Philosophy Bites has an excellent interview with Ray Monk on Philosophy and Biography (mp3 format). Monk, of course, uses his experience with writing biographies for Wittgenstein and Russell, but much of what is discussed, of course, is generalizable.

The newest early modern edition of Carnivalesque is up at Early Modern Notes. It has a number of great entries; I especially recommend the series on early modern print culture at Mercurius Politicus. Enjoy!

This is a re-post of a post from a prior version of this site, originally published 31 August 2005.

Depending on whether you date according to the Julian or the Gregorian calendar, Niels Stensen was born in Copenhagen January 1 (Julian) or January 11 (Gregorian) 1638. (The Gregorian calendar only began to be used in Denmark itself after 1700.) He was a second child of the goldsmith Sten Pedersen; his mother's name was Anne.

In 1656 he matriculated under the name Nicolaus Stenonis at Copenhagen University,

This is a re-post of a post from a previous version of this site; it was originally published on 7 March 2005.

Last week I gave a guest lecture on Butler’s view of conscience. Here are the notes for it.

Joseph Butler (1692-1712)

Major Works:

• Fifteen Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel (1726)
• The Analogy of religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature

Class Topic: Butler on Conscience

Catharine Trotter (1679-1749), later Catharine Cockburn, philosopher and playwright. You will find links useful for the study of Cockburn's work below the fold.

This is a re-post of a post from a prior version of the site; that post was published 22 April, 2006.

One of the most important contemporary criticisms of Descartes was that of Gisbert Voet [link broken], a scholar at the University of Utrecht. Voetius, a member of the Reformed Church, early became a central member of the so-called 'Further Reformation', which attempted to put down anything that encouraged the human inclination to sin. In his later life he wasn't as involved in such matters, but he remained an important figure in Reformed scholasticism.

Attached you will find a handout in Word format that lays out the basic points of Berkeley's visual language argument for the existence of God.

Attached you will find another wordfind, this one devoted to Augustine, Descartes, and Malebranche. It presupposes some basic familiarity with each of the three, and, in particular, acquaintance with Augustinian themes in the latter two.

Everyone who studies a given philosopher, or, I suppose, just about anything, has their own mental laundry list of clean-up points, by which I mean the set of common misunderstandings that, come what may, you are going to eliminate. Of course, this is optimistic thinking, since the laundry list gets longer and longer as time goes on, but something about those misunderstandings puts you on a mission to eliminate them.

Attached you should find a wordfind, this one devoted to Nicolas Malebranche and Mary Astell. (Although the exact nature of Malebranche's influence on Astell is still a matter of scholarly study, it is certain that Astell can be put, along with John Norris, in the class of British Malebrancheans.) It presumes a certain amount of familiarity with the work of both Astell and Malebranche.