Edward Herbert of Cherbury

From The Oxford Companion to English Literature, ed. Margaret Drabble.

HERBERT of Cherbury, Edward, Lord (1582-1648), elder brother of G. *Herbert, born at Eyton-on-Severn, Shropshire, into one of the foremost families of the Welsh border. In 1596, aged 14, he was enrolled as gentleman commoner at University College, Oxford. That year his father died, and Herbert became ward of Sir George Moore (later *Donne's father-in-law). At 16 he was married to his cousin Mary, daughter of Sir William Herbert of St Julians, five years Edward's senior and heiress to her father's estates in England, Wales and Ireland. By the time he was 21 the couple had had, he reports, 'divers children', of whom none survived him. He was created Knight of the Bath in 1603. His adventures are recounted by Herbert in his Life, a remarkable document, not least for its unabashed presentation of its author's martial valour, success with women, truthfulness, sweetness of breath, and other virtues. Herbert aspired to a career in public service and spent much of the time from 1608 to 1618 in France, getting to know the French aristocracy and court. He also travelled in Italy and the Low Countries, fighting at the siege of Juliers (1610).

In 1619 he became ambassador to France, on *Buckingham's recommendation. His most famous philosophical work, De Veritate, was published in Paris in 1624. He was recalled to London in 1624, where he unsuccessfully petitioned for high office. Although he joined Charles's council of war in 1629, becoming Baron Herbert of Cherbury, recognition still eluded him. To attract royal notice he wrote, in 1630, The Expedition to the Isle of Rhé, which tries to justify Buckingham's calamitous generalship, and in 1632 he began a detailed 'official' history of *Henry VIII's reign, assisted by Thomas Masters, which was published in 1649. At the outbreak of the Civil War he retired to Montgomery Castle and declined to become involved. The castle was threatened by Royalists in 1644, and he admitted a parliamentary garrison, under Sir Thomas Myddleton, in exchange for the return of his books, which had been seized. He moved to his London house in Queen Street, St Giles, and dedicated himself to philosophy, supplementing his De Veritate with De Causis Errorum and De Religione Laici, both published in 1645, and writing besides De Religione Gentilium and his autobiography (begun in 1643). In 1647 he visited Gassendi in Paris.

Herbert's De Veritate postulates that religion is common to all men and that, stripped of superfluous priestly accretions, it can be reduced to five universal innate ideas: that there is a God; that he should be worshipped; that virtue and piety are essential to worship; that man should repent of his sins; and that there are rewards and punishments after this life. It gained Herbert the title of father of English *Deism. It was widely read in the 17th cent., earning the attention and disagreement of Mersenne, Gassendi, *Descartes, and *Locke. Herbert also wrote poetry which is obscure and metrically contorted, evidently influence by his friend Donne, but he also wrote some tender and musical love lyrics. (See also METAPHYSICAL POETS.)

Life, ed. S. Lee (1886, rev. 1906), and ed. J. M. Shuttleworth (1976); Poems English and Latin, ed. G. C. Moore Smith (1923); De Veritate, ed. and trans. M. H. Carré (1937); De Religione Laici, ed. and trans. H. R. Hutcheson (1944); R. D. Bedford, The Defence of Truth (1979).

Deism (Wikipedia)

 

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John Locke

From the History Today Companion to British History:

 

Locke, John (1632-1704), philosopher. son of an ATTORNEY who had fought on the PARLIAMENTARIAN SIDE in the CIVIL WARS, Locke both studied and taught at OXFORD UNIVERSITY. In 1667, he became attached to the household of Anthony Ashley COOPER, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury, henceforth his political patron. Holding minor office when Shaftesbury was in power, Locke went to France when the Earl was out of favour (1676-9), and to Holland when the exposure of the RYE HOUSE PLOT shattered his circle. The GLORIOUS REVOLUTION allowed him to come back to England in 1689, and from 1696 he once more played a part in public life, serving as one of the most active members of the newly founded BOARD OF TRADE.

His writings, published only after 1689 although much was written earlier, include three Letters advocating religious toleration (1689, 1690, 1692); Two Treatises of Government (1690), a classic exposition both of the right to resist misgovernment and limit its activities, and of the right to hold private property; and An Essay on Human Understanding (1690), a book which was to be hailed as seminal by thinkers of the ENLIGHTENMENT for its advocacy of the primacy of human experience in the perception of truth. Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693) and The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695) followed; the latter became a key text for LATITUDINARIANS and DEISTS (although Locke himself disapproved of the description 'Deist'). Like HOBBES, Locke began his analysis with man in a state of nature; otherwise there is little resemblance in their political theory. For Hobbes, the state of nature is so terrifying that men willingly accept the arbitrary rule of an all-powerful sovereign; for Locke, the state of nature has sufficient inconveniences to persuade men to join together and to entrust limited powers (defined in terms of executive, federative, and legislative functions) to a government to act for the common good. What make Locke's Two Treatises appear subversive to his more conservative readers, then and later, was his justification of the subject's right to resistance should the ruler (or governing authority) violate the trust invested in him. And Locke seems to have been well aware of the work's radical thrust; not only did he publish it anonymously, but he also consistently denied authorship, though frequently taxed with it, until his death. His political ideas were to have a considerable influence on the American colonists in their breach with Britain (see SIDNEY, ALGERNON).

From The Oxford Companion to English Literature,  ed. Margaret Drabble:

LOCKE, John (1632-1704), born at Wrington, Somerset, educated at Westminster and Christ Church. He held various academic posts at that university, and became physician to the household of the first earl of *Shaftesbury in 1667. He held official positions and subsequently lived at Oxford, then fled to Holland in 1683 as a consequence of Shaftesbury's plotting for Monmouth; how far he was himself involved is not certain. In 1687 he joined William of Orange at Rotterdam; on his return to England he became commissioner of appeals and member of the council of trade. His last years were spent in Essex in the home of Sir Francis and Lady Masham, the latter being the daughter of Ralph Cudworth, one of the *Cambridge Platonists.

Locke's principal philosophical work is the *Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), a work which led J. S. *Mill to call him the 'unquestioned founder of the analytic philosophy of mind'. Always critical of 'enthusiasm', he was originally opposed to freedom of religion, and never supported Catholic emancipation; but in his maturity he defended the rights of the Dissenters on both moral and economic grounds. He published three Letters on Toleration between 1689 and 1692; a fourth was left unfinished at his death. His defence of simple biblical religion in The Reasonableness of Christianity, without resort to creed or tradition, led to a charge of *Socinianism, which Locke replied to in two Vindications (1695, 1697). He was also involved in an extensive pamphlet war with Edward Stillingfleet (1696-8) over the alleged compatibility of his Essay with Socinianism and *Deism.

Locke published in 1690 two Treatises of Government designed to combat the theory of the divine right of kings. He finds the origin of the civil state in a contract. The 'legislative', or government, 'being only a fiduciary power to act for certain ends, there remains still in the people the supreme power to remove or alter the legislative when they find the legislative act contrary to the trust reposed in them'. Throughout, Locke in his theory of the 'Original Contract' opposes absolutism; the first Treatise is specifically an attack on Sir Robert Filmer's Patriarcha. Although Locke in his early manuscripts was closer to *Hobbes's authoritarianism and continues to share with Hobbes the view that civil obligations are founded in contract, he strongly rejected Hobbes's view that the sovereign is above the law and no party to the contract. He published a volume on education in 1693, and on the rate of interest and the value of money in 1692 and 1695. The first edition of his collected works appeared in 1714. A full critical edition of his works, including eight volumes of correspondence, was launched in 1975.

Locke's writings had an immense influence on the literature of succeeding generations, and he was very widely read; his Thoughts Concerning Education, which are concerned with practical advice on the upbringing of 'sons of gentlemen', were given to *Richardson's Pamela by Mr. B—, and to his son by *Chesterfield, and their influence is seen in *Rousseau's *Émile; his view of the child's mind as a tabula rasa, and his distinctions between wit and judgement, were the subject of much discussion during the *Augustan age. The anti-philosophy jokes of the *Scriblerus Club demonstrate the currency of his ideas; *Addison was his champion in many essays. But perhaps his greatest impact was on *Sterne, who quotes him frequently in *Tristram Shandy, and who was deeply interested in his theories of the random association of ideas, of the measuring of time, of the nature of sensation, etc. On this subject, see Kenneth MacLean, John Locke and English Literature of the Eighteenth Century (1936).

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1975), ed. Peter H. Nidditch; A Paraphrase and Notes on the Epistles of St Paul, ed. Arthur W. Wainwright (2 vols, 1987); The Correspondence of John Locke, ed. E. S. de Beer (8 vols, 1976-89). (See also RESTORATION).




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NIVEL AVANZADO:

Contractualismo. Locke y Hobbes comparados.

First lecture on Locke (Arthur Holmes, Wheaton College):

Adam Smith (NIVEL AVANZADO)

Nivel avanzado - Más sobre Adam Smith


- Una conferencia sobre las teorías económicas de Adam Smith: "Adam Smith and the Birth of Economics": http://youtu.be/J85N9zozYz8
 
- Otra  conferencia sobre la obra de Adam Smith—los sentimientos morales, etc., de Alan Macfarlane—en Cambridge. Quien no asiste a clases de Cambridge es porque no quiere. 


Plus:

Breashears, Caroline. "Adam Smith and the Horror of Frankenstein." Video lecture, 27 Feb. 2019. Online at Adam Smith Works.*

         https://www.adamsmithworks.org/documents/livestream-adam-smith-and-the-horror-of-frankenstein

         2022

-Un par de artículos míos sobre Adam Smith:

 

_____. "La teatralidad del yo en Adam Smith." Ibercampus (Vanity Fea) 16 March 2016.*

         http://www.ibercampus.es/la-teatralidad-del-yo-en-adam-smith-32637.htm

         2016

_____. "La construcción afectiva de la realidad social." ResearchGate 13 April 2017.*

         https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316086914

         2017

- Y una divagación sobre la relación entre el espectador invisible de Adam Smith y la idea del lector implícito.

David Hume - NIVEL AVANZADO

David Hume  (1711-1776)

_____. (Anonymous pub.). A Treatise of Human Nature: Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects. London, 1739-1740. 1748, 1758.
_____. Essays Moral, Political and Literary. 1741-2. (16 eds. with different titles and selections up to 1776). ("Of Essay writing." "Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth." "Of Civil Liberty." "Of Commerce." "Of Superstition and Enthusiasm." "Of the First Principles of Government." "Of the Origin of Government." "Of the Original Contract." "The Sceptic." Etc.).
_____. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. 1748.
_____. Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.  Written 1751. Pub. 1779.
_____. Political Discourses. London, 1752.
_____. Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. 1752.
_____. Four Dissertations. 1757.
_____. The Natural History of Religion. 1757.
_____. History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution of 1688. 8 vols. 1763, etc.
_____. Two Essays. ("Of Suicide." "Of the Immortality of the Soul."). Written c. 1755. Pub. 1777.
_____. The Life of David Hume, Esq., Written by Himself. 1777. (In most eds. of the Essays  thereafter).





 



Hume, más introductorio:

David Hume (Wikipedia)

Fernando SAVATER. "David Hume por Fernando Savater en 'La Aventura del Pensamiento'" (VIDEO): https://youtu.be/u9zx_VtKVBs


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Nivel avanzado:


Bragg, Melvyn, et al. "David Hume, the Great Empiricist and Skeptic." BBC (In Our Time). Online audio at YouTube (Brad Younger) 27 Sept. 2015.*
    https://youtu.be/Sai1s0ShldE
    2015

The Scottish Enlightenment (BBC audio).


Daniel DENNETT. "Dennett on Hume's Strange Inversion."
http://youtu.be/wY9Xm5xgiEE

Dennett es uno de los grandes predicadores del escepticismo contemporáneo, en la tradición de Hume.

John Locke (NIVEL AVANZADO)

NIVEL AVANZADO:   John Locke

Hablamos algo de la filosofía de Locke y su psicología. Tenéis una lectura de su Essay Concerning Human Understanding, sobre la asociación de las ideas. Aquí hay un pequeño comentario adicional sobre él: "Training the Train of Ideas".
 


A video lesson on John Locke's political philosophy:  https://youtu.be/nbnmtWtCABI



Another one:
 "2. Locke: Equality, Freedom, Property, and the Right to Dissent." (Foundations of Modern Social Thought SOCY 151). YouTube (Yale Courses) 4 March 2011.*   http://youtu.be/T7dTgWL3ajM

and another one on the empiricists, Locke and Berkeley (Richard Brown): http://youtu.be/R9GuSA9HHgA

Francis Bacon (NIVEL AVANZADO)

NIVEL AVANZADO:  Francis Bacon


Will Durant: The Philosophy of Francis Bacon (a partir del min. 14).




In our Time (BBC audio): 


     — Empiricism: http://bbc.in/MRbK2I



      — Baconian science: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00jdb6c

—and a lesson by Arthur Holmes: http://vanityfea.blogspot.com.es/2017/11/a-history-of-philosophy-arthur-f-holmes.html




Una conferencia de Carlos Madrid donde se matiza la originalidad de la ciencia baconiana británica frente a la primacía de la ciencia española en el siglo XVI.



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Aquí nos recita Bacon sus ensayos "Of Truth", "Of Death", y otros: https://youtu.be/ak0EaV0KFbc



A cuenta de Bacon nombramos a Montaigne, interesante ensayista escéptico del Renacimiento francés. Aquí un pequeño comentario sobre la construcción social de la realidad según el escéptico Montaigne.

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