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Limborch, Philippus van (1633–1712) Reference library
Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment
...reason.” He was denounced as a Spinozist as a result of these theological and philosophical reflections. In his explorations of Arminianism, he also emphasized the ethical commitment of human beings, defended free will, criticized religious predestinarianism and philosophic determinism, and promoted a voluntarist understanding of religion in which human intelligence cooperates with faith in the pursuit of salvation. His most important work, the Theologia christiana ( 1686 ), is a systematic compilation of Remonstrant belief made accessible to all...
Argens, Jean-Baptiste d' (1701–1771) Reference library
Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment
...matters, and to fight the existing corruption of the public administration in order to demolish some of the privileges of the leading classes. Apparently, his philosophy can be considered as belonging to a deist naturalism, but in reality d'Argens was closer to the materialist determinism of the first half of the century. He was more tied to La Mettrie's thought than to the philosophes who could frequent, in Paris, literary salons, and who began the extraordinary undertaking of Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie . If, in the long term, some circumstances...
Condorcet, Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat (1743–1794) Reference library
Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment
...the calculus of probabilities—much disputed in the 1760s and 1770s—that Condorcet was to devote his later mathematical work. Through it, he was to reach a philosophy that combined positivism and probability in a way very similar to that of Pierre-Simon Laplace . Accepting the determinism implicit in the postulate of a rationally ordered universe but denying that human beings could go beyond the probable knowledge of that universe derived from observation, Condorcet nevertheless saw in the calculus of probabilities a means of expressing with precision the...
Philosophy Reference library
Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment
.... Enlightenment philosophy took up a number of themes and debates from the late seventeenth century. There was no unanimity on these matters, of course, but there were discernible tendencies. There was a move toward materialism, determinism, and empiricism, and a move away from an uncritical acceptance of revealed providential Christianity, as well as from tradition, received authority, and undemocratic political power, from rationalistic metaphysical systems, and from any non-naturalistic conception of humanity. Religion The late seventeenth and the...
Kant, Immanuel (1724–1804) Reference library
Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment
...that one could think, without contradiction, many things about noumena (God, freedom, immortality) which were of urgent human concern, that is, there was room for faith. Thus Kant secured the “primacy” of this “practical” use of reason against the twin dangers of strict determinism and unrestricted skepticism in theoretical philosophy. Kant's argument presumes a fundamental distinction of sensibility (receptivity) from understanding (spontaneity), which he takes to define human finitude. While he is prepared to hold, with Leibniz, that the mind is capable...
Roman Catholicism Reference library
Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment
..., 1722 ) was not taken up again, despite its success in the first half of the century. The 1750s and 1760s saw a “spiritualistic” and Jansenist apologetics typified by the works of the Oratorian Le Large de Lignac, with his call to conscience and interior conviction against determinism ( Le témoignage du sens intime et de l'expérience opposé à la foi profane et ridicule des fatalistes modernes , 1760 ), Louis-Antoine Caraccioli's La religion de l'honnête homme ( 1766 ) against Rousseau, and Louis Racine's La religion ( 1742 , 1747 , 1752 ), which...
Newtonianism Reference library
Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment
...European responses were affected by religious and political attitudes. Cartesian ideas persisted in many Catholic countries, especially where educational institutions were controlled by Jesuits, who feared that Newtonian philosophy encouraged the spread of materialism and determinism. In France, this rejection was heightened by chauvinist loyalties. Thus, after his funeral éloge to Newton at the Académie Royale, Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle was attacked for comparing Newton with France's intellectual hero, Descartes. English victory was symbolically...
Empiricism Reference library
Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment
...chap. 4, “The Science of Man.” Jacobson, Anne Jaap . David Hume on Human Understanding. In British Philosophy and the Age of Enlightenment , edited by Stuart Brown , pp. 150–178. London and New York, 1996. Jimack, Peter . The French Enlightenment I: Science, Materialism and Determinism. In British Philosophy and the Age of Enlightenment , edited by Stuart Brown , pp. 228–250. London and New York, 1996. Rogers, G. A. J. Science and British Philosophy: Boyle and Newton. In British Philosophy and the Age of Enlightenment , edited by Stuart Brown , pp....
Diderot, Denis (1713–1784) Reference library
Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment
...However, Diderot refused to take the next logical step and let Jacques replace the man he serves. Throughout the story, Jacques's deterministic philosophy, constantly appealed to, is demonstrated to be of no earthly use in practical matters of existence. Materialistic determinism is treated here whimsically and ironically, in contrast to the didactic treatment in Diderot's other writings. A few of Diderot's shorter pieces, however, were printed during his lifetime. Among the finest are Sur Richardson ( 1762 ), Sur Terence ( 1765 ), and Regrets sur...
Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat (1689–1755) Reference library
Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment
...laws. At the end of thirty-one books, he had provided a wide-ranging account of the diversity of social practice in the world, with reference to a vast range of travel and historical accounts. His discussion of physical causes, particularly of climate, has been controversial since the publication of L'esprit des lois . Some have expressed concern that his ideas imply a form of determinism. Others recognized that Montesquieu held that moral causes, including laws themselves, are of greater weight and importance; they argued that, according to Montesquieu,...
Skepticism Reference library
Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment
...is represented by dogmatism, while the second step is taken by the skeptic, who thus achieves actual progress. Kant describes in tones of evident interest the struggle and the conflict of the speculative claims advanced by the opposing dogmatisms (theism and atheism, determinism and liberty, and so on), and he deprecates the dogmatic supporters of orthodoxy for demanding that the conflict be halted with arguments that amount to an act of “blinding” and a source of prejudices. From this stance, the philosopher of Königsberg praised the attempt of Hume...
Marxism Reference library
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation
...but part of more comprehensive political, economic, and intellectual changes. His materialist conception of history avoided crude economic determinism, yet class structure remained the presupposition of his historical understanding. Unlike earlier Marxists, Pascal accorded Luther a key role and acknowledged the centrality of his theological concerns, locating them firmly in their social context. Luther's historical role had been to define the moral and spiritual principles of the newly emerging individualistic society. The doctrine of justification was...
Free Will Reference library
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation
...faith, and the understanding of scripture. One should note that terminological differences may sometimes explain what in the sixteenth-century debates appeared as doctrinal divergences, and that the theological negation of a free will does not necessarily imply a philosophical determinism. Augustine and Medieval Theology Augustine is the founder of Western theological thinking concerning freedom of the will. All theologians of the Middle Ages were faced with, and tried to solve, the fundamental problems raised by him: How can one maintain the freedom of the...
Edwards, Jonathan (1703–58) Reference library
Robert E. Brown
The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of the American Enlightenment
...of early modernity. Edwards’s ethics developed in response to two important currents in early modernity: the emerging school of British humanitarianism, exemplified by Francis Hutcheson and the third Earl of Shaftesbury, and the Arminian rejection of Calvinist moral determinism (the doctrines of original sin and free will), exemplified by the work of dissenting theologian John Taylor and the Anglican cleric Daniel Whitby. Edwards’s response to these developments represents the last and most significant phase of his intellectual career, resulting in...
Predestination Reference library
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation
...acts. Since human beings are locked in sin, election rests entirely on the free mercy of God while damnation arises because of human sin. The concept of a divine permission and concurrence that supports freedom and contingency distinguishes this view from a metaphysical determinism. Election, according to Zanchi's De praedestinatione sanctorum , is the special predestination of God: it is God's “eternal, most wise, and immutable decree, constituted by him in eternity, by which certain men in the trap of deepest sin and death, and one with all the fallen...
