دانلود کتاب فلسفه آنتوان آرنو

Antoine Arnauld (1612–1694) was an intellectual celebrity and a central figure in the scholarly life of Europe in the latter half of the seventeenth century. He engaged in theological controversies, took part in philosophical correspondence, sparred with popes and kings, was expelled from the Sorbonne, and penned texts that would have great influence on subsequent generations of thinkers. His philosophical exchanges with René Descartes, Gottfried Leibniz, and Nicolas Malebranche were closely followed by other thinkers of the day. Contemporary scholars agree that Arnauld is a central and important thinker. Nevertheless, Arnauld has been somewhat neglected by contemporary scholars. This book is the first ever English-language monograph on Arnauld’s systematic philosophical commitments. My goal is to provide a cohesive account of his main philosophical contributions, deepen our understanding of Arnauld, and demonstrate the originality of Arnauld’s philosophical project. One central theme throughout this book is that, contrary to many treatments, Arnauld is not merely a skilled critic and interlocuter – though he certainly is both of these things. In addition, Arnauld follows a careful, albeit subtle, method, and once this method is established, his philosophy comes into focus, proves systematic, and offers many novel contributions to Enlightenment-era thought. I begin, in Chapter 1, with an account of Arnauld’s life and works of philosophical import. I divide Arnauld’s life and works into four broad periods based on key events in his life. The rest of the book proceeds in two parts, with Part I focusing on method, metaphysics, and epistemology, and Part II on Arnauld’s account of God. Part I begins, in Chapter 2, with Arnauld’s method and his account of the various sources of knowledge, especially his distinction between reason and faith. I also discuss his rationalist epistemology and argue for a subtle difference between Descartes’s and Arnauld’s epistemologies. In Chapter 3, I outline Arnauld’s basic ontology, focusing on his dual dualisms: a substance-mode ontology and a mind–body substance dualism. I then investigate Arnauld’s famous objections to Descartes’s real distinction argument and Descartes’s replies. I conclude the chapter with a discussion of Arnauld’s endorsement of arguments very much like the real distinction argument in later texts. Chapter 4 considers Arnauld’s accounts of the mind–body union and causation throughout his whole career. I begin by considering his early worries with the Cartesian account in the Fourth Objections and New Objections. I then argue that he holds an occasional cause account of body-to-mind interaction in the Logic and a mitigated occasionalist account of mind–body interaction in later texts. Chapter 5 examines Arnauld’s account of ideas and his much-debated view of perception. I focus on his debate with Malebranche and argue that Arnauld is best understood as a direct realist (about sensory perception at least). That said, his view eludes straightforward classification and in reflection, both virtual and explicit, ideas are direct objects of perception for Arnauld. Chapter 6 considers his account of human freedom in its historical context. I argue that Arnauld’s view of freedom changes later in his life from a compatibilism to a libertarianism. I also argue that many of the cases that Arnauld uses that have been the focus of recent scholarship are not in fact meant to illuminate the nature of human freedom but to defend efficacious grace and its compatibility with human freedom. Finally, I conclude Part I of the book with Chapter 7, which centers on Arnauld’s actualist theory of possibility. I argue, focusing on the correspondence with Leibniz, that Arnauld holds an essence-based modal actualist theory of possibility. In Part II of the book, I consider Arnauld’s conception of God and develop a novel interpretation that I call a “partially hidden” conception of God. This account has some similarities to Descartes’s conception of God and other similarities to the Dieu caché of the Jansenists. I begin with a short preface where I outline two other prominent conceptions of God, the voluntarist conception (focusing on Descartes) and the rationalist conception (focusing on Malebranche). I then outline Arnauld’s partially hidden conception of God as well as two other prominent interpretations of Arnauld’s God. In Chapter 8, I consider Arnauld’s account of our epistemic access to God. I develop an interpretation of Arnauld that combines aspects of a Cartesian view that grounds knowledge of God in an innate idea and the Jansenist Dieu caché that denies we have any knowledge of God through reason. In brief, Arnauld thinks our innate idea of God grounds some knowledge of God, including that God exists, but he thinks the scope of knowledge this idea allows is quite limited. Chapter 9 considers Arnauld’s account of God’s nature, focusing specifically on God’s simplicity and whether God acts for reasons. I defend an interpretation of Arnauld where he holds a strong account of divine simplicity, according to which there are only conceptual distinctions among God’s attributes. With respect to his account of God’s reasons, I argue Arnauld is agnostic about whether God has reasons in any sense (such questions are beyond the scope of reason), but we know that God does not have practical reasons. Chapters 10 and 11 concern whether Arnauld endorsed Descartes’s claim that God freely creates the eternal truths. Chapter 10 focuses on texts from early in Arnauld’s life (the 1640s) and Chapter 11 on texts from later in his life (mostly the 1680s). I argue, in Chapter 10, that in Arnauld’s earliest texts he does not hold any version of the doctrine, but through the 1640s his view develops into an epistemic version of the doctrine, according to which we cannot know whether God creates the eternal truths and we ought not to say of God that God could not have made the eternal truths other than they are. I conclude the book with Chapter 11, where I consider the later texts and show that Arnauld holds this epistemic version of the creation doctrine in these texts as well. I argue, contrary to some recent treatments, that neither Arnauld’s commitment to divine simplicity, nor to God’s indifferent freedom, commit him to anything stronger than the epistemic version of the doctrine.