Nabeel Hamid. History of Modern Philosophy (esp. German)

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1 Nabeel Hamid 433 Claudia Cohen Hall 249 S. 36 th Street Philadelphia, PA Areas of specialization History of Modern Philosophy (esp. German) Areas of competence Islamic Philosophy; Ancient Philosophy; History and Philosophy of Science; Philosophy of Mind. Education University of Pennsylvania (Penn), PhD, Philosophy, 2018 University of British Columbia (UBC), MA, Philosophy, 2012 Macquarie University, MA, Applied Linguistics, 2010 University of Wisconsin-Madison, BA, Philosophy, 2004 Publications Kant s Antinomy of Teleology: In Defense of a Traditional Interpretation. In Proceedings of the 12 th International Kant Congress (forthcoming 2018). Dilthey on the Unity of Science. In British Journal for the History of Philosophy 24, no. 4 (2016): Hume s (Berkeleyan) Language of Representation. In Hume Studies 41, no. 2 (2015): Works in progress Domesticating Descartes, Renovating Scholasticism: Johann Clauberg and the German Reception of Cartesianism (in preparation for a special issue of the OUP series, History of Universities, 30 pages in ms.) Teleology and Realism in Leibniz s Philosophy of Science (in preparation for a volume in the Springer series, Boston Studies in Philosophy and History of Science, 37 pages in ms.) Intuitions, Concepts, Ideas: Kant s Three-Factor Epistemology (under review, 38 pages in ms.) Law and Structure in Dilthey s Philosophy of History (in preparation) The Role of Cosmology in Wolff s Psychology (in preparation) From Final Causes to Purposiveness: Wolff, Baumgarten, and Kant on Ends in Nature (in preparation) Leibniz and Wolff on Final Causes (in preparation) Organicity in Kant s Theory of the Cognitive Faculties (in preparation)

2 Nabeel Hamid Curriculum Vitae 2 Cognitivist and Realist Teleology between Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd: Revisiting the Maier Thesis (in preparation Selected awards Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship, Fellow-in-residence, Consortium for History of Science, Technology, and Medicine (CHSTM), Philadelphia, G.W. Leibniz Gesellschaft Stipend, Leipzig and Hanover, 2016 Predoctoral Fellow, Max Planck Institute for History of Science, Berlin, 2015 Gutmann Leadership Award (competitive travel grant), Penn, 2015 George WM Bacon Fellowship, Penn, Hume Society Young Scholar Award, 2014 Benjamin Franklin Fellowship, Penn, Talks (* = invited; = refereed) The Role of Cosmology in Wolff s Psychology. Christian Wolff s German Metaphysics, Halle, June Law and Structure in Dilthey s Philosophy of History. International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science (HOPOS), Groningen, July Intuitions, Concepts, Ideas: Kant s Three-Factor Epistemology. Concordia University, March 2018.* Teleology and Realism in Leibniz s Philosophy of Science. University of Massachusetts-Lowell, January 2018.* Francisco Suárez and Modern Teleology. University of Pittsburgh, January 2018.* Domesticating Descartes: Comenius, Clauberg, and the Reception of Cartesianism in Germany. Teaching the New Science: The Role of Academia during the Scientific Revolution, Groningen, June Oxford Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy, Oxford, March Teleological Principles in Leibniz s Science. Nature, Mind, and Action in Leibniz, Turku, Finland, June 2017.* Kant s Organic Mind. Representing Reality, Potsdam, NY, May 2017.* Leibniz and Wolff on Final Causes. 10 th Leibniz Congress, Hanover, July Kant s Antinomy of Teleology: In Defense of a Traditional Interpretation. 12 th Kant Congress, Vienna, September Leibniz s Two Realms in Corporeal Nature. Hopkins-Penn-Princeton- Columbia Early Modern Workshop, Princeton, February 2015.* Hume s Mitigated Naturalism about Mental Representation. Hume Society, Portland, July 2014.

3 Nabeel Hamid Curriculum Vitae 3 S.S. Stevens, Operationism and Logical Positivism. International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science (HOPOS), Ghent, July Reasonable Impressions and Reasonable Assent in Stoicism. Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy (SAGP), New York, October The Duhem Thesis in Ernst Cassirer s Philosophy of Science. International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science (HOPOS), Halifax, June Introspection and Perception: A Reply to Goldman. Society for Philosophy and Psychology (SPP), Montreal, July Teaching experience Instructor of Record (at Penn) Philosophy in the Islamic World, Spring 2017 Ancient Philosophy (online, co-taught), Summer 2015 Teaching Assistant Bioethics (online, Andrew McAninch), Penn, Summer 2016 Philosophy of Mind (Gary Purpura), Penn, Spring 2015 Space and Time (Zoltan Domotor), Penn, Fall 2014 Early Modern Philosophy (Gary Hatfield), Penn, Spring 2014 Ancient Philosophy (Susan Sauvé Meyer), Penn, Fall 2013 Introduction to Philosophy (Eric Margolis), UBC, Spring th century Philosophy (Uygar Abaci), UBC, Fall 2011 Introduction to Philosophy (Brad Murray), UBC, Spring 2011 Instructor, English Language Institute, UBC, Taught academic English skills to non-native English speakers admitted to, or applying to, Anglophone universities. Instructor and Teacher Trainer, AUA Language Center, Bangkok, Thailand, Taught elementary to advanced ESL classes, including business English and academic English. Trained new teachers, designed tests and curricula as part of a team. Service Refereeing HOPOS: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 37 th Ancient Philosophy Workshop, April 2014 Penn-Princeton-Columbia Graduate Student Conference on the History of Philosophy, April 2014 Conferences organized 4 th Annual Minorities and Philosophy (MAP) Conference: Inclusive Methodology and Pedagogy, Penn, April 2018

4 Nabeel Hamid Curriculum Vitae 4 3 rd Annual MAP Conference on Non-western Philosophy: Global Feminisms, Penn, March nd Annual MAP Conference on Non-western Philosophy, Penn, February st Annual MAP Workshop on Non-western Philosophy, Penn, March 2015 MAP Workshop on Diversity in Philosophy, Penn, March 2014 Languages Native or near-native: Urdu, English Reading and speaking: German Reading only: Latin, French, Classical Arabic References Gary Hatfield University of Pennsylvania Seybert Professor of Philosophy hatfield@sas.upenn.edu Karen Detlefsen University of Pennsylvania Professor of Philosophy and Education detlefse@phil.upenn.edu Susan Sauvé Meyer University of Pennsylvania Professor of Philosophy smeyer@phil.upenn.edu Rolf-Peter Horstmann Humboldt University Professor of Philosophy horstmannr@cms.hu-berlin.de Vincenzo De Risi University of Paris, Diderot CNRS CNRS Research Fellow vincenzoderisi@gmail.com

5 Nabeel Hamid Curriculum Vitae 5 Dissertation Abstract This dissertation examines the problem of teleology in early modern German philosophy. The problem, briefly, is to account for the proper sources and conditions of the use of teleological concepts such as design, purpose, function, or end in explaining nature. In its modern guise, the status of these concepts becomes problematic with the the seventeenth-century rise of modern physics, which reconceived the physical world as fundamentally inert and purposeless, as opposed to the medieval view of the world as governed by goal-directed powers. This disssertation argues that the reception of the new science in Germany was deeply conditioned by the metaphysics of late medieval scholasticism. It situates the better known thinkers of the eighteenth-century German Enlightenment in relation to the later medieval tradition, originating with sixteenth- and seventeenth-century authors such as Francisco Suárez, Christoph Scheibler, and Johann Clauberg and being transmitted to Gottfried Leibniz, Christian Wolff, and Immanuel Kant. I show that Leibniz, Wolff, and Kant inherit from neo-scholasticism two classical assumptions bearing on teleology: first, a version of the classical thesis of the equation of being and the good (ens et bonum convertuntur), or that every being manifests goodness or desirability in some measure; and second, a tight conceptual dependence of final causation on rational cognition, such that any appeal to purposes or ends in explanation entails an appeal to rationality. Leibniz s, Wolff s, and Kant s acceptance of these positions underlies their shared commitment to view not only goal-directed animal behavior but also any contingent unity of laws (such as the unification of Newtonian laws of motion through the law of universal gravitation) as presupposing a rational connection. Teleological unity, or a unity of purpose, appears in this tradition as an evident natural fact in need of explanation at the cosmological, biological, and psychological levels. At the same time, Kant departs from his predecessors in crucial respects. For Kant, the conditions for the legitimacy of judging nature as if it were purposively constructed are borrowed, not from a divine guarantee of order, but from the essence of human reason itself, when, in his terms, reason itself is properly described as a goal-directed natural power. The problem of teleology, with Kant, becomes reconfigured as essentially concerned with the ends of human reason. My dissertation begins in Chapter 1 with an exposition of the contested status of final causation among Jesuit scholastics such as Suárez and the Coimbra commentators. Drawing on the work of Maier (1955), Des Chene (1996), and Carraud (2002) I argue that the entrenchment in later scholasticism of a cognitivist interpretation of final causes that ends act as causes only if they are cognized opened the possibility of attributing all goal-directedness in non-human nature to the divine ideas alone. I focus on the reception of the issues of order and providence in nature in the Protestant German context through Scheibler s Opus metaphysicum, and Clauberg s Metaphysica de ente. The chapter ends with a survey of syncretistic trends in late seventeenth century Germany that sought to reconcile the Cartesian and Aristotelian philosophies, as exemplified in figures such as Erhard Weigel and Johann Christoph Sturm. With this background, Chapter 2 elaborates Leibniz s rehabilitation of final causation alongside his acceptance of the mechanical philosophy. On the one hand, Leibniz s conception of substance as a unity of ends effectively understands teleology, in its formal aspect, as a mereological notion, or of how wholes relate to their parts. At the same time, at the level of explaining material phenomena,

6 Nabeel Hamid Curriculum Vitae 6 teleological principles turn out to have an important role in his epistemology of natural science. Underwriting each aspect of teleology, however, is Leibniz s commitment to the thesis that human beings are made in the image of God, and thus in principle capable of understanding God s reasons for creation. With this, I push back on some recent, deflationary accounts of the role of goodness and providence in Leibniz s philosophy. Chapter 3 turns to Christian Wolff, whose voluminous writings more than anyone else s conveyed features of Leibnizian thought to eighteenth century Germany in what was, nevertheless, an original synthesis of Aristotelian and Cartesian philosophies. Through a close reading of their correspondence, I highlight the young Wolff s disagreements with Leibniz on the crucial notions of substance and causation. In particular, Wolff rejects the central Leibnizian doctrine of causally closed, mind-like substances as fundamental ontological units. From their exchange, Wolff emerges as far more committed than Leibniz to the autonomy of physical explanation, and to a sharp separation of the mental and the physical. Building on this divergence, Chapter 4 draws out the external character of natural teleology in Wolff s cosmology, in contrast to the internal goal-directedness of created substances in Leibniz. Affirming the ideality of ends and the reality of physical forces, Wolff separates psychological from physical conceptions of finality. Wolff marks a sharp division between psychological substances (human minds) and non-mental, physical substances interacting through real relations of physical influx. Like the Cartesians, Wolff rejects any appeal to final causes in physical explanation and conceives nature as essentially inert. His new science of Teleologia, I argue, only serves a propaedeutic, non-explanatory role in psychology, theology, and physiology. In the backdrop of Wolffianism in the mid-eighteenth century, Chapter 5 turns to Kant s account of natural teleology. The chapter situates Kant s early thinking about final causation in the context of Alexander Baumgarten s and Georg Friedrich Meier s work to distinguish concepts of use, intention, and goal within Wolff s single category of end (Absicht, finis). I then show how Kant s understanding of the problem of purposive unity i.e. of an internal unity of properties in a subject effected through intellect and will develops in the process of adjusting the claims of Newtonian science to concerns with providence and the normativity of nature. This leads Kant to reformulate in the Newtonian framework an important contrast between material and formal senses of nature, and to build teleological conditions of order and systematicity into the latter. Finally, Chapter 6 presents an account of teleology in Kant s critical theory of cognition. Kant naturalizes teleology in his formal sense, I argue, by locating it in the nature of the human subject. The legitimacy of teleological principles in scientific inquiry depends on their restriction to the proper conditions of activity of human reason. Borrowing an analogy from the structure of organisms, Kant conceives of the cognitive faculties as constituting a goal-directed natural power striving to realize its drives to systematic knowledge. Teleological principles enter Kant s account of the normative conditions of knowledge not as dispensable heuristics, but rather as necessary conditions for the possibility of making truth-apt claims about experience.