La position du problème La question du néant chez Descartes semble nous confronter à deux séries de difficultés, la première de nature conceptuelle, la seconde de nature historique. Les difficultés de nature conceptuelle sont immédiates : elles dérivent du texte dans lequel Descartes thématise, sinon exclusivement, du moins le plus exhaustivement, la question du néant. Nous voulons parler du passage qui, au tout début de la...

The Conversation that Descartes had with Burman on April 16, 1648 sheds light on the meaning of the phrase ens reale, which was common in modern scholastic treatises but unusual under his pen, and thus on the Cartesian concept of realitas. Ens verum et reale, such is the object of mathematics: no less real than that of physics, even if it does not exist out of the mind and requires imagination. As for the object of metaphysics, if it is no (...) less real than that of physics and mathematics, it is both existent and unimaginable. The answers given by Descartes that are examined here are significant samples which in addition show the need to re-edit the Conversation in the light of Clauberg's Opera. (shrink)

This paper aims at investigating the vocabulary of thingness in the thought of Henry of Ghent. The paper features two main parts: in the first part we try to clarify the statement and the implications of the distinction between the concept of res a reor, reris and the concept of res a ratitudine. On the subject the thesis argued that this distinction has essentially an epistemological function in Henry of Ghent's thought. The second part of the paper, instead, takes into (...) consideration the concept of realitas as it is formulated by Henry in some sections of his Quodlibeta. The argued thesis is that realitas is not a synonym of being, but rather designates the inner foundation of every ontological attribution. (shrink)

Generally attributed to Duns Scotus, as the correlate of formal distinction, and as the minimal component of being, the concept of reality is older than that. It arose during the twelfth century, u...

In the Pensées, Pascal uses the astonishing phrase “the reality of things” to designate, not the actual existence of things, but the being-thing of all things (in accordance with the meaning of the Latin realitas rerum). It will be established that with this phrase, although it is of Cartesian origin, the analysis of “Disproportion of Man” aims at a criticism of the Cartesian ratio formalis infiniti sive infinitas, which Pascal shows not to be suitable to think God, but only to (...) describe and name nature asthe totality of thinkable objects. (shrink)