Sabrina Ebbersmeyer

Sarah Hutton

This book showcases Elisabeth of Bohemia, Princess Palatine (1618-1680), one of the foremost female minds of the 17th century. Best known today for her important correspondence with the philosopher René Descartes, Elisabeth was famous in her own time for her learning, philosophical acumen, and mathematical brilliance. She was also well-connected in the seventeenth-century intellectual circles. Elisabeth’s status as a woman philosopher is emblematic of both the possibilities and limitations of women's participation in the republic of letters and of their subsequent fate in history. Few sources containing her own views survive, and until recently there has been no work on Elisabeth as a thinker in her own right. This volume brings together an international team of scholars to discuss her work from a cross-disciplinary perspective on the occasion of her fourth centenary. It is the first collection of essays to examine a range of her interests and to discuss them in relation to her historical context. The studies presented here discuss her educational background, her friendships and contacts, her interest in politics, religion, and astronomy, as well as her views on politics, her moral philosophy and her engagement with Cartesianism. The volume will appeal to historians of philosophy, historians of political thought, philosophers, feminists and seventeenth-century historians.

Elisabeth of Bohemia (1618–1680): A Philosopher in her Historical Context

Thomas Ricklin

Helga Pirner-Pareschi

Sonne und Mensch, die laut Aristoteles den Menschen zeugen (Physica, II, 2, 194b), stehen stellvertretend für das weite Interessenspektrum, das Eckhardt Keßler als Forscher und akademischer Lehrer der Philosophie der Renaissance ebenso kompetent wie umsichtig erforscht und vermittelt. Mit den in diesem Band versammelten Beiträgen versuchen Freunde, Kollegen und Schüler Eckhardt Keßlers, seine wegweisenden Forschungen zu Humanismus, universitärer und außeruniversitärer Philosophie der Renaissance und der Frühen Neuzeit aufzugreifen und die Kenntnis der Geistesgeschichte der Epoche mit der dem Jubilar eigenen Akribie voranzutreiben.

Mensch und Natur in der Renaissance : Festschrift zum 70 : Geburtstag für Eckhard Keßler

Sol et homo

The author reconstructs the development and particular structure of early humanist moral philosophy. The humanists overcame scholastic philosophy through the development of a new style of thought. Not only did they develop solutions to the philosophical problems important in their time, but they also provided answers to ethical questions that remained relevant in the modern period.

Studien zur Genese und Struktur frühhumanistischer Moralphilosophie

Homo agens

The thoroughly contemporary question of the relationship between emotion and reason was debated with such complexity by the philosophers of the 17th century that their concepts remain a source of inspiration for today’s research about the emotionality of the mind. The analyses of the works of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and many other thinkers collected in this volume offer new insights into the diversity and significance of philosophical reflections about emotions during the early modern era. A focus is placed on affective components in learning processes and the boundaries between emotions and reason.

The Passions and the Limits of Pure Inquiry in Early Modern Philosophy

Emotional Minds

Angeregt durch die Lektüre von Descartes' Meditationen suchte Elisabeth von der Pfalz (1618-1680) 1643 den brieflichen Kontakt zu dem berühmten Philosophen. Der sich über sechs Jahre, bis zum Tod Descartes' im Februar 1650 erstreckende Briefwechsel fesselt durch philosophische Reflexionen wie durch persönliche Betrachtungen. Unter den 59 Briefen der Korrespondenz stammen 26 aus Elisabeths und 33 aus Descartes' Feder. Der Briefwechsel ist zum einen bedeutsam für all jene, die sich für die Philosophie Descartes' interessieren, insbesondere für das Verständnis vom Menschen als Körper-Geist-Einheit. Zum anderen dokumentiert er die philosophischen Überlegungen einer der gelehrtesten Frauen des 17. Jahrhunderts und belegt eindrucksvoll, auf welche Weise sich gebildete Frauen der Frühen Neuzeit in den philosophischen Diskurs einbringen konnten.

Der Briefwechsel zwischen Elisabeth von der Pfalz und René Descartes

Gianni Paganini

This book sheds light on the originality and historical significance of women’s philosophical, moral, political and scientific ideas in Italy and early modern Europe. Divided into three sections, it starts by discussing the women philosophers’ engagement with the classical inheritance with regard to the works of Moderata Fonte, Tullia d'Aragona and Anne Conway. The next section examines the relationship between women philosophers and the new philosophy of nature, focusing on the connections between female thought and the new seventeenth- and eighteenth-century science, and discussing the work of Camilla Erculiani, Margherita Sarocchi, Margaret Cavendish, Mariangela Ardinghelli, Teresa Ciceri, Candida Lena Perpenti, and Alessandro Volta. The final section presents male philosophers’ perspectives on the role of women, discussing the place of women in the work of Giordano Bruno, Poulain de la Barre and the theories of Hobbes and Rawls. By exploring these women philosophers, writers and translators, the book offers a re-examination of the early modern thinking of and about women in Italy.

Sabrina Ebbersmeyer

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