Journal of Modern Philosophy Article Feed

This essay offers an account of the core of Du Châtelet’s understanding of time and attempts to situate it with respect to more familiar views of her era. The essay is divided into three sections. The first section argues that Du Châtelet holds that we have a foundational idea of successive being and defends a particular interpretation of her understanding of that crucial concept. The second [...]

One of Leibniz’s fundamental philosophical commitments is the principle of sufficient reason (PSR). Yet Leibniz’s precise understanding of this principle is elusive.  Leibniz provides several seemingly different formulations of its content, and Leibniz sometimes seems to require the PSR being metaphysically necessary and sometimes being metaphysically contingent.  I argue that these puzzles [...]

In Ethics 5 , Spinoza writes that “something” of the human mind remains eternally beyond death (E5p23). I develop a novel implication of this doctrine, given Spinoza’s views of knowledge and interpersonal love. I argue that one can Spinozistically keep the eternal element of a passed loved one “with them” by developing adequate ideas of parts of their loved one’s essence. §1 identifies [...]

In his Medicina mentis (1686/87; 2nd ed. 1695), Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus claims to have found an ‘intermediary path’ between a priori and a posteriori methods in natural philosophy—a three-step method of introspection, deduction, and experimentation. In this paper, I offer a systematic reconstruction of this method, showing how it was developed in the [...]

This discussion analyzes Lady Mary Shepherd’s response to the skeptical question raised by Hume about necessary causation: how can we know that like causes will necessarily give rise to like effects? Regardless of whether her account is metaphysically tenable in principle, this discussion seeks to assess if it is feasible in practice . Specifically, Shepherd’s response is considered in [...]

This paper argues that there is an important yet underexplored idea of existential trial, expressed by the notion of Anfægtelse, in Kierkegaard’s account of the human self. I argue that there are three kinds of existential trials, corresponding to the three major existential spheres: the esthetic, the ethical, and the Christian-religious. Each existential trial involves an essential conflict [...]

In his understanding of passion, Nietzsche closely follows Kant and Schopenhauer. For all three, passion is a uniquely demanding variety of desire: desire so strong that we are compelled to pursue its object regardless of the cost. In his evaluation of passion, however, Nietzsche is unique: while Kant and Schopenhauer both condemn passion, Nietzsche celebrates it. I argue that this celebration [.…

Although there are several passages in which Spinoza ascribes parts to God, scholarship has refused to take these texts seriously. The reason for this refusal lies in four key characteristics of God that seem to contradict mereological complexity: (i) indivisibility, (ii) infinity, (iii) perfection, and (iv) simplicity. But are these properties really incompatible with mereological complexity? [.…

After each of his discussions of specific ethical duties in the Doctrine of Virtue, Kant adds small sections entitled ‘Casuistical questions’. These questions have received little attention so far, and existing discussions strikingly disagree about their purpose. In this article, I argue that locating Kant’s conception of moral philosophy within a longstanding tradition of ethical [...]

While there is an extensive literature on Kant’s conception of practical reason, there is comparatively little on his conception of practical judgment. In addition, commentators have yet to take up the question of what the distinction between practical reason and practical judgment amounts to, for Kant. My aim in this paper is to provide an answer by bringing the type/token distinction to bear [.…

In the literature, discussion of Hume’s racism has largely centred on an appalling and infamous footnote to his essay entitled ‘Of National Characters’. This ignores, or at best sidelines, the bigotry contained in the main text of the essay. I will first make the case that the main text of the essay expresses a cultural bigotry. Then, I contrast this cultural bigotry with the [...]

This paper reignites the debate over Locke’s one-act versus two-act account of knowledge and judgment, reassessing the recent inclination to discuss his theory within the justified true belief (JTB+) framework of Anglo-American analytic epistemology. After clarifying the key issues, it defends the one-act account by critically engaging with recent scholarship, highlighting weaknesses in the [...]