17th/18th Century French Philosophy, Misc

Cet article vise à souligner la centrante de Laf.308, Br.793 au sein des Pensées, tout en déterminant sa portée anti-cartésienne. Une confrontation avec d'autres fragments connexes permet de préciser ce que Pascal met sous le deuxième ordre : une science relayée par la pensée, non la métaphysique cartésienne. Il devient alors possible de discuter l'interprétation de Jean-Luc Marion et de montrer que, loin d'opérer une simple destitution de la métaphysique cartésienne au nom de la charité chrétienne, Laf.308, Br.793 résume bien (...) l'antagonisme de deux systèmes philosophiques. The object of this article is to point out the central place of Laf.308-Br.793 within the Pensées and to determine at the same time its anti-cartesian implications. By confronting it with connected fragments, we are allowed to state what exactly Pascal does include under the second order, that is, not the cartesian metaphysics, but a science whose relay is the thought. So it becomes possible to discuss Jean-Luc Marion's interpretation by showing that, far from simply producing a destitution of the cartesian metaphysics in the name of Christian charity, Laf.308-Br.793 concentrates well the antagonism between two philosophical systems. (shrink)

Malebranche holds that sensory experience represents the world from the body’s point of view. I argue that Malebranche gives a systematic analysis of this bodily perspective in terms of the claim that the five familiar external senses and bodily awareness represent nothing but relations to the body.

As a Catholic nun, to suggest Jacqueline Pascal as autonomous might at first glance seem contradictory. We show that her moral deference to the divine is not at all forfeiting her autonomy, but that aligning her own law with God's law is to align her own law with rationality itself, that is, the laws of nature. Her theoretical structure begins with a theory of virtue—viz., how and to whom we have an obligation to be moral. For her, acting in accordance (...) with cultural restrictions or following church orders against her own conscience would be living by the laws of another and so not acting autonomously. Pascal would not live by other's laws, regardless of whether her actions conform to the categories by which society expected her to act. The framework for her laws laid in Pascal's understanding of self-governance: if she wants to act virtuously then she must autonomously follow God's law by making it her own through the sentiments of her heart. Thus, she cannot live by the laws of men, but by the laws of her human nature and in alignment with a rightly ordered universe, that is, God's law, which we show parallels with a Stoic framework of autonomy. (shrink)

We look at some interesting and important episodes in the life of early modern Epicureanism, focusing on natural philosophy. We begin with two early moderns who had a great deal to say about ancient Epicureanism: Pierre Gassendi and Ralph Cudworth. Looking at how Gassendi and Cudworth conceived of Epicureanism gives us a sense of what the early moderns considered important in the ancient tradition. It also points us towards three main themes of early modern Epicureanism in natural philosophy, which we (...) then discuss at greater length: atomism, materialism about the mind or soul, and the denial of providence, which was often accompanied by deflationary explanations of religious belief. (shrink)

In this work I intend to explore the textual and conceptual roots of the moral view in the Early Modern Rationalism of Cartesian spectrum as detected by Elisabeth of Bohemia. To this intent, I will drive my analysis, first, to the remark Descartes adds to his own provisional morality of the Discourse in the Letter of August 4th, 1645 to Elisabeth. Second, I will approach the two aspects of her reply to Descartes, both in her Letter of September 13th 1645, (...) which I call a) the contextual aspect – with which she excludes the hypotheses of an infinite science at the service of assessing the good and b) the self-related aspect, with which the philosopher of Bohemia address the moral objectiveness as an intrinsic practical value, obtained by the passions that may lead to reasonable actions. The upshot is a practical and affective moral view, in which the normative trait of some passions of the soul can be taken as the explanation of an intentional infrastructure of the mind, without, however, a theory of ideas as such playing an explicit role. Instead of a representational endeavor, Elisabeth of Bohemia claims a kind of self-awareness from the discovery of a passionate function as an expression of the adequate measure between happiness and morality of actions. That kind of awareness, I shall demonstrate, is what objectiveness consists in. (shrink)

This book argues that the Enlightenment was a golden age for the philosophy of body, and for efforts to integrate coherently a philosophical concept of body with a mathematized theory of mechanics. Thereby, it articulates a new framing for the history of 18th-century philosophy and science. It explains why, more than a century after Newton, physics broke away from philosophy to become an autonomous domain. And, it casts fresh light on the structure and foundations of classical mechanics. Among the figures (...) studied are Malebranche, Leibniz, Du Châtelet, Boscovich, and Kant, alongside d’Alembert, Euler, Lagrange, Laplace and Cauchy. (shrink)

I begin by outlining Du Châtelet’s ontology of mathematical objects: she is an idealist, and mathematical objects are fictions dependent on acts of abstraction. Next, I consider how this idealism can be reconciled with her endorsement of necessary truths in mathematics, which are grounded in essences that we do not create. Finally, I discuss how mathematics and physics relate within Du Châtelet’s idealism. Because the primary objects of physics are partly grounded in the same kinds of acts as yield mathematical (...) objects, she thinks we are sometimes licensed in drawing conclusions about physical things from mathematical premises. (shrink)

Du Châtelet holds that mathematical representations play an explanatory role in natural science. Moreover, things proceed in nature as they do in geometry. How should we square these assertions with Du Châtelet’s idealism about mathematical objects, on which they are ‘fictions’ dependent on acts of abstraction? The question is especially pressing because some of her important interlocutors (Wolff, Maupertuis, and Voltaire) denied that mathematics informs us about the properties of real things. After situating Du Châtelet in this debate, this chapter (...) argues, first, that her account of the origins of mathematical objects is less subjectivist than it might seem. Mathematical objects are non-arbitrary, public entities. While mathematical objects are partly mind-dependent, so too are material things. Mathematical objects can approximate the material. Second, it is argued that this moderate metaphysical position underlies Du Châtelet’s persistent claims that mathematics is required for certain kinds of general knowledge, including in natural science. The chapter concludes with an illustrative example: an analysis of Du Châtelet’s argument that matter is continuous. A key but overlooked premise in the argument is that mathematical representations and material nature correspond. (shrink)

Cette contribution propose une analyse comparée de la manière dont Bernard de Fontenelle, pour l’Académie des sciences de Paris, et Samuel Formey, pour l’Académie des sciences et des belles-lettres de Berlin, théorisent le rôle et le mode de fonctionnement des académies, ainsi que leur inscription dans la catégorie générale d’histoire de l’esprit humain. Cela permet de montrer comment leur fonction épistémologique est en étroite relation avec le statut politique qui leur est conféré.

Cette contribution propose une analyse comparée de la manière dont Bernard de Fontenelle, pour l’Académie des sciences de Paris, et Samuel Formey, pour l’Académie des sciences et des belles-lettres de Berlin, théorisent le rôle et le mode de fonctionnement des académies, ainsi que leur inscription dans la catégorie générale d’histoire de l’esprit humain. Cela permet de montrer comment leur fonction épistémologique est en étroite relation avec le statut politique qui leur est conféré.

Ce recueil de textes propose de contribuer à l’histoire des grandes académies scientifiques européennes. Plutôt que de vouloir tenter d’en dégager une homogénéité discutable, les études réunies tentent, au contraire, de montrer comment la pratique académique trouve son unité dans un ensemble de querelles.

Much scholarship has claimed the physics of Emilie du Châtelet’s treatise, Institutions de physique, is Newtonian. I argue against that idea. To do so, I distinguish three strands of meaning for the category ‘Newtonian science,’ and I examine her book against them. I conclude that her physics is not Newtonian in any useful or informative sense. To capture what is specific about it, we need better interpretive categories.

In the 1640’s Elisabeth of Bohemia and René Descartes engaged in a philosophically rich correspondence. The most well-known aspect of the correspondence begins with a question Elisabeth asks Descartes about his account of the interaction between soul and body. This objection, often called the ‘problem of interaction’, has received much attention in contemporary scholarship and this attention frequently focuses on the exchange between Elisabeth and Descartes. Following the lead of Descartes himself, the majority of scholars treat the problem of interaction (...) as the core, or even the entirety, of Elisabeth’s objections to Descartes from this stage in the correspondence. In this paper I argue that the driving force of Elisabeth’s objections to Descartes’ account is not the problem of interaction. Rather, Elisabeth’s objections to Descartes fundamentally concern Descartes’ account of the nature of the soul. While Elisabeth clearly offers the problem of interaction, it is only one of several worries each of which is designed to show that Descartes’ account of the soul is insufficient. I argue that Elisabeth raises three distinct problems to Descartes’ account of the nature of the soul: the causal interface problem, the vapors problem and the principal attribute problem. (shrink)

I argue that Émilie Du Châtelet breaks with Christian Wolff regarding the scope and epistemological content of the principle of sufficient reason, despite his influence on her basic ontology and their agreement that the principle of sufficient reason has foundational importance. These differences have decisive consequences for the ways in which Du Châtelet and Wolff conceive of science.

Most studies of René Descartes’s legacy have focused on the novelty of his ideas, but little has been done to uncover the conditions that allowed these ideas to spread. Seventeenth-century Europe was already a small world—it presented a high degree of connectedness with a few brokers bridging otherwise disparate regions. A communication network known as the Republic of Letters enabled scholars to trade ideas—including Descartes’s—by means of correspondence. This article offers an analysis—both qualitative and quantitative—of a corpus of letters written (...) during Descartes’s lifetime and mentioning his name. The aim is to unveil the factors that drove the diffusion of Descartes’s ideas. The results are twofold. First, a close reading of the letters reveals that they were not used to create awareness about Descartes and his works but rather to discuss his ideas. Second, a network analysis of the letters shows that ideas do not spread like viruses, thus undermining the ‘social contagion’ model, and that weak ties are not as effective in promoting innovations as they are in circulating information. (shrink)

Aujourd'hui presque oublié, Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (1698-1759) est pourtant une figure majeure de la vie intellectuelle et institutionnelle du siècle des Lumières. Cet ouvrage se propose de renouveler l'image du savant en approfondissant certains aspects saillants de sa vie et de son œuvre, et de lui restituer ainsi la place qu'il mérite dans l'histoire de son siècle. Il s'agit notamment d'interroger la genèse et l'évolution de sa pensée philosophique, en dévoilant l'originalité de son épistémologie et de sa métaphysique. L'identité (...) du « Maupertuis philosophe » se construit en parallèle avec celle de l'« académicien » et du « polémiste ». C'est pourquoi ce volume consacre aussi un large espace à l'étude des milieux académiques où Maupertuis travailla, à Paris comme à Berlin, ainsi qu'aux controverses auxquelles il prit part. (shrink)

There is a growing consensus that Emilie Du Châtelet’s challenging essay “On Freedom” defends compatibilism. I offer an alternative, libertarian reading of the essay. I lay out the prima facie textual evidence for such a reading. I also explain how apparently compatibilist remarks in “On Freedom” can be read as aspects of a sophisticated type of libertarianism that rejects blind or arbitrary choice. To this end, I consider the historical context of Du Châtelet’s essay, and especially the dialectic between various (...) strands of eighteenth-century libertarianism and compatibilism. (shrink)

This is an English translation of Emilie Du Châtelet's "Sur la liberté." This 18th century text discusses freedom of the will, determinism, and divine foreknowledge. Translated from French by Julia Jorati, with the help of Julie Roy. French edition of this text, on which this translation is based: “Sur la liberté,” in Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, vol. 14, edited by William H. Barber, 484–502. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1989.

This article reveals three aspects of victimhood in Bataille’s reading of Sade (of the other, of the self, and Sade’s language) and relates them to some of Bataille’s metaphysical and political notions: the impossible, the general and the restricted economy, sovereignty, and transgression. Doing so shows a progressive simplification of possibilities for transgression from the pre-Christian world to that of popular sovereignty, i.e., the sovereignty of the crowd, the latter leaving open one avenue for transgression: Sadean victimhood. The article then (...) applies these aspects to the pamphlet in Sade’s Philosophy in the Boudoir, “Frenchmen, Some More Effort If You Wish to Become Republicans,” in relation to a contemporaneous document of popular sovereignty, the preamble to the Constitution of the Year III, titled “Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man and Citizen.” Attending to the aspects of Sadean victimhood in “Effort” shows that its system’s very impossibility makes it the Declaration’s logical completion. Finally, that impossibility is revealed as the sovereignty of the masses, distinct from that of the crowd. (shrink)

Em maio de 1643, Elisabeth da Bohemia endereçou uma questão a Descartes que inaugurou uma Correspondência de seis anos, até a morte do filósofo. Ele dedica à Princesa o seu trabalho de maturidade metafísica (Princípios de Filosofia Primeira, 1644) e redige Paixões da Alma (1649) como um dos resultados do diálogo com a filósofa. O silenciamento dos últimos cem anos de historiografia sobre o legado de Elisabeth da Bohemia nesta troca epistolar causou distorções e, em alguns casos, lastreou o viés (...) como regra e como a história. Uma das consequências dessa distorção está na leitura de que a questão da filósofa consistiria em uma crítica ao dualismo substancial. Neste estudo busco oferecer uma interpretação da natureza da primeira questão, com o intuito de esclarecer o pensamento da filósofa e o seu papel no diálogo, de uma maneira compreensiva, sem subscrever o paradigma literário do solilóquio cartesiano, e seu viés na literatura filosófica. (shrink)

There is a tension in Emilie Du Châtelet’s thought on mathematics. The objects of mathematics are ideal or fictional entities; nevertheless, mathematics is presented as indispensable for an account of the physical world. After outlining Du Châtelet’s position, and showing how she departs from Christian Wolff’s pessimism about Newtonian mathematical physics, I show that the tension in her position is only apparent. Du Châtelet has a worked-out defense of the explanatory and epistemic need for mathematical objects, consistent with their metaphysical (...) nonfundamentality. I conclude by sketching how Du Châtelet’s conception of mathematical indispensability differs interestingly from many contemporary approaches. (shrink)

The Southern Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

The querelle des femmes was an intellectual debate over the status of women that occurred in the early modern period, between the 1400s and 1700s. A common argument for the superiority of men and inferiority of women that appeared during the debate is that women are less physically strong than men, and are therefore inferior. In response, two distinct argumentative strategies were developed by defenders of women. First, some argued that men and women did not in fact differ in physical (...) strength. A second strategy was to deny that physical strength is relevant to the question of superiority. In this case, one would argue that a difference in strength is not normatively relevant to evaluations of worth. I argue that this second strategy was the more effective response to the argument that women were inferior because of their alleged physical weakness compared to men. (shrink)

Malebranche holds that visual experience represents the size of objects relative to the perceiver's body and does not represent objects as having intrinsic or nonrelational spatial magnitudes. I argue that Malebranche's case for this body-relative thesis is more sophisticated than other commentators—most notably, Atherton and Simmons —have presented it. Malebranche's central argument relies on the possibility of perceptual variation with respect to size. He uses two thought experiments to show that perceivers of different sizes—namely, miniature people, giants, and typical human (...) beings—can experience the very same objects as having radically different sizes. Malebranche argues that there is no principled reason to privilege one of these ways of experiencing size over the others and, more specifically, that all three kinds of perceivers experience size veridically. From the possibility of this kind of veridical perceptual variation, Malebranche infers that visual experience represents only body-relative size. (shrink)

This essay responds to scholarly neglect which Diderot’s “Éloge de Richardson” has met for being regarded as too colourful (“trop coloré”). Focus on the emotive aspect of the “Éloge” is, here, shown to reveal commentary on philosophy itself; Samuel Richardson’s work thus occasions a fresh take on philosophical discourse. Diderot’s “Éloge” proves to be a new twist in literary criticism as well as an important contribution to philosophy proper.

- Emilie du Châtelet offers an interesting and unusual account of the origin of our representation of extension. - She is an idealist about the essence extension, bodies and space, regarding them as mental constructs. - Du Châtelet's account requires a brute fact about the mind, in apparent tension with the Principle of Sufficient Reason.

In this study, I intend to show how and why, in the Port-Royal Logic, a singular term can reveal the nature of the logical judgment in the handbook. As I argue, the treatment given to one of thee singular terms, namely, the defined descriptions, in the terminology introduced by Russell, leads to an opening to langage that sounds unexpected and unjustified. Considering the privilege of thinking over langage and also that judgment is the mental act that defines logic, however, we (...) may understand how the authors regard langage, in relation to the epistemic constituents, namely, the mental acts within the terms. In doing so we are compelled to recognize the implications of this step towards pragmatism in fixing the meaning of defined descriptions to the nature of judgment in the handbook. This opening to langage reveals the conception of judgment as a twofold mental act: a formal and a practical (moral and theological) one. (shrink)

Many contemporary social epistemologists take themselves to be combatting an individualist approach to knowledge typified by Descartes. Although I agree that Descartes presents an individualist picture of scientific knowledge, he does allow some practical roles for reliance on the testimony and beliefs of others. More importantly, however, his reasons for committing to individualism raise important issues for social epistemology, particularly about how reliance on mere testimony can propagate prejudices and inhibit genuine understanding. The implications of his views are worked out (...) more fully by some of his immediate successors; I examine how François Poulain de la Barre, and (briefly) Mary Astell analyze the social conditions for epistemic agency in a Cartesian vein. (shrink)

The Cartesian view that animals are automata sparked a major controversy in early modern European philosophy. This paper studies an early contribution to this controversy. I provide an interpretation of an influential objection to Cartesian animal automatism raised by Ignace-Gaston Pardies (1636–1673). Pardies objects that the Cartesian arguments show only that animals lack ‘intellectual perception’ but do not show that animals lack ‘sensible perception.’ According to Pardies, the difference between these two types of perception is that the former is reflexive (...) such that we both perceive an object and the perception itself, whereas sensible perception lacks this reflexivity. This notion of sensible perception was criticized by the Cartesian Antoine Dilly for violating the doctrine that all thought is conscious. However, I argue that sensible perceptions are not unconscious for Pardies. Rather, they are conscious perceptions that are unaccompanied by a kind of reflexive perception that is constitutive of attention. Moreover, I argue that when understood in this way Pardies raises a compelling objection to Cartesian animal automatists. (shrink)

A central project of Enlightenment thought is to ground claims to natural freedom and equality. This project is the foundation of Suchon’s view of freedom. But it is not the whole story. For, Suchon’s focus is not just natural freedom, but also the necessary and sufficient conditions for oppressed members of society, women, to avail themselves of this freedom. In this paper I, first, treat Suchon’s normative argument for women’s right to develop their rational minds. In Section 2, I consider (...) Suchon’s three necessary and sufficient conditions for freedom, and the manners in which women are blocked from meeting them. The normative argument together with the obstacles to women meeting the conditions for freedom raises the question of how to get women into a position where they can enjoy the freedom to which they are entitled. In Section 3, I outline Suchon’s answer: women must live a life without attachment. I argue this answer situates Suchon both chronologically and theoretically between the Béguines, a medieval women’s spiritual movement, and 20th century feminist separatism. I conclude that Suchon’s view of freedom is radical, both for its time and ours, and deserves greater attention from historians of philosophy and of feminist thought. (shrink)

ABSTRACTBernard Lamy is frequently included among the Cartesian Empiricists of the second half of the seventeenth century. He has also been described as an Augustinian who dabbled in Cartesianism. While acknowledging that there are both empiricist and Augustinian elements in his thought, I argue that it ought not be forgotten that there are central components of his philosophy that are both anti-empiricist and in opposition to Augustine. My aim in this paper, though, is not critical; I hope to show that (...) Lamy provides us with one more example of the diversity present among the various thinkers labelled as ‘Cartesian’. (shrink)

This paper deals with Descartes’s and Roberval’s attempts to devise and describe the center of agitation of a composite pendulum. This episode has received some attention in the recent literature. It is usually depicted as the first step in the development of a general procedure for establishing the center of oscillation of a pendulum. My aim is to explore the different physical concepts and assumptions which informed the two mathematical accounts of the composite pendulum. I will argue that force, agitation, (...) heaviness, or resis­tance of air essentially meant different things for Descartes and Roberval. As a result, the physical phenomena covered by the two geometrical procedures were quite distinct, and both mathematicians envisaged different roles of these phenomena within their agenda of studying nature. (shrink)

L’histoire de la pensée sémiotique se caractérise par une oscillation entre définition large et définition étroite de son objet. Au Moyen Âge, la définition augustinienne du signe est jugée trop étroite, car elle ne concerne que le signe sensible. De nouvelles définitions tentent alors de faire des concepts des signes qui renvoient aux choses. L’Âge moderne, au contraire, affirme une volonté de rétrécissement à l’égard de la notion de signe. Cet article montrera les caractéristiques d’une telle réflexion sémiotique à travers (...) deux auteurs représentatifs d’un premier empirisme moderne : Pierre Gassendi et Thomas Hobbes. Le retour à une sémiotique étroite s’effectue par la référence aux traditions stoïcienne, sceptique et épicurienne, ainsi qu’à un Aristote renouvelé, et par une prédilection affichée pour la valeur indiciaire du signe par rapport à sa valeur sémantique. Ceci veut dire que les empiristes vont insister avant tout sur la fonction remémorative du signe et sur sa valeur de probabilité. L’indice en tant que trace sera ainsi privilégié par rapport au signe communicationnel, et il s’agira d’en défendre la validité en tant qu’il s’inscrit dans une échelle de certitude, au sommet de laquelle se situe la preuve. (shrink)

The 17th century author François Poulain de la Barre was an important contributor to a pivotal moment in the history of feminist thought. Poulain borrows from many of Descartes’s doctrines, including his dualism, distrust of epistemic authority, accounts of imagination, and passion, and at least some aspects of his doxastic voluntarism; here I examine how he uses a Cartesian notion of prejudice for an anti-essentializing philosophy of women’s education and the formation of the tastes, talents and interests of individuals. ‘Prejudice’ (...) remains Descartes’s notion of an entrenched, yet self-imposed doxastic commitment, but also takes on the sense of social-political group bias, founded on custom, transmitted through education, serving interests, and forming social expectations. Poulain also expands on the Cartesian notion and themes by emphasizing widespread, yet unjustified social opinions in favor of the status quo in both epistemic practices and epistemic authorities, while considering how biased beliefs about sexual difference and gender identity can be internalized even by those who suffer most from them. At the same time, he shows how powerful Cartesian concepts can be for feminist methodology, even though they might also be put to problematic uses (as Malebranche did). (shrink)

La conception malebranchiste de la liberté est originale. Malebranche ne croit pas en une liberté d’indifférence absolue, c'est-à-dire en une capacité d’opérer un choix indépendamment de toute motivation. Il ne croit pas non plus que nous puissions indifféremment choisir entre deux motivations de force inégale : au moment où on se détermine, le bien le plus grand (du moins selon l’apparence) l’emporte. La liberté réside seulement dans le fait que l’on n’est pas obligé de se déterminer : nous pouvons toujours (...) suspendre notre consentement. Cette conception est exposée à des objections que Pierre Bayle a formulées et qui tentent de la mettre en contradiction avec d’autres thèses de Malebranche : son occasionalisme, sa théorie de la création continuée, l’obscurité de l’âme à elle-même, sa théologie des voies de l’action divine. Nous discuterons ces objections et verrons si Malebranche est en mesure de leur résister. (shrink)

Much early modern metaphysics grew with an eye to the new science of its time, but few figures took it as seriously as Emilie du Châtelet. Happily, her oeuvre is now attracting close, renewed attention, and so the time is ripe for looking into her metaphysical foundation for empirical theory. Accordingly, I move here to do just that. I establish two conclusions. First, du Châtelet's basic metaphysics is a robust realism. Idealist strands, while they exist, are confined to non-basic regimes. (...) Second, her substance realism seems internally coherent, so her foundational project appears successful.I have two aims in this paper. Historically, I show that du Châtelet's main source of inspiration was Christian... (shrink)

Baron d’Holbach was a critic of established religion, or a philosophe, in late 18 th -century France. His work is often perceived as less inventive than the work of other materialist philosophes, such as Helvétius and Diderot. However, I claim that d’Holbach makes an original, unjustly overlooked move in the criticism of religious moral teaching. According to the materialist philosophes, this teaching claims that true happiness is only possible in the afterlife. As an alternative, Helvétius and Diderot offer theories according (...) to which the experience of pleasure constitutes happiness, the end of all human desire. In contemporary terms, these theories would represent psychological hedonism. But, as Diderot himself admits, they have a problem in accounting for why people seem to naturally regard some pleasures as preferable to others. I argue that in response to this challenge, instead of accepting the psychological hedonism of his fellow materialists, d’Holbach shows how one can abstain from reducing happiness to pleasure and yet remain a materialist. (shrink)

Foreword from the Guest Editor to the special issue of Diametros – “Enlightenment and Secularism.”.

Descartes’s very brief explanations of human responsibility for sin and divine innocence of sin include references to the idea that evil is a privation rather than a real thing. It is not obvious, though, that privation fits naturally in Descartes’s reductionistic metaphysics, nor is it clear precisely what role his privation doctrine plays in his theodicy. These issues are made clear by contrasting Descartes’s use of privations with that of Suarez, particularly in light of reoccurring objections to privation theory. These (...) objections have no weight against Suarez’s use of privations, but Descartes’s mentions of privation are so few that it is not clear how his account avoids their consequences. Descartes’s brevity seems to have motivated some of his followers to develop creative accounts of the way in which privation fits in a Cartesian system. Pierre-Sylvain Régis accomplishes this task by reintroducing material causation. Régis holds that moral evil has no efficient cause since an efficient cause can only produce something real. Because he holds that moral evil can have a material cause, he is able to affirm that the soul is morally responsible for sin. In Régis’s case, accommodating this theological issue meant reincorporating Aristotelian resources into his Cartesian system. (shrink)

In the mid-seventeenth century a movement of self-styled experimental philosophers emerged in Britain. Originating in the discipline of natural philosophy amongst Fellows of the fledgling Royal Society of London, it soon spread to medicine and by the eighteenth century had impacted moral and political philosophy and even aesthetics. Early modern experimental philosophers gave epistemic priority to observation and experiment over theorising and speculation. They decried the use of hypotheses and system-building without recourse to experiment and, in some quarters, developed a (...) philosophy of experiment. The movement spread to the Netherlands and France in the early eighteenth century and later impacted Germany. Its important role in early modern philosophy was subsequently eclipsed by the widespread adoption of the Kantian historiography of modern philosophy, which emphasised the distinction between rationalism and empiricism and had no place for the historical phenomenon of early modern experimental philosophy. The re-emergence of interest in early modern experimental philosophy roughly coincided with the development of contemporary x-phi and there are some important similarities between the two. (shrink)

The title of Roger Ariew’s new book parallels that of his earlier collection of essays, Descartes and the Last Scholastics, published in 1999 and widely regarded as a signal contribution to the study of Descartes’s relationship to his intellectual predecessors. Some of the themes of that work are reflected in the new book as well. In both, Ariew seeks to overthrow the myth of Descartes as staunch opponent of Scholasticism by revealing his affinities to strands of Scholastic thought. Indeed, given (...) the title, it may be surprising that much of Descartes and the First Cartesians focuses on Descartes’s relationship to Scholastic philosophy. The reason is that Ariew’s aim is to show how Descartes’s followers designed.. (shrink)

Atheism was the most foundational challenge to early-modern French certainties. Theologians and philosophers labelled such atheism as absurd, confident that neither the fact nor behaviour of nature was explicable without reference to God. The alternative was a categorical naturalism, whose most extreme form was Epicureanism. The dynamics of the Christian learned world, however, which this book explains, allowed the wide dissemination of the Epicurean argument. By the end of the seventeenth century, atheism achieved real voice and life. This book examines (...) the Epicurean inheritance and explains what constituted actual atheistic thinking in early-modern France, distinguishing such categorical unbelief from other challenges to orthodox beliefs. Without understanding the actual context and convergence of the inheritance, scholarship, protocols, and polemical modes of orthodox culture, the early-modern generation and dissemination of atheism are inexplicable. This book brings to life both early-modern French Christian learned culture and the atheists who emerged from its intellectual vitality. (shrink)

Essay review of Roger Ariew, Descartes and the first Cartesians. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2014. xix + 236 S.

Political writings of eighteenth-century France have been so far mostly overlooked as a source of republican thought. Philosophers such as Condorcet actively promoted the ideal of republicanism in ways that can shed light on current debates. In this paper, I look at one particular source: Le Republicain, published in the summer 1791, focusing on previously unattributed articles by Condorcet’s wife and collaborator, Sophie de Grouchy. Grouchy, a philosopher in her own right, is beginning to be known for her Letters on (...) Sympathy, a response to Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiment, which she published at the same time as her translation of that text into French. I argue, further, that in the texts, which I attribute to Grouchy, we can find the early development of a commercial republican theory, a belief, which is reflected in her discussion of the ‘cost’ of tyranny. (shrink)

This article tries to show how, in his philosophy, Diderot assumes the character of a rhetorician: each idea is inseparable fro m the imagination that has created it, constituting a thought that is based on analogical and metaphorical references. In this perspective, my article considers the Encyclopédie as the most specific product of the philosopher-rhetorician’s thought: here the human knowledge organizes itself in a totality unfinished and ever-changing, where the articles are placed in a network of multiple references, never unambiguous (...) and transparent. The result is a work in which each statement has an ambiguous and never final status: with this background, irony now appears as the constitutive factor of a human knowledge that always redefines its centres and its suburbs, creating unstable symmetries and balances. (shrink)