Subjectivity and Selfhood in Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy

This book is a collection of studies on topics related to subjectivity and selfhood in medieval and early modern philosophy. The individual contributions approach the theme from a number of angles varying from cognitive and moral psychology to metaphysics and epistemology. Instead of a complete overview on the historical period, the book provides detailed glimpses into some of the most important figures of the period, such as Augustine, Avicenna, Aquinas, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz and Hume. The questions addressed include the ethical problems of the location of one's true self and the proper distribution of labour between desire, passion and reason, and the psychological tasks of accounting for subjective experience and self-knowledge and determining different types of self-awareness.

Jari Kaukua is an Academy of Finland research fellow at the University of Jyväskylä. An expert in classical and post-classical Arabic philosophy, he is the author of Self-Awareness in Islamic Philosophy (Cambridge University Press), and has published a number of articles in leading journals of medieval philosophy, including Vivarium and Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale. Tomas Ekenberg is a docent of theoretical philosophy at Uppsala University, Sweden. He specializes in early medieval metaphysics, theories of action and philosophical psychology and their origins in late ancient thought. He has published several articles about Anselm of Canterbury and Augustine of Hippo. Among his recent publications is a contribution to the anthology Augustine's Confessions: Philosophy in Autobiography, edited by William Mann (OUP 2014).