McDonough, Jeffrey K. Saints, Heretics, and Atheists: A Historical Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion. New York: Oxford University Press, 2022.
AbstractSaints, Heretics, and Atheists offers a historical introduction to fundamental questions in the philosophy of religion. It is divided into twenty-five chapters. The first chapter discusses the nature of piety drawing on Plato’s Euthyphro. The next three chapters discuss the nature of evil, free will, foreknowledge, and sin in the context of Augustine’s On Free Choice of Will. Chapter Five discusses Anslem’s “ontological” argument for the existence of God. Chapter Six explores Ibn Sina’s account of the nature of the soul and immortality. The next two chapters explore the foundations of religious belief and mysticism in the company of al-Ghazali’s The Rescuer from Error. Chapters nine through eleven discuss Aquinas’s arguments for the existence of God as well as his account of God’s impersonal and personal attributes. The twelfth chapter explores Marguerite Porete’s account of mystical ascent as well as the doctrines of heaven and hell. Chapter Thirteen discusses Pascal’s pragmatic argument for belief in the existence of God. Chapters Fourteen through Sixteen discuss Spinoza’s understanding of God, our relationship to God, and the foundations of morality. Chapters Seventeen through Nineteen explore the argument from design, the existence of God, deism, and the problem of evil. Chapter Twenty investigates Mary Shepherd’s defense of belief in miracles, while Chapter Twenty-One explores Mill’s views on the utility of religion. Finally, chapters Twenty-Three through Twenty-Five explore the origins of modern morality and the relationship between religion and nihilism in the company of Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality.
McDonough, Jeffrey K. A Miracle Creed: The Principle of Optimality in Leibniz's Physics and Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2022.
Publisher's VersionAbstract
This book introduces Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s Principle of Optimality and argues that it plays a central role his physics and philosophy, with profound implications for both. Each chapter begins with an introduction to one of Leibniz’s ground-breaking studies in natural philosophy, paying special attention to the role of optimal form in those investigations. Each chapter then goes on to explore the philosophical implications of optimal form for Leibniz’s broader philosophical system. Individual chapters include discussions of Leibniz’s understanding of teleology, the nature of bodies, laws of nature, and free will. The final chapter explores the legacy of Leibniz’s physics in light of his work on optimal form.
McDonough, Jeffrey K. “
Space, Monads, and Incompossibility.”
Edited by Donald Rutherford.
Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy (2022).
Publisher's VersionAbstract
This essay offers a novel account of how to understand Leibniz’s views on compossibility when applied to infinite worlds constituted by unextended, immaterial substances or “monads.” The first section sets the stage by taking up some essential questions about the relationship between monads and space. The second section argues that – with a better understanding of that relationship – it is possible to see how the so-called “packing strategy” can be applied quite directly, even intuitively, to monadic worlds and substances. The third section argues that thinking through the application of the packing strategy to monadic worlds highlights an important, neglected Leibnizian commitment and reveals surprising affinities between the packing strategy and recent cosmological interpretations.
Penultimate Draft.pdf