3,823 research outputs found
L’antimysticisme de Port-Royal et la mystique de Fénelon
No full textOn sait le rôle que Port-Royal joua dans « le crépuscule des mystiques » (Cognet). Il se peut que si Bossuet se réclame des Messieurs de Port-Royal, et notamment d’Arnauld et de Nicole dans son affrontement avec Fénelon, c’est précisément dans la mesure où ceux-ci s’étaient finalement éloignés de Jansénius et de son interprétation de saint Augustin. L’exégèse de la doctrine thomiste de l’amour naturel de Dieu proposée par Arnauld et l’usage du théologoumène du « Dieu caché » par Nicole en donnent la preuve
Fausto Sozzini, la mortalità d’Adamo e la teologia moderna
No full textFausto Sozzini, Adam's Mortality and Early Modern Theology. In his dispute with Francesco Pucci, Fausto Sozzini argues that man was not created immortal but, being by nature subject to death, he could be made perpetually immune only through divine grace, which was a gift not included in his creation. It has thus been suggested that the Pucci-Sozzini querelle should be read as an expression of the broader debate that opposed the two 'souls' of modern theology, that is the Thomistic and the Augustinian. By reconstructing the late medieval theological debate on the mortality of Adam in the condition of innocence, the Author tries to show that Sozzini's theses are greatly indebted to Duns Scotus' criticisms of Thomas Aquinas
Montaigne's Gods
No full textAccording to Montaigne, ‘we cannot condignly conceive’ the nature and actions of God ‘if we are able to conceive them at
all. To imagine them condignly, we must imagine them unimaginable, unutterable, incomprehensible’. These criticisms,
directed at Raymond of Sebond, lead implicitly to the promotion of a radically negative theology. Yet, even if ‘human reason
goes astray [...] when she concerns herself with matters divine’, it is still possible to elaborate a discourse on God which
speaks ‘condignly’ of His nature as beyond our power to comprehend. Moreover, it is in the literature of pagan antiquity that
Montaigne finds the elements of this more ‘religious’ theology. This chapter examines Montaigne’s annotations on Lilio
Gregorio Giraldi’s treatise, De deis gentium varia et multiplex historia (‘The Varied and Manifold History of the Pagan
Gods’, 1548), as well as the comparison between Christian and pagan theology sketched out in the Essais
Locke o Spinoza: un punto di eresia
No full textRelying on his previous inquiries, the author discusses theories of “consciousness” which were elaborated almost simultaneously by Locke and Spinoza, as a reaction against the Cartesian doctrine of self-certainty. Because of their remarkable analogies and their sharp antithesis, they illustrate a “point of heresy” which, even today, intrinsically divides any project of framing a “psychology” or “philosophy of mind
Un adversaire accompli
No full textL’attachement amical « Nietzsche a toujours nourri un intérêt particulier pour la personnalité de Pascal ; et il y avait assurément entre eux une grande affinité spirituelle, en raison du caractère passionné de la pensée de Pascal, de son aspiration à la vérité, du scepticisme et de l’aversion à l’égard des ‘‘autorités’’ qui en caractérisaient l’esprit. » Ainsi écrivait Franz Overbeck en 1906 dans ses magnifiques Souvenirs sur Nietzsche. Et Thomas Mann de lui faire écho quelques années plus t..
A very obscure definition: Descartes’ account of love in the Passions of the Soul and its scholastic background
No full textThe definition of love given by Descartes in the Passions of the Soul (art. 79-84) has never stopped puzzling commentators. If the first Cartesian textbooks discreetly evoke or even fail to discuss Descartes's account of love, Spinoza harshly criticizes it, pointing out that it is on all hands admitted to be very obscure'. More recently several scholars have noticed the puzzling (or even paradoxical) character of the articles of the Passions of the Soul on love and hate. In this paper, I would like to propose a reassessment of the definition of love provided by the Passions of the Soul and the Letters to Elisabeth and Chanut. By tracing back Descartes's scholastic sources (namely Aquinas's treatises on the passions and charity in the Summa Theologiae), I will demonstrate how Descartes builds up his definition of love by displacing or subverting the meaning of several major elements of the thomistic vulgata on love. Hence, a significant part of the obscurity of the definition given by the Passions of the Soul possibly finds its ultimate rationale in this attempt to recover some traditional questions of the scholastic debate on love, while advancing new answers to them
Necessary error : Pascal on imagination and Descartes’ Fourth Meditation
No full textOne of the most renowned pages of Pascal's Pensées offers an astonishing phenomenology of the all-powerful action of imagination in human life. This article retraces the genesis of this text and reassesses the sources of Pascal's conception of imagination. It argues that Pascal builds up his definition of the imagination as an ‘anti-theodicy’ which carefully recalls and then criticizes the Cartesian ‘theodicy of error’ and the foundation of the ‘general rule’ of truth proposed by the Fourth Meditation. In doing so, Pascal undermines the major aim of Descartes's Meditations, which is to secure human nature against any doubt as to its intrinsic perfection. Where, according to Descartes, human knowledge is finite yet perfectly secured in its accomplishments when we use the faculties of our mind correctly, Pascal describes imagination as a deceptive faculty that seems to have been given to us specifically to lead us into necessary error
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