pp. 266, References, Index, Library Binding, Munich 2015

ISBN 978-3-88405-115-3 

Date of Publication: 10.06.2015
 

This volume brings together a group of articles that explore some less familiar aspects of early modern conceptions of ontological dependence. A unifying theme of these essays is the role of discussions of dependence relations in the context of early modern theories of individual substances. How do individual substances depend on other individuals? How do individual substances depend on their constituents such as matter and form, qualities and parts? In which sense do they depend on divine agency? And how can individuality be understood in such a way that dependence relations do not threaten the status of particulars as substances? These questions bring into view some fascinating connections between ontological dependence and a whole field of other issues prominent in early modern metaphysics, such as the distinction between absolute and ordained divine potency, the nature of emanative causation, the eduction of forms from the potencies of matter, the relation between material and immaterial extension, the nature of physical indivisibility, the senses in which soul and body could be understood as incomplete entities, and the relation between simple substances and composite substances.

 

The Author:

Andreas Blank (1968) is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Paderborn, Germany. He has been Visiting Fellow at the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, USA, the Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas, Tel Aviv University, Israel, the Herzog August Library, Wolfenbüttel, Germany, and the Jacques Loeb Center for the History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences at Ben-Gurion University, Be’er-Sheva, Israel. His publications include Der logische Aufbau von Leibniz’ Metaphysik (2001), Leibniz: Metaphilosophy and Metaphysics, 1666–1686 (2005), and Biomedical Ontology and the Metaphysics of Composite Substances, 1540–1670 (2010). 

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