Subjectivity and Selfhood in Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy

This book is a collection of studies on topics related to subjectivity and selfhood in medieval and early modern philosophy. The individual contributions approach the theme from a number of angles varying from cognitive and moral psychology to metaphysics and epistemology. Instead of a complete overview on the historical period, the book provides detailed glimpses into some of the most important figures of the period, such as Augustine, Avicenna, Aquinas, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz and Hume. The questions addressed include the ethical problems of the location of one's true self and the proper distribution of labour between desire, passion and reason, and the psychological tasks of accounting for subjective experience and self-knowledge and determining different types of self-awareness.

Offers a new perspective on historical discussions of human subjectivity and agency Bridges the gap between medieval and early modern philosophy Combines discussions from both the Latin and the Arabic traditions

Auteur
Jari Kaukua is an Academy of Finland research fellow at the University of Jyväskylä. An expert in classical and post-classical Arabic philosophy, he is the author of Self-Awareness in Islamic Philosophy (Cambridge University Press), and has published a number of articles in leading journals of medieval philosophy, including Vivarium and Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale. Tomas Ekenberg is a docent of theoretical philosophy at Uppsala University, Sweden. He specializes in early medieval metaphysics, theories of action and philosophical psychology and their origins in late ancient thought. He has published several articles about Anselm of Canterbury and Augustine of Hippo. Among his recent publications is a contribution to the anthology Augustine's Confessions: Philosophy in Autobiography, edited by William Mann (OUP 2014).

Contenu
Introduction; Jari Kaukua and Tomas Ekenberg.- Chapter 1. Augustine on Second-Order Desires and Passions; Tomas Ekenberg.- Chapter 2. The Augustinian cogito and Materialist Theories of Mind; Tamer Nawar.- Chapter 3. Losing Oneself, Finding Oneself: Perspectives from Islamic Intellectual History; Taneli Kukkonen.- Chapter 4. Avicenna on Non-Conceptual Content and Self-Awareness in Non-Human Animals; Luis Xavier López-Farjeat.- Chapter 5. Self, Agent, Soul: Abû al-Barakât al-Baghdâdî's Critical Reception of Avicennian Psychology; Jari Kaukua.- Chapter 6. 'Causa sui': Awareness and Choice in the Constitution of Self; Calvin Normore.- Chapter 7. Aping Logic? Albert the Great on Animal Mind and Action; Jörg Alejandro Tellkamp.- Chapter 8. Locating Human Subjectivity in Aquinas: Self-Awareness, Freedom, and the Reflexivity of Incorporeal Acts; Therese Scarpelli Cory.- Chapter 9. Subjective Experience and Self-Knowledge: Chatton's Approach and its Problems; Sonja Schierbaum.- Chapter 10. Self-Awareness and Perception in Late Medieval Epistemology; José Filipe Silva.- Chapter 11. Beasts, Human Beings, or Gods: Human Subjectivity in Medieval Political Philosophy; Juhana Toivanen.- Chapter 12. Martin Luther's Early Theological Anthropology: From Parts of the Soul to the Human Person; Ilmari Karimies.- Chapter 13. A Bodily Sense of Self in Descartes and Malebranche; Colin Chamberlain.- Chapter 14. A View from Nowhere? The Place of Subjectivity in Spinoza's Rationalism; Julia Borcherding.- Chapter 15. Reflection and Rationality in Leibniz; Sebastian Bender.- Chapter 16. Hume's Self and the Appendix; Udo Thiel.