ČLÁNKY / ARTICLES / STUDIEN
Márton SZENTPÉTERI, The Theory of Cognition in Transylvania (1629–1658): The Herborn Tradition and the Influence of Dutch Cartesianism
This paper compares the two models of the theory of cognition established by the Herborn encyclopaedists and by their successor in Transylvania, János Apáczai Csere. I claim that the major difference between the considerations of the Herborners and those of Apáczai Csere lies in the modest and gradual separation of the realms of faith and reason. Whereas Johann Heinrich Alsted, Johann Heinrich Bisterfeld, Jan Amos Comenius, and Apáczai Csere’s first master, András Porcsalmi, based their theories of cognition on the three interrelated foundations of experience, right reason, and the Holy Writ in a typically Trinitarian fashion, Apáczai Csere gradually adopted the Cartesian use of the exegetical principle of accommodation, which separates knowledge deriving from the Bible and the book of nature. It is highly possible that one of the major sources to catalyse Apáczai Csere’s interest in this issue was an anonymous book published in the Netherlands and devoted to Copernicanism. Apáczai Csere’s Cartesianism should not be overestimated, however. In his late Philosophia naturalis, typical of the eclecticism of the second and third Post-Ramist generations, Apáczai Csere happily combines theories taken from Cartesians with notions reminiscent of William Ames and the moral principles of Protestant scholasticism so familiar to Alsted and the other Herborners.
Keywords
Theory of cognition; Herborn tradition; Trinitarianism; Cartesianism; Minimalistic view of accommodation
Kateřina ŠOLCOVÁ, Conceptions of the Vacuum in the Seventeenth-Century Czech Lands
The article presents the debates on the vacuum held by seventeenth-century Bohemia-based scholars, at the centre of which stood the traditional Aristotelian doctrine of the impossibility of an extended vacuum. The first, a Capuchin of Italian origin who received his habit in the monastery in Prague, Valerian Magni (1586–1661), conducted an experiment (1647) to prove the real existence of a vacuum, which he further promoted as a serious anti-Aristotelian argument. The Spanish Jesuit Rodrigo de Arriaga (1592–1667), who was teaching in Prague, sought to defend and deepen Aristotle’s teaching using the Jesuit concept of imaginary space. His contemporary Prague professor of medicine, Johannes Marcus Marci of Kronland (1595–1667), largely agreed but, unlike Arriaga, rejected even the logical possibility of a vacuum, trying to resolve the consequences that would result from the annihilation of bodies under these conditions. J. A. Comenius (1592–1670) also followed the Aristotelian teaching on the impossibility of the vacuum and adopted the thesis into his metaphysical system, which became the starting point for his further pansophical, ethical, and didactic work. The approaches of these scholars represent a diverse range of opinions reflecting the broader early modern tendencies that eventually led to the downfall of Aristotelian scholasticism.
Keywords
Vacuum; Aristotelian natural philosophy; Valerian Magni; Rodrigo de Arriaga; Marcus Marci; Jan Amos Comenius
Lucie STORCHOVÁ, Labia tua maledicentiae e t calumniae igne calent: Humanist Polemics and Invectives at the University of Prague from 1610 to 1620
This study deals with three disputes led by the humanist scholars related to the University of Prague between 1600 and 1620. Being part of a broader contemporary ‘culture of contention’, these polemics were conducted either in Latin or in the vernacular, thereby enabling a comparison of the topics, stylistic devices and registers of expression which were employed in humanist invectives. Several Latin polemical texts were written in connection with the university’s dispute with Johannes Matthias a Sudetis from 1614 to 1617. His De origine Bohemorum et Slavorum was not only an attempt at a novel historical interpretation; it became the catalyst for a dispute in which university scholars (Nicolaus Troilus, Georgius Schultissius, Nicolaus Albertus etc.) commented on more general issues related primarily to the concept of patria and the functioning of the academic community. The study includes a scholarly edition of Troilus’ polemical Neo-Latin treatise Antiroxolania based on a unique exemplar housed in Syracuse University Libraries. This dispute is compared with two other scholarly controversies from the same period. Exclusively in Latin, another controversy with the university masters was conducted by Paulus Gisbicius, an original and productive poet. Illustrating a different register and the possibilities of the polemical style in the vernacular, one rarely documented scholarly controversy conducted in Czech concerned the marriage of priests and took place between the Utraquist priest Adam Klemens and the Jesuit Vojtěch Scipio Berlička.
Keywords
Bohemian lands; Neo-Latin literature; University of Prague; Polemics; Invective; Nicolaus Troilus; Antiroxolania; Edition
Vojtěch HLADKÝ, Kepler on Patrizi, Ancient Wisdom, and Astronomical Hypotheses
This study offers a detailed and comprehensive comparison of certain ideas of Francesco Patrizi and Johannes Kepler. They wrote in the late 16th and early 17th century, at a point when the previously dominant Aristotelean cosmology was crumbling and although they shared some important concepts and presuppositions, they reacted to this situation in different ways. Kepler confronted Patrizi most notably in his Contra Ursum, a work written after he was asked to defend Brahe. Patrizi unjustly accused him of preserving the idea of celestial spheres. Kepler used this opportunity to launch a broader attack on Patrizi and his denial of the validity and utility of astronomical hypotheses. He also rejected Patrizi’s concept of planets as living beings that move in the space according to their will and claimed that astronomers must instead focus on search for mathematical laws that would explain their motion. But Kepler also made use of Patrizi’s Nova de universis philosophia when discussing the history of astronomy. In contrast to Patrizi, who accepted the arrangement of planets proposed in the Corpus Hermeticum, Kepler ascribed a key role to the ancient Pythagoreans and to the heliocentrism of Philolaus and Aristarchus of Samos. One can conclude that the Platonic tradition, especially Proclus, formed the background of both Patrizi’s and Kepler’s thoughts, but they adapted it each to his own purposes. Patrizi focused on the spontaneity of individual souls of celestial objects, while Kepler emphasised the general order of the world where the universal animation of the cosmos and magnetic force responsible for planetary motions were assigned key roles.
Keywords
Johannes Kepler; Francesco Patrizi; Renaissance Platonism; Renaissance cosmology; Astronomical hypotheses; History of astronomy; Ancient wisdom; Pythagoreanism
DISCUSSION / DISKUSSION
Howard Hotson, Eruditio semper reformanda: A R esponse to Petr Pavlas’s Review of The Reformation of Common Learning
RECENZE / REVIEWS / REZENSIONEN
J. A. Comenii Opera omnia 19/II: De rerum humanarum emendatione consultatio catholica – Pansophia (Pars 1) (Uwe VOIGT)
Lyke de Vries, Reformation, Revolution, Renovation: The Roots and Reception of the Rosicrucian Call for General Reform (Jiří MICHALÍK)
Martin Holý – Mlada Holá et al., Profesoři pražské utrakvistické univerzity v pozdním středověku a raném novověku (1457/1458–1622) (Lucie STORCHOVÁ)
Kateřina Šolcová – Stanislav Sousedík, Kapitoly z dějin politické filosofie v českých zemích 17. století (Tomáš NEJESCHLEBA)
Jana Kolářová, Básnické dílo Jiřího Bartholda Pontana (Ondřej PODAVKA)
Gil Morejón, The Unconscious of Thought in Leibniz, Spinoza and Hume (Alessandro NANNINI)
Radmila Prchal Pavlíčková – Iveta Coufalová – Hana Ferencová et al., Vytváření konvertity. Jazyková a vizuální reprezentace konverze v raném novověku (Olga FEJTOVÁ)
