ČLÁNKY / ARTICLES / STUDIEN
JAN ČÍŽEK, The Natural Philosophy of Johannes Amos Comenius and His Followers in the Context of Early Modern Mosaic Physics
From the earliest histories of philosophy (Johann Franz Buddeus, Johann Jakob Brucker) to twentieth-century scholarly research (Jaromír Červenka, Ann Blair), the work of Johannes Amos Comenius, especially his Physicae synopsis (1633) with its later Addenda (1663), has been understood as the culmination of so-called Mosaic physics, a remarkable endeavour of early modern natural philosophy. Comenius’ conception was characterized as both the most elaborate and the most successful, even if compared with his alleged predecessors. In this paper I examine this evaluation. It is evident that Comenius denies the main principles laid down by the first generation of Mosaic natural philosophers (e.g. Lambert Daneau, Otto Casmann, and Kort Aslakssøn), namely their emphasis on the significance of the Bible as the most reliable source of natural-philosophical knowledge (overshadowing reason and the senses), the necessity of reading it literally, and the facticity of the world’s creation out of nothing within six actual days. For this reason, the fundamental works of the aforementioned philosophers will be introduced and compared with Comenius’ texts to facilitate a proper grasping of Comenius’ place in the tradition of Mosaic physics. Finally, the texts written by Johannes Bayer and Johannes Sophronius Kozák, Comenius’ direct followers in the field of natural philosophy, will be studied as well.
Keywords
Johannes Amos Comenius; Lambert Daneau; Otto Casmann; Kort Aslakssøn; Johannes Bayer; Johannes Sophronius Kozák; Mosaic physics
Stefano GULIZIA, What is an Early Modern Research Library? Scholarly Practices in Seventeenth-Century Helmstedt
This study investigates note-taking techniques, which at least in part can be said to derive from Ramism, and it also discusses, more in general, the importance of including marginalia and annotated printed editions into the history of ideas. The focus is the seventeenth-century life of the University of Helmstedt, seen from the period of the Thirty Years’ War to its post-Westphalian configuration. In the first part, the essay follows the development of the learned library as a specific cultural form, exploring its relationship with the genre of historia litteraria and with the Republic of Letters, and showing how, by using the language of historical actors, we could describe the origins of “research” or “academic” workshops. The second part draws strength from a vast and mostly unexplored archival evidence from Helmstedt, in which it is possible to identify a system of shared knowledge that presents a distinct interchangeable nature between the German-speaking world and the Baltic area, and it is also possible to narrow down a renewed study of the reception of Bodin and Ramus, as well as the presence of a neglected collection of Comenius’s textbooks. Throughout its conclusions, this contribution offers a new orientation on tabular learning and other types of paper technology used by both students and professors, and reveals intertextual scholarly trends which bolster the interpretative pluralism of Aristotelianism, while simultaneously anticipating the openness and competition of the pre-Enlightenment period.
Keywords
Jean Bodin; Petrus Ramus; Jan Amos Comenius; Hermann Conring; historia litteraria; note-taking; marginalia; University of Helmstedt; Johann Caspar Trost;
Duncan Liddel; Nicolaus Andreae Granius; bibliotheca selecta; book trading
Dominik WHITTAKER, Faith and Reason in the Epistemologies of Jan Amos Comenius and Pierre Bayle: a Comparative Study
The relationship between reason and faith is one of the themes that runs like a red thread through the history of philosophy, especially in the context of Christian thought. To delineate their roles and to think through their relationship is one of the key tasks of philosophy, which in the past, since the patristic period, has had and still has the ambition to respond to the biblical message. In the seventeenth century, the period when modern philosophy and modern science were born, the relationship between reason and faith was problematized with great urgency. For the theologian, philosopher, and pedagogue Johannes Amos Comenius, who aspired to universal knowledge and to the reformation of society, the harmonization of reason and faith had to be one of the key tasks. Pierre Bayle, though two generations younger than Comenius, shared with him the same 17th-century background and just like Comenius he examined the subject of the nature of faith and its place in epistemology, though this is where the similarities end. The views of these two philosophers could not be more different. This paper compares the approaches of Comenius and Bayle to the question of the relationship between faith and reason, with the intention of assessing their differing perspectives on this issue from a systematic point of view and providing an insight into the epistemologies of both of these thinkers as well as the reasons for the differences that exist between their two views.
Keywords
Pierre Bayle; Johannes Amos Comenius; Comparative study; Faith and reason; Religious epistemology; Christian epistemology
Jiří MICHALÍK, Kepler’s Reception of Rosicrucianism
The Rosicrucian furore caused great excitement among Central and Western European intellectuals in the 1610s. Many of them reacted positively or negatively to the message of the mysterious brotherhood and soon a whole corpus of polemical literature emerged. While more is known about the approach of some contemporary intellectuals, such as Descartes, we do not know much about how other, no less important scientists, such as Johannes Kepler, perceived the Rosicrucian view. This article fills this gap. It collects and interprets Kepler’s mostly critical references to Rosicrucian ideas, focusing on three main types of source: Kepler’s astronomical work, Kepler’s letters, and Kepler’s astrological work.
Keywords
Johannes Kepler; Rosicrucian manifestos; Johann Valentin Andreae; prognostics
REVIEW ARTICLES / REZENSIONSARTIKEL
Kateřina LOCHMANOVÁ, The Leibniz – Clarke Correspondence: Looking Back to Czech and Slovak Translations of Leibniz
In addition to reviewing Jan Palkoska’s recent translation of the Leibniz-Clarke correspondence, this study presents a broader reflection on the state of Czech/
Slovak translations of Leibniz’s work. In this context, Jan Palkoska’s effort is appreciated together with similar attempts by other translators, although their overall weakness is identified in terminological inconsistency and, in the case of Palkoska, some shortcomings in the content are also identified. However, in contrast with the target of the OIKOYMENH publishing company itself, the author of the study specially emphasizes its merit for students and early-career academics as a convenient (although partial) tool for cultivating language diversity in general and the richness of the national language in particular.
Keywords
G. W. Leibniz; Leibniz-Clarke correspondence; Czech/Slovak Leibniz translations
RECENZE / REVIEWS / REZENSIONEN
Petr Pavlas, Knize knih vstříc. Herbornský encyklopedismus a konstelace Komenský–Leibniz (Jacques JOSEPH)
Rudolf Kučera – Jiří Chotaš (eds.), Politické myšlení raného novověku (Jan BURÁŇ)
Cornelis J. Schilt, Isaac Newton and the Study of Chronology: Prophecy, History, and Method (Daniel ŠPELDA)
Marta Vaculínová, Martina Šárovcová, and Alena Nachtmannová, Portréty předbělohorských intelektuálů (Michal ŠRONĚK)
Jeanine De Landtsheer, In Pursuit of the Muses: The Life and Work of Justus Lipsius (Vojtěch PELC)
Kateřina Smyčková, Krátká věčnost. Vytržení z č asu v n arativních textech od středověku na práh moderní doby (Tomáš HAVELKA)
Antal Molnár, Die Formelsammlungen der Franziskaner-Observanten in Ungarn (ca. 1451–1554) (Antonín KALOUS)
Suzanne Sutherland, The Rise of the Military Entrepreneur: War, Diplomacy, and Knowledge in Habsburg Europe (Vítězslav PRCHAL)
