Christia Mercer

The Philosophy of Peace: German Philosophy after the Thirty Years War

My research at the HAB concerns broadly methodological matters in seventeenth-century philosophy. My main interest is to explore how philosophers writing in the second half of the century attempted to promote philosophical, religious, and political peace. I will research three related projects:

1. The Philosophy of Peace: German Philosophy after the Thirty Years War examines the innovative way in which German thinkers responded both to the devastation of the Thirty Years War and to the innovative or “new philosophies” of the seventeenth century. Their goal was to use the philosophy of the past to promote peace.

2.  The Philosophy of Anne Conway offers the first thorough study of the philosophy of the English Platonist, Anne Conway. Like many of her German contemporaries, Conway intends to construct a philosophical system that will appeal to people of all faiths and effect peace on earth.

3. Platonisms in Early Modern Thought argues that Platonism is much more important than we think in early modern philosophy and that the Platonism relevant to the early modern period has very little to do with the views of the historic Plato. The paradox of early modern Platonism is that Plato is only remotely relevant to the school that bears his name. This project offers a genealogy of the heterogeneous doctrines of sympathy, emanation, and reflection that developed under the name of Plato but that bear little resemblance to the philosophy of the Platonic dialogues and it then analyzes the role they play in the thought of early modern figures like Conway and Leibniz.