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Emilie du Châtelet's Metaphysics of Substance

45 citations0/0 files storedJournal of the history of philosophy

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Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought Rousseau and Enlightenment Thought Historical Philosophy and Science

Abstract

I argue that Emilie du Châtelet's metaphysics of corporeal substance in the 1740s was a species of realism.This result challenges the ruling consensus, which takes her to have been decisively influenced by Leibniz, an idealist.In addition, I argue that du Châtelet's ontology of body is a mixture of realism and idealism, likewise non-Leibnizian.This, too, questions the scholarly consensus and opens the way for an overdue careful reassessment of her overall doctrine.I suggest that her view is best understood as dualism, a two-substance metaphysics that puts du Châtelet quite close to Christian Wolff.

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1976Philosophical Papers and Letters 1968Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century.n.d.Institutions de physique 2008Oxford Studies In Early Modern Philosophy 1958Philosophical Papers and Letters 1962Philosophia prima sive Ontologia 1983Vernünfftige Gedancken von Gott, der Welt und der Seele des Menschen, auch allen Dingen ürberhaupt 2004Idealism Declined: Leibniz and Christian Wolff

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2019Du Châtelet on Freedom, Self-Motion, and Moral Necessity 2019The Laws of Motion from Newton to Kant

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