Teaching Early Modern Philosophy as a Bridge between Causal or Naturalistic and Conceptual Thought

It is a challenge in teaching early modern philosophy to balance historical faithfulness to the arguments and concerns of early modern philosophers and interpreting them as relevant to the kinds of thinking that contemporary undergraduate students find plausible. Early modern philosophy is unique, h...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Metaphilosophy 2015-07, Vol.46 (3), p.326-343
Main Authors: Barris, Jeremy, Turner, Paul M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
causal explanation
conceptual analysis
Descartes
History
Hobbes
naturalistic explanation
Pedagogy
Philosophy
Spinoza
SYMPOSIUM: TEACHING EARLY MODERN PHILOSOPHY: NEW APPROACHES
teaching early modern philosophy
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Summary:It is a challenge in teaching early modern philosophy to balance historical faithfulness to the arguments and concerns of early modern philosophers and interpreting them as relevant to the kinds of thinking that contemporary undergraduate students find plausible. Early modern philosophy is unique, however, in applying modern scientific method directly to problems concerning nonphysical aspects of reality that our contemporary scientific thought, and with it mainstream contemporary culture, no longer find amenable in their own, independent right to reliable reasoned approaches. At the same time, early modern philosophy often also takes seriously purely conceptual or logically consequential thought in the investigation of these topics, as our mainstream contemporary culture does not. This kind of thought, we argue, is distinctive of philosophy in general and appropriate to nonphysical aspects of reality. Early modern philosophy, then, offers a bridge between the kind of reasoned, objective thought our mainstream culture finds plausible and thought about nonphysical reality or, in general, the thought that characterizes philosophy.
ISSN:0026-1068
1467-9973
DOI:10.1111/meta.12134