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20 - Bayle
- Edited by Sacha Golob, King's College London, Jens Timmermann, University of St Andrews, Scotland
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- The Cambridge History of Moral Philosophy
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- 13 December 2017
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- 07 December 2017, pp 257-267
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Another brick in the wall: fifth millennium BC earthen-walled architecture on the Channel shores
- Luc Laporte, Catherine Bizien-Jaglin, Julia Wattez, Jean-Noël Guyodo, Jean-Baptiste Barreau, Yann Bernard, David Aoustin, Véronique Guitton, Gwenaelle Hamon, Luc Jallot, Alexandre Lucquin, Ramiro March, Nancy Marcoux, Emmanuel Mens, Ludovic Soler, Elise Werthe
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The west European Neolithic is famed for its funerary and ceremonial monuments, but the evidence for houses is sparse. Can this be explained by the materials of which they were built? On the northern coast of Brittany, the site of Lillemer rises from the surrounding marshes and presents abundant evidence of Middle Neolithic occupation, contemporary with the passage graves of the region. Surprisingly, their evidence includes the remains of collapsed earthen-walled structures, providing the northernmost example of this type of architecture in a Neolithic context and a possible explanation for the invisibility of much Neolithic domestic architecture.
La Grange, Jean-Baptiste de (ca.1641 – after 1680)
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- By Jean-Luc Solère, Boston College
- Edited by Lawrence Nolan, California State University, Long Beach
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- The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon
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- 05 January 2016
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- 01 January 2015, pp 430-432
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Summary
Few data are available on La Grange's life, except that he entered the Oratory in 1660 and left in 1680 to become a parish priest in Chartres. During these two decades, he taught philosophy at Montbrison and Le Mans and theology at Troyes.
La Grange is the author of a two-volume treatise The Principles of Philosophy against the New Philosophers. Although these “new philosophers” include Pierre Gassendi and Emmanuel Maignan, La Grange's main target is Cartesianism. The title polemically alludes to Descartes’ own Principles of Philosophy. La Grange also aims at Descartes’ followers, Rohault mainly, and, unnamed, Malebranche, whose theory of the “vision in God” is denounced (1675–79, 1:78).
La Grange's preface refers to Louis XIV's 1671 decree, which banned the teaching of Cartesianism on the ground that it jeopardizes the traditional account of “the mysteries of the faith.” Similarly, La Grange's first and main reproach is that the principles of Cartesianism are incompatible with a number of revealed truths. According to him, theological dogmas provide a litmus test for philosophical principles. Even if these principles appear to be evident and certain, they cannot be but false if they generate conclusions that are opposed to revealed truths.
In particular, contrary to Descartes’ claim, it is impossible to account for transubstantiation without the tools of “ordinary philosophy,” such as accidental forms. As a consequence, La Grange undertakes to rehabilitate real qualities, that is, entities which are ontologically different from the substance in which they inhere, instead of being just modes of that substance (see quality, real). Thence, La Grange tries to prove that accidents are not reducible to their substances. This applies to qualities residing in the soul, such as virtue or knowledge as well as to physical properties. The latter are not reducible to relations between parts of matter, that is, to figure and motion, as the Cartesians want it. Thus, La Grange directly challenges Cartesian natural philosophy and contends that no serious theory can do away with entities such as quantity (which entails that extension is not merely the essence of bodies), heat, sound, and colors.
Le Bossu, René (1631–1680)
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- By Jean-Luc Solère, Boston College
- Edited by Lawrence Nolan, California State University, Long Beach
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- The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon
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- 05 January 2016
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- 01 January 2015, pp 446-446
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A canon and librarian of the abbey of Sainte-Geneviève in Paris, Le Bossu is the author of a systematic comparison of Aristotelian and Cartesian physics (the latter often being actually Jacques Rohault's version). Surprisingly, Le Bossu believes that they can be reconciled. How can such a feat be achieved? Le Bossu thinks that the difference between Aristotle and Descartes is above all a matter of presentation. Descartes (in the Principles) systematically expounds a full-fledged science, which, Le Bossu (1674, 314) contends, Aristotle possessed but did not want to divulge! Thus, Descartes dismisses the testimony of the senses and starts with the most general principles, such as motion, from which he deduces the properties of particular bodies (Le Bossu 1674, 203–4). On the contrary, Aristotle starts with immediate, sensible experience and regresses by induction to the causes, because his presentation is a propaedeutic, suitable for beginners. Similarly, whereas Descartes sets forth his principles (matter and form only) as the real constitutive principles of things, Aristotle proposes the fundamental concepts of his physics (matter, form, privation) as heuristic principles only. Aristotle does know that there is no real privation in things, Le Bossu contends (1674, 84–89); speaking of privation is only a methodological detour to discover what role the form plays with respect to matter. Thanks to some adjustments, the Cartesian and Aristotelian concepts of form and of matter are then declared to be compatible. Form, for instance, is to be understood as the arrangement of parts of matter that makes a thing what it is. Along the same lines, Le Bossu (1674, 209–11) even claims that the Aristotelian notion of potentiality is to be interpreted as the relative rest between the parts of a same body, and that the actualization of this potentiality consists in the local motion of this body in Descartes’ sense.
Since in unpublished memoirs he apparently supported Descartes’ views on animals and showed sympathy for his explanation of transubstantiation, Le Bossu's interpretation must be seen as a way of making Cartesianism acceptable to traditional minds. However, the result of his endeavor is faithful neither to Aristotle nor to Descartes.
Gibieuf, Guillaume (1583–1650)
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- By Jean-Luc Solère, Boston College
- Edited by Lawrence Nolan, California State University, Long Beach
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- The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon
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- 05 January 2016
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- 01 January 2015, pp 334-335
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Gibieuf studied at the Sorbonne and received the title of doctor in theology in 1612. The same year he joined the Oratory, recently founded by Cardinal Pierre de Bérulle. He quickly became Bérulle's right-hand man and played an important role in the expansion of the Oratory (see Oratorian). However, because of internal dissent, he was not elected superior of the congregation at Bérulle's death (1629). From 1631 on, he was kept out of its leadership, for about ten years. He nevertheless remained in charge of the supervision of the Carmelites.
Through Bérulle, Gibieuf associated with Descartes in Paris between 1626 and 1628. After Descartes’ departure for the Netherlands, they remained on excellent terms. Gibieuf interceded on Descartes’ behalf with the Sorbonne to obtain an approbation of the Meditations.
Gibieuf and Descartes share some views on divine and human freedom. As Bérulle's disciple, Gibieuf defended, in his On the Liberty of God and of the Creatures, the “Augustinian” thesis of the necessity and invincibility of grace, against the “Molinist” theory that “indifference” is essential to human free will. For the Jesuit Molina, our will is not free if it cannot choose one of two opposite alternatives indifferently, that is, without being irresistibly inclined to one of these opposites. In contrast, for Gibieuf, inclination is compatible with free will because it is not an external constraint. Indifference is proper only to God's supreme freedom. Because of his “amplitude” – namely, his infinity, inexhaustible power, and absolute perfection – God is not limited or constrained in any way regarding his ends or means. On the other hand, in the case of humans, indifference characterizes a will that has gone astray from the path marked by God. Creatures are essentially ordained to God as their end, and human freedom is perfectly achieved in the adhesion to the motion that irresistibly draws us back to God.
Conimbricenses (COIMBRANS)
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- By Jean-Luc Solère, Boston College
- Edited by Lawrence Nolan, California State University, Long Beach
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- The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon
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- 05 January 2016
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- 01 January 2015, pp 148-150
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Descartes mentions the Conimbricenses (in Latin; “Coimbrans” in English) among the textbooks that contributed to his philosophical education (AT III 185, CSMK 154). What he refers to is a set of commentaries on Aristotle (with some complementary pieces) written by a team of Jesuits at the University of Coimbra (Portugal) between 1592 and 1606 to provide an authorized version of the philosophy courses that were delivered there. The project was initially under the supervision of Manuel de Gois (1542–97), who published the first six parts. He was succeeded by Cosmas de Magalhães (1551–1624). The other contributors were Balthasar Alvares (1561–1630) and Sebastião do Couto (1567–1639) – who wrote alone the entire Dialectic.
Commenting on Aristotle, mostly in the form of disputed questions, was the usual way of teaching philosophy in universities since the Middle Ages. The Jesuits, a teaching order, produced a great number of such textbooks that, officially at least, followed Thomas Aquinas's line of interpretation of Aristotle. Taken together, these textbooks would provide a complete curriculum (cursus) in philosophy. Such was the intention of the Conimbricenses. However, whereas a cursus would normally comprise logic, natural philosophy, metaphysics, and ethics, the Conimbricenses did not include a volume on metaphysics. The Coimbran Jesuit Pedro de Fonseca's famous commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics may have made it unnecessary, and, moreover, Francisco Suárez, whose Metaphysical Disputations were widely influential, also taught at Coimbra. Thus, the Conimbricenses (eight parts in five, in-quarto volumes) include a volume on Aristotle's logic (Dialectica, published last); commentaries on Aristotle's Physics, On the Heavens, On Generation and Corruption, Meteors, On the Soul, and Short Treatises on Nature for the natural philosophy section; and a commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics. Because of their quality, the Conimbricenses were best sellers, even in Protestant countries, and were republished many times in the seventeenth century. Like other Jesuit textbooks, they came to represent the quintessential “philosophy of the School” (see Scholasticism). They were undoubtedly important in Descartes’ education and are essential for understanding his vocabulary and the Scholastic ideas he eventually either rejected or conserved. When he decides in 1640 to reread some Scholastic philosophy to prepare his counteroffensive against the Jesuits (and to prepare to write what became the Principles of Philosophy), Descartes finds that the Conimbricenses corpus is too voluminous for his purpose. The textbook he finally chose as representative of Scholastic thought is Eustachius a Sancto Paulo's Summa quadripartita.
Bourdin, Pierre (1595–1653)
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- By Jean-Luc Solère, Boston College
- Edited by Lawrence Nolan, California State University, Long Beach
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- The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon
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- 05 January 2016
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- 01 January 2015, pp 75-76
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In 1640, Bourdin, a Jesuit and mathematics professor at Clermont College in Paris, challenges in public disputation several theses of Descartes’ Dioptrics. Descartes reacts angrily. First, he is outraged that the objections were not sent to him before being publicized. Second, because he was hoping that the Jesuits would support and disseminate his views, Descartes perceives Bourdin's challenge as a flat rejection and the sign of a coming offensive by the whole order. Indeed, Descartes is persuaded that the discipline within the Society of Jesus is such that none of its members speaks without expressing the opinion of the whole body. Thus, in order to avoid having to fight one Jesuit after another, Descartes writes to the rector of Clermont College to demand that any Jesuit criticizing him be officially commissioned. He also suggests that the society choose another champion in place of Bourdin, whom he regards as incompetent and on whom he repeatedly pours scorn. Otherwise, Descartes threatens, he will write a systematic refutation of Scholastic philosophy and science taught in Jesuit colleges, presented alongside his own to the advantage of the latter (this project would eventually lead to the Principles of Philosophy, after Descartes gave up the critical part).
The response is not as Descartes expects. In 1641, Bourdin, uninvited by Descartes or by Mersenne, raises objections against the recently released first edition of the Meditations. This time, the criticisms are conveyed privately to Descartes. But Bourdin also proposes a nonaggression pact: he will not publish his objections if Descartes refrains from writing against the Jesuits. Again, Descartes takes Bourdin's piece as the reaction of the whole society and, indignant, does not waver. He adds Bourdin's objections (known as the Seventh Objections, which are the longest set), along with his scathing replies, to the second edition of the Meditations (1642). He also appends an open letter to the head of the French Jesuits, Dinet, in which he attacks both Bourdin and the Dutch Calvinist theologian Voetius (AT VII 449–603, CSM II 303–97).
By the end of 1642, Descartes is more or less reconciled with Bourdin and the Jesuits. Still, Bourdin's objections might indeed reflect the society's negative judgment on Descartes’ thought. Notably, Bourdin does not engage with particular theses but aims at the Meditations’method.