Subjectivity and Selfhood in Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-ix

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2. Introduction: Subjectivity and Selfhood in the History of Philosophy

   • Jari Kaukua, Tomas Ekenberg

   Pages 1-7

3. Augustine on Second-Order Desires and Persons

   • Tomas Ekenberg

   Pages 9-24

4. The Augustinian Cogito and Materialist Theories of Mind

   • Tamer Nawar

   Pages 25-35

5. Sources of the Self in the Arabic Tradition: Remarks on the Avicennan Turn

   • Taneli Kukkonen

   Pages 37-60

6. Avicenna on Non-conceptual Content and Self-Awareness in Non-human Animals

   • Luis Xavier López-Farjeat

   Pages 61-73

7. Self, Agent, Soul: Abū al-Barakāt al-Baghdādī’s Critical Reception of Avicennian Psychology

   • Jari Kaukua

   Pages 75-89

8. “Causa sui”: Awareness and Choice in the Constitution of the Self

   • Calvin Normore

   Pages 91-107

9. Aping Logic? Albert the Great on Animal Mind and Action

   • Jörg Alejandro Tellkamp

   Pages 109-123

10. The Reflexivity of Incorporeal Acts as Source of Freedom and Subjectivity in Aquinas

    • Therese Scarpelli Cory

    Pages 125-141

11. Subjective Experience and Self-Knowledge: Chatton’s Approach and Its Problems

    • Sonja Schierbaum

    Pages 143-156

12. Self-Awareness and Perception in Augustinian Epistemology

    • José Filipe Silva

    Pages 157-179

13. Beasts, Human Beings, or Gods? Human Subjectivity in Medieval Political Philosophy

    • Juhana Toivanen

    Pages 181-197

14. Martin Luther’s Early Theological Anthropology: From Parts of the Soul to the Human Person as One Subject

    • Ilmari Karimies

    Pages 199-218

15. A Bodily Sense of Self in Descartes and Malebranche

    • Colin Chamberlain

    Pages 219-234

16. A View from Nowhere? The Place of Subjectivity in Spinoza’s Rationalism

    • Julia Borcherding

    Pages 235-261

17. Reflection and Rationality in Leibniz

    • Sebastian Bender

    Pages 263-275

18. Hume on the Self and His ‘Overall Philosophical Scheme’

    • Udo Thiel

    Pages 277-290

19. Back Matter

    Pages 291-295

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This book is a collection of studies on topics related to subjectivity and selfhood in medieval and early modern philosophy. The individual contributions approach the theme from a number of angles varying from cognitive and moral psychology to metaphysics and epistemology. Instead of a complete overview on the historical period, the book provides detailed glimpses into some of the most important figures of the period, such as Augustine, Avicenna, Aquinas, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz and Hume. The questions addressed include the ethical problems of the location of one's true self and the proper distribution of labour between desire, passion and reason, and the psychological tasks of accounting for subjective experience and self-knowledge and determining different types of self-awareness.

• Augustine on second-order desires and passions
• personhood
• rational agency
• reflexivity
• self-awareness
• selfhood

“This is a collection of essays presented at a conference held at the University of Uppsala in August 2012 entitled ‘Subjectivity, Selfhood, and Agency in the Arabic and Latin Traditions.’ … Any scholar of medieval or early modern epistemology or philosophy of mind would be well-served by a careful reading of these papers.” (Eric Hagedorn, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, ndpr.nd.edu, September, 2016)

• Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland

  Jari Kaukua

• Department of Philosophy, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

  Tomas Ekenberg

Jari Kaukua is an Academy of Finland research fellow at the University of Jyväskylä. An expert in classical and post-classical Arabic philosophy, he is the author of Self-Awareness in Islamic Philosophy (Cambridge University Press), and has published a number of articles in leading journals of medieval philosophy, including Vivarium and Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale. Tomas Ekenberg is a docent of theoretical philosophy at Uppsala University, Sweden. He specializes in early medieval metaphysics, theories of action and philosophical psychology and their origins in late ancient thought. He has published several articles about Anselm of Canterbury and Augustine of Hippo. Among his recent publications is a contribution to the anthology Augustine's Confessions: Philosophy in Autobiography, edited by William Mann (OUP 2014).

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