Teaching Philosophy in Early Modern Europe: Text and Image

Description

This book examines how philosophy was taught in the early modern period in Europe. It breaks new ground in a number of ways. Firstly, it seeks to bring text-based scholars in the history of philosophy together with social and cultural historians to examine the interaction between tradition and innovation in the early modern classroom, the site where traditional views of the world were transmitted to the generation that was to give birth to modern philosophy and science. Secondly, it draws together scholars who are centered on ideas and words with other scholars who focus on the role of images in the classroom and the intellectual world in this central period of history. The volume advances our understanding of how philosophy was understood and transmitted in this rich and crucial era. The principal audience for Teaching Philosophy are historians of science, philosophy, art, visual culture, and print culture. The chapters are written in a tone accessible to upper-level undergraduates and graduate students. It also reaches non-specialist readers interested in subjects including the "scientific revolution," the organization of information, and Renaissance and Baroque visual art. Acknowledgments Contents About the Authors Abbreviations Chapter 1: Introduction Bibliography Chapter 2: The Dialogue of Ingenuous Students: Early Printed Textbooks at Paris 2.1 Movement of Mind and Page 2.2 Dialogues and the Ingenuous Student 2.3 Sources of Ingenuous Affect Bibliography Chapter 3: “Le meilleur livre qui ait jamais été fait en cette matière”: Eustachius a Sancto Paulo and the Teaching of Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century Bibliography Chapter 4: Philosophical Cartography in Seventeenth-Century Paris 4.1 Mediated Descriptions 4.2 Charting Natural Philosophy 4.3 Monsters of Ignorance Bibliography Chapter 5: The Mathematics Theses Defended at collège de Clermont (1637–1682): How to Guard a Fortress in Times of War 5.1 Introduction 5.2 An Overview of the Mathematics Theses Defended at the collège de Clermont 5.3 Pierre Bourdin’s Collections of Optical Problems: Spectacular Devices Enlisted to Defend a Traditional Theory of Sight 5.4 Ignace-Gaston Pardies: A New Theory of Light Claiming to Be True to the Ancients 5.5 Conclusion Bibliography Manuscripts Mathematics theses defended at the collège de Clermont (1637–1682) 1634–1653: Pierre Bourdin (1595–1653) 1658–1661: Georges Faultrel (Unknown–1687) 1661–1664: Nicolas d’Harouys (1622–1698) 1665–1669: Michel Beaussier (Unknown–Unknown) 1670–1673: Ignace–Gaston Pardies (1636–1673) 1673–1676: Claude–François Millet de Chales (1621–1678) 1677–1682: Jean de Fontaney (1643–1710) References Chapter 6: Subtilis, Inutilis: The Jesuit Pedagogy of Ingenuity at La Flèche in the Seventeenth Century 6.1 The Ingenium Emblem. Commentary 6.2 The Ambivalences of Ingenium 6.2.1 Subtle Wit, Useless Wit 6.2.2 Thinking with Images, Reforming One’s Nature: The Ingenium in Jesuit Pedagogy 6.3 Rhetorical Ingenuity: Invention—Judgement 6.3.1 Jesuit Ingenuity and Emblematics 6.3.2 Redefining Rhetorical Wit 6.4 Philosophical and Mixed-Mathematical Ingenuity: Paradoxes of Ignorant Science, Pedantic Precision 6.4.1 Structure: Philosophical Commonplaces 6.4.2 From Skepticism to Satire: The Condemnation of Logical and Epistemological Ingenuity 6.4.3 Dissenting Clocks and the Defense of Commonsense: Against Mixed Mathematical Ingenuity 6.5 Style and the Commonsensical Discipline of Wit Bibliography Chapter 7: Manuscripts as Pedagogical Tools in the Philosophy Teaching of Jean-Robert Chouet (1642–1731) 7.1 Chouet’s Teaching 7.2 The Geneva Manuscripts and the Role of Dictation 7.3 Trends in Chouet’s Courses Across His Career—From the Wellcome Manuscript of 1667 to the Karlsruhe Manuscript of 1684 7.4 Chouet’s New Emphases 1679–84 7.5 The “Compendium Physicae” and the Yale Manuscript (1684) 7.6 Student Decisions 7.7 In Closing Bibliography Manuscripts Cambridge Mass. Houghton Library, Harvard University Geneva, Bibliothèque de Genève (BGE) Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek London, Wellcome Institute Library New Haven, Conn., Beinecke Library, Yale University References Chapter 8: Pierre Bayle as a Teacher of Philosophy 8.1 In the Background of the Systema 8.1.1 Studies 8.1.2 Readings 8.2 Inside the Systema 8.2.1 A “Means-to-End” Structure 8.2.2 A Disputational Physics The Subversion of Prime Matter The Case of Substantial Forms 8.3 Conclusion Bibliography Chapter 9: Literary Technology and Its Replication: Teaching the Torricellian Void and Air-Pump at the Collegio Romano 9.1 Teaching the Torricellian Void and Air-Pump at the Collegio Romano 9.2 Text Versus Experiment 9.3 Replicating Literary Technology Bibliography Chapter 10: A Mirror of Wisdom: Simon Vouet’s Satyrs Admiring the Anamorphosis of an Elephant and Its Afterlives Bibliography Index