The origins of the modern emotions: Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia and the embodied mind

In the history of European ideas, Princess Elisabeth is conventionally viewed as little more than a curiosity, a clever but ultimately unimportant exiled princess who became the confidant, critic, and muse of a far more famous man, René Descartes. Contrary to this view, however, this article argues that Elisabeth made a significant contribution to the development of western philosophy in her own right. Drawing on her letters to Descartes, as well the diaries and correspondence of her associates and a range of secondary sources, it demonstrates that an early understanding of the modern emotions akin to that which later found form in the work of the moral sentiment theorists can be found in Elisabeth’s thought. In particular, drawing on her understanding of the embodied mind, Elisabeth of Bohemia began to develop a hybrid understanding of the passions, identified a role for the emotions in the pursuit of virtue, and began to reconceive the relationship between reason and the emotions that had until then dominated seventeenth-century thought.     

任鸿隽科学教育思想及其实践初探

任鸿隽是我国近代著名的科学教育家,在近代中国的社会转型中,他以中国知识界卓越前驱的敏锐目光,对近代中国的教育发展提出了诸多独到的见解。任鸿隽在科学教育上的筚路蓝缕之功为世人所公认,他对科学教育思想的独特阐释与实践,以及在科学教育实践上提出的科学与人文并重的理念,不仅在近代中国教育界产生了深远影响,而且为当今中国科学教育改革提供了极为有益的借鉴。     

Missing the point: globalization, deterritorialization and the space of the world

This article provides a critique of a dominant strand of the literature on globalization – that which suggests it can be understood as deterritorialization. It argues that suggestions that we have moved away from territorial understandings of politics fail to conceptually elaborate the notion of territory itself. Drawing parallels between mathematics and politics in the seventeenth century, the paper claims that the notion of territory is dependent on a particular way of grasping space as calculable. This way of understanding space makes bounded territories possible, but also underlies new global configurations. In other words globalization is a reconfiguration of existing understandings rather than the radical break some suggest. The article concludes by making some comments on this reconfiguration, and suggesting that further historical and conceptual work on territory is necessary before it can be thought to be superseded.     

Descartes and the pineal gland in animals: A frequent misinterpretation

Abstract

Rene Descartes presented a number of reasons for his choice of the pineal gland as a logical place for the soul to interact with the physical machinery of the body. It is often stated that one of his reasons was that be believed animals do not have pineal glands, whereas humans alone possess a soul and this small structure. This is a misinterpretation of Descartes. The philosopher knew that barnyard and other animals possess pineal glands, having seen this with his own eyes. His point was that the pineal is unique in humans only because of a special function — acting as the seat for the rational soul.     

Introduction

Abstract

For all of its political drama, the health care debate appears consumed with bureaucratic minutiae quite distant from political philosophy. Yet in important respects that debate is intimately connected with the founding premises of the modern technological project of the mastery of nature for the relief of man's estate as envisioned by René Descartes and Francis Bacon. This essay uses a recent discussion of the health care debate by bioethicist Daniel Callahan to raise some fundamental questions about the role of technology in our medical culture. It argues that modern health care is the Cartesian project come of age, and it uses Descartes' Discourse on Method to reflect on the possibility of a sensible politics of technology in our time.     

A “Calvinist” theory of matter? Burgersdijk and Descartes on res extensa

In the Dutch debates on Cartesianism of the 1640s, a minority believed that some Cartesian views were in fact Calvinist ones. The paper argues that, among others, a likely precursor of this position is the Aristotelian Franco Burgersdijk (1590-1635), who held a reductionist view of accidents and of the essential extension of matter on Calvinist grounds. It seems unlikely that Descartes was unaware of these views. The claim is that Descartes had two aims in his Replies to Arnauld: to show the compatibility of res extensa and the Catholic transubstantiation but also to differentiate the res extensa from some views of matter explicitly defended by some Calvinists. The association with Calvinism will be eventually used polemically against Cartesianism, for example in France. The paper finally suggests that, notwithstanding the points of conflict, the affinities between the theologically relevant theories of accidents, matter and extension ultimately facilitated the dissemination of Cartesianism among the Calvinists.     

袁枚《续同人集》所录钱大昕佚诗遗札

袁枚所编《续同人集》,收录钱大昕诗札多篇,其中有4首诗歌、3通尺牍,为《钱大听全集》所失载。     

董其昌《山水》册与《董范合参图》轴辨伪

上海博物馆藏董其昌《山水》册(共十开),为天启四年(1624)元旦所作,实并非董氏真迹。据考,该年四月董其昌才抵京。同时,该册对题均节录自董氏及明清书画著录著作与晚清文学笔记中,其第二开对题,与故宫博物院藏董氏癸酉(1633)夏五所作《董范合参图》轴题跋相同。再考《山水》册笔法,嫩弱飘浮,墨色平淡,与典型的董其昌风格相差甚远,更无其生拙秀逸之气;而《董范合参图》轴,用笔亦尖劲细碎,全幅墨气滞涩,艺术水准远不及故宫博物院藏董氏十二年前所作《仿古山水图》册,亦无法企及董氏卒前一年所作的《关山雪霁图》卷。可见,《山水》册和《董范合参图》轴非董氏本家之作。     

Myth and history in the contemporary Spanish Novel

Locke has often been hailed as the father of an empiricism that provided a philosophical basis to natural science in the Age of Enlightenment. In this article his empiricism is compared with that of the little known Dutch Aristotelian professor Gerardus de Vries. There are striking parallels between Locke's brand of mechanist empiricism and the pragmatic and flexible Aristotelianism of De Vries. These parallels put strictures on both the archaic character of the Aristotelianism embraced by De Vries and on the modern and forward-looking character of Locke's philosophy of science.     

天人合一述论

邹衍第一次把天人合一变成了系统的学说。从天地的形成谈起,融阴阳与五行为一体,用五行生克、阴阳消长和五德转移的理论解释一年四季的诸多变化和历史演进的规律,并进而规范人类、特别是王者的行为,是邹衍学说的实质和核心。但邹衍的天人合一理论和它所自出的巫术原理一样,归根结底是错误的和虚妄的。有人把天人合一等同于人和自然的和谐,完全是对古代文化的曲解。