The Philosopher in Early Modern Europe The Nature of a Contested Identity [Hardcover]

This collection of essays provides access to key early modern disputes over what it meant to be a philosopher.This collection of essays by leading figures in philosophy and the history of ideas provides access to key early modern disputes over what it meant to be a philosopher and to the institutional, political and religious contexts in which such disputes took place.This collection of essays by leading figures in philosophy and the history of ideas provides access to key early modern disputes over what it meant to be a philosopher and to the institutional, political and religious contexts in which such disputes took place.In this groundbreaking collection of essays the history of philosophy appears in a fresh light, not as reason's progressive discovery of its universal conditions, but as a series of unreconciled disputes over the proper way to conduct oneself as a philosopher. By shifting focus from the philosopher as proxy for the universal subject of reason to the philosopher as a special persona arising from rival forms of self-cultivation, philosophy is approached in terms of the social office and intellectual deportment of the philosopher, as a personage with a definite moral physiognomy and institutional setting. In so doing, this collection of essays by leading figures in the fields of both philosophy and the history of ideas provides access to key early modern disputes over what it meant to be a philosopher, and to the institutional and larger political and religious contexts in which such disputes took place.List of contributors; Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. The persona of the natural philosopher Stephen Gaukroger; 2. The university philosopher in early modern Germany Ian Hunter; 3. The persona of the philosopher and the rhetorics of office in early modern England Conal Condren; 4. From Sir Thomas More to Robert Burton: the laughing philosopher in the early modern period Catherine Curtis; 5. 'Vaine philosophy': Thomas Hobbes and the philosophy of tlÕ