- Abélard and Descartes, fathers of French philosophy: a look back at Cousin's thesis
- Two questions
- how far did Descartes break with Scholasticism?
- Does Descartes have a theory of universals, and if so, which camp does he fall into?
- A key text in two versions: the Principia philosophiae and their French translation by "l'abbé Picot" (1647)
- F. Alquié's interpretation: Descartes is a conceptualist. He equates universals and mathematical beings
- Discussion
- Archaeological perspective. Reminder of the two Aristotelian theories of abstraction: geometrical abstraction through the neutralization of features singularizing an individual, and abstractive induction through the capture of similarities between several individuals
- Analysis of paragraphs 56-59 of the Principia/Principles
- Descartes' thesis: universals are universal names for universal ideas
- Genesis of number, formation of the universal and typology of universals
- The general idea of the triangle (Descartes) and the "general triangle" (Locke)
- O. Hamelin's interpretation: Descartes is a nominalist. He professes elements of what we would today call "act theory"
- A. Robinet's interpretation: Descartes is neither conceptualist, nominalistic nor realist. He supports a theory close to that of La Ramée
- This theory is the theory of the act
- Remarks on Ockham's theory of the act
- Scottish philosophy and French philosophy
- Gérando's interpretative horizon is inherited from Dugald Stewart
- Stewart's horizon is itself constituted by Reid's theses on universals
- Analysis of Reid's account of the quarrel
- For Reid, Abelard is not a conceptualist, but a nominalist: he places universality in names
- Modern philosophy continues the medieval debate: Hobbes is a nominalist, Locke a conceptualist, and criticized for this by Berkeley and Hume, both nominalists.
11:30 - 13:00
