Alice Ragni

A recent study by P.R. Blum suggests the hypothesis of an ideal line from Scotus to Mastri, passing through Perera, which would tend towards a new concept of metaphysics attainable through the use of abstraction by indifference. This essay intends to test this hypothesis starting from the way in which Perera questions the unity of metaphysical abstraction through a series of innovative interpretations that are widely received in both Catholic and Reformed and Protestant domains. A first interpretation, less radical, advances a model of metaphysical abstraction, taken up by Mastri and Micraelius, which maintains the unity of metaphysics; a second interpretation, more radical, breaks the methodological unity of metaphysics through a clear distinction between ‘real’ abstraction from matter (secundum rem et rationem) and ‘mental’ abstraction by indifference (secundum rationem tantum) and, consequently, between metaphysics and ontology.

In this article I examine the possibility of identifying an ‘ontology’ within the context of Ancient Greek thought. Usually considered as a discipline introduced only in the Early-Modern philosophy, I seek here to demonstrate that the reflection on being conducted by Parmenides is already based on some of the theoretical assumptions characteristic of the ontology of the moderns, namely first and foremost the thesis of the univocity of being and the universality of the science concerning it, to which is added the assumption of its full thinkability, whereby being ends up coinciding with what can actually and fully be thought.

L’histoire de la métaphysique à Genève pendant l’époque moderne est liée à la figure de David Derodon (c. 1600-1664), philosophe et théologien calviniste français. Il soutient que la métaphysique est la science de l’étant commun aux corps et aux esprits et que, pour cette raison, elle doit être distinguée de la pneumatique et de la somatique. Il s’agit, en d’autres termes, d’une métaphysique fortement « ontologisée » qui traite des choses neutres. Le but de cet article est de montrer la diffusion de cette définition de la France à la Suisse jusqu’à son emploi par le cartésien Jean-Robert Chouet (1642-1731), professeur à la célèbre Académie de Genève fondée par Calvin en 1559. Chouet va encore plus loin en donnant une dénomination nouvelle à cette version de la métaphysique, qui est celle d’ontologie (ou ontosophia ), et en y introduisant le cogito cartésien.

La présentation de ce dossier l’inscrit dans les recherches récentes sur l’origine moderne du mot ontologia, sur son historiographie, sur les apories de la métaphysique scolastique dont l’ontologie hérite, sur son contexte initialement calviniste, sur les moments principaux de son développement et sur la thèse fondamentale qui, réduisant l’étant à un pur concept, l’identifie au pensable – jusqu’à la fascination ambivalente de Kant, qui, avant que la Critique de la raison pure n’entende substituer au nom orgueilleux d’ontologie le nom modeste d’une analytique de l’entendement pur, avait envisagé, dans les années 1770, son remplacement par une anthropologie transcendantale.

scholarly interest in johannes clauberg's philosophy increased significantly in the twentieth century, and the renaissance continued in the first decade of the twenty-first century. This is mainly due to the 1968 reprint of his Opera Omnia Philosophica,1 and to such events as the colloquium entirely devoted to Clauberg held in Groningen on 15 and 16 December 1995. The ground-breaking papers presented on that occasion, collected by Theo Verbeek in Johannes Clauberg and Cartesian Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century,2 offer a comprehensive overview of Clauberg's thought and supersede the outdated works by Müller,3 Brosch,4 and Weier,5 who tended to interpret Clauberg's philosophy as an...