Freedom as a self-moving power in Émilie Du Châtelet: early reflections
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.1517-0128.v1i38p37-53Keywords:
Émilie Du Châtelet, Liberty, De la liberté, Eighteenth Century, Fatalisme, EnlightenmentAbstract
The aim of this article is to examine continuities and discontinuities between Émilie Du Châtelet’s essay De la liberté, her correspondence, and her Institutions de physique regarding the topic of liberty as a self-moving power. I argue that certain philosophical problems that she considers in De la liberté and in her letters are resolved (or dissolved) in her Institutions de physique, namely: 1. the alleged contradiction between the idea of a self-moving power and the conservation of the quantity of force in the universe, and 2. the alleged lack of guarantee of the veraciousness of our cognitive faculties (through which we perceive our liberty).
Downloads
References
Fuentes
DU CHÂTELET, E. Institutions de Physique, manuscrito autógrafo, BNF, Fr, 12265, 1737.
DU CHÂTELET, E. Institutions de physique. Paris: Prault, 1740.
DU CHÂTELET, E. Les Lettres de la Marquise Du Châtelet. 2 Vols. Besterman, T. (Ed.). Geneva: Institut et Musée Voltaire, 1958.
DU CHÂTELET, E. La correspondance d'Emilie du Châtelet. Brown, A. e Kölving, U. (Eds.). Paris: Centre international d’étude du XVIIIe siècle, 2018.
WADE, I. Studies on Voltaire. With Some Unpublished Papers of Mme du Châtelet. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1947.
Complementaria
BERNSTEIN, M. “Fatalism”. In: The Oxford handbook of freewill. Kane, R. (Ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
BRANDÃO, R. “Voltaire et le scepticisme”. In: Philosophiques, n. 35 (1), pp. 261–274, 2008. https://doi.org/10.7202/018249ar
BROWN, A. & KÖLVING, U. “Qui est l’auteur du Traité de métaphysique?”. In : Cahiers Voltaire, n. 2, pp. 85–94, 2003.
CAUSSY, F. Inventaire des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque de Voltaire conservés à la Bibliothèque Impériale de Saint-Pétersbourg. Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1913.
CHARLES, S. “O solipsismo como forma extrema de ceticismo no Século das Luzes”. In: Doispontos n. 2 (4), pp. 13-38, 2007.
CROUSAZ, J.-P. Examen du pyrrhonisme ancien et moderne. La Haya: Pierre de Hondt, 1733.
DESCARTES, R. Œuvres de Descartes, 12 vols. Adam, C. e Tannery, P. (Eds.). Paris: Vrin, 1895-1910.
DESCARTES, R. Meditaciones metafísicas con objeciones y respuestas, Trad. de Vidal Peña. Madrid: Alfaguara, 1977.
DESCARTES, R. Los principios de la filosofía. Trad. de Gregorio Halperín. Buenos Aires: Losada, 1997.
DESCARTES, R. Las pasiones del alma. Trad. de Tomás Onaindia, Introducción de Agustín Izquierdo. Madrid, EDAF, 2005.
DETLEFSEN, K. “Émilie du Châtelet”. In: Zalta, E. (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2018. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2018/entries/emilie-du-chatelet.
GARDINER JANIK, L. “Searching for the Metaphysics of Science: The Structure and Composition of Madame du Châtelet’s Institutions de physique, 1737–1740”. In: Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, n. 201, pp. 85–113, 1982.
HAGENGRUBER, R. “If I were king! Morals and Physics in Emilie Du Châtelet’s Subtle Thoughts on Liberty”. In: Women and Liberty, 1600-1800: Philosophical Essays, Broad, J., e Detlefsen, K. (Comps.). Oxford: Oxford Scholarship Online, 2017.
HATFIELD, G. “Transparency of Mind: The Contributions of Descartes, Leibniz, and Berkeley to the Genesis of the Modern Subject”. In: Departure for Modern Europe: A Handbook of Early Modern Philosophy (1400-1700), Busche, H. (Ed.). Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 2011.
JORATI, J. “Du Châtelet on freedom, self-motion, and moral necessity”. In: Journal of the History of Philosophy, n. 57 (2), pp. 255-80, 2019.
MASON, H. (1986). Voltaire. Barcelona: Salvat, 1986.
PAILLARD, C. “Entre science et métaphysique: le problème du fatalisme dans la philosophie de Voltaire”. In: Revue Voltaire, n. 8, pp. 207-223, 2008.
POPKIN, R. The history of scepticism from Savonarola to Bayle. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
REY, A.-L. “La Minerve vient de faire sa physique”. In: Philosophiques, n. 44 (2), pp. 233–253, 2017. https://doi.org/10.7202/1042332ar
SHAPIRO, L. “Descartes’s Passions of the Soul”. In: Philosophy Compass, n. 1 (3), pp. 268–278, 2006.
ZANCONATO, A. La dispute du fatalisme en France: 1730-1760. Paris: Presses Paris Sorbonne, 2004.
ZINSSER, J. La Dame d’Esprit: A Biography of the Marquise Du Châtelet. New York: Penguin, 2006.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2021 Natalia Zorrilla
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
