Niezauważona rewolucja. Konstruktywistyczny idealizm Richarda Burthogge’a
An Unnoticed Revolution. Constructivist Idealism of Richard Burthogge

Author(s): Bartosz Żukowski
Subject(s): Philosophy, History of Philosophy
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego
Keywords: modi concipiendi;Burthogge Richard;innate ideas;model of cognition;cognitive act;perceptions;idealism;imagination
Summary/Abstract: The book is devoted to the theory of knowledge espoused by Richard Burthogge (1638–⁠1705), a seventeenth-century English philosopher, author of works such as Organum Vetus & Novum (1678) and An Essay upon Reason, and the Nature of Spirits (1694).Although Burthogge’s epistemological ideas failed to have a significant impact on philosophy at the time, and, as a consequence, have not yet become the subject of deeper analysis, his writings contain a very original concept of constructivist idealism, which – assessed from a broader historical perspective – turns out to anticipate in key points the philosophy of Kant that came almost a century later.The most important element of this position is the rejection of the possibility of direct (intellectual or sensual) cognition of external objects in favour of the theory of modi concipiendi, according to which the conceptualization of extramental reality is always carried out in the form and using the means determined by the structural and functional properties of the human cognitive abilities.In this way, by proving that the outside world is accessible to the human mind only through the “phenomena” that it co-creates, Burthogge clearly anticipates Kant’s claim of the incognizability of reality in itself.A need has been repeatedly articulated, at least since the 1920s, for a more detailed analysis of the writings of the eternally “forgotten” thinkers of the 17th and 18th centuries.The present monograph addresses this demand.Although its immediate goal is to expand the knowledge of early modern British philosophy, to restore the memory of the idealistic doctrine, almost a century ahead of Kant's concept, it should also allow the future formulation of new conclusions on internal logic and immanent dynamics of the evolution of all post-Cartesian thought.

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