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3594 results in Philosophy texts

Page 161 of 180

  • Letters

  • René Descartes
  • Edited by John Cottingham, Dugald Murdoch, Robert Stoothoff, Anthony Kenny
  • Book:
    The Philosophical Writings of Descartes
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    30 August 1991, pp 1-197

  • Summary

    TO BEECKMAN, 24 JANUARY 1619

    I have received your letter, which I was expecting. On first glancing over it, I was delighted to see your notes on music. What clearer evidence could there be that you had not forgotten me? But there was something else I was looking for, and that the most important, namely news about what you have been doing, what you are doing, and how you are. You ought not to think that all I care about is science, I care about you, and not just your intellect – even if that is the greatest part of you – but the whole man.

    As for me, in my usual state of indolence I have hardly put a title to the books which, on your advice, I am going to write. But you should not think me so lazy as to fritter away all my time. On the contrary, I have never been more usefully employed – but on matters which your intellect, occupied with more elevated subjects, would no doubt despise, looking down on them from the lofty heights of science, namely painting, military architecture and above all, Flemish. You will soon see what progress I have made in this language, for I am coming to Middelburg, God willing, at the beginning of Lent …

    If you look carefully at what I wrote on discords and the rest of my treatise on music, you will find that all the points I made on the intervals of harmonies, scales and discords were demonstrated mathematically; but the account I gave is too brief, confused, and not properly worked out.

  • Introduction

  • René Descartes
  • Edited by John Cottingham, Dugald Murdoch, Robert Stoothoff, Anthony Kenny
  • Book:
    The Philosophical Writings of Descartes
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    30 August 1991, pp vii-xi

  • Summary

    This volume completes the project, begun in the 1980s, to provide an authoritative and comprehensive new English translation of the philosophical writings of Descartes, based on the original Latin and French texts. The first two volumes of the translation, which appeared in 1985 (known as ‘CSM’), contained the Early Writings, Rules for the Direction of our Native Intelligence, The World and Treatise on Man, Discourse and Essays, Principles of Philosophy, Comments on a Certain Broadsheet, Description of the Human Body and The Passions of the Soul (Volume One); and the Meditations, Objections and Replies and The Search for Truth (Volume Two). But for scholars and students of Descartes there is, in addition to the large corpus of his published works, another formidable body of source material which is indispensable for a proper understanding of his philosophy: the correspondence. This third and final volume of The Philosophical Writings of Descartes is devoted to Descartes' letters.

    Descartes himself attached great importance to his letters – an extraordinarily rich and wide-ranging body of detailed commentary and analysis covering every aspect of his philosophical system. Apart from a handful of letters, most of this material was not available to English readers until the publication in 1970 of Anthony Kenny's Descartes: Philosophical Letters (known as ‘K’). This valuable anthology, which has gained wide currency among Anglophone Cartesian scholars, is now out of print; but we are extremely fortunate in that it has been possible to incorporate it in its entirety into the present volume.

The Philosophical Writings of Descartes
  • Volume 3, The Correspondence
  • René Descartes
  • Edited by John Cottingham, Dugald Murdoch, Robert Stoothoff, Anthony Kenny
  • Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    30 August 1991
  • Volumes I and II provide a completely new translation of the philosophical works of Descartes, based on the best available Latin and French texts. Volume III contains 207 of Descartes' letters, over half of which have not been translated into English before. It incorporates, in its entirety, Anthony Kenny's celebrated translation of selected philosophical letters, first published in 1970. In conjunction with Volumes I and II it is designed to meet the widespread demand for a comprehensive, accurate and authoritative edition of Descartes' philosophical writings in clear and readable modern English.

  • 7 - On recognizing men's natural equality

  • from BOOK I
  • Samuel Pufendorf
  • Edited by James Tully, McGill University, Montréal
  • Translated by Michael Silverthorne, McGill University, Montréal
  • Book:
    Pufendorf: On the Duty of Man and Citizen according to Natural Law
    Published online:
    14 September 2019
    Print publication:
    26 July 1991, pp 61-63

  • Summary

    1. Man is an animal which is not only intensely interested in its own preservation but also possesses a native and delicate sense of its own value. To detract from that causes no less alarm than härm to body or goods. In the very name of man a certain dignity is feit to lie, so that the ultimate and most effective rebuttal of insolence and insults from others is ‘Look, I am not a dog, but a man as well as yourself.’ Human nature therefore belongs equally to all and no one would or could gladly associate with anyone who does not value him as a man as well as himself and a partner in the same nature. Hence, the second of the duties of every man to every man is held to be: that each man value and treat the other as naturally his equal, or as equally a man.

    2. This equality among men consists not only in the fact that the physical strength of adult men is nearly equal to the extent that even a relatively weak man can kill a stronger man by taking him by surprise or by use of cunning and skill in arms, but also in that one must practise the precepts of natural law towards another and one expects the same in return, even though he may be better provided by nature with various gifts of mind and body; his superiority does not give him licence to inflict injuries on others. On the other hand neither the scanty provision of nature nor the niggardliness of fortune in themselves condemn one to have less access to the enjoyment of the common law than others. But what one may require or expect from others, the same, other things being equal, they should have from him; and any law [jus] that a man has made for others, it is particularly fitting that he follow himself. For the Obligation to cultivate social life with others lies on all men equally; and it is not allowed to one more than any other to violate natural laws where another person is concerned.

  • 13 - On the right of life and death

  • from BOOK II
  • Samuel Pufendorf
  • Edited by James Tully, McGill University, Montréal
  • Translated by Michael Silverthorne, McGill University, Montréal
  • Book:
    Pufendorf: On the Duty of Man and Citizen according to Natural Law
    Published online:
    14 September 2019
    Print publication:
    26 July 1991, pp 158-162

  • Summary

    1. The sovereign civil authority has a twofold right over the Citizens’ lives: a direct right in the suppression of crime, and an indirect right in the defence of the State.

    2. Force on the part of an external enemy has often to be met by force; or we may need to use violence in claiming our right. In either case the sovereign authority may compel the Citizens to perform this kind of service, where it is not a question of deliberately sending them to death but only of exposing them to the danger of death. The sovereign authority has the duty to give them training and preparation to conduct themselves with vigour and skill in such dangers. No Citizen through fear of this danger may render himself unfit for military service. Once inducted, he will in no circumstances desert his post through fear but will fight rather to the last breath, unless he believes it to be the will of his Commander that he should save his life rather than hold his position, or that the position is less important to the State than the lives of the Citizens involved.

    3. Executing its right directly the sovereign power may take away Citizens’ lives for atrocious crimes and as a punishment (though punishment also falls upon a man's other possessions). At this point a few general explanatory remarks on the nature of punishment are necessary.

    4. A punishment is an evil one suffers, inflicted in return for an evil one has done; in other words, some painful evil imposed by authority as a means of coercion in view of a past offence.

  • For although punishment often takes the form of action, yet these actions are designed to be laborious and painful to die doer and so to inflict on him a kind of suffering.

  • Punishment is to be inflicted on men against their will. Otherwise it would not achieve its goal, which is to deter men from wrongdoing by its harshness. Nothing a man gladly accepts has this effect.

  • Evils inflicted in war or in self-defence in fighting are not punishments, because they are not by authority.

  • Nor is what one suffers when wronged a punishment, because it is not inflicted in view of a past offence.

  • 12 - On civil laws in particular

  • from BOOK II
  • Samuel Pufendorf
  • Edited by James Tully, McGill University, Montréal
  • Translated by Michael Silverthorne, McGill University, Montréal
  • Book:
    Pufendorf: On the Duty of Man and Citizen according to Natural Law
    Published online:
    14 September 2019
    Print publication:
    26 July 1991, pp 155-157

  • Summary

    1. It remains to discern the specific functions of sovereign power and their noteworthy features. Most important here are the civil laws, which are the decrees of the sovereign civil authority [summi imperantis civilis], which enjoin upon the Citizens what they should do or not do in civil life.

    2. There are two particular senses in which the word ‘civil’ is applied to law: with respect to authority and with respect to origin. In the former sense, all laws are called civil which are the bases for the giving of justice in the civil courts, whatever their origin. In the latter sense, those laws are called civil which proceed from the will of the sovereign and deal with matters which are undefined by natural and divine law but deeply affect the private interests of individual Citizens.

    3. Though nothing should be regulated by the authority of the civil laws unless it has a bearing on the public interest, it is of the highest importance for the dignity and peace of civil life that Citizens should properly observe the natural law; and therefore it is a duty of sovereigns to lend it the force and effectiveness of civil law. For there is so much wickedness in the greater part of mankind that neither the obvious benefits of natural law nor fear of divine power is adequate to check it. The sovereign, therefore, may ensure preservation of the moral integrity of civil life by lending to natural laws the force of the civil laws.

    4. The force of the civil laws consists in the addition of a penal sanction to precepts to do or not to do, or in defining the penalty in the courts that awaits one who has done what he ought not or not done what he ought. Violations of natural law which have no penal sanctions attached are beyond the reach of human justice, though the divine tribunal still Stands ready to punish.

    5. Since civil life is too fragile to allow each man to exact what he believes to be his due by violent self-help, civil laws come to the aid of natural law in providing actions for the obligations of natural law.

  • 17 - On treaties

  • from BOOK II
  • Samuel Pufendorf
  • Edited by James Tully, McGill University, Montréal
  • Translated by Michael Silverthorne, McGill University, Montréal
  • Book:
    Pufendorf: On the Duty of Man and Citizen according to Natural Law
    Published online:
    14 September 2019
    Print publication:
    26 July 1991, pp 173-174

  • Summary

    1. Treaties which are agreements made between independent sovereign rulers have a function both in wartime and in peacetime. They may be divided, on the basis of their content, into those which define the terms of reciprocal Performance of some duty already enjoined by natural law, and those which go beyond the duties of natural law, or at least put into specific terms what seems indefinite in natural law.

    2. Treaties of the first type are those which form an agreement merely about practising simple humanity or refraining from doing harm. To this category belong also treaties which simply give formal expression to friendly relations without any requirements or which confirm the right of diplomacy and commerce insofar as it is laid down by natural law.

    3. Treaties of the second type are either equal or unequal. An equal treaty is the same for both parties. It involves equality in the content of the promises made on each side, either simply or with due regard to differences of strength, and equality in the manner of the promises, so that neither party may be in an inferior position to the other or subject to him.

    4. Treaties are unequal when the Performances promised by the parties are unequal or when one party is in an inferior position to the other. Unequal promises are made either by the more powerful party to the treaty or by the less powerful. The first is the case if the greater power promises help to the other party without a stipulation in return, or if it makes promises on a larger scale than the other. The second is the case if the weaker party is obliged to give more than it gets back.

    5. Some of the obligations of a weaker party to a treaty involve some loss of sovereignty, for example if it is agreed that the weaker ally may not exercise some part of his sovereign power without the consent of the more powerful.

  • 15 - On the power of sovereign authority over property within the state

  • from BOOK II
  • Samuel Pufendorf
  • Edited by James Tully, McGill University, Montréal
  • Translated by Michael Silverthorne, McGill University, Montréal
  • Book:
    Pufendorf: On the Duty of Man and Citizen according to Natural Law
    Published online:
    14 September 2019
    Print publication:
    26 July 1991, pp 166-167

  • Summary

    1. When property has come to Citizens from sovereigns, the right by which they hold it depends on the discretion of the sovereign. By contrast, property of which Citizens have obtained full ownership by their own industry or in any other way is subject to three principal rights which, by the nature of states and as necessary to their purpose, belong to sovereigns.

    2. The first right is that sovereigns may make laws obliging the Citizens to accommodate their use of their property to the interest of the State; or defining the extent and nature of possessions, and the method of transferring property to others, and other matters of this kind.

    3. The second right is that the sovereign may collect a fraction of the Citizens’ property as tribute or tax. For since their lives and fortunes are to be defended by the State, it is appropriate that they contribute to meeting the expenses necessary to this end. It is totally unscrupulous to attempt to enjoy the protection and convenience the State affords while refusing to contribute either Service or property to its preservation. And yet prudent rulers would be wise to take into consideration the resentment felt by ordinary people, and to make an effort to give as little offence as possible in collecting taxes, observing fairness above all and imposing taxes that are moderate and flexible rather than massive and uniform.

    4. The third right is eminent domain, which means that in a national emergency sovereigns may seize and apply to public use the property of any subject which the crisis particularly requires, even if the property seized far exceeds the amount which had been fixed as his normal obligatory contribution to his country's expenses. For this reason, however, as much of the excess as possible should be refunded to him from the public treasury or by a levy on the rest of the Citizens.

    5. Besides these three rights, there is in many states a distinct public property, which usually goes under the name of the country's or the kingdom's patrimony. This is again divided in various places into the patrimony of the prince and that of the country, or into the privy purse and the treasury.

  • 6 - On the duty of every man to every man, and first of not harming others

  • from BOOK I
  • Samuel Pufendorf
  • Edited by James Tully, McGill University, Montréal
  • Translated by Michael Silverthorne, McGill University, Montréal
  • Book:
    Pufendorf: On the Duty of Man and Citizen according to Natural Law
    Published online:
    14 September 2019
    Print publication:
    26 July 1991, pp 56-60

  • Summary

    1. We come now to the duties which a man must perform towards other men. Some result from the common Obligation by which the Creator has willed that all men be bound as men; others derive from a particular custom which has been introduced or accepted, or from a particular adventitious State. The former are to be shown by every man to every man, the latter only towards certain men on the basis of a particular condition or State. Hence you may call the former absolute, the latter hypothetical.

    2. First among the absolute duties is the duty not to harm others. This is at once the most far-reaching of all duties, extending as it does to all men as men, and the easiest, since it consists of mere omission of action, except insofar as passions in conflict with reason must sometimes be restrained. It is also the most essential duty, since without it human social life would be utterly impossible. For I can live at peace with a man who does me no positive Service, and with a man who does not exchange even the commonest duties with me, provided he does me no harm. In fact, this is all we desire from mankind at large; it is only within a fairly small circle that we impart good things to each other. By contrast, there is no way that I can live at peace with one who does me harm. For nature has implanted in each man such a tender love of himself and of what is his, that he cannot but repel by every means one who offers to do harm to either.

    3. This duty affords protection not only to what we have from nature, as life, body, limbs, chastity, liberty, but also to what we have acquired on the basis of some institution and human Convention. Hence this precept forbids that anything which is ours by legitimate title be taken, spoiled, damaged or removed from our use in whole or in part. By this precept all crimes are understood to be forbidden by which harm is inflicted on another, as, killing, wounding, beating, robbery, theft, fraud and other forms of violence, whether inflicted directly or indirectly, in person or through an agent.

Pufendorf: On the Duty of Man and Citizen according to Natural Law
  • Samuel Pufendorf
  • Edited by James Tully
  • Translated by Michael Silverthorne
  • Published online:
    14 September 2019
    Print publication:
    26 July 1991
  • On the Duty of Man and Citizen (1673) is Pufendorf's succinct and condensed presentation of the natural law political theory he developed in his monumental classic On the Law of Nature and Nations (1672). His theory was the most influential natural law philosophy of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-centuries. He advanced a compelling reply to Grotius and Hobbes, and in doing so, set the intellectual problems for theorists such as Locke, Hutcheson, Hume, Rousseau, and Smith. In the aftermath of the Thirty Years' War, Pufendorf sets forth a classic justification of the early modern enlightened state and of the proper relations of moral and political subjection to it. This lucid and historically sensitive translation by Michael Silverthorne, (a classicist and a specialist in Roman Law and early modern political thought) is the first since the early twentieth century. James Tully's introduction sets the text in its seventeenth-century context, summarises the main arguments, surveys recent literature on Pufendorf, and shows how Pufendorf transformed natural law theory into an independent discipline of juristic political philosophy which dominated reflection on politics until Kant.

  • 1 - On human action

  • from BOOK I
  • Samuel Pufendorf
  • Edited by James Tully, McGill University, Montréal
  • Translated by Michael Silverthorne, McGill University, Montréal
  • Book:
    Pufendorf: On the Duty of Man and Citizen according to Natural Law
    Published online:
    14 September 2019
    Print publication:
    26 July 1991, pp 17-26

  • Summary

    1. By *duty’ [offcium] here I mean human action in conformity with the commands of law on die ground of Obligation. To explain this, one must first discuss the nature of human action and the nature of laws in general.

    2. By ‘human action’ I do not mean any motion which has its origin in man's faculties [facultas] but only such as is begun and directed by the faculties which the great and good Creator has given to mankind above and beyond the animals. I mean motion initiated in the light of understanding and at the command of will.

    3. It has been given to man to become acquainted with the diverse multiplicity of objects that he meets in this world, to compare them, and to form new notions about them. But he has also the ability to envisage his future actions, to set himself to achieve them, to fashion them to a specific norm and purpose, and to deduce the consequences; and he can tell whether past actions conform to rule. Moreover, human faculties are not all in constant and uniform Operation; some of them are aroused by an internal impulse and after arousal are brought under control and direction. Finally, a man is not attracted to all objects indifferently; some he seeks, others he avoids. Often, too, he checks a motion despite the presence of the object of action; and he often selects one of several objects before him, rejecting the rest.

    4. The faculty of comprehension and judgement is called understanding [intellectus]. It must be taken as certain that any adult of sound mind has natural light enough to enable him, with instruction and proper reflection, to achieve adequate comprehension of at least the general precepts and principles which make for a good and peaceful life in this world; and to recognize their conformity with human nature. If this is not granted, at least in the court of man, men could hide all their wrongdoing behind a plea of invincible ignorance, since no one can be condemned in the court of man for violating a rule which is beyond his capacity to understand.

  • 10 - On the duty of men in the use of language

  • from BOOK I
  • Samuel Pufendorf
  • Edited by James Tully, McGill University, Montréal
  • Translated by Michael Silverthorne, McGill University, Montréal
  • Book:
    Pufendorf: On the Duty of Man and Citizen according to Natural Law
    Published online:
    14 September 2019
    Print publication:
    26 July 1991, pp 77-79

  • Summary

    1. Everyone knows how useful, how simply necessary, an instrument of human society language [sermo] is. Indeed, it has often been argued, on the basis of this faculty alone, that man is intended by nature to live a social life. The legitimate and profitable use of language for human society is based upon this duty prescribed by natural law: no man should deceive another by language or by other signs which have been established to express the sense of his mind [sensa animi].

    2. A more profound grasp of the nature of language requires a knowledge of the double Obligation incurred by using it whether in Speech or in writing. The first is that users of any given language [lingua] must employ the same words for the same objects following the usage of that language. For since neither sounds nor particular letter-shapes naturally signify anything (for if they did, all languages or forms of writing would necessarily converge), the use of a language would become meaningless if everyone could give an object any name he wanted. To prevent this, it is necessary for a tacit agreement to be made among users of the same language to denote each thing with one particular word and not another. For without an accord on the consistent employment of sounds, it is impossible to understand from what someone says the sense of his mind. By virtue of this agreement everyone is obliged to use words in his common discourse in the sense they bear in the accepted usage of that language. It follows from this too that, although the sense of a man's mind may be at variance with what he says, yet in the afFairs of human life everyone is assumed to have meant what his words indicate, even if it deviates perhaps from the inner intention of his mind. For we can know nothing of his mind except by signs; and therefore all use of language would be rendered futile if an internal mental reservation, which each man can form as he pleases, could undermine the usual force of signs in social life.

  • 14 - On reputation

  • from BOOK II
  • Samuel Pufendorf
  • Edited by James Tully, McGill University, Montréal
  • Translated by Michael Silverthorne, McGill University, Montréal
  • Book:
    Pufendorf: On the Duty of Man and Citizen according to Natural Law
    Published online:
    14 September 2019
    Print publication:
    26 July 1991, pp 163-165

  • Summary

    1. Reputation in general is the value of persons in common life [vita communis] by which they may be measured against others or compared with them and either preferred or put after them.

    2. Reputation is either simple or intensive. Both are viewed with reference on the one hand to men living in natural liberty and on the other hand to men in the civil State.

    3. Simple reputation among those who live in natural liberty consists primarily in each man's making himself and being taken to be such a man as may be dealt with as a good man and who is fit to live with others by the prescript of natural law.

    4. Reputation of this kind is held to be intact, so long as one does not knowingiy, willingly and with evil intent violate the law of nature with respect to others by a malicious or outrageous act. Hence everyone is taken to be a good man, until the contrary is proved.

    5. Reputation of this kind is diminished by malicious commission of outrageous crimes contrary to the law of nature, the effect of which is that one needs to show more caution in dealing with such a man. However, this stain may be purged by making voluntary reparation for the loss caused and by giving evidence of sincere repentance.

    6. Similarly, reputation is utterly destroyed by a manner and way of life which aims directly at indiscriminate harm to others and at profiting by open wrongdoing. Men of this nature (so long as they show no signs of repentance) may be treated as public enemies by all who are in any way affected by their wickedness. They may however repair their reputation by abjuring their vicious manner of life and entering on an honourable course, after making restitution for loss or obtaining forgiveness.

    7. Simple reputation among those who live in states is not to have been declared by the law and custom of the State a vicious member of the same, and to be regarded as a person of some Standing.

  • 5 - On duty to oneself

  • from BOOK I
  • Samuel Pufendorf
  • Edited by James Tully, McGill University, Montréal
  • Translated by Michael Silverthorne, McGill University, Montréal
  • Book:
    Pufendorf: On the Duty of Man and Citizen according to Natural Law
    Published online:
    14 September 2019
    Print publication:
    26 July 1991, pp 46-55

  • Summary

    1. Self-love is implanted deep in man; it compels him to have a careful concern for himself and to get all the good he can in every way. In view of this it seems superfluous to invent an Obligation of self-love. Yet from another point of view a man surely does have certain obligations to himself. For man is not born for himself alone; the end for which he has been endowed by his Creator with such excellent gifts is that he may celebrate His glory and be a fit member of human society. He is therefore bound so to conduct himself as not to permit the Creator's gifts to perish for lack of use, and to contribute what he can to human society. So, by analogy, though a person's ignorance is his own shame and loss, yet the master is right to flog the pupil who neglects to learn such skills as his capacity allows.

    2. Furthermore, man consists of two parts, soul [anima] and body. The soul has the function of ruler, the body of servant and instrument; consequently we employ the mind [animus] for government and the body for service. We must care for both, but particularly for the former. Above all the mind [animus] must be formed to accept social life with ease; it must be steeped in a sense and a love of duty and goodness. Every man must also receive some education in accordance with his capacity and fortune, so that no one shall be a useless burden on the earth, a problem to himself and a nuisance to others. He must also choose in due time an honest way of life in accordance with his natural bent, his mental and physical abilities, the condition of his birth, his fortune, his parents’ wishes, the commands of the civil rulers, opportunity or necessity.

    3. Since the mind depends upon support from the body, we must strengthen and preserve the powers of the body with appropriate food and exercise. We should not weaken them by intemperance in food or drink or by unseasonable and unnecessary toil or by any other means. For the same reason we must avoid gluttony, drunkenness, excessive sex, and so on.

Page 161 of 180