God And Nature In The Thought Of Margaret Cavendish

Download or read book God and Nature in the Thought of Margaret Cavendish written by Brandie R. Siegfried and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-22 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Only recently have scholars begun to note Margaret Cavendish’s references to 'God,' 'spirits,' and the 'rational soul,' and little has been published in this regard. This volume addresses that scarcity by taking up the theological threads woven into Cavendish’s ideas about nature, matter, magic, governance, and social relations, with special attention given to Cavendish’s literary and philosophical works. Reflecting the lively state of Cavendish studies, God and Nature in the Thought of Margaret Cavendish allows for disagreements among the contributing authors, whose readings of Cavendish sometimes vary in significant ways; and it encourages further exploration of the theological elements evident in her literary and philosophical works. Despite the diversity of thought developed here, several significant points of convergence establish a foundation for future work on Cavendish’s vision of nature, philosophy, and God. The chapters collected here enhance our understanding of the intriguing-and sometimes brilliant-contributions Cavendish made to debates about God’s place in the scientific cosmos.

Download or read book The Well-ordered Universe written by Deborah A. Boyle and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The prolific Margaret Cavendish (1623-1673) published books on natural philosophy as well as stories, plays, poems, orations, allegories, and letters. Her mature philosophical system offered a unique panpsychist theory of Nature as composed of a continuous, non-atomistic, perceiving, knowing matter. In contrast to the dominant philosophical thinking of her day, Cavendish argued that all matter has free will and can choose whether or not to follow Nature's rules. The Well-Ordered Universe explores the development of Cavendish's natural philosophy from the atomism of her 1653 poems to the panpsychist materialism of her 1668 Grounds of Natural Philosophy. Deborah Boyle argues that her natural philosophy, her medical theories, and her social and political philosophy are all informed by an underlying concern with order, regularity, and rule-following. This focus on order reveals interesting connections among apparently disparate elements of Cavendish's philosophical program, including her views on gender, on animals and the environment, and on sickness and health. Focusing on the role of order in Cavendish's philosophy also helps reveal key differences between her natural philosophy and her more conservative social and political philosophy. Cavendish believed that humans' special desire for public recognition often leads to an unruly ambition, causing humans to disrupt society in ways not seen in the rest of Nature. Thus, The Well-Ordered Universe defends Cavendish as a royalist who endorsed absolute monarchy and a rigid social hierarchy for maintaining order in human society.

Download or read book The Blazing World and Other Writings written by Margaret Cavendish and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 1994-03-31 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Flamboyant, theatrical and ambitious, Margaret Cavendish was one of the seventeenth century's most striking figures: a woman who ventured into the male spheres of politics, science, philosophy and literature. The Blazing World is a highly original work: part Utopian fiction, part feminist text, it tells of a lady shipwrecked on the Blazing World where she is made Empress and uses her power to ensure that it is free of war, religious division and unfair sexual discrimination. This volume also includes The Contract, a romance in which love and law work harmoniously together, and Assaulted and Pursued Chastity, which explores the power and freedom a woman can achieve in the disguise of a man.

Download or read book Ethics and the Problem of Evil written by Marilyn McCord Adams and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2017-02-27 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provocative essays that seek “to turn the attention of analytic philosophy of religion on the problem of evil . . . towards advances in ethical theory” (Reading Religion). The contributors to this book—Marilyn McCord Adams, John Hare, Linda Zagzebski, Laura Garcia, Bruce Russell, Stephen Wykstra, and Stephen Maitzen—attended two University of Notre Dame conferences in which they addressed the thesis that there are yet untapped resources in ethical theory for affecting a more adequate solution to the problem of evil. The problem of evil has been an extremely active area of study in the philosophy of religion for many years. Until now, most sources have focused on logical, metaphysical, and epistemological issues, leaving moral questions as open territory. With the resources of ethical theory firmly in hand, this volume provides lively insight into this ageless philosophical issue. “These essays—and others—will be of primary interest to scholars working in analytic philosophy of religion from a self-consciously Christian standpoint, but its audience is not limited to such persons. The book offers illustrative examples of how scholars in philosophy of religion understand their aims and how they go about making their arguments . . . hopefully more work will follow this volume’s lead.”—Reading Religion “Recommended.”—Choice

Download or read book The Philosophical and Physical Opinions written by Margaret Cavendish Duches Newcastle and published by Legare Street Press. This book was released on 2021-09-09 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Download or read book Grounds of Natural Philosophy written by Margaret Cavendish and published by Broadview Press. This book was released on 2020-02-28 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edition aims to make Margaret Cavendish’s most mature philosophical work more accessible to students and scholars of the period. Grounds of Natural Philosophy is important not only because it is Cavendish’s final articulation of her metaphysics but also because it succinctly outlines her fundamental views on “the nature of nature”—or the base substance and mechanics of all natural matter—and vividly demonstrates her probabilistic approach to philosophical enquiry. Moreover, Grounds spends considerable time discussing the human body, including the functions of the mind, a topic of growing interest to both historians of philosophy and literary scholars. This Broadview Edition opens to modern readers a vibrant, unique, and provocative voice of the past that challenges our standard view of seventeenth-century English philosophy.

Download or read book Philosophical Letters; Or, Modest Reflections Upon Some Opinions in Natvral Philosophy written by Margaret Cavendish and published by Franklin Classics Trade Press. This book was released on 2018-11-11 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.