History and Texts of Philosophy of Modern Times

The 2026-2017 course (Q1, Sept to Dec) will be taught by Dr Louis Rouquayrol, research fellow at the FNRS This course will offer, through a reflection on the status of the invisible in modern philosophy, an introductory exploration of some major figures of the period, notably Descartes, Malebranche, Fontenelle, Leibniz, and Kant. We will focus primarily on questions relating to metaphysics, natural philosophy, and epistemology.

 

1. The “Scientific Revolution.”

 

We will begin by examining the new division between the visible and the invisible established by what has come to be known as the “scientific revolution.” (This will be an opportunity to review this category, which is currently being challenged by historians of science.) The virtually unlimited expansion, beginning in the 17th century, of what we are able to perceive thanks to optical instruments (telescope, microscope) has left an ambiguous mark on modern philosophy. It is true that these instruments, by opening up the horizon of the infinitely large and the infinitely small, have fostered the emergence of entirely new conceptions of the universe, of life, of humankind, and of its cognitive faculties. This new horizon opens up to our reflections—more or less anguished (Pascal)—an infinite field of experience: pushing back the limits of the visible does not diminish the realm of the invisible, but on the contrary, reveals its unsuspected extent.

 

2. “Mechanism” and “Dualism.”

 

We will then examine how Descartes, in demonstrating the real distinction between soul and body in the Meditations on First Philosophy (1641) — a concept commonly known as “dualism”—establishes the principle of an analogy between nature and a machine: this is what is commonly called “mechanism.” This analogy allows Descartes to postulate that the explanation of visible natural phenomena involves movements and configurations of invisible parts of matter. It is up to reason, possibly aided by the imagination, to uncover these movements and configurations, which, by definition, escape our senses. The postulate of a homogeneity between the visible and the invisible is shared by many 17th-century authors, who do not necessarily subscribe to the Cartesian version of “mechanism” or to “dualism.” Several examples will allow us to see by virtue of what inferences philosophers have striven, throughout the 17th century, to populate the invisible: Hobbes' "corpuscles"; Gassendi's "atoms"; Malebranche's "small animals"; Fontenelle's extraterrestrials, etc.