December 8

Fatema Amijee (U British Columbia)

Du Châtelet's Idealist Turn

Abstract: Orthodoxy holds that Emilie Du Châtelet’s metaphysics as laid out in her Institutions de Physique is inherited from Leibniz. Against this orthodoxy, I show that Du Châtelet’s metaphysics is non-Leibnizian with respect to one of its core commitments: I argue that that Du Châtelet and Leibniz have distinct conceptions of the central rationalist principle, namely the Principle of Sufficient Reason (‘PSR’). That Du Châtelet and Leibniz diverge radically in their conceptions of the PSR, and thus the nature of their respective rationalisms, may come as a surprise, for Du Châtelet not only conceives of herself as working in the Leibnizian tradition, but also employs the PSR in arguments—such as the cosmological argument for God’s existence—in much the way that Leibniz does. Yet, as I will argue, Du Châtelet is committed to a version of epistemic idealism about sufficient reasons: for Du Châtelet, what counts as a sufficient reason is constrained by what we can understand. Thus, unlike Leibniz, Du Châtelet endorses a strong accessibility constraint on sufficient reason.

Fatema Amijee is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia. Her main research interests lie in Metaphysics, Modern Philosophy, Feminist Philosophy (particularly as it relates to Islam) and the History of Analytic Philosophy (esp. Frege, Russell, and early Wittgenstein).

A recording of the session will be made available on the “Downloads” page for some time following the event.

(The “Downloads” page is password-protected, and the password is available to all members of the Spinoza and EMP Workshop email list.)