Kirjahaku

Stephen Daniel presents a study of the philosophy of George Berkeley in the intellectual context of his times, with a particular focus on how, for Berkeley, mind is related to its ideas. Daniel does not assume that thinkers like Descartes, Malebranche, or Locke define for Berkeley the context in which he develops his own thought. Instead, he indicates how Berkeley draws on a tradition that informed his early training and that challenges much of the early modern thought with which he is often associated. Specifically, this book indicates how Berkeley's distinctive treatment of mind (as the activity whereby objects are differentiated and related to one another) highlights how mind neither precedes the existence of objects nor exists independently of them. This distinctive way of understanding the relation of mind and objects allows Berkeley to appropriate ideas from his contemporaries in ways that transform the issues with which he is engaged. The resulting insights--for example, about how God creates the minds that perceive objects--are only now starting to be fully appreciated.

"In this challenging work, Daniel draws on the semiotics of Foucault, Kristeva, and Peirce to explore Edwards's typology. . . . elegant and important . . . " —Library Journal "A provocative and at times brilliant reinterpretation of Edwards . . . " —Religious Studies Review " . . . a comprehensive analysis and redefinition of the thought of Jonathan Edwards." —Peirce Project Newsletter " . . . a new foundation for the study of Edwards's thought and rhetoric." —Wilson H. Kimnach ". . . this is a superb and important book, one that deserves to be widely read and vigorously discussed." —Transactions of the Charles S. Pierce Society ". . . Daniel's work ought . . . to be required reading among the Edwards guild, for it provides perhaps the best philosophical introduction in English to Edward's major writings." —Church History Drawing on the semiotic work of Peirce, Foucault, and Kristeva, Stephen Daniel shows how the Renaissance theory of signatures provides Edwards and his contemporaries with a powerful alternative to the ideas of Descartes and Locke.

Drawing on a variety of published and unpublished material representing Toland's broad interests, Professor Daniel reveals a common theme emphasizing man's capacity for independent thought on basic philosophical, religious, and political issues. Roughly chronological, Daniel's treatment describes Toland's progressive refinement of this fundamental aspect of his thought. After examining, in his early works, the process whereby religion becomes mystified, Toland turned to biography, demonstrating that through it one can regain rational control over religion. Prejudices and superstitions, topics of the Letters to Serena, are shown to be overcome through corrections implicit in the principles of biographical and historical exegesis. Polemic as philosophic methode required Toland to provide a doctrine of esoteric communication. In the course of his later writings this doctrine became grounded in a metaphysics suitable for the Cieronian religion of the pantheists.

George Berkeley (1685-1753) is perhaps most famous for his assertion that our knowledge of the world is nothing other than the experience of our ideas. Reexamining Berkeley's Philosophy examines this aspect of Berkeley's thought, arguing that such a viewpoint assumes that physical objects and minds are better understood when discussed in the contexts of science, morality, and religion. This collection confronts the question: how can we know anything about the world if all we know are our ideas?Comprised of eleven previously unpublished essays by leading scholars in the field, Reexamining Berkeley's Philosophy demonstrates how things in the world are intrinsically related to the sequence of experiences that constitute minds. This collection also discusses how the harmony of experience reveals strategies for recognizing the inherently active character of reality. Ultimately, this volume represents a major contribution to the study of Berkeley's philosophy by critiquing the tendency to generalize his thought as a version of theologically modified solipsism. In this way, it is a unique and invaluable addition to Berkeley scholarship.