Powers: A History

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Julia Jorati (Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, The Ohio State University)

Powers

A History

Julia Jorati (Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, The Ohio State University)

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English

Oxford University Press Inc
26 August 2021

Series: Oxford Philosophical Concepts

"Why does a wine glass break when you drop it, whereas a steel goblet does not? The answer may seem obvious: glass, unlike steel, is fragile. This is an explanation in terms of a power or disposition: the glass breaks because it possesses a particular power, namely fragility. Seemingly simple, such intrinsic dispositions or powers have fascinated philosophers for centuries. A power's central task is explaining why a thing changes in the ways that it does, rather than in other ways: powers should explain why an acorn turns into an oak tree, not a sunflower, or why fire burns wood, and wood can catch fire. This volume examines the twists and turns of the fascinating history of a difficult philosophical concept, focusing on the metaphysical sense of ""powers""--that is, the powers that are invoked in the explanation of natural changes and activities. Scholars probe the views of thinkers from antiquity to the present day: Anaxagoras, Plato, the Stoics, Abelard, Anselm, Henry of Ghent, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Margaret Cavendish, Mary Shepherd, Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and numerous others. In addition, the volume contains four short reflection essays that examine the concept of powers from the perspective of disciplines other than philosophy, namely history of music, West African religions, history of chemistry, and history of art.

The history of philosophy brims with controversies surrounding the concept of power, and these controversies have not diminished--particularly as potentialities or powers see a revival in contemporary analytic metaphysics. Hence, telling the history of philosophical theories of powers means exploring the trajectory of a concept whose importance to the past and present of philosophy can hardly be overstated."

Edited by: Julia Jorati (Assistant Professor Department of Philosophy Assistant Professor Department of Philosophy The Ohio State University)
Imprint: Oxford University Press Inc
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 137mm, Width: 208mm, Spine: 23mm
Weight: 388g
ISBN: 9780190925529
ISBN 10: 0190925523
Series: Oxford Philosophical Concepts
Pages: 336
Publication Date: 26 August 2021
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Julia Jorati is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her research focuses on early modern philosophy. She is the author of Leibniz on Causation and Agency (Cambridge University Press, 2017) and of numerous articles on early modern metaphysics, philosophy of action, philosophy of mind, and political philosophy.