: THE EUROPEAN RECEPTION OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

Week 13. The reception of Indian philosophy in Europe in the 17th-19th centuries. Readings: François Bernier, Travels in the Mughal Empire (1670); August Wilhelm Schlegel, excerpts from the Indische Bibliothek (1823, my translation); Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation (excerpts) (all in packet).

 Additional Preparatory Reading:

 Kisor Kumar Chakrabarti, Classical Indian Philosophy of Mind: The Nyaya Dualist Tradition, SUNY Press, 1999.

 Ainslie T. Embree (Ed.), Sources of Indian Tradition, vol. I: From the Beginning to 1800, Columbia University Press, 1988. 

 Jonardon Ganeri, Semantic Powers: Meanings and the Means of Knowing in Classical Indian Philosophy, Oxford University Press, 1999.

 Jonardon Ganeri, Philosophy in Classical India: An Introduction and Analysis, Routledge, 2001.

 Stephen J. Laumakis, An Introduction to Buddhist Philosophy

 Bimal Krishna Matilal, The Character of Logic in India, SUNY Press, 1998.

 Jitendranath N. Mohanty, Classical Indian Philosophy, Rowman and Littlefield, 2001.

Fossils as an Epistemological Problem

Department of History and Philosophy of Science Colloquium Series, Indiana University, Bloomington, October 21, 2011

Abstract. In his influential 1951 article, "The Species Concept," George Gaylord Simpson highlights a number of important respects in which the classification of paleontological species on the basis of fossil remains is a project that must necessarily contend with conceptual problems that do not arise in the classification of living species. For one thing, if, as has often been supposed, species boundaries are to be determined at least in part by the interfertility of individual organisms, then the obvious fact that fossils cannot mate with one another means that placing two of them in the same species, simply on the basis of perceived morphological similarities, is to employ a rather more dubious criterion than the one deployed for living species, which is based not so much on how two individuals look, as on what they are able to do. The dubious nature of morphology-based classification is compounded by the fact that fossils are by definition not remains so much as traces: that is, they are the form of a hard part of an animal, preserved through the replacement of the original matter. This replacement process, as well as the simple elapsing of time and the long-term impact of environmental factors, inevitably causes a great deal of distortion, and for this reason paleontological classification must remain provisional, and constantly aware of the possibility that perceived similarities or differences in specimens are artefacts of external forces. But these challenges to the identification of paleontological species have themselves served as an important engine for the working out of a theoretically adequate model for a science of the past that must of necessity work through singular things in its aim of reconstructing a general picture of past processes. The working out of such a model began in earnest in the 17th century, with the widespread debate in learned Europe about the nature and origins of the fossils of Pleistocene mammals that were in that period turning up at a rapid pace (particularly the remains of woolly mammoths and Irish elk). An important insight in the era, one had independently by G. W. Leibniz, Thomas Burnet, Hans Sloane, and others, is that the distortions caused by the passing of time might be seized upon as providing clues to the character of the thing being studied, rather than being regretted as impediments to a proper understanding of the thing. Thus in a short 1720 'Account of Elephants Teeth and Bones found under Ground', Sloane argues of a fossilized mammoth tusk that "the very manner of its falling to pieces is an evident Proof of its Structure." In this talk I would like to chart out the history of paleontological theory as it develops from this sort of early insight. I would like to argue, in particular, that the idea that decay may be a tool of, rather than an impediment to, inquiry into the past would play an important role well beyond paleontology in the working out of an adequate theoretical framework for historical sciences in general. It would be evident, for example, in Carl Hempel's attempt to ground history as a science within a positivist framework. I will conclude with some speculative suggestions as to how this insight may also serve to ground the sort of historical inquiry that works through textual traces of the past (of which this talk is itself an instance).


Call for Papers / Appel à propositions, LSNA, Montréal, 2012

(le français suit)

The 2012 Annual Meeting of the Leibniz Society of North America will be hosted jointly by the université de Montréal and by Concordia University in Montreal, October 19-20, 2012. It will be preceded, on October 17 and 18 in Montreal, by the North American wing of a pair of conferences on Leibniz and Bayle, the first of which will be held in Paris, at the Sorbonne, on from the 13th to the 15th of September, 2012.

We are currently inviting submissions for papers to be delivered at the LSNA meeting on October 19-20. Papers may be on any aspect of Leibniz's philosophy, and should have a delivery time of 45-50 minutes. Papers may be in either English or French.

Please send a 1- to 2-page abstract of your paper to Christian Leduc (christian.leduc.1@gmail.com) or to Justin Smith (justismi@alcor.concordia.ca) by December 15, 2011.

**

Le colloque annuel de la Société Leibnizienne de l'Amérique du Nord se tiendra conjointement à l'université de Montréal et à l'université Concordia, à Montréal, 19-20 octobre, 2012. Cette réunion sera précédée par le volet nord-américain d'un diptyque de colloques sur Leibniz et Bayle, dont le premier aura lieu à Paris, en Sorbonne, 13-15 septembre, 2012.

Nous vous invitons à soumettre vos propositions de communication à la réunion de la SLAN (les organisateurs du colloque Leibniz-Bayle feront un appel à propositions séparé). Les interventions peuvent porter sur tous les aspects et toutes les périodes de la philosophie de Leibniz. Chaque intervenant aura autour de 45-50 minutes pour sa communication. Les langues officielles du colloque sont le français et l'anglais.

Veuillez faire parvenir un résumé de votre communication (1-2 pages) à Christian Leduc (christian.leduc.1@gmail.com) ou à Justin Smith (justismi@alcor.concordia.ca) avant le 15 décembre, 2011.

Philosophy and Its History

A Workshop on Methods, Aims, and New Directions in the Scholarship of Early Modern Philosophy

Concordia University, Montreal, Canada

October 29-30, 2011

Programme

Saturday, October 29 (Room MB 15.224, in the John Molson School of Business)

11:30-11:50 Welcome and Introduction (Mogens Laerke, Eric Schliesser, and Justin Smith)

11:50-12:40 Michael Della Rocca (Yale University): "The Taming of Philosophy"

12:40-1:30 Mary Domski (University of New Mexico): "Difference, Disunity, and the Dialogue Between Past and Present"

1:30-2:30 Lunch

2:30-3:20 Eric Schliesser (University of Ghent): "True Philosophic Prophecy"

3:20-4:10 Yitzhak Melamed (The Johns Hopkins University): "The Political Domestication of Spinoza, or, Benedict in the Land of the Secular Imagination"

4:15-5:05 Julie R. Klein (Villanova University): "The Dialectics of Philosophy and Its History"

5:10-6:00 Delphine Kolesnik (École Normale Supérieure, Lyon): "On the Construction of Models and Counter-Models in the History of Cartesian Philosophy: Régius and Malebranche"

7:00 Dinner for participants at La Sala Rosa (4848 Blvd. St. Laurent)

Sunday, October 30 (Room 769, Hall Building)

9:00-9:50 Roger Ariew and Joanne Waugh (University of South Florida):  "Confronting Evil Demons: The Contingency of Philosophical Problems"

9:50-10:40 Leo Catana (University of Copenhagen): "The Internal-External Distinction in the Historiography of Philosophy"

10:50-11:40 Alan Nelson (University of North Carolina): "Philosophical Systems and their History"

11:40-12:30 Tad M. Schmaltz (University of Michigan): "What Has History of Science to Do with History of Philosophy?"

12:30-1:30 Lunch

1:30-2:20 Mogens Laerke (University of Aberdeen and Fondation Marie Curie): "The Anthropological Analogy and the Constitution of Historical Perspectivism"

2:20-3:10 Justin E. H. Smith (Concordia University): "The History of Philosophy as Past and as Process: The Archaeological Analogy"

3:20-4:10 Koen Vermeir (CNRS, Paris): "A Plea for Philosophical Promiscuity"

4:10-5:00 Dan Garber (Princeton University): Discussion

*

This event is being made possible with generous support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and from the Matchette Foundation.

For more information please contact Justin Smith: justismi@alcor.concordia.ca

Philosophy and Its History

New Perspectives on the Aims and Methods of Research in the History of Philosophy

A Workshop at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada

October 29-30, 2011

*

List of Speakers:

Michael Della Rocca (Yale University): "The Taming of Philosophy"

Mary Domski (University of New Mexico): "Difference, Disunity, and the Dialogue Between Past and Present"

Tad Schmaltz (University of Michigan): "What Has the History of Science to Do with the History of Philosophy?"

Yitzhak Melamed (Johns Hopkins University): "'Be Aware of the Charitable Interpreter': Charitable Interpretations, the History of Philosophy, and the Gettier Problem"

Roger Ariew and Joanne Waugh (University of South Florida): "Confronting Evil Demons: The Contingency of Philosophical Problems"

Delphine Kolesnik (École Normale Supérieure, Lyon): "Comment peut-on penser des modèles et des repoussoirs en histoire de la philosophie? L'exemple de Malebranche et Regius"

Leo Catana (University of Copenhagen): "The Internal-External Distinction in the Methodology of the History of Philosophy"

Justin E. H. Smith (Concordia University): "Texts, Traces, and Intentions in the Reconstruction of Philosophy's Past"

Mogens Lærke (ENS de Lyon / University of Aberdeen): "The Anthropological Analogy and the Constitution of Historical Perspectivism"

Alan Nelson (University of North Carolina): "What Is a Theory of Ideas? A Methodological Answer"

Ursula Goldenbaum (Emory University): "Following Sherlock's Lead: The Method of Investigation in the History of Philosophy"

Julie R. Klein (Villanova University): "On the Dialectics of Philosophy and Its History"

Eric Schliesser (University of Ghent): "True Philosophic Prophecy"

Koen Vermeir (CNRS, Paris): "A Plea for Methodological Promiscuity"

Daniel Garber (Princeton University): Discussant.

*

This is a workshop organized around a volume, edited by Mogens Laerke, Eric Schliesser, and Justin E. H. Smith, forthcoming from Oxford University Press.

This workshop has received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and from the Matchette Foundation.

For more information, or if you wish to attend the event as an auditor, please contact Justin Smith (jehsmith@gmail.com).

Upcoming Talks, Fall, 2011

"The Philosophical Stakes of the Leibniz-Stahl Debate: An Outline." Internationaler Leibniz-Kongress, Leibniz-Universität zu Hannover, Hanover, Germany, Tuesday, September 27.

"Sharks' Teeth and Snakes' Tongues: Fossils as an Epistemological Problem from Leibniz to George Gaylord Simpson." Lecture Series of the Department of the History and Philosophy of Science, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, Friday, October 21.

"Texts, Traces, and Intentions in the Reconstruction of Philosophy's Past." Workshop on Methodology in History-of-Philosophy Scholarship, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Saturday, October 29.

"Towards a General Science of the Past: Abductive Inference and Inductive Consilience in Paleontology, Archeology, and History." Annual Lecture Series of the University of Pittsburgh Center for the Philosophy of Science, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Friday, November 18.

Philosophy and Its History: A Workshop on the Methods and Aims of Research in the History of Philosophy

Concordia University, Montreal, Canada

October 29-30, 2011

List of Speakers (official program to follow shortly):

Roger Ariew and Joanne Waugh (University of South Florida): "Confronting Evil Demons: The Contingency of Philosophical Problems"

Leo Catana (University of Copenhagen): TBA

Michael Della Rocca (Yale University): "The Taming of Philosophy"

Mary Domski (University of New Mexico): "Difference, Disunity, and the Dialogue Between Past and Present"

Ursula Goldenbaum (Emory University): "Following Sherlock's Lead: The Method of Investigation in the History of Philosophy"

Julie R. Klein (Villanova University): "The Dialectics of Philosophy and Its History"

Delphine Kolesnik (École Normale Supérieure, Lyon): "On the Construction of Models and Counter-Models in the History of Cartesian Philosophy: Régius and Malebranche"

Mogens Laerke (University of Aberdeen and ENS-LSH, Lyon): "Leibniz's Prism: Close Contexts and Participant Observation in Early Modern Philosophy"

Yitzhak Melamed (The Johns Hopkins University): "The Political Domestication of Spinoza, or, Benedict in the Land of the Secular Imagination"

Alan Nelson (University of North Carolina): "Philosophical Systems and their History"

Tad M. Schmaltz (University of Michigan): "What Has History of Science to Do with History of Philosophy?"

Justin E. H. Smith (Concordia University): "Texts, Traces and Intentions in Reconstructing Philosophy's Past"

Eric Schliesser (University of Ghent): "True Philosophic Prophecy"

Koen Vermeir (CNRS, Paris): "A Plea for Philosophical Promiscuity"

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This event is being made possible with generaous support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and from the Matchette Foundation.

For more information please contact Justin Smith: justismi@alcor.concordia.ca

Experiment, Culture and the History of Philosophy

A guest post for the Early Modern Experimental Philosophy Research Project at the University of Otago, New Zealand.

A question of central methodological importance for the historian of philosophy concerns the appropriate relationship between the aspects of philosophy’s past that a scholar takes on, on the one hand, and on the other the current agenda of non-historical philosophy. Recently, in the results of a query launched by Mark Lance at the NewAPPS blog, my own deep worry about the state of the discipline was confirmed: a good many non-historian philosophers believe that, at the end of the day, history-of-philosophy scholarship should make itself relevant to the cluster of questions currently being investigated in philosophy. I could not disagree more strongly. To riff on John F. Kennedy’s famous line, I believe that we should not be asking what the history of philosophy can do for us, but rather what we can do for the history of philosophy. That is, we should be attempting to do justice to past thinkers by carefully reconstructing their own world of concerns. In doing so, we shall often have to move beyond the boundaries of what we consider philosophy (and even of what they considered philosophy).

I have argued in many fora that we should respect the historical usage of the term ‘philosophy’. Some have objected that it is a semantic issue –as in, a mere semantic issue– what might have been called by a certain name in another era. What is important, they say, is whether the activity so-called in fact has any continuity with what we are doing when we do philosophy. To some today, the discontinuity seems most evident when we consider early modern experimental philosophy. There simply is no meaningful sense, they maintain, in which we can think of meteorology as a proper part of philosophy, even if this is how it was conceived in the history of natural philosophy from Aristotle through (at least) Boyle.

To continue reading, please go here.

Leibniz's Medical, Physiological, and Life-Scientific Works: A Catalog

This catalog is still in progress, and suggestions for additions are welcome. Eventually, I hope to include links to mss. and to available editions. I include only those texts that are entirely or principally devoted to life-scientific questions. 

Conventional Title	Manuscript Number, Publication Information, or Bibliographical Reference	Year of Composition	Subjects
Directiones ad rem medicam pertinentes	LH III, 1, 3, folio 1-9; Hartmann and Krüger 1976	1671	Medicine; public health
Bedenken von aufrichtung einer Academie oder Societät in Teütschland, zu Aufnehmen der Künste und Wißenschaften	A IV i, 543-552	1671	Medicine; public health
Excerptum ex autographo     Cartesii	LH III 2, 5 49	24 February, 1676	Embryology; physiology
Excerptum ex autographo Cartesii: Remedia, et vires medicamentorum	LH III 4, 3 1	24 February, 1676	Pharmacology
Note on the origins of fossils	LH XXXVII 4, 16	1672-77(??)	Paleontology
“Le phosphore de M. Krafft ou Liqueur de terre seiche de sa composition qui iettent continuellement de grands éclats de lumère”	Journal des Sçavans, August 2, 1677, 190-91	1677	Chemistry (fermentation)
Machina animalis	LH III 5, 12; Pasini 1996	3 October, 1677	Animal economy
“Extrait d’une lettre de Mr. de Leibniz, à l’auteur du Journal des Savans, écrite d’Hanovre le 18. Juin, 1677. Contenant la Rélation, et la figure d’un Chevreuil coëffé d’une manière fort extaordinaire”	Dutens II 2, 175-76	1677	Animal economy; ethology
De animalibus	LH 37, 2, 123	1672-6	Animal economy
Review of Jungius’s Harmonica et phytoscopia scripta posthuma Joachimi Jungii	Ravier 195 / KM 53	August, 1678	Botany, Taxonomy
Corpus hominis et aliuscujusque animalis est machina quaedam	LH III 1, 2; Mahrenholtz 1987; Pasini 1996; Smith 2007	1682-86	Animal economy
De scribendis novis Medicinae elementis	LH III 1, 1; Pasini 1996	1682-83	Animal economy; medicine
Excerpt of a letter from M. de Leibniz, “touchant une expérience considérable d’une eau fumante”	Journal des Sçavans, 17 February, 1681, 46.	1681	Chemistry (fermentation, perpetual motion)
“G. G. L. Meditatio de Separatione Salis et aquae dulcis, novoque Separationum Chymicarum genere”	Acta Erudtiorum, December, 1682, 386-88; Dutens II 2, 108-10.	1682	Chemistry (mixtures)
Four letters to Schelhammer	Dutens II 2, 164-8	1680-82	Generation theory; medicine
“Observatio de usu intestini coeci in figurandis, quorundam animalium excrementis. Ex Transactionibus sive Actis Philosophicis Anglicis”	Acta Eruditorum, June 1685, 313-15.	June, 1685	Physiology
Notes on Martin Lister’s article in the Philosophical Transactions of 1683/4, “Observatio de usu intestini coeci in figurandis quorundam animalium excrementis”	Acta Eruditorum August, 1685, 351-53; Ravier 200; MK 75	July, 1685	Physiology
Letter to Hertel	Guhrauer B II 458	1691	Medicine
“Extrait d’une lettre sur la maniére de perfectionner la Médecine”	Journal des Sçavans 1694; Dutens II 2, 162-4	1694	Medicine; public health
De ortu et antiquissimo statu rerum naturalium in regionibus Brunsvic.-Luneb. Dissertatio [Later published as Protogaea]	Scheidt 1749; Engelhardt 1949; Barrande 1993; Cohen and Wakefield, 2008	1691-93.	Paleontology; generation theory.
“G. G. L. Relatio ad Inclytam Societatem Leopoldinam Naturae Curiosorum, de novo antidysenterico Americano magnis successibus comprobato”	LH III 4, 4; Misc. Acad. Nat. Cur., 1695-96, decuria 3, iii, 1-22; Dutens II 2, 110-19.	1696	Pharmacology; medicine; botany
Letter to J. G. Sparwenfeld	Otium Hanoveranum	29 January, 1697	Physical anthropology
De methodo botanica (Letter to A. C. Gackenholtz)	Monatlicher Auszug April, 1701 VIII S.68-80; Kortholt 4, 83-194; Dutens II 2, 169-74.	April, 1701	Botany; taxonomy
“Summarische Punctuation die medicinalische Observationes betr. so durchgehends anzustellen und beständigt fortzusetzen seyn möchten”	Klopp 10, 346-50 / MK 176	23 April, 1701	Public health; medicine
“Verordnung betr. regelmäßige Beobachtungun zur Förderung des Sanitätswesens”	Klopp 10, 350-53 / MK 176	1701	Public health; medicine
“Mémoire sur les pierres qui renferment des plantes et des poissons desséchés”	Histoire de l’Académie des sciences 1704; Dutens II 2 178-9.	1704	Paleontology
De causis febrium	LH III 5, 111-12; Pasini 1996	1704-5	Medicine; animal economy
“Exposé d’une lettre de Mr. Leibniz à l’Abbé de St. Pierre, sur un chien qui parle”	Histoire de l’Académie des sciences 1706; Dutens II 2, 180	1706	Ethology
Animadversiones in G. E. Stahlii Theoria medica vera	Stahl 1720; Duchesneau and Smith (forthcoming)	1709-10	Animal economy; organics
“Commentatio de anima brutorum”	G VII 328-32.	1710	Physiology; animal economy
De secretione animali, ad P. A. Michelottum	Dutens II 2, 89-91	17 September, 1715	Animal economy

Some Poetry by Leibniz

This is from a letter in the LHv manuscripts, among the texts in the Ritterkatalog eventually to be included in Reihe VIII of the Akademie Edition. To see a scan of the original in the online Ritterkatalog, go here.

I have been working on transcribing the letter, but it is too messy towards the end for me to make out a clearly significant portion of the text. I am uncertain of the recipient and of the date, but judging from the handwriting and from the style it is almost certainly from the end of Leibniz's Paris period, 1675 or 1676.

The letter begins with a disarmingly sincere avowal of jealousy on Leibniz's part, at not having received letters from the addressee, whoever he or she (but almost certainly he) may be, while knowing nonetheless that a certain Abbé de Canisy, based in Normandy, continued to maintain an active correspondence with him or her (but almost certainly him).

It then moves on to an account of a letter Leibniz himself had sent to the same Abbé, in which he advises him of the importance of prohibiting the consumption of cider in Normandy and Brittany. He writes:

[J]e m'érigea en donneur d'avis, et je luy conseilla de faire défendre l'usage du Cidre, par ce que cette boisson estoit dangereuse, qu'elle n'estoit pas assez cuite par le soleil, et qu'elle faisoit monter a la teste certaines fumées grossieres capables de troubler les esprits des peuples. J'appuya cecy par des raisons et des experiences, et il faut qu'on les ait communiquées au Roy d'Angleterre, car c'est dépuis ce temps la qu'il a defendu l'usage public du Caffé, pour des motifs tous semblables.

[I set myself up as an advice-giver, and I encouraged him to have the consumption of cider outlawed, because this beverage was dangerous, because it was not sufficiently cooked by the sun, and because it caused certain heavy vapors, capable of troubling people's minds, to rise to the head. I backed this up with reasons and with evidence, and these must have been communicated to the king of England, for it is at that time that he prohibited the public consumption of coffee on similar grounds.]

Leibniz then confesses somewhat bashfully that he also included a poem in the letter to the abbot, intended to supplement the argument he had given against drinking cider:

J'avois adjouté des vers, qui contiennent mes raisons en racourcy. Les voicy, si vous les voyez dignes d'estre lûs.

[I added some verses, which include my reasons in abbreviated form. Here they are, if you consider them worthy of being read.]

So then, if you too consider them worthy of being read, here they are:

Normans enfoncez les tonneaux
Versez ce dangereux breuvage
Qui d'un peuple tranquille et sage
Peut faire un amas de brebaux.

L'air Breton est contagieux
Gardez vous d'en tirer l'haleine
Faites faire la quarantaine
Aux paysages audacieux.

On vous accorde assez d'esprit
Mais le Cidre en prend la partie,
Et en cas de quelque folie,
Dieu sçait si le reste suffit.

Mais j'y suis peut estre trompé
Et la nature toute sage
Vous fait encor un avantage
quand le vin vous est refusé.

Car si vous faites tant de bruit
Avec le surplus de souplesse
Avec le reste de finesse
Que le Cidre n'a pas détruit

Que feriez vous si la boisson
Estoit un peu plus genereuse,
La metamorphose est facheuse
Qui change un Normand en Gascon.

I've tried to translate the poem in a way that maintains at least a minimum of its poetic elements, in particular the enclosing rhyme scheme of the stanzas, while nonetheless giving first priority to the preservation of the general meaning:

Break your barrels, Normans,
Pour out this dangerous drink
Which transforms a people who think
Into a nation of morons.

The Breton air is contagious,
So content yourselves with breathing it,
Rather than thinking of leaving it
To suck something more outrageous.

You're endowed with adequate mind,
But on cider you've only a part left,
And God knows if you'll have enough art left,
To put paid to life's madness in kind.

But perhaps here I wrongly opine
And nature, with clear-sighted vantage,
Has seen to your nation's advantage
In refusing to let you drink wine.

For if you make so much noise,
With so much inborn ability,
With what's left of the natural agility
That the cider in large part destroys,

Then imagine if your flascons
Caused still greater a transformation,
And made of the great Normand nation
A mash more befitting Gascons.

Fifth Annual Conference of the Leibniz Society of North America

June 15-17, 2010
University of California, San Diego

Wednesday, June 15
9:00 am            Welcome
Workshops
9:15-10:30        Editing Leibniz’s Manuscripts (Leibniz-Forschungsstelle)
10:30-12:00      Textual Sources of Leibniz’s Late Philosophy (Donald Rutherford/Justin Smith)

Session 1          Chair: Mark Kulstad (Rice)
1:30-3:00           Paul Lodge (Oxford), “A Guided Tour of the Leibniz-De Volder Correspondence”
3:00-4:30           Stephan Meier-Oeser (Leibniz-Forschungsstelle, Münster), “The Leibniz Code: Semantic Transpositions in Leibniz’s Language of Metaphysics”
4:30-6:00           Daniel Garber (Princeton), “Monadological Metaphysics and the Composition of the ‘Monadology’”

Thursday, June 16
Session 2           Chair: Julie Walsh (UCSD)
9:00-10:30         Stefan Jenschke (Leibniz-Forschungsstelle, Münster), “Perception and Substantial Unity in Leibniz’s Late Metaphysics”
10:30-12:00        Jeffrey McDonough (Harvard), “Leibniz’s Irenic Account of Substance”

Session 3            Chair: Justin Smith (Concordia)
1:30-3:00            Richard Arthur (McMaster), “Presupposition, Aggregation, and Leibniz’s Argument for a Plurality of Substances”
3:00-4:30            Arnaud Pelletier (Alexander von Humboldt Foundation/Leibniz-Archiv, Hannover), “Between the ‘Two Systems’: Leibniz’s Late Reflections on Modifications and Accidents”
4:30-6:00            Thomas Leinkauf (Leibniz-Forschungsstelle, Münster), “The Vinculum Substantiale and the Impact of Metaphysics in Leibniz’s Concept of Reality”

Friday, June 17
Session 4            Chair: Shane Duarte (Stanford)
9:00-10:30           Laurence Carlin (Wisconsin, Oshkosh), “Leibniz’s Final Teleological System”
10:30-12:00         Martha Bolton (Rutgers), “Leibniz on Perception, Appetition and Trans-temporal Identity in the Later Years”

Session 5            Chair: Stephen Puryear (North Carolina State)
1:30-3:00            John Whipple (Illinois, Chicago), “Leibniz’s Exoteric Philosophy”
3:00-4:30            Brandon Look (Kentucky), “The Principles of Leibniz’s Final Philosophy”
4:30-6:00            Donald Rutherford (UCSD), “Method and System in Leibniz’s Late Philosophy”

For further information, contact Don Rutherford (drutherford@ucsd.edu)
Conference website:http://leibnizphilosophy.wordpress.com/

Peut-on lire la Genèse comme histoire naturelle?

Voici le texte de la conférence que j'ai donnée dans le cadre du colloque, "Les Arts de Lire des Philosophes à l'Âge Classique," à l'École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, le 21 mai, 2011.

Blood Transfusion and Pythagoreanism in the Royal Society

Justin E. H. Smith and Cameron Brown

[Presented at the workshop, The Life Sciences in Early Modern Philosophy, May 7, 2011]

Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood quickly gave rise to experiments on transfusion of blood between animals. The Cornish physician Richard Lower went so far as to declare himself 'the second Harvey' for having, in 1666, successfully caused blood to circulate back and forth between two dogs, connected by tubes, in front of a spellbound audience at the Royal Society. Respiration and digestion were traditionally seen as two physiological processes that separated living bodies ontologically off from inanimate things: a living body, unlike a stone, remains the individual body it is in virtue of its constant exchange of matter with its environment; it has no cohesion, but is constantly in flux. The circulation of the blood showed that it was in constant internal flux as well, and intraspecies transfusion showed that this flux need not necessarily remain contained within the boundaries of the infividual body. But it was the possibility of interspecies transfusion that generated the most serious metaphysical problems, indeed quite new problems that had not arisen in earlier attempts to understand processes such as nutrition and digestion in terms of a corporeal-substance metaphysics. As early as 1671 G. W. Leibniz recommended that “One should not cease to make tests involving the transfusion of the blood, at least in animals, as in England a weak horse was made strong again by the use of fresh sheep’s blood (Smith 2011, Appendix 1). To the extent that blood was identified variously as the bearer or as the substance of the sensitive and nutritive soul of an animal –the variety of soul that was traditionally seen as being shared in common among all members of a species—to transfuse from one member to another was only to transfer some share of an already shared sort of soul. But the possibility of interspecies transfusion complicated matters by suggesting that one kind’s sensitive soul could animate a member of another kind, thus posing a threat to the very stability of biological kinds. In this paper, we will summarize the key moments in the debate about transfusion in the 1660s, particularly in the English context but also in the work of Jean-Baptiste Denis in Paris. We will argue that quite apart from the experimental success or failure of these experiments, the fact that they were so short-lived --all taking place within the three-year period from 1666 to 1668-- may have something to do with the incompatibility of experimental success with the available background metaphysical theory of the nature of biological species difference.