Roger Ariew

Résumé Dans quelle mesure la Logique de Port-Royal peut-elle être considérée comme une logique cartésienne? Et dans quelle mesure l’ Art de penser diffère-t-il des logiques antérieures? Telles sont les deux questions, étroitement liées l’une à l’autre, auxquelles je souhaite répondre dans cette étude en procédant à une série de comparaisons, d’une part avec ce que Descartes appelait sa logique, d’autre part avec ce que les cartésiens de la première génération entendaient par logique cartésienne, et pour finir avec l'évolution de la logique scolastique au cours du XVII e siècle. Je conclus que la logique élaborée par les cartésiens est simplement venue confirmer certains des développements de la logique scolastique au XVII e siècle. La Logique de Port-Royal qui, pour les cartésiens de la fin du XVII e siècle, représente par excellence la logique cartésienne, a également bien des traits en commun avec une logique néo-scolastique.

Gregorio Baldin’s book, La croisée des savoirs, concerns the intellectual relations among Hobbes, Mersenne, and Descartes. The study is limited to the time between 1634 and 1648, starting when Hobbes first met Mersenne in Paris and ending when Mersenne died. It covers three main topics. Part i is devoted to the relations maintained by Hobbes with the circle of Mersenne during 1634–1636, which Baldin thinks are essential for the development of Hobbes’ scientific thought. Part ii develops the theme of the “hidden” influence of Mersenne on Hobbes’ thought, highlighting points of contact between the two authors, such as mechanism, research in optics, and their approach to epistemology. Part iii concerns Hobbes’ influence on Mersenne’s thought. It addresses several themes, starting with Mersenne’s interest in Hobbes’ system, the attitudes of Mersenne, Gassendi, and Hobbes toward Cartesian metaphysics, and ending with scientific themes debated in Mersenne’s circle during the 1640s.

No single text could be considered more important in the history of philosophy than Descartes' Meditations. This unique collection of background material to this magisterial philosophical text has been translated from the original French and Latin. The texts gathered here illustrate the kinds of principles, assumptions, and philosophical methods that were commonplace when Descartes was growing up. The selections are from: Francisco Sanches, Christopher Clavius, Pierre de la Ramee, Francisco Suárez, Pierre Charron, Eustachius a Sancto Paulo, Scipion Dupleix, Marin Mersenne, Pierre Gassendi, Jean de Silhon, François de la Mothe le Vayer, Charles Sorel, and Jean-Baptiste Morin.

Since the revival of historicist philosophy of science in the 1960s many philosophers have acknowledged a debt to Duhem. But Duhem’s opinions are imperfectly understood and, as McMullin has shown in his (1970) and (1979), there are many strands in the current revival of historicism. We consider here Duhem’s views on the role of history in the appraisal of scientific theories. However, there is no single text offering Duhem’s views on the subject; rather, they are revealed during their application to various historical and contemporary cases. Duhem’s most sustained examination of a contemporary case is his critique of Maxwell’s science and scientific methodology.Duhem’s critique of Maxwell is not a set of isolated or incidental dicta, but the expression of Duhem’s mature thought over the last quarter-century of his life, ranging from (at least) 1893 to his death in 1916.

These volumes contain Descartes's main works in their first English translations, as well as critiques of his philosophy both in English and translated from other languages. Other works in the set bring together writings by Cartesians in English translation, works by English thinkers influenced by Descartes, and the standard seventeenth-century Descartes biographies in their English translations. As a whole, this set provides a group of rare and largely inaccessible works vital to understanding the impact of Cartesian thought on his contemporary Anglophone world.

I argue that Descartes and the Cartesians are likely in agreement that logic is an ars cogitandi whose aim is to perfect the ingenium by the exercise of its operations: ideating, judging, discoursing, and ordering. We can see that these elements are the underpinning of both the Regulae and the Discourse on Method, and thus, like Adrien Baillet and others in the seventeenth century, we can understand these two works as embodying Descartes’ “logic,” despite Descartes’ notorious anti-logic Renaissance rhetoric in both writings.

This volume appears to be the product of much effort, the culmination of more than twenty years of study--though it could not have been "written before the collapse of the research program of the logical positivists," as the back cover proclaims. Schlagel's introduction is more precise: the volume adopts an anti-positivistic approach to understanding science precisely because of the failure of the research program of the positivists and the success of the historicists. In fact, in opposition to the positivists who approach science as a completed system of laws, theories, and mathematical formalism, Schlagel conceives of science as an intellectual enterprise exhibiting a developmental, creative process. Schlagel believes that there is an emerging consensus, in this century, in the work of anthropologists, classicists, philologists, and historians of science about man's intellectual history. He argues that what is lacking is an interpretation of these products from the perspective of gradual cognitive development, that is, from the perspective of various anthropological conceptions of primitive mentality and psychological studies of different mental developments. Chapters I, II, and III provide the details for this original and challenging thesis of the volume.

I am grateful that a set of fine scholars would be willing to reflect upon and write about Descartes and the First Cartesians. Their efforts are greatly appreciated and, on the whole, their observations are sound. It should be evident that I do not consider the work to be the final word on the subject of Descartes and Cartesians, that is, something exhaustive of it or complete for any of its topics. In fact, every time I reconsider an issue from my book, I find that there is more to be said even in respect to what I wrote about in great detail. I will reply to the commentators in the following order: 1. Domenico Collacciani; 2. Lucian Petrescu; 3. Martine...

© Mind Association 2018Some time ago I was at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris investigating the teaching of philosophy during Descartes’ time. Fine monographs had already been published on the various regimens and practices at Descartes’ college at La Flèche, and Jesuit institutions in general, as well as the collegiate curriculum in seventeenth-century France. But as interested as I was in the form of the teaching—how philosophy was taught, where, and when—I was more interested in its content—what was actually taught. A fair number of early modern textbooks and some manuscripts of lectures and student notebooks were still available; beyond that, one could find reports of weekly or monthly disputations, condemnations of specific doctrines, various broadsheets, manifestos, and student theses and dissertations. After overcoming some administrative resistance, I found myself in a room at the Cabinet d’Estampes looking at a...