Abstract
A central theme in the scholarly literature on Enlightenment Europe concerns the increased focus on the role of reason in the development of European thought, especially in the development of the new science by the natural philosophers. As a consequence, there is a tendency in both philosophical scholarship and teaching to bind philosophy and science tightly together. While there is certainly much that is correct in this approach, one motivation for pluralizing philosophy’s past is that this story leaves out a great deal that is important in Enlightenment views of reason. We argue, using as an example the work of figures like Margaret Cavendish, that reason was significantly broader in scope—and that developments in science were paralleled by equally important advances in music, art, literature, medicine, philosophy, and other areas. In recognizing the lack of a sharp boundary between these areas, an inclusive canon of Enlightenment philosophy gives us this richer notion of reason. Integrating figures such as Cavendish into the canon helps us to see that the narrow focus on the scientific version of reason within Enlightenment scholarship creates a false distinction between science and the humanities and misses out on the humanistic ends for which we engage in philosophy.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
- 2.
See Phillips (2017).
- 3.
While this seems to be a compelling passage in favor of RN, in Section 10.4 we offer a way to interpret this passage that cuts against RN.
- 4.
It is worth noting that there are good philosophical, historical, and pedagogical reasons for this. For a thorough treatment of Descartes’ relation to late scholasticism, see Ariew (2014).
- 5.
- 6.
For the clearest example, see the first three sections of Cavendish (2001).
- 7.
See Cavendish (2001, 215). While this discussion seems to cut against the idea that Cavendish was an “empiricist,” one of the goals of incorporating figures like Cavendish into our study of early modern philosophy is to apply pressure to the rationalist/empiricist aspect of RN and show that the distinction is ultimately unstable and unhelpful.
- 8.
See also Cavendish (2001, 53, 144, 149–154, 196–197, and 241–242).
- 9.
See Cavendish (2001, 202, 214, and 226). Because the sensation happens locally, when we use the microscope, for example, what we are seeing is the lens, and the lens is “seeing” the object. What we actually perceive, then, is not the object itself magnified, but rather the lens’ version of the object, which is necessarily different from the object itself.
- 10.
See Cavendish (2001, 50 and 140).
- 11.
See Cavendish (2001, 218–219 and 221). This is especially true concerning the knowability of God (215).
- 12.
See also Descartes’ suggestion to Elisabeth that one not engage in serious philosophy but for a few hours per year (Descartes 1991, 227).
- 13.
- 14.
- 15.
To this we might add that false accounts in philosophy and science often are pragmatically useful in our search for truth; we should thereby expect precisely the same outcome from the humanities.
- 16.
Cf. Lloyd (1979). In Lloyd’s influential paper, she argues that the development of reason in the works of Enlightenment thinkers is a direct cause of the separation of reason from imagination and emotion in contemporary philosophy. Although we agree with Lloyd about the way in which RN has influenced contemporary philosophy, where we differ is in suggesting that the problem with the contemporary distinction lies with RN itself and not with the view of reason held by early modern thinkers.
- 17.
- 18.
See Cavendish (2001, xvi, 74, and 251).
- 19.
Cavendish (2001, 52–53 and 234). The above passages are only a sample of the places where Cavendish is directly engaged with RN’s version of the philosophical canon.
- 20.
Her Philosophical Letters is simply a direct correspondence with an imagined “Madam” concerning her philosophical contemporaries.
- 21.
For example, Shapiro suggests that we should pursue the philosophy of education in the modern period (Shapiro 2016, 380).
References
Ariew, Roger. 2014. Descartes and the First Cartesians. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ariew, Roger, and Eric Watkins. 2009. Modern Philosophy: an Anthology of Primary Sources. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.
Bristow, William. 2010. “Enlightenment.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2017 Edition), edited by Edward N. Zalta. Last modified August 29, 2017. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2017/entries/enlightenment/.
Cavendish, Margaret. 2001. In Observations upon Experimental Philosophy, ed. Eileen O’Neill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 2003. The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World. In Margaret Cavendish: Political Writings, ed. Susan James, 1–110. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cottingham, John, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch, and Anthony Kenny, eds. 1991. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. 3 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cunning, David. 2016. Cavendish. New York: Routledge.
———. 2018. Cavendish on the Metaphysics of Imagination and the Dramatic Force of the Imaginary World. In Early Modern Women on Metaphysics, ed. Emily Thomas, 188–210. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Descartes, Rene. 1985a. Discourse on the Method. In The Philosophical Writings of Descartes (Vol. I). Translated by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff and Dugald Murdoch, 111–151. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 1985b. Principles of Philosophy. In The Philosophical Writings of Descartes (Vol. I). Translated by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff and Dugald Murdoch, 179–292. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 1991. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes (Vol. III). Translated by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch, and Anthony Kenny. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lloyd, Genevieve. 1979. The Man of Reason. Metaphilosophy 10 (1): 18–37.
Marshall, Eugene. 2014. How to Teach Modern Philosophy. Teaching Philosophy 37 (1): 73–90.
Martinich, A.P., Fritz Allhoff, and Anand Jayprakash Vaidya, eds. 2007. Early Modern Philosophy: Essential Readings with Commentary. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Nadler, Steven. 2014. History of Modern Philosophy: What is it Good For? Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association: 38–49.
O’Neill, Eileen. 2005. Early Modern Women Philosophers and the History of Philosophy. Hypatia 20 (3): 185–197.
Phillips, Kristopher G. 2017. Is Philosophy Impractical? Yes and No, but that’s Precisely Why We Need it. In Why the Humanities Matter Today: In Defense of Liberal Education, ed. Lee Trepanier, 37–64. Lanham: Lexington Press.
Sarasohn, Lisa T. 2010. The Natural Philosophy of Margaret Cavendish: Reason and Fancy during the Scientific Revolution. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Schliesser, Eric. 2007. “Hume’s Newtonianism and Anti-Newtonianism.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2008 Edition), edited by Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/hume-newton/.
Shapiro, Lisa. 2016. Revisiting the Early Modern Philosophical Canon. Journal of the American Philosophical Association 2 (3): 365–383.
Wright, John. 2009. Hume’s “A Treatise of Human Nature”: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Jones, S.A., Phillips, K.G. (2023). Two Dogmas of Enlightenment Scholarship. In: Griffioen, A.L., Backmann, M. (eds) Pluralizing Philosophy’s Past. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13405-0_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13405-0_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-13404-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-13405-0
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)