Grounding the World

Abstract

INTRODUCTION 1) General Remarks 9 2) Incipit Historia. Leibniz and Occasionalism 3) Status quaestionis -A Meta-Historical and Meta-Philosophical Map 3.1) The History of Historical-Philosophical Research on Occasionalism 3.2) Conceptual Tools 4) My Contribution to Current Research 5) Methodological Considerations 6) Structure of the Dissertation CHAPTER 1 The Natural Place of Géraud de Cordemoy's Occasionalism. A Project of Deconstruction and Reconstruction Introduction 1) Deconstruction 1.1) From the State to the Individual 1.2) Body and Matter: the Realm of Physics 2) Reconstruction 2.1) The Realm of Matter and Body-Body Occasionalism 2.2) Ecce Homo and Mind-Body Occasionalism 2.3) Language, Society and the State 3) The Threat of Eliminativism 3.1) The Problem 3.2) The Solution 3.3) Conclusion 4) The Political Dimension of Cordemoy's Project 4.1) Dreaming of an Ideal State 4.2) Supporting the Absolutism of Louis XIV 5) Conclusion CHAPTER 2 Occasionalism, Final Causes, and Life in the Natural Philosophy of

Do you need to know in order to act? The case for a Suárezian legacy in early modern occasionalism

“…Occasionalist arguments often engage with issues pertaining to physics and natural philosophy (Lennon, 1974), and they are endorsed by authors who do not necessarily identify themselves as “Cartesians” (Henkel, 2021). The impact of occasionalist‐inflected philosophies extended beyond the Franco‐Dutch Cartesian network, including at least Great Britain (Connolly, 2021) and the German Empire (Henkel, 2022a) and remaining alive as an intellectual interlocutor until at least the mid‐eighteenth century (Henkel, 2022b). Given the broad‐ranging and highly diverse configuration of occasionalist views that were discussed, it is unlikely that their revamping in the early modern period could be explained as something abrupt or be accounted for by one simple factor.…”