Leibniz's calculator
Leibniz's calculator
History of Modern Philosophy (V83. 0021)
NYU Summer 06
Monday-Thursday, 1:30-3:05pm
Room 120, 48 Cooper Square
June 26th through August 4th
Colin Marshall, Instructor
Email: crm281@nyu.edu
Office: 503K in Silver Center (in the Philosophy Department)
Office hours: Wednesdays, 3:30-5:30pm, and by appointment
This is the coursepage for History of Modern Philosophy. All assignments, study guides and other course materials will be posted here.
Essential Material
The course syllabus is here.
Weekly assignment number one
Weekly assignment number two
Reading from Locke
Weekly assignment number three
Validity homework
Weekly assignment number four
Weekly assignment number five
...drumroll...Study questions for the final
Supplementary Material
Here is a timeline of the major figures and works we will be reading, along with a couple other relevant dates.
Here is a loose guide for reconstructing an argument from the text. As I say here, the main point of doing this is to help you think through the material.
A glossary of a few terms that pop up fairly often. Remember that these are just rough definitions meant to get you going.
Links
These are some links with material on modern philosophy that I have found useful:
This is a collection of translations of all the major works we'll use in the course. The translations are by Jonathan Bennett, one of the most important (and controversial) scholars working on the history of philosophy. His chief aim in this translations is readability, which is why also he offers 'translations' of philosophers who originally wrote in English. No translation is perfect, so be a bit wary, but this can be a great source if you're having trouble making sense of material in the Ariew/Watkins anthology.
A very useful resource, especially with terminological questions. You must use a computer in the NYU campus network to use this link. You can also connect from outside the NYU network, provided you have an NYU email account, by looking up 'Encyclopedias, Dictionaries & Other Reference Works' for philosophy here.
A free online collection of articles on all areas of philosophy, written by a selective group of contemporary philosophers. Most of the material is quite good, and there are a number of articles concerning the figures we'll be reading. The articles tend to be a step or two more advanced than those in the Nadler 'Companion' I recommended, and often go into far greater detail.
To connect, you need to either be at an NYU computer. You can also connect from outside the NYU network, provided you have an NYU email account, by looking up 'primary text collections' for philosophy here.
Though it isn't directed at people studying the history of philosophy, I strongly recommend Jim Pryor's advice on reading and writing philosophy. Trust me - 'feeling' that you're getting it does not mean that you are. These are difficult skills to develop, but well worth the effort.
These guidelines are presented in terms of reading contemporary articles, but the process is the same in all essential respects. The most important difference is that, with historical material, one has to be extra careful to recognize that the authors' use of terms is often quite different from the sense we give them in contemporary language.
I'm not requiring any full-length papers for the course, so much of this won't apply to anything you'll be doing (though it's still worth reading for its own sake). But do look at the points concerning style.