Philosophy Begins in Wonder

Michael Funk Deckard is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Lenoir-Rhyne College in North Carolina. He has taught History of Ideas, Philosophy, and Ethics at the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium), North Central College (Naperville, Illinois) and Wheaton College (Wheaton, Illinois). He also has published articles and reviews in journals such as The Heythrop Journal; British Journal of Aesthetics; Eighteenth-Century Thought; Bijdragen: International Journal in Philosophy and Theology; Philosophy in Review; Tijdschrift voor Filosofie, and Verbum: Analecta Neolatina. Dr Péter Losonczi is a Research Associate at the Centre for Metaphysics and Philosophy of Culture Institute of Philosophy, KU Leuven. He is also Director of the International Research Network on Religion and Democracy.

• List of FiguresPreface / Michael Funk DeckardAbbreviationsIntroduction / Péter Losonczi and Michael Funk DeckardPart One: Historical, Scientific, and Religious Contexts1. Wonder and Wondering in the Renaissance / Elisabeth Blum and Paul Richard Blum2. Wonder, Magic, and Natural Philosophy: The Disenchantment Thesis Revisited / Koen Vermeir3. Religious Awe at the Origin of Eighteenth-Century Physico-Theology / Miklós VassányiPart Two: Wonder in Seventeenth-Century Europe4. Descartes on the Excellent Use of Admiration / Dorottya Kaposi5. Admiration, Fear, and Infinity in Pascal's Thinking / Tamás Pavlovits6. On Thomas Hobbes's Concept of Wonder / Jianhong Chen7. "Straight toward Heaven": Natural Theology and Politics in Milton's Paradise Lost / Veronika Szántó8. Malebranche on Restlessness and Curiosity / Roland Breeur9. Wonder in the Age of the Saeculum: Spinoza / Gábor BorosPart Three: Wonder in Eighteenth-Century Europe10. Berkeley's Wonderful Divine Language: Apology and Biblical Realism / Péter Losonczi11. "Of Curiosity, or the Love of Truth": David Hume on Wonder in A Treatise of Human Nature / Michael Funk Deckard12. A Risk of Testimony: Astonishment and the Sublime / Baldine Saint Girons13. Two Sources of Wonder in Early Modern Judaism / Roberta Sabbath14. Kant and the End of Wonder / Patrick Frierson15. Ways of Wondering: Beyond the Barbarism of Reflection / William DesmondList of ContributorsIndex of AuthorsIndex of Subjects

"Both Plato and Aristotle have put forward that philosophy begins with wonder, although they didn't take the time to define exactly what wonder is. The authors of this book examine the role of wonder in the science, philosophy and theology of early modernity - the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. First of all, it aims to demonstrate how the evolutions and progressions in natural theology, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics and philosophy during those two centuries finally gave birth to a complex history of the passion of wonder - a history in which can be found as well the elements of continuity, criticism and reformulation. How did modern philosophy and science appear? According to very famous academics, in the Enlightenment and its scientific conception of the world, there is no place for wonder. This book however, as it draws a panorama of the history of wonder, manages to change the way modern Europe is perceived. The myth of wonder's disappearance vanishes as modernity rises." Dialogo Filosofico, May/August 2012'Deckard and Losonczi demonstrate quite successfully that the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophical developments did not exclude 'wonder' while still maintaining a rigorous scientific position of experimentation and hypothesis, criticism, and reformulation.' P. H. Brazier, Heythrop Journal, Vol. 55, Issue 1, January 2014