Reply to My Critics: Experience Embodied: Early Modern Accounts of the Human Place in Nature

IF 0.3 4区 哲学 0 PHILOSOPHY Hume Studies Pub Date : 2023-11-01 DOI:10.1353/hms.2023.a910750
Anik Waldow
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In this context, I will also discuss Janoušek’s suggestion to draw further distinctions between the different senses in which the concept of body relates to experience in Descartes and Hume. In the last section, I address the question of whether the focus on bodies risks undermining the claim that experience is intersubjectively constituted. 1. Narrow versus Broad Concept of Experience Dario Perinetti raises the worry that during the early modern period, and even before, the concept of experience was mainly used to discuss epistemological questions, and that therefore the Broad Experience Thesis fails. According to this thesis, it is reductive to think of experience in exclusively epistemological terms, since this ignores that many early modern writers approached questions about the benefits and dangers of experience from a wider moral perspective. This perspective, as I argue in [End Page 329] Experience Embodied, was concerned with the training of the mind’s intellectual and moral capacities, the role of pleasure and pain (and other affects) in epistemic and moral judgement, and, more generally, the question of how it is possible to be self-determined agents who do more than simply respond to the experiences they have. To support his claim, Perinetti cites the Historische Wörterbuch der Philosophie, Cauvin’s Lexicon Rationale sive Thesaurus Philosophicus, but also Aristotle, Bacon, and Hobbes. The approach I pursue in my book is based on the usage of the concept of experience by the authors examined (Descartes, Locke, Hume, Rousseau, Herder, Kant). I will turn to the analysis of this usage in a moment, but before this let me say a few words about dictionaries. It is in principle not surprising that a dictionary like the Historische Wörterbuch der Philosophie—and its discussion of Aristotle, Bacon, and Hobbes—supports the traditional approach to experience as a centrally epistemological concept. Its entry on “experience” revolves around the idea that philosophers are either empiricists or rationalists.1 Yet it is precisely the establishment of this distinction that has substantially contributed to promoting a reductive concept of experience. After all, rationalism and empiricism are labels typically used to describe competing epistemological positions.2 It is also worth noting that the dictionary’s entry is from the 1970s. Because of this, it operates with a picture of the history of philosophy that has long been challenged by studies that show that there is far more to early modern philosophy than the standard works of some selected canonical figures.3 When dealing with Locke, the entry for instance exclusively focuses on An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and does not even mention that experience is a key concept in Some Thoughts Concerning Education. The rather short and general entry on experience in Chauvin’s Lexicon Philosophicum (1692) is not very telling either—at least not if treated in isolation from other dictionaries and encyclopedias of the period, such as D’Alembert and Diderot’s Encylopédie: a tremendously influential work, that, according to its editors, is in itself committed to the Baconian method.4 And here César Chesneau Du Marsais’s entry on experience straightforwardly highlights the moral dimension of the knowledge acquired through experience: Experience, abstract term, commonly means the knowledge acquired through a long life, combined with the reflections made on what one has seen, and on the good and bad that has happened to us. In this sense, reading history is a highly profitable way of gaining experience; it tells us of events, and shows us the good or bad repercussions and consequences of these events.5 The...","PeriodicalId":29761,"journal":{"name":"Hume Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3000,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Hume Studies","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hms.2023.a910750","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"PHILOSOPHY","Score":null,"Total":0}
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Abstract

Reply to My CriticsExperience Embodied: Early Modern Accounts of the Human Place in Nature Anik Waldow (bio) I would like to thank Dario Perinetti and Hynek Janoušek for their thoughtful comments and the time and effort they invested into my work. Their reflections drive attention to important questions and make helpful suggestions about how some of the arguments of the book can be further developed and clarified. In what follows, I will first discuss the proposal to distinguish between a narrow and a broad sense of experience, then specify how I understand the connection between having a body and being able to engage in experiences. In this context, I will also discuss Janoušek’s suggestion to draw further distinctions between the different senses in which the concept of body relates to experience in Descartes and Hume. In the last section, I address the question of whether the focus on bodies risks undermining the claim that experience is intersubjectively constituted. 1. Narrow versus Broad Concept of Experience Dario Perinetti raises the worry that during the early modern period, and even before, the concept of experience was mainly used to discuss epistemological questions, and that therefore the Broad Experience Thesis fails. According to this thesis, it is reductive to think of experience in exclusively epistemological terms, since this ignores that many early modern writers approached questions about the benefits and dangers of experience from a wider moral perspective. This perspective, as I argue in [End Page 329] Experience Embodied, was concerned with the training of the mind’s intellectual and moral capacities, the role of pleasure and pain (and other affects) in epistemic and moral judgement, and, more generally, the question of how it is possible to be self-determined agents who do more than simply respond to the experiences they have. To support his claim, Perinetti cites the Historische Wörterbuch der Philosophie, Cauvin’s Lexicon Rationale sive Thesaurus Philosophicus, but also Aristotle, Bacon, and Hobbes. The approach I pursue in my book is based on the usage of the concept of experience by the authors examined (Descartes, Locke, Hume, Rousseau, Herder, Kant). I will turn to the analysis of this usage in a moment, but before this let me say a few words about dictionaries. It is in principle not surprising that a dictionary like the Historische Wörterbuch der Philosophie—and its discussion of Aristotle, Bacon, and Hobbes—supports the traditional approach to experience as a centrally epistemological concept. Its entry on “experience” revolves around the idea that philosophers are either empiricists or rationalists.1 Yet it is precisely the establishment of this distinction that has substantially contributed to promoting a reductive concept of experience. After all, rationalism and empiricism are labels typically used to describe competing epistemological positions.2 It is also worth noting that the dictionary’s entry is from the 1970s. Because of this, it operates with a picture of the history of philosophy that has long been challenged by studies that show that there is far more to early modern philosophy than the standard works of some selected canonical figures.3 When dealing with Locke, the entry for instance exclusively focuses on An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and does not even mention that experience is a key concept in Some Thoughts Concerning Education. The rather short and general entry on experience in Chauvin’s Lexicon Philosophicum (1692) is not very telling either—at least not if treated in isolation from other dictionaries and encyclopedias of the period, such as D’Alembert and Diderot’s Encylopédie: a tremendously influential work, that, according to its editors, is in itself committed to the Baconian method.4 And here César Chesneau Du Marsais’s entry on experience straightforwardly highlights the moral dimension of the knowledge acquired through experience: Experience, abstract term, commonly means the knowledge acquired through a long life, combined with the reflections made on what one has seen, and on the good and bad that has happened to us. In this sense, reading history is a highly profitable way of gaining experience; it tells us of events, and shows us the good or bad repercussions and consequences of these events.5 The...
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《体验的体现:人类在自然中的地位的早期现代描述》
我要感谢达里奥·佩里内蒂(Dario Perinetti)和海内克Janoušek,感谢他们对我的工作所作的深思熟虑的评论,以及他们为我的工作所投入的时间和精力。他们的反思推动了对重要问题的关注,并就本书的一些论点如何进一步发展和澄清提出了有益的建议。在接下来的内容中,我将首先讨论区分狭义和广义经验的建议,然后详细说明我如何理解拥有身体和能够参与经验之间的联系。在这种情况下,我还将讨论Janoušek的建议,即在笛卡尔和休谟的身体概念与经验相关的不同感官之间进一步区分。在最后一节中,我提出了一个问题,即对身体的关注是否会破坏经验是主体间构成的说法。1. Dario Perinetti提出了一种担忧,即在早期的现代时期,甚至更早,经验的概念主要用于讨论认识论问题,因此,广义经验的论点是失败的。根据这篇论文,仅仅从认识论的角度来思考经验是简化的,因为这忽略了许多早期现代作家从更广泛的道德角度来处理有关经验的好处和危险的问题。这个观点,正如我在[End Page 329] Experience Embodied中所说的,关注的是对心智智力和道德能力的训练,快乐和痛苦(以及其他情感)在认知和道德判断中的作用,以及更一般地说,如何可能成为自我决定的主体,而不仅仅是对他们所拥有的经验做出反应。为了支持他的观点,Perinetti引用了Historische Wörterbuch der Philosophie, Cauvin 's Lexicon Rationale Thesaurus Philosophicus,以及亚里士多德,培根和霍布斯。我在书中所采用的方法是基于所研究的作者(笛卡尔、洛克、休谟、卢梭、赫尔德、康德)对经验概念的使用。稍后我将分析这个用法,但在此之前,让我先谈谈字典。原则上,像Historische Wörterbuch der philosophy这样的词典——以及它对亚里士多德、培根和霍布斯的讨论——支持将经验作为中心认识论概念的传统方法,这并不奇怪。它关于“经验”的条目围绕着哲学家要么是经验主义者,要么是理性主义者的观点展开然而,正是这种区分的建立,极大地促进了经验的简化概念。毕竟,理性主义和经验主义是用来描述相互竞争的认识论立场的典型标签同样值得注意的是,该词典的词条来自20世纪70年代。正因为如此,它与哲学史的一幅图景相结合,这幅图景长期以来受到研究的挑战,这些研究表明,早期现代哲学远不止一些精选的权威人物的标准著作例如,当涉及洛克时,条目专门关注于《论人类理解》,甚至没有提到经验是《关于教育的一些思考》中的一个关键概念。肖文的《哲学词典》(1692)中关于经验的相当简短而笼统的条目也不太能说明问题——至少如果把它与同时期的其他词典和百科全书(如达朗贝尔和狄德罗的《百科全书》)分开来看是不太能说明问题的。《百科全书》是一部极具影响力的作品,根据其编辑的说法,它本身就是培根方法的一部分在这里,csamar Chesneau Du Marsais关于经验的条目直接强调了通过经验获得的知识的道德维度:经验,一个抽象的术语,通常意味着通过长期生活获得的知识,结合对所见之事的反思,以及对发生在我们身上的好事和坏事的反思。从这个意义上说,阅读历史是一种非常有益的获取经验的方式;它告诉我们事件,并向我们展示这些事件的好或坏的影响和后果…
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The Testimony of Sense: Empiricism and the Essay from Hume to Hazlitt by Tim Milnes (review) Hume as Regularity Theorist—After All! Completing a Counter-Revolution Hume on Self-Government and Strength of Mind Hume beyond Theism and Atheism Hume's Theory of Moral Judgment in Light of His Explanatory Project
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