Le débat qui se déroule dans les années 1720 à l'Académie royale des inscriptions et belles-lettres, sur la possibilité ou non de connaître l'histoire des premiers siècles de Rome, est généralement interprété comme une mise au point épistémologique par l'un des protagonistes. Une mise en contexte qui prend en considération les enjeux politiques de la dispute permet de comprendre que ce débat est l'amorce d'un processus d'autonomisation du champ des études historiques savantes, non seulement du point de vue de la (...) division des savoirs, mais aussi par rapport au pouvoir monarchique. (shrink)

_An exploration of philosophical and religious ideas about humor in modern philosophy and their secular implications._.

My topic is the materialist appropriation of empiricism – as conveyed in the ‘minimal credo’ nihil est in intellectu quod non fuerit in sensu (which interestingly is not just a phrase repeated from Hobbes and Locke to Diderot, but is also a medical phrase, used by Harvey, Mandeville and others). That is, canonical empiricists like Locke go out of their way to state that their project to investigate and articulate the ‘logic of ideas’ is not a scientific project: “I shall (...) not at present meddle with the Physical consideration of the Mind” (Essay, I.i.2, in Locke 1975; which Kant gets exactly wrong in his reading of Locke, in the Preface to the A edition of the first Critique). Indeed, I have suggested elsewhere, contrary to a prevalent reading of Locke, that the Essay is not the extension to the study of the mind of the methods of natural philosophy; that he is actually not the “underlabourer” of Newton and Boyle he claims politely to be in the Epistle to the Reader (Wolfe and Salter 2009, Wolfe 2010). Rather, Locke says quite directly if we pay heed to such passages, “Our Business here is not to know all things, but those which concern our Conduct” (Essay, I.i.6). There would be more to say here about what this implies for our understanding of empiricism (see Norton 1981 and Gaukroger 2005), but instead I shall focus on a different aspect of this episode: how a non-naturalistic claim which falls under what we now call epistemology (a claim about the senses as the source of knowledge) becomes an ontology – materialism. That is, how an empiricist claim could shift from being about the sources of knowledge to being about the nature of reality (and/or the mind, in which case it needs, as David Hartley saw and Denis Diderot proclaimed more overtly, an account of the relation between mental processes and the brain). (David Armstrong, for one, denied that there could be an identification between empiricism and materialism on this point: eighteenth-century history of science seems to prove him wrong: see Armstrong 1968 and 1978.) Put differently, I want to examine the shift from the logic of ideas in the seventeenth century (Locke) to an eighteenth-century focus on what kind of ‘world’ the senses give us (Condillac), to an assertion that there is only one substance in the universe (Diderot, giving a materialist cast to Spinozism), and that we need an account of the material substrate of mental life. This is neither a ‘scientific empiricism’ nor a linear developmental process from philosophical empiricism to natural science, but something else again: the unpredictable emergence of an ontology on empiricist grounds. (shrink)

If research devoted to the clandestine literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is today enjoying considerable expansion in the scholarly world, it tends, nonetheless, to be restricted to materialist considerations. However, other themes are open to exploration, such as the immaterialist one which is explicitly mentioned in two manuscripts (theRéflections morales et métaphisiques sur les religions et sur les connoissances de l'hommeand theJordanus Brunus Redivivus). After presenting and analyzing these two texts, we argue that this clandestine account of immaterialism (...) could explain both the evolution of this theory during the Enlightenment and the misunderstanding of Berkeley's philosophy. (shrink)

will give an overview of the fascinating communication between G. W. Leibniz and Pierre Bayle on pre-established harmony and sudden change in the soul which started from Bayle’s footnote H to the article “Rorarius” in his Dictionnaire historique et critique (1697) and ended in 1706 with Bayle’s death. I will compare the views presented in the communication to Leibniz’s reflections on the soul in his partly concurrent Nouveaux essais sur l’entendement humain (1704) and argue that many topics in the communication (...) with Bayle are discussed with more details in Nouveaux essais. I also argue that the communication helped Leibniz to respond to Locke’s views concerning uneasiness in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II, xxi. Bayle himself, however, was not able to completely understand Leibniz’s views on spontaneity as he was unaware of the contents of the Nouveaux essais, especially the systematic role of petites perceptions in Leibniz’s philosophy of mind. I will also reflect on whether the controversy could have ended in agreement if it would have continued longer. (shrink)

From Hegel to Engels, Sartre and Ruyer (Ruyer, 1933), to name only a few, materialism is viewed as a necropolis, or the metaphysics befitting such an abode; many speak of matter’s crudeness, bruteness, coldness or stupidity. Science or scientism, on this view, reduces the living world to ‘dead matter’, ‘brutish’, ‘mechanical, lifeless matter’, thereby also stripping it of its freedom (Crocker, 1959). Materialism is often wrongly presented as ‘mechanistic materialism’ – with ‘Death of Nature’ echoes of de-humanization and hostility to (...) the Scientific Revolution (which knew nothing of materialism!), also a powerful Christian theme in Cudworth, Clarke and beyond (Overhoff, 2000). Here I challenge this view, building on some aspects of Israel’s Radical Enlightenment concept (Israel, 2001), which has been controversial but for my purposes is a useful claim about the dissemination of a home-grown Spinozism, sometimes reformulated as an ontology of the life sciences, an aspect Israel does not address (compare Secrétan et al., eds., 2007; Citton, 2006). First, I examine some ‘moments’ of radical Enlightenment materialism such as La Mettrie and Diderot (including his Encyclopédie entry “Spinosiste”), but also anonymous, clandestine texts such as L’Âme Matérielle, to emphasize their distinctive focus on the specific existence of organic beings. Second, I show how this ‘embodied’, non-mechanistic character of Enlightenment ‘vital materialism’ makes it different from other episodes, and perhaps more of an ethics than is usually thought (also via the figure of the materialist as ‘laughing philosopher’). Third, I reflect on what this implies for our image of the Enlightenment – no longer a Frankfurt School and/or Foucaldian vision of ‘discipline’, regimentation and order (as in Mayr, 1986) – but ‘vital’, without, conversely, being a kind of holist vitalism “at odds with the universalizing discourse of Encyclopedist materialism, with its insistence on the uniformity of nature and the universality of physical laws” (Williams, 2003): vital materialism is still materialism. Its ethics tends towards hedonism, but its most radical proponents (Diderot, La Mettrie and later Sade) disagree as to what this means. (shrink)

ArgumentThis article highlights the epistemic concerns that have permeated the historical discourse around charlatanism. In it, I study the term “charlatan” as a multivalent actor’s category without a stable referent. Instead of defining or identifying “the charlatan,” I analyze how the concept of the charlatan was used to make epistemic interventions about what constituted credible knowledge in two interconnected controversies. Focusing on these controversies allows me to thematize how the concept of “the charlatan” expanded beyond medical contexts and to bring (...) a history of knowledge perspective to the history of medicine.The title of the article, “Charlatan Epistemology,” indicates a historical epistemological approach to charlatanism as well as the existence of a charlatan’s embodied epistemology. On the one hand, I historicize the epistemic characteristics of charlatanism, focusing on virtues as well as vices, knowledge as well as ignorance, by addressing the historical and contextual specificities of two case studies and the larger epistemic concerns at play. On the other hand, I show how references to charlatanism implied the existence of specific embodied knowledges, special skills and techniques to manipulate either natural secrets or the human psyche, and I explore the similarities and differences between charlatan epistemology and artisanal epistemology. (shrink)

One of the most pressing philosophical problems in early modern Europe concerned how the soul and body could form a unity, or, as many understood it, how these two substances could work together. It was widely believed that there were three (and only three) hypotheses regarding the union of soul and body: (1) physical influence, (2) occasionalism, and (3) pre-established harmony. However, in 1763, a fourth hypothesis was put forward by the French thinker André-Pierre Le Guay de Prémontval (1716–1764). Prémontval’s (...) hypothesis, given the grand name of “psychocracy” (i.e., the dominion or the rule of the soul), held that there was a real influence between soul and body, but that this was an immaterial kind of influence as opposed to the physical kind that had been entertained heretofore. Prémontval’s hypothesis is the focus of this paper. I shall begin by sketching out the details of Prémontval’s hypothesis (Section 1), then proceed to consider its claims to constitute a true fourth hypothesis distinct from the other three (Section 2), before closing by briefly considering two objections and the responses either that Prémontval himself made or that may be made on his behalf (Section 3). (shrink)

In early modern times it was not uncommon for thinkers to tease out from the nature of God various doctrines of substantial physical and metaphysical import. This approach was particularly fruitful in the so-called beast-machine controversy, which erupted following Descartes’ claim that animals are automata, that is, pure machines, without a spiritual, incorporeal soul. Over the course of this controversy, thinkers on both sides attempted to draw out important truths about the status of animals simply from the notion or attributes (...) of God. Automatists – led by Nicolas Malebranche and Antoine Dilly – developed six such arguments, appealing to divine justice, providence, economy, glory (twice) and wisdom, while opponents to animal automatism developed two arguments, appealing to divine wisdom and goodness. In this article I shall examine the substance of all eight of these arguments, along with their origins, patronage, and variations, and the objections they elicited from opponents, with the aim of determining their suitability for use in contemporary debates about animal sentience and consciousness, and hence their relevance for contemporary philosophers. (shrink)

Pierre Bayle shows that, in order to avoid devastating objections, materialism should postulate that the property of thinking does not emerge from certain material combinations but is present in matter from the start and everywhere—a hypothesis recently revived and labelled “panpsychism”. There are reasons for entertaining the idea that Bayle actually considers this enhanced materialism to be tenable, as it might use the same line of defence that Bayle outlined for Stratonism. However, this would lead to a view similar to (...) Locke’s superaddition theory, and I contend that such cannot be Bayle’s position because he embraces the Cartesian principle that each substance has only one principal attribute. This makes untenable, in his eyes, any system that conjoins thought with matter in the same simple substance. By contrast, this makes clear which kinds of metaphysics and epistemology panpsychists need to adopt to defend their view. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to probe the connection between Spinoza's philosophy and his excommunication from the Synagogue in 1656. It seeks, first, to show the decisive influence of the 1656 excommunication on Spinoza's life and thought, and to demonstrate that this event is the single most important key to understanding his entire philosophy. With this key, the paper seeks, secondly, to illustrate the development and transformation of Spinoza's thought through specific reference to his three major works, Korte Verhandeling, De (...) Emendatione, and Ethica. Underlying these two points is a third, namely, that the inherently dynamic and positive elements of ?experience?, which have not been fully appreciated thus far, should be given greater attention in the evaluation of Spinoza's philosophy. (shrink)

Roger Ariew's new book, Descartes and the First Cartesians, will not be a methodological surprise for those who already read his previous work, Descartes and the Last Scholastics, as well as its expanded version, Descartes Among the Scholastics. Right at the beginning of DAS, Ariew justified the title of this book in the following way: A philosophical system cannot be studied adequately apart from the intellectual context in which it is situated. Philosophers do not usually utter propositions in a vacuum, (...) but accept, modify or reject doctrines whose meaning and significance are given in a particular culture. Thus Cartesian philosophy should... (shrink)

ArgumentThe purpose of this paper is to provide an analysis of Giordano Bruno’s conception of mathematics. Specifically, it intends to highlight two aspects of this conception that have been neglected in previous studies. First, Bruno’s conception of mathematics changed over time and in parallel with another concept that was central to his thought: the concept of infinity. Specifically, Bruno undertook a reform of mathematics in order to accommodate the concept of the infinitely small or “minimum,” which was introduced at a (...) later stage. Second, contrary to what Héléne Védrine claimed, Bruno believed that mathematical objects were mind-dependent. To chart the parallel development of the conceptions of mathematics and infinity, a seven-year time span is considered, from the publication of Bruno’s first Italian dialogue (La cena de le ceneri,1584) to the publication of one of his last Latin works (De minimo, 1591). (shrink)

This article aims to make further progress in revising the standard account of Wolff’s philosophy as a popularisation and systematisation of Leibniz’s doctrines. It focuses on the topic of the communication among substances and the metaphysics of simples and activity underlying it. It is argued that Wolff does not accept the pre-established harmony in its orthodox Leibnizian version. The article explains Wolff’s departure from Leibniz’s PEH as stemming from his rejection of Leibniz’s construal of the activity of every simple as (...) representational power and of the metaphysics of unity and activity in which that construal is rooted. (shrink)

O presente artigo enfoca a discussão, ensejada pela publicação do Dictionnaire Historique et Critique, entre seu autor, Pierre Bayle, e Leibniz a propósito dos critérios epistemológicos que permitem distinguir cognição animal de cognição propriamente humana. Trata-se de examinar em detalhe a distinção que, na sequência dessa publicação, Leibniz traçará entre o homem racional – caracterizado como aquele apto a produzir silogismos demonstrativos e de alcançar verdades necessárias – e o homem enquanto empírico, a fim de examinar se e de que (...) maneira os critérios epistemológicos que permitem distinguir cognição animal de cognição propriamente humana podem ou não nos permitir circunscrever uma diferença antropológica que permita distinguir o homem do animal. (shrink)

This article traces the fortunes of John Duns Scotus in histories of philosophy from Melanchthon’s student Caspar Peucer to the eminent medievalist Étienne Gilson. It identifies themes and historiographical methods common to sources from the late sixteenth century and follows their development to the present, with special emphasis given to the socalled historia philosophiae philosophica first advanced by Lutheran historians during the early Enlightenment.

Se abordan las tres cuestiones principales que aparecen en la correspondencia entre Tschirnhaus y Spinoza: la libertad; la producción de los cuerpos a partir del atributo extensión; la relación entre los modos del atributo pensamiento y los modos de los demás atributos. Se analizan las dificultades que Tschirnhaus detecta y el valor y alcance de las respuestas de Spinoza.

RésuméLes querelles constituent une activité « routinière » plutôt qu’extra ordinaire du monde lettré et savant. Nous montrons ici qu’elles ont un rôle à jouer dans le domaine de la critique historique. Notre apport est double. En nous intéressant aux enjeux épistémologiques de l’écriture baylienne de la querelle, nous transposons sur le terrain de l’historiographie l’apport des études récentes sur la productivité des querelles scientifiques. Nous présentons une perspective nouvelle de compréhension des querelles comme activité structurante de la république des (...) lettres, tant sur le plan social qu’intellectuel. Ce faisant, nous prenons position dans le débat sur le « pyrrhonisme » historique de Bayle en montrant que les querelles sont centrales dans une démarche historio graphique consciente de ses limites comme de ses pouvoirs d’investigation. (shrink)

Résumé Les querelles constituent une activité « routinière » plutôt qu’extra ordinaire du monde lettré et savant. Nous montrons ici qu’elles ont un rôle à jouer dans le domaine de la critique historique. Notre apport est double. En nous intéressant aux enjeux épistémologiques de l’écriture baylienne de la querelle, nous transposons sur le terrain de l’historiographie l’apport des études récentes sur la productivité des querelles scientifiques. Nous présentons une perspective nouvelle de compréhension des querelles comme activité structurante de la république (...) des lettres, tant sur le plan social qu’intellectuel. Ce faisant, nous prenons position dans le débat sur le « pyrrhonisme » historique de Bayle en montrant que les querelles sont centrales dans une démarche historio graphique consciente de ses limites comme de ses pouvoirs d’investigation. (shrink)

By offering an apology of Japan's closed country policy, Engelbert Kaempfer (1651–1716) was contributing not so much to the literature of exotic journey record, but rather to the field of European political and moral theory, and importantly to the debate over the relative merits of ancient and modern societies and effects of international commerce. There is a marked lack of scholarly attention given to Kaempfer as a modestly interesting political theorist, compared to a substantial body of research praising his record (...) as a scientifically minded observer of remote cultures. As a deceptively straightforward specimen of the genre of travelogue, and also because it has tended to be treated mostly as a pioneering attempt in western Japanese studies, Kaempfer's work has not generally been considered in its relation to the debate on Europe's own moral and political predicament. When it has, the emphasis tended to be on the influence his work exercised on the enlightened European mind and its awareness of alien cultures, rather than on the extent to which the moral and political questions he sought to answer regarding Japan's situation were in fact standard questions formulated within the wider European debate on commerce and government. This paper hopes to correct the imbalance by placing Kaempfer's argument into the context of such contrasting contemporaneous positions as those represented, respectively, by Joseph Addison's view of global commerce in The Spectator and by François Fénelon's vision of the ideal commonwealth of Salente in his Aventures de Télemaque. ☆ The present article was written as part of the author's stay in 2008 at the Centre for History and Economics, King's College, Cambridge, made possible by Andrew W. Mellon Foundation research grant. The author would like to thank the staff of the Centre for an unfailing support, and to Istvan Hont and Carolina Armenteros for invaluable comments on the text. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the Hasidic view, namely, that human flaws do not function as a barrier between a fallen humanity and a perfect deity, since the whole of creation stems from a divine act of self-contraction. Thus, we need not be discouraged by our own shortcomings, nor by those of our loved ones. Rather, seeing our flaws in the face of another should remind us that imperfection is an aspect of the God who created us. Such a positive approach (...) to human fallibility arouses forgiveness, mutual acceptance, and a hope for repair, and, therefore, has much to recommend itself. In the first part of the paper, I argue that the notion of a perfect God derives from the Greeks rather than the Hebrew Bible. A review of classical philosophies and the idea of God’s imperfection is followed by a consideration of several Jewish attempts to resolve the dichotomy between Divine perfection and an imperfect creation. I focus on Lurianic Kabbalah, Hans Jonas, and on the Hasidic concept of "Ayin " or “nothingness” as the very source of redemption. This Hasidic idea, which was further expanded upon by the Baal Shem Tov’s students, appears in a tale recounted by his great-grandson R. Nachman of Bratslav called “The Hanging Lamp.” I focus on the tale, which illustrates the idea that knowledge of human imperfection is itself a means of perfection and redemption. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: This article evaluates the strategies used by Christian philosophers to counter the invasion of Spinozist ideas between 1680 and 1720. The analysis of these refutations reveals a significant evolution in the way they unfolded. I wish to show that the argument from finality, or Gods death to get organized and refute him directly.

In early life, the philosopher, theologian and scientist Robert Boyle wrote extensively on moral matters. One of the extant early documents written in Boyle's hand deals with the morality of our treatment of non-human animals. In this piece Boyle offered a number of arguments for extending moral concern to non-human animals. Since the later Boyle routinely vivisected or otherwise killed animals in his scientific experiments, we are left with the biographical questions, did his views change, and if so, why? as (...) well as with the philosophical questions, what were his arguments and how good are they? (shrink)

Jusqu'au XVIe siècle, l'emploi de la force publique au service de l'unité religieuse semble être une conséquence du zèle pour le salut d'autrui. Pour parvenir à la concorde civile, dans les nations où s'affrontaient des confessions différentes, il a fallu trouver un fondement théologique à la reconnaissance juridique de la liberté de conscience et de culte. Les théologiens protestants de l'académie de Saumur fondée par Philippe Duplessis-Mornay, négociateur de l'édit de Nantes, ont cherché ce fondement du côté d'une théologie de (...) la création. Dieu a créé l'homme pour vivre paisiblement en compagnie de ses semblables et le drame de la chute originelle, bien qu'il ait entraîné pour sa réparation une révélation de Dieu protégée par l'Église, n'a pas détruit cet ordre tout à fait primitif. « Nous sommes hommes, écrit Amyraut, avant que d'être chrétiens. ». (shrink)

Based on two French authors from the end of the 17th century, this paper aims to highlight how the scholars themselves use the practice of criticism to represent a controversial aspect of knowledge associated with the gradually greater diffusion of books in the public dimension. This characteristic of knowledge together with this new social condition creates a specifically modern requirement that associates freedom of thought not only with private thought, but also with the exercise of writing and the access to (...) books of the most diverse contents. On the other hand, this new disposition of the Republic of Letters raises questionsamong critics themselves about the limits or regulatory criteria of criticism. (shrink)

Bayle's conception of reason is notoriously difficult to unravel, as are its consequences for the rationality of religious belief. The secondary literature has generally coalesced around two interpretations of Bayle's conception of reason. The “superskeptical” interpretation holds that reason is the source of its own undoing, not to be trusted; religious belief turns out to be irrational on this conception of reason, but this is hardly cause for alarm. The jusqu'au bout (to the very end) interpretation holds that reason is (...) to be followed wherever it leads, and if one follows closely, reason requires the rejection of religious belief. On both models, religious belief turns out to be irrational. In this piece, I summarize and examine these two interpretations, and using José Maia Neto's exposition of Bayle as an Academic skeptic, I propose a third that I call “common sense” skepticism. On this reading, reason does indeed use logic to form and sort beliefs – including some religious beliefs – but only holds to those beliefs fallibilistically. There may be a category of religious beliefs, however, that can only be recommended by faith; these would be religious beliefs that lack rational evidence, or exhibit rational contradictions. On this view, while some religious beliefs may turn out to be rational, there will likely be a set of core religious beliefs that come out to be irrational. I end by highlighting a suggestion by Bayle that reason itself may recommend revelation as a guide to belief, conferring a kind of intermediate rationality even on apparently irrational religious beliefs. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Pierre Bayle developed an expansive theory of toleration in his Commentaire philosophique by arguing that tolerance is a universal principle of natural law. However, by situating toleration in natural law rather than positive law, Bayle was brought into theoretical conflict with the Old Testament injunction that the state should punish idolatry. To resolve this conflict, Bayle drew upon the work of early modern Hebraists, particularly the Catholic biblical scholar Richard Simon. Bayle adapted Simon’s idea that theocracy uniquely shaped the (...) institutions of ancient Israel to argue that prohibitions against idolatry should be exclusive to the Hebrew republic. Bayle argued that the Mosaic Law did not punish someone for their sincerely held religious beliefs but only prohibited treason, and these circumstantial laws should not be emulated by other states. This allowed Bayle to contend for the moral veracity of the Old Testament and the notion that toleration is an unconditional principle of natural law. Bayle’s use of Simon displayed the revolutionary potential of textual critical scholarship in the early modern period, as he adapted Simon’s critical ideas to his own aims of promoting religious toleration within the ecclesiastical and civic spheres of his own confessional context. (shrink)

The “destructive” appropriation of the Aristotelian concepts of δύναµις and ἐνέργεια played a central role in Martin Heidegger’s own reflection on the meaning of being. While this has been generally known for some time, it is only now that we can understand the full scope, complexity and evolving character of this appropriation. One reason is the fairly recent publication of notes and protocols for seminars Heidegger led on Aristotle as late as the 1940s and 1950s. Another is the existence of (...) student transcripts in the Special Collections Department of Stanford University for a number of unpublished seminars on Aristotle that Heidegger led during the 1920s. Considering all of this material enables us to see both the significance of Heidegger’s interpretation of the δύναµις/ἐνέργιεα pair as well as how this interpretation evolved along with his own “Kehre”: from a “pandynamic” conception of being to being as “Ereignis.”. (shrink)

Pierre Bayle and the impossibility of a rational debate on evil I claim that Bayle engaged with theodicy in order to show how philosophy was misused in religious matters. For Bayle, the debate on evil does not oppose dichotomically reason and religion, it just requires that the participants deal with revealed truths using reason alone. In this regard, Bayle does not only criticize the Calvinist theologians of his time, but also the very source of Christian theology, Augustine of Hippo. En (...) ese artículo, sugerimos que el debate sobre la teodicea bayleana tiene por finalidad hacer patente el uso ilegítimo que se hace de la filosofía al aplicarla al debate religioso. La discusión sobre el mal no supone una disputa entre la razón en sentido absoluto y la religión, sino que compromete el uso de la razón en la revelación, de modo exclusivo Por esa razón, como veremos, el filósofo de Rotterdam no limita su crítica a la teología calvinista de su tiempo sino que la dirige al mismo corazón de la teología cristiana: la obra de Agustin de Hipona. (shrink)

Seventeenth century scholastics had a rich debate about the ontological status and nature of lacks, negations, and privations. Realists in this debate posit irreducible negative entities responsible for the non-existence of positive entities. One of the first scholastics to develop a realist position on negative entities was Thomas Compton Carleton. In this paper I explain Carleton's theory of negative entities, including what it is for something to be negative, how negative entities are individuated, whether they are abstract or concrete, and (...) how they affect their subjects. I argue that for Carleton, negative entities are conceived as spatially extended simples that affect their subjects by means of spatial overlap. I also show how Carleton responds to some theological worries about his realism concerning negative entities. (shrink)

What I plan to do in this paper is to provide a survey of the ways in which Spinoza’s philosophy has been deployed in relation to early modern thought, in the history of ideas and in a number of different domains of contemporary philosophy, and to offer an account of how some of this research has developed. The past decade of research in Spinoza studies has been characterized by a number of tendencies; however, it is possible to identify four main (...) domains that characterize these different lines of research: studies of Spinoza’s individual works, of its problematic concepts, from the point of view of the history of ideas, and comparative studies of Spinoza’s ideas. (shrink)

Like many of their contemporaries Bernard Nieuwentijt and Pieter van Musschenbroek were baffled by the heterodox conclusions which Baruch Spinoza drew in the Ethics. As the full title of the Ethics—Ethica ordine geometrico demonstrata—indicates, these conclusions were purportedly demonstrated in a geometrical order, i.e. by means of pure mathematics. First, I highlight how Nieuwentijt tried to immunize Spinoza’s worrisome conclusions by insisting on the distinction between pure and mixed mathematics. Next, I argue that the anti-Spinozist underpinnings of Nieuwentijt’s distinction between (...) pure and mixed mathematics resurfaced in the work of van Musschenbroek. By insisting on the distinction between pure and mixed mathematics, Nieuwentijt and van Musschenbroek argued that Spinoza abused mathematics by making claims about things that exist in rerum natura by relying on a pure mathematical approach. In addition, by insisting that mixed mathematics should be painstakingly based on mathematical ideas that correspond to nature, van Musschenbroek argued that René Descartes’ natural-philosophical project abused mathematics by introducing hypotheses, i.e. ideas, that do not correspond to nature. (shrink)

À partir de 1643, la querelle catholique de la grâce voit l’affrontement de trois partis théologiques, celui des jésuites, acquis au molinisme, celui des dominicains, défenseurs du thomisme, et celui des jansénistes, partisans d’un retour au strict augustinisme mais soucieux également de se défendre des accusations d’hérésie en mettant en avant leur conformité au thomisme. Le présent article tente de suivre l’évolution des différents courants au temps de la crise de 1655–1657 en utilisant les textes contemporains de Blaise Pascal comme (...) observatoire et en montrant comment les jansénistes ont peu à peu liquidé la solution moyenne d’un thomisme molinisant. (shrink)

À partir de 1643, la querelle catholique de la grâce voit l’affrontement de trois partis théologiques, celui des jésuites, acquis au molinisme, celui des dominicains, défenseurs du thomisme, et celui des jansénistes, partisans d’un retour au strict augustinisme mais soucieux également de se défendre des accusations d’hérésie en mettant en avant leur conformité au thomisme. Le présent article tente de suivre l’évolution des différents courants au temps de la crise de 1655–1657 en utilisant les textes contemporains de Blaise Pascal comme (...) observatoire et en montrant comment les jansénistes ont peu à peu liquidé la solution moyenne d’un thomisme molinisant. (shrink)

The ArgumentThe Republic of Letters of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries teaches us two lessons about style in science. First, the bearer of style—individual, nation, institution, religious group, region, class—depends crucially on historical context. When the organization and values of intellectual life are self-consciously cosmopolitan, and when allegiances to other entities are culturally more compelling than those to the nation-state, distinctivelynationalstyles are far to seek. This was largely the case for the Republic of Letters, that immaterial but nonetheless real (...) realm among the sovereign states of the Enlightenment. Second, that form of objectivity which made science seem so curiously detached from scientists, and therefore so apparently unmarked by style at any level, also has a history. The unremitting emphasis on impartial criticism and evaluation within the Republic of Letters encouraged its citizens to distance themselves first from friends and family, then from compatriots and contemporaries, and finally, in the early nineteenth century, from themselves as well. Although this psychological process of estrangement and ultimately of self-estrangement may seldom have been completely realized, the striving was genuine and constitutes part of the moral history of objectivity. (shrink)

Normal 0 21 Cet article s’attache à montrer la persistance au XVIIIe siècle d’un problème né en sol cartésien – le solipsisme – afin d’atténuer la distinction trop abrupte que l’on fait habituellement entre le rationalisme classique et l’empirisme des Lumières, notamment au plan épistémologique. Après avoir montré l’importance du débat au XVIIIe siècle et répertorié les arguments pro et contra la position solipsiste, l’article se conclut par un plaidoyer en faveur d’une relecture de la philosophie des Lumières, et propose (...) de relier le pessimisme épistémologique qui caractérise les grandes théories philosophiques de la fin du XVIIIe siècle à la prégnance du cartésianisme sur un siècle qui croyait pourtant s’être débarrassé de l’esprit de système du siècle précédent. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: If research devoted to the clandestine literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is today enjoying considerable expansion in the scholarly world, it tends, nonetheless, to be restricted to materialist considerations. However, other themes are open to exploration, such as the immaterialist one which is explicitly mentioned in two manuscripts. After presenting and analyzing these two texts, we argue that this clandestine account of immaterialism could explain both the evolution of this theory during the Enlightenment and the misunderstanding of (...) Berkeley’s philosophy. (shrink)

Resenha do livro "O mais natural dos regimes. Espinosa e a Democracia", de Diogo Pires Aurélio.

The present article intends at shedding some light on how Voltaire's Candide enacts its criticism of the Leibnizian system. In order to do that, we shall follow different paths. Firstly, we will consider a brief history of the problem of evil, especially the Bayle and Leibniz debate on it. Secondly, we shall briefly refer to Voltaire's metaphysics of evil. The almost forty years he dedicated to the question are not monotonous, they are constituted of variations, approximations and criticisms on both (...) Alexander Pope and Leibniz. Thirdly, we shall consider some examples of caricatures of Leibniz's philosophy in Candide in order to show that they bear real criticism on the philosophical optimism. (shrink)