Adi Efal Lautenschläger

The paper seeks to draw a preliminary map of the relations between the human body, habituation, and nature, in a lineage of questioning which should be referred to as Aristotelian in the wider sense of the term. The trail begins from Aristotle’s articulations of Hexis, and reaches Bergson’s definition of motoric habitude, through the two intermediary-stops of Thomas Aquinas and Félix Ravaisson. In all of the four “stations” of the trail, one finds intricate relations between habituation and nature that include the role that the human body plays in the process of coming-near of the two and the approximation between them. Habituation has a task to play in the bringing of a humanbody as close as possible to its own natural reality. Yet by that process habituation effectively covers and wraps the body with a “second” nature, a supplementary nature including not only actions, operations, gestures and deeds but also things that participate in these. Finally, based on this basic structure of habituation, all the four “stops” in the presented conceptual genre conceive of the task of habituation as carrying a moral tenor, which the article seeks to portray.

_Hegel and Schelling in Early Nineteenth-Century France_ is a two-volume work that documents the French reception of G. W. F. Hegel and F. W. J. Schelling from 1801 to 1848. It shows that the story of the "French Hegel" didn't begin with Wahl and Kojève by giving readers a solid understanding of the various ways in which German Idealism impacted nineteenth-century French philosophy, as well as providing the first ever English-language translations of excerpts from the most important philosophical texts of the era. Inside volume one, readers will find a number of interpretative frameworks to help them get to grips with this neglected field in the history of ideas. In addition to excerpted translations and a narrative of Hegel’s and Schelling’s fate in France during the early nineteenth century, this volume includes an introduction on transnational reception history, as well as an analytical catalogue of the translations of their work produced in French at this time, of the publications which appropriated or interrogated their philosophical legacy, and of the journals, institutional structures and other mechanisms of dissemination that brought Hegel’s and Schelling’s philosophy into France. The book thus details the ways in which French philosophers of the period took up the debates and concepts of German Idealism, transformed them or rejected them. In this way, it aims to contribute to a reversal of the serious neglect of early nineteenth-century French thought in English-language scholarship and, in so doing, goes beyond a nation-based narrative of the history of philosophy.

This introduction familiarises the reader with the project undertaken in Hegel and Schelling in Early Nineteenth-Century France by focusing on the various methodological requirements for its transnational reception-history. Such a methodology should trace the mutations, contestations and hybridisations that constitute the dissemination of Hegel’s and Schelling’s philosophies into France. We argue, in particular, for a renewed method in the history of post-KantianKantianism philosophy which is, firstly, more sensitive to the work of intellectual history and the history of ideas; secondly, as interested in the material processes by which an argument circulates as the validity of that argument itself; and, thirdly, which does away with the canon, as far as possible, in favour of a history of philosophy done in a minoritarian key.

_Hegel and Schelling in Early Nineteenth-Century France_ is a two-volume work that documents the French reception of G. W. F. Hegel and F. W. J. Schelling from 1801 to 1848. It shows that the story of the "French Hegel" didn't begin with Wahl and Kojève by giving readers a solid understanding of the various ways in which German Idealism impacted nineteenth-century French philosophy, as well as providing the first ever English-language translations of excerpts from the most important philosophical texts of the era. Inside volume two, readers will find a series of scholarly studies to help them get to grips with this neglected field in the history of ideas. The contributors are world-leading and emerging experts from Europe, UK, and North America. They highlight the stakes and trace the pathways of this reception for French and German thought during the period, including the ways in which French philosophers of the period took up the debates and concepts of German Idealism, transformed them or rejected them. In this way, the volume aims to redress the serious neglect of early nineteenth-century French thought in English-language scholarship and, in so doing, goes beyond a nation-based narrative of the history of philosophy.

This chapter is intended to provide some introductory orientation concerning what the Hegelian and Schellingian reception in France looked like. It tells a chronological story of its development with a focus on some of its key moments or landmarks, including Germaine de StäelStäel, Germaine de’s De l’Allemagne, Victor CousinCousin, Victor’s journeys to Germany, Pierre LerouxLeroux, Pierre’s radical appropriation of Schelling, the pantheistPantheism critique of Hegel and Hyppolite TaineTaine, Hyppolite’s early flirtation with HegelianismHegelianism. It is, therefore, meant to resume some of the standard reference points for any understanding of this topic.

Any account of the conditions for making possible the dissemination of German philosophy in France in the nineteenth century must include the various publications, institutions and mechanisms that supported, promoted and encouraged it. To this end, this chapter is interested in the structures that made the reception of Hegel’s and Schelling’s philosophy possible in France. It includes sections on the journals that discussed their work, the obituaries of Hegel that appeared in the early 1830s, the role of the prize-essay competitions set by the Académie des sciences morales et politiquesAcadémie des sciences morales et politiques, the research visits undertaken to Germany and the epistolary networks that all supported their reception.

This short note summarises the intent of the following chapters in the volume: to help readers gain an introductory overview of how Hegel’s and Schelling’s philosophies were circulated, transformed and subjected to critique in France from 1801 to 1848, with a focus on enumerating the various figures, publications and mechanisms of transmission at stake. It further records and justifies the major translation decisions made in the volume, especially in the context of the various translation-strategies for German Idealism already being developed in early nineteenth-century France.

This chapter lists the translations of Hegel’s and Schelling’s writings published in French before 1848. It contrasts the flurries of translation-activity to which Schelling’s philosophy was subject (nine works published during the 1830s and 1840s) to translations of Hegel which were few and far between. This was, we conjecture, partly due to the impact of the Left Hegelians (whose works were quickly translated), rather than Hegel’s texts themselves, on French philosophical consciousness. The chapter ends with a brief discussion of the German-language texts and editions studied by French philosophers in the early nineteenth century.

This work proposes a reading of the writings of Johannes Clauberg (1622-1665), under the prism of the philosophical method. Clauberg's philosophy is situated within the conceptual genre of "methodism", whose historiographical focal point is the philosophy of René Descartes. The conceptual genre of the methodism suggests a discussion around the concept of the method. We define the way in which Clauberg's Cartesianism is also shaped by a methodical impulse that is not exclusively Cartesian. In addition, we suggest that Clauberg's methodism proposes an epistemology in which proto-philosophical stages receive a determining role. We begin with a reconstruction of the conceptual genre of methodology, concentrating on Ramus and Zabarella, and show that the conceptual genre of methodism necessarily uses the terms ‘analysis’ and ‘synthesis.’ We demonstrate the complex structure of analysis and synthesis found in Clauberg. We then construct a description of the synthetic aspects of Clauberg's philosophy - figuration, comprehension (Verstehen) and therapeutic pedagogy, together as a proto-philosophy.

This paper takes a fresh look at Johannes Clauberg’s Logica vetus et nova, in order to try to clarify its nature and character. Differently from prior readings of Clauberg that analyze his philosophy from the point of view of the construction of ‘ontology’, the approach of the present paper sees in Clauberg’s philosophy a late-Humanist work, accentuating his pedagogic and hermeneutical interests. Indeed, in Clauberg’s philosophy, hermeneutics and pedagogy are intrinsically bound together. This, the paper suggests, is supported not only by the concrete subject-matters of his logic, but also by the examination of Clauberg’s milieu and of his sources. Analysis, in this framework, has a strictly hermeneutical usage.

ABSTRACT Focused upon Descartes’ writings and letters, this paper considers the exponentially-charged relationship between sadness, melancholy, doubt and philosophical inquiry. The first sections examine the relation between sadness in the Cartesian corpus and melancholy as a traditional pathological classification, with both set against a larger seventeenth century intellectual discourse. The letters exchanged between the Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia and the Palatine and Descartes between 1643 and 1649, that is, just prior to the death of the philosopher in 1650, reveal the central paradigm of this particular relationship between sadness and melancholy. The call to use philosophy as a cure against sadness also enters consideration, with the theatrical, artificial nature of the philosophical cure presented as essential not only to Descartes’ relation to sadness, but also to philosophical method in general. The moral aspect of the establishment of mental habits and their emendation by philosophy hence yields central insights into the larger Cartesian project, here viewed as essentially premised upon a medical vocation.