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Reason and Freedom Margaret Cavendish on the Order and Disorder of Nature
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Karen Detlefsen
Published/Copyright:
December 4, 2007
Abstract
According to Margaret Cavendish the entire natural world is essentially rational such that everything thinks in some way or another. In this paper, I examine why Cavendish would believe that the natural world is ubiquitously rational, arguing against the usual account, which holds that she does so in order to account for the orderly production of very complex phenomena (e.g. living beings) given the limits of the mechanical philosophy. Rather, I argue, she attributes ubiquitous rationality to the natural world in order to ground a theory of the ubiquitous freedom of nature, which in turn accounts for both the world's orderly and disorderly behavior.
Published Online: 2007-12-04
Published in Print: 2007-07-20
© Walter de Gruyter
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Articles in the same Issue
- Democritus and Secondary Qualities
- Aquinas and Intellectual Determinism: The Test Case of Angelic Sin
- Reason and Freedom Margaret Cavendish on the Order and Disorder of Nature
- Reductionism, Rationality and Responsibility: A Discussion of Tim O'Keefe, Epicurus on Freedom
- Carone on the Mind-Body Problem in Late Plato
- Rezensionen
Articles in the same Issue
- Democritus and Secondary Qualities
- Aquinas and Intellectual Determinism: The Test Case of Angelic Sin
- Reason and Freedom Margaret Cavendish on the Order and Disorder of Nature
- Reductionism, Rationality and Responsibility: A Discussion of Tim O'Keefe, Epicurus on Freedom
- Carone on the Mind-Body Problem in Late Plato
- Rezensionen
