In the latter half of the 17th century, Antoine Arnauld was a public and private defender of many of the central tenets of Cartesianism. Yet, one issue on which he is surprisingly silent is René Descartes’ claim that God freely created the eternal truths (the Creation Doctrine). Despite Arnauld’s evasion of the issue, whether he holds the Creation Doctrine is one of the most contested issues in Arnauld scholarship. In this paper I offer an interpretation of Arnauld’s position. I argue (...) that Arnauld does not hold what I call the metaphysical version of the Creation Doctrine according to which God in fact freely created the eternal truths. Rather, he holds what I call the epistemic version of the Creation Doctrine according to which we cannot know whether God freely created the eternal truths. (shrink)

En este trabajo intentaré mostrar que, de acuerdo con Agustín de Hipona –y a diferencia de una cierta lectura relativamente clásica de Pascal–, el deseo puede ser el comienzo de la relación del hombre con el Absoluto. Para ello divido el texto en cuatro partes: primero, describo la situación existencial primordial de la que nace el deseo, la inquietud. Después, describo el doble despliegue del deseo: amor o concupiscencia, según objeto e inclinación. En tercer lugar, intento describir los tipos de (...) concupiscencias y sus paralelismos en ambos autores. Concluyo mostrando la importancia de la costumbre en la constitución del deseo. (shrink)

Aristotelianism remained the dominant influence on the course of natural philosophy taught at the University of Paris until the 1690s, when it was swiftly replaced by Cartesianism. The change was not one wanted by church or state and it can only be understood by developments within the wider University. On the one hand, the opening of a new college, the Collège de Mazarin, provided an environment in which the mechanical philosophy could flourish. On the other, divisions within the French Catholic (...) Church between Austinians and Molinists led to Cartesianism finding support within an important section of the faculty of theology, which was the traditional guardian of philosophical orthodoxy. The conversion of the University of Paris to Cartesianism had important consequences. It encouraged similar changes to the natural philosophical curriculum throughout France and affected the structure and raison d'être of the Académie des Sciences. (shrink)

This article explores the speed and form in which the mechanical philosophy was absorbed into the college curriculum in Louis XIV’s France. It argues that in general a mechanist approach to nature only began to be received sympathetically after 1690. It also emphasizes that it was the Cartesian not Gassendist form of the mechanical philosophy that professors espoused. While admitting that at present it is impossible to explain successfully the history of the reception of the mechanical philosophy in the classroom, (...) the article concludes by attempting to throw light on the French preference for Descartes. This, it is suggested, is linked to the relative familiarity of Cartesian mechanism, the way the philosophy was packaged, and the political and religious environment. (shrink)

Cartesianism appeared inexorably to produce disparate theoretical tendencies inside itself, and Spinoza’s philosophy was one of the most outrageous and strangest result of those tendencies. This explains why so many Cartesians felt the urge to deal with the thought of the Dutch philosopher, from time to time labelled as ‘monism’, ‘pantheism’, or ‘atheism’. The case of Fénelon, the Quietist theologian, tutor of the Princes of France and brilliant Cartesian philosopher, highlights the difficulties of such an operation. The Archbishop of Cambrai (...) devotes not only various letters to the criticism of Spinoza, but even a whole section of the Démonstration de l’existence de Dieu – his most ambitious work, from a theoretical point of view. For apparently no reason, the Réfutation du spinozisme was inserted in the middle of the second part of the Démonstration, the more specifically philosophical section. This paper aims to show how Fénelon actually wanted to criticize Descartes’ radical tendencies by attacking them where they were to be found inside Spinoza, without directly compromising Cartesianism – or, first and foremost, his own ‘apologetic’ Cartesianism. (shrink)

I am grateful that a set of fine scholars would be willing to reflect upon and write about Descartes and the First Cartesians. Their efforts are greatly appreciated and, on the whole, their observations are sound. It should be evident that I do not consider the work to be the final word on the subject of Descartes and Cartesians, that is, something exhaustive of it or complete for any of its topics. In fact, every time I reconsider an issue from (...) my book, I find that there is more to be said even in respect to what I wrote about in great detail. I will reply to the commentators in the following order: 1. Domenico Collacciani; 2. Lucian Petrescu; 3. Martine... (shrink)

In this paper, I defend a novel interpretation of Antoine Arnauld’s conception of God, namely a ‘partially hidden’ conception of God. I focus on divine simplicity and whether God acts for reasons. I argue that Arnauld holds the view that: God, God’s action and God’s attributes are (i) identical, and (ii) conceptually distinct, but that (iii) there are no conceptual priorities among them. Next, I argue that Arnauld’s view about whether God has any type of reasons is agnosticism, but that (...) there are certain types of reasons we know that God does not have, e.g., practical reasons. (shrink)

Humanists and philosophers in the Quattrocento find inspiration for their treatises on human dignity not only in Classical Antiquity, but also in the works of the Church Fathers. The present paper examines the influence of the latter on the theories of freedom at the dawn of Modernity, especially regarding the Patristic conception of human self as person or hypostasis, whose free decision is considered inviolable, creative and irreducible to its own nature or essence.