Resilient Transcendence: Modern Philosophical Disputes on Human Nature (AP3163C)

Undergraduate, 18.0 points

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: AP3163C

Unit status: Approved (Major revision)

Points: 18.0

Unit level: Undergraduate Level 3

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.

Expound the theories, terminology and arguments studied in the unit
3.

Assess the theories and arguments studied in the unit
4.

Narrate the outlines of the historical sequence of major encounters between philosophical naturalists and theologians and other defenders of human transcendence throughout the early modern period
5.

Characterise the material studied in relation to the wider framework of key philosophical positions and ideas in the Christian tradition (e.g. faith and reason, anti-reductionism, human person, nature)

Unit sequence

One unit of philosophy at second level

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

Essay 2000 40.0
Essay 2500 60.0

Variant 2

Essay 4500 100.0

Variant 3

Essay 2500 60.0
Report

The report will comprise various parts answering questions provided during week 14 of the unit. It is an asynchronous, online substitute for e.g. a written two-hour examination.

 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 15:19:59 +1000