{"word_count": 658, "character_count": 4438}
04/04, 12h30-14h30, &#160;dans le cadre du séminaire Mathesis : « Life in God and Life in Nature: Scholastic Perspectives »ENS, salle Pasteur, 45 rue d’Ulm, Pavillon Pasteur, 1er étageIn the early modern period, the concept of life can be applied to bothimmaterial substances and material ones. Life is both a natural and a‘supernatural’ phenomenon. God is alive, but so are plants. In thispresentation I will explore the consequences drawn from this insight inSpanish scholasticism at the turn from the 16th to the 17th century. Iwill argue that we need to broaden the scope of sources we deem to berelevant for an understanding of the concept of life. Looking at Thomistcommentaries to Aquinas's Summa Theologiae we will find that theycontain substantial discussions of the concept of life that are relevantalso for a philosophical perspective on the topic. The same applies toSuárez's Disputationes Metaphysicae: it was Suárez who first ponderedthe possibility that a unified concept of life may be out of reach forus, if we want to apply it to God as well as to his creatures.10/04, 13h30-15h30 : « Life in God: Zuñiga and Arriaga » Bibliothèque de l’UFR de philosophie, Université Paris-Sorbonne, 1 rue Victor Cousin, escalier E, 2e étage, salle F042In this&#160;presentation I will discuss the only publication of the Jesuittheologian Francisco de Zuñiga (1570-1614), a commentary on thetrinitarian questions of Aquinas's Summa. It is certainly true that theconnection between problems of the Trinity and the concept of life inthe early modern period is far from obvious. But I will neverthelessclaim that it exists. In fact, it seems that Zuñiga's text may haveprompted his younger colleague Arriaga to come to the conclusion that wemust take the concept of life to be equivocal, because the life of Godand processes of life in nature are simply too heterogeneous to besubsumed under a unified conception of life. It will become clear that acrucial obstacle to developing such a unified conception is theexistence of the Holy Spirit. The life of this person of the trinity iscompletely incommensurable with the life of plants, as it was conceivedby early modern scholastics.11/04, 12h30-14h30, dans le cadre du séminaire Mathesis : « Life in Nature: Suárez, Iuxtaposition and Intussumption»ENS, salle Pasteur, 45 rue d’Ulm, Pavillon Pasteur, 1er étageThe&#160;status of plants as living beings is precarious in the early 17thcentury. My presentation will discuss arguments of the Protestantphysician and philosopher Nicolaus Taurellus for the thesis that plantsare not alive, because they are not distinguishable from certaininanimate bodies like fire. These arguments are refuted in Suárez'sCommentary on De Anima, published posthumously in 1621. But Suárez's ownposition is ultimately unconvincing. This prompted a search for a newmark of life distinguishing living substances from those which are notalive. The Jesuit Rodrigo de Arriaga developed a proposal to distinguishliving bodies from others through their mode of assimilating new matter.The resulting dichotomy of iuxtaposition and intussumption proved to bevery influential up to the 19th century, although its exact meaningremains somewhat obscure. The presentation will uncover the prehistoryof the dichotomy and show that Arriaga's Jesuit precursors were markedlymore sceptical whether it provides a clear criterion for the distinctionof animate and inanimate substances.12/04, 14h-16h :&#160;« Life in God and Life in Nature: Clauberg and Spinoza »&#160;&#160;Université Paris-Diderot, salle&#160;Mondrian, 646A bâtiment Condorcet, 4 rue Elsa MoranteThe presentation will first analyse the reception of Spanish Jesuit thoughtin the textbooks of Burgersdijk and Heereboord. This will allow us tounderstand better the anti-Aristotelian turn in understanding life thatwe find in Clauberg and Spinoza. After reconstructing their critique, Iwill argue that Spinoza's conception of life in his Cogitata Metaphysicacan be best understood as a creative adaptation of ideas that Claubergdeveloped seven years earlier in his De cognitione dei et nostriexercitationes. Spinoza's definition of life as 'the force through whichthings persevere in their being’ can be read as an attempt to resolvefundamental inconsistencies in Clauberg's account. This insight may leadto a fresh understanding of Spinoza's views of life in general and withregard to the life of God in particular.