Focusing on the ‘keeping’ and ‘cure’ of frantic persons, Chapter 5 explores the ideational link between ‘reason’ and ‘rule’ which – in the minds of contemporaries – justified these interventions. If the ‘ruling faculties’ of the human mind were impaired, this merited the placement of the affected individual under the ‘rule’ of others. If the subject was an adult male, the result was a rapid and often chaotic reshuffling of power relations within the home and the wider community. Looking at how householders, parishioners, physicians, mayors, and local magistrates responded to frenzy, this chapter shows how the ideas explored in Chapters 1–3 changed the lives of those who received the diagnosis. It suggests that, if the high premium placed on the faculty of the ‘reason’ served to shore up the rigidly hierarchical order of social relations which obtained in early modern England (encompassing rank, age, gender, and species), frenzy exposed the fragility of that same order.

The Introduction situates the book’s contribution in relation to the historiographies of madness, medicine, emotion, selfhood, and personhood. While mania and melancholy have enjoyed perennial scholarly interest, the same cannot be said of early modern frenzy. The Introduction offers some thoughts as to why frenzy has been neglected, and reflects on some of the conceptual and methodological difficulties which accompany its study. It explains the book’s scope (and limits), and offers short summaries of its six chapters. Sketching out the book’s central claim – that frenzy had devastating effects on personhood, and that these effects drove its early modern observers to unpick the tangle of mind, soul, and brain – it engages with recent claims about the emergence of a distinctively modern ‘cerebral self’. It sets out to test the claim that the possession of certain ‘psychological features, such as memory, consciousness, and self-awareness’ was not constitutive of ‘personhood’ until the end of the seventeenth century.

At first glance, Thomism and feminism seem like unlikely bedfellows. In spite of the apparent incongruity, I argue that a fruitful dialogue can exist between Aquinas and feminism, particularly regarding the relationship between the body and reason. To this end, I make three points. First, I argue that Aquinas’s anthropology provides a fertile ground for a discussion of women’s nature and flourishing. Second, I argue that there is surprising degree of similarity between the attitude of Thomas toward the female body and the attitude of certain contemporary feminists, such as Simone de Beauvoir and Shulamith Firestone. All three of these authors recognized that women are more affected by their bodies than men are, and all three saw this as a source of inequality between men and women. Third, I argue that, while Aquinas is wrong to conclude that women are less rational than men, it may nonetheless be true that women experience more frequent interruptions to their ability to exercise fully their highest powers because they experience more pain and fatigue related to their biology. Finally, I consider how the nature of the female body may dispose women to exercising their reason slightly differently than men do.

Much has been written about the historical sources – Aristotelian and neo-Platonic – used by Thomas Aquinas in his theological works. Without neglecting such research, this chapter examines the broader speculative framework of themes at the intersection of faith and reason in Thomistic thought. The goal is to provide philosophers and theologians with a clearer view of Thomism’s key speculative concerns regarding human reason and revealed truth. These include the degree of theology’s influence on faith (Christian philosophy), the preambles of faith, rational credibility, the relationship between common sense, philosophy, and faith, analogy in relation to revealed truths, the scientific structure of theology, and the potential for a Thomist account of knowledge’s historicity.

Modern proponents of free speech maintain that the value of expression resides in its authenticity-making power, which generates political legitimacy. They simultaneously concede that the value of expression is not without abridgments, no matter how deeply felt or authentically fulfilling such expression may be. Given these commitments, how can free speech be valued for its authenticity-making power, and yet also conditionally regulated? This chapter explores a resolution based on an interpretation of Aquinas’s thought on speech and expression. First, Aquinas clarifies Aristotle’s distinction between vox (animal expression) and loquutio (logical discourse) as an irreducible relationship of explanandum and explanans: loquutio is uniquely disposed to comprehending what is just or unjust within what is pleasant or painful. Second, Thomistic loquutio is directed to truth while permitting false claims as logical-temporal constituents of discourse, requiring above all a “discursive situation” that avoids both contradiction and epistemically unjustified conviction. These characteristics of Thomistic loquutio are supported by his treatment of angelic communication, which is not revelatory so much as consultatory from a second-person perspective and clarificatory from a first-person perspective. Ultimately, this interpretive Thomistic account rejects the modern commitment of authenticity without absolutism, while affirming certain aspects of what makes speech politically valuable.

By the time of his death, Lincoln had earned substantial recognition as a great president, even admiration as a statesman of outstanding quality. His assassination heightened the sense of loss and mourning Americans and others felt, in tributes, eulogies and sermons.

This chapter explores Aristotle’s account of the good life as presented in the Nicomachean Ethics, emphasizing his empirical, observational approach to virtue, social life, and human flourishing. Aristotle presents human beings as inherently social and defines virtues—such as generosity, magnanimity, and justice—as traits expressed in habitual action and observed within social contexts. Justice, in particular, emerges as a “complete” virtue, operative only within the framework of law and reciprocity. Aristotle also articulates the importance of friendship (philia), distinguishing between lesser forms based on utility or pleasure and the highest form—friendship grounded in shared virtue. Intellectual virtues are treated alongside moral ones, with phronêsis (prudence or practical wisdom) guiding right action. Ultimately, Aristotle identifies contemplation as the highest human activity, likening it to divine activity. Though only attainable by few, contemplation fulfills the intellect’s potential and brings human beings closest to the divine. The chapter concludes by reflecting on Aristotle’s conception of divinity, the nature of blessedness, and how these inform a hierarchical vision of reality in which the contemplative life represents the fullest expression of human excellence.

Karl Schafer develops an account of reason in its theoretical use and argues that a proper appreciation of the end of reason puts one in a position to see that, while Kant rejects the rationalist claim that we can know or cognize the unconditioned, he nonetheless accepts that we are rationally committed to a form of doctrinal belief in the bare existence of something unconditioned. Kant thus takes reason’s interest in systematic comprehension to commit us, even from the perspective of theoretical reason (albeit only on “subjectively sufficient” grounds), to a version of the Principle of Sufficient Reason – specifically, the proposition that every finite, conditioned thing is ultimately grounded in something unconditioned.

In 1739, the author who wanted to go by the name of Sophia, A Person of Quality, published a text called Woman Not Inferior to Man: Or, A short and modest Vindication of the natural Right of the Fair-Sex to a perfect Equality of Power, Dignity, and Esteem, with the Men. This title gives voice to what has become an established way of thinking about the history of liberation, and of feminism in particular – that is, as a history of the vindication of rights, as Mary Wollstonecraft would go on to echo in her own titles, A Vindication of the Rights of Men in 1790, and then, when it appeared that women were not included in mankind, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792.

This chapter considers how, between the mid twelfth and the mid thirteenth century, the theme of free will was addressed according to two major lines of investigation: on the one hand, that of the relationship between free will and the different powers of the soul; and on the other hand, the idea that free will should be understood as a process divided into several steps.

This chapter looks at Kant’s understanding of the relationship between laws of nature and those of freedom in order to further explain Kant’s grounding argument at 4:453. The two sets of laws constitute two systems, the first governing phenomenal nature and the second the intelligible world, that is, the systematic interrelation of rational wills. How the two sets of laws relate reveal one fundamental philosophical system that can be grasped correctly only from the standpoint of practical reason, namely, that of the agent making use of its intelligence in its practical activity. It is the same understanding and the very same transcendental subject who gives the law to nature, who also gives the law to itself, using the same set of concepts, only differently applied. Our law-giving function in both worlds grounds the primacy of our membership in the intelligible world. Different criteria of application of these concepts to noumenal and phenomenal worlds are discussed, and I show how Kant avoids objections to the idea of timeless agency. Kant espouses a modified Leibizianism through which the intelligible and sensible worlds are harmonized indirectly by the author of nature, who harmonizes the functions in us through which the two are constituted.

In this chapter, I argue that a comprehensive picture of Platonic autonomy must be balanced by attention to mutual interdependence and the ways that ideas arise through interpersonal dialogue. Philosophical ideas arise in a social context, and to this degree, even ideas that are now ‘my own’ have come to be mine in part through the reasoning of other persons. Moreover, as a result of human fallibility, even the fully developed Platonic philosopher still requires conversational partners to both learn and to test out ideas. Rather than overvaluing self-sufficiency, a philosophical life includes being open to challenges to one’s ideas, tolerating a state of not knowing fully, and learning that one needs others due to the limits of individual reasoners.

This chapter analyzes the Republic’s theory of the tripartite soul regarding the question of self-rule and autonomy. Only when the soul is in the ideal position of having reason positioned as sovereign ruler can a person be seen as acting autonomously. But it is not clear that when reason rules, it also motivates actions. Christine M. Korsgaard has argued that personal decision-making should be seen as analogous to political decision-making. She conceives of political decisions as a process where requests for action spring from the people, while rulers suffice to say yes or no. This chapter claims that this analysis is inadequate as a theory of how Plato portrays the relationship between the parts of the soul and of decision-making in general, and offers an alterantive interpreation in terms of what is called the Complex Model of Decision-Making.