2017 - Franco Angeli
Article
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Systematic Thought and the Early French Enlightenment
629-640 p.
- The Enlightenment critique of the esprit de système and its tendency towards eclecticism have often been interpreted as symptoms of speculative shallowness. The article analyses the origins of this prejudice, with special reference to the early French Enlightenment (1700-1750). It then attempts to counter such a preconception by providing a relevant counterexample. The case study presented is that of Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, usually considered a typical instance of the anti-systematic proto-positivist philosophe. In discussing his philosophy, epistemological and cosmological issues in particular are emphasized, showing how Maupertuis' thoroughly empiricist theory of knowledge led him to apply mathematics to all domains of human knowledge in order to reduce their uncertainty. It is concluded that Maupertuis is the author of a rich and interesting work, which brings some novelty to the philosophical scene of his own times, if not to the whole history of modern philosophy. [Publishers' text].
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Information
ISSN: 1972-5558
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In this issue
- History of failed synthesis
- The Unity of Science and the Search for a Unity of Understanding in the Modern Era.
- The Magic Mountain
- Thomas Reid on Consciousness and the Constitution of the Mental
- There's no Success like Failure : on the early Reception of Kant's most famous Synthesis
- Tycho's System and the Decline of the Traditional Cosmos
- Self-Preservation and Exchange : Two Ways of Historicizing Kant's Concept of Synthesis and their Epistemological Implications
- Systematic Thought and the Early French Enlightenment
- Philosophies cartésiennes à l'usage des étrangers : les traductions latines du Traité de physique de Rohault et de la Recherche de la vérité de Malebranche
- Genovesi e la Metafisica
- Ludwig Feuerbach, L'uomo è ciò che mangia
- Il dominio di una tradizione : separazione dei saperi nei programmi e nella prassi didattica italiana
- L'attualità dei dialoghi sull'Idiota di Nicola Cusano
- Heidegger, lector de la tradición
- Recensioni
- Schede
- Indice dell'annata 2017
