Content

Religious thought depends on a transcendent account of human nature, which has been challenged repeatedly by materialists and naturalists, in the context of successive theories of physics. This unit examines key debates between transcendent and reductionist accounts of the human person in the 17th–19th centuries, highlighting the resilience of transcendent accounts. It includes Descartes’ arguments for an immaterial soul, Locke and ‘thinking matter’, Ralph Cudworth's coinage of ‘consciousness’ (1678), the Newtonian theologian Samuel Clarke's correspondence with the materialist Anthony Collins (1706–17), the anti-materialist philosophies of mind of the Jesuit physicist Roger Boscovich (1757) and the Evangelical Christians Maxwell and Faraday, the dispute between philosophical idealist T. H. Green and the positivist and naturalist G. H. Lewes (1878–85), and the philosophy of mind in C. D. Broad's The Mind and its Place in Nature (1925). Students will also be introduced to the primary working tools of contemporary research in early modern and 19th century philosophy.

Unit code: AP9163C

Unit status: Approved (Major revision)

Points: 24.0

Unit level: Postgraduate Elective

Unit discipline: Philosophy

Proposing College: Catholic Theological College

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Learning outcomes

1.

Analyse the selected primary texts carefully in relation to their purpose and historical context, and identify their basic positions on human nature;

2.

Critically expound and evaluate the theories, terminology and arguments studied in the unit

3.

Situate and critically interpret the material studied in relation to the wider framework of the Christian philosophical tradition (e.g. faith and reason, voluntarism and rationalism

4.

Narrate critically and contextually the sequence of major encounters between philosophical naturalists and theologians and other defenders of human transcendence throughout the early modern period

5.

Develop a topic of research in a critical, rigorous, sustained and self-directed manner, in accord with the methodologies and conventions of research in early modern, 18th- and 19th-century history of philosophy

Unit sequence

One unit of philosophy e.g.: AP8000C or AP8002C

Pedagogy

Lectures, seminars, tutorials. When taught online asynchronously, the tutorial/seminar component may be replaced by guided reading exercises.

Indicative Bibliography

  • Harman, P. M. The Natural Philosophy of James Clerk Maxwell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
  • Harris, James A. Of Liberty and Necessity: The Free Will Debate in Eighteenth Century British Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
  • Holden, Thomas. The Architecture of Matter: Galileo to Kant. Oxford: Clarendon, 2006.
  • Kargon, Robert. “William Rowan Hamilton, Michael Faraday, and the Revival of Boscovichean Atomism.” American Journal of Physics 32, no. 10 (1964): 792-795.
  • Mander, William, and M. Dimova-Cookson, eds. T. H. Green: Ethics, Metaphysics and Political Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
  • Mijuskovic, Ben L. The Achilles of Rationalist Arguments. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974.
  • Whyte, Lancelot Law. Roger Joseph Boscovich, S.J., F.R.S., 1711-1787: studies of his life and work on the 250th anniversary of his birth. London: Allen and Unwin, 1961.
  • Yolton, John. Thinking Matter: Materialism in Eighteenth Century Britain. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983.

Assessment

Type Description Word count Weight (%)

Variant 1

Skeleton Argument

Skeleton argument for the 6000 word essay

1000 10.0
Essay

6000-word essay

6000 90.0

Variant 2

Skeleton Argument

Skeleton argument for the large essay

1000 10.0
Essay

4,000-word essay

4000 50.0
Essay

2000-word essay

2000 40.0
Approvals

Unit approved for the University of Divinity by Prof Albert Haddad on 16 Aug, 2022

Unit record last updated: 2022-08-16 15:28:40 +1000