National Programme for the Development of the Humanities
Project Financed from the State Budget
TASK TITLE:
BRITISH PHILOSOPHY IN THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES
TASK LEADER:
Adam Grzeliński, PhD, DSc, Full Professor
FUNDING:
PLN 392,768
TOTAL VALUE:
PLN 392,768
Description of the activity:
The project involves the translation, critical scholarly preparation and academic editing, and publication of previously unavailable works in the field of early modern British philosophy. These works:
a) shed light on the formation of the principal philosophical systems;
b) make it possible to reconstruct the early modern debate surrounding religious rationality, deism, and freethought;
c) demonstrate the process through which early modern ethics developed as an independent field of philosophical inquiry;
d) introduce British Idealism, which anticipated Berkeley’s philosophy, into Polish intellectual and cultural discourse.
The proposed list of works includes:
- Thomas Hobbes, Elements of Law, Natural and Politic, 1640.
- John Locke, Questions concerning the Law of Nature, An Examination of P. Malebranche’s Opinion on Seeing Things in God, On Miracles, c. 1662–1706.
- John Locke, The Reasonableness of Christianity, 1695.
- John Toland, Christianity Not Mysterious, 1696.
- Shaftesbury, Sensus Communis. An Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour, An Inquiry concerning Virtue and Merit, 1711.
- Anthony Collins, A Discourse of Free-Thinking, 1713.
- Francis Hutcheson, An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, 1725.
- Francis Hutcheson, An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections, with Illustrations on the Moral Sense, 1728.
- Richard Burthogge, Writings, 1678–1699.
- Arthur Collier, Clavis Universalis, 1713.
Each translation will be prepared by scholars and translators specializing in the relevant subject area and will be preceded by a critical introduction addressing the historical and intellectual context in which the work was produced, its content and significance for the history of philosophy, as well as the most recent scholarly debates concerning its interpretation.