dr. (Paul) P Schuurman

Biography

**Paul Schuurman is associate professor in the history of philosophy at Erasmus School of Philosophy. **

Areas of PhD supervision/research interests.

* War in the History of Ideas: the influence of game-theoretical concepts on the grand strategy of the Dutch Republic (Pieter de la Court); the influence of theological concepts on the philosophy of war (François Fénelon);
* the importance of positive and negative feedback cycles for the explanation of the rise and fall of empires (Montesquieu);
* the concepts of ‘absolute war’ and ‘limited war’ versus ‘real war’ (Carl von Clausewitz); the role of historical counterfactuals in the analysis and evaluation of military decisions (Carl von Clausewitz); the delimma between realism and playability in Napoleonic wargames as models of military reality; Prussian wargames and the leadership concept of mission tactics; the evaluation of the functionality of warfare in the work of Immanuel Kant, Herbert Spencer, Ludwig Gumplowicz; Ian Morris.

 Paul Schuurman studied History, Business Administration and Philosophy. He obtained his doctorate at Keele University (United Kingdom) with a text edition of John Locke's “Of the Conduct of the Understanding”. He has also published on the epistemology, philosophy of science and logic of John Locke and René Descartes. See also his electronic edition of the manuscripts of John Locke on www.digitallockeproject.nl.

* Early modern logic, metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of science (Descartes and Locke).