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In his lectures on modern philosophy, Josiah Royce presents a sweeping analysis of the uniquely historical character of philosophical inquiry in the 19th century. Royce's inclusion of such a wide variety of converging thought in that century serves as a useful introduction into the amendments that nineteenth century thought made to the tendencies of the preceding era. The science of the 17th century had "deliberately neglected the history of things," and looked at nature as it eternally is, particular natural events as subsumable under universal laws, and history as subsumable under mechanism.² The 18th century, whose Enlightenment philosophy we examined in the previous chapters, conceived of human nature as static, and postulated our access to that nature through an examination of the state of nature. The supposition of the permanence of human nature allowed Enlightenment philosophers to demonstrate the natural equality, freedom, and independence of humans and their endowment with natural rights and reason.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137466839_4

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