Matteo Favaretti Camposampiero | Università Ca' Foscari Venezia (original) (raw)

Papers by Matteo Favaretti Camposampiero

Life and Death in Early Modern Philosophy, edited by Susan James, Oxford University Press, 2021

Leibniz upholds immortalism in its extreme form. Nothing ever really dies, for not only the soul ... more Leibniz upholds immortalism in its extreme form. Nothing ever really dies, for not only the soul but also the organic body is indestructible except by God’s power. Current scholarship may often have overlooked the radical character of these views, but eighteenth-century philosophers did not. They described Leibniz’s doctrine in terms of exilium mortis or “the banishment of death”, which most of them rejected as an implausible, ridiculous, or even scandalous notion. To understand this negative reaction, I will reconstruct the German debate among Leibniz’s contemporaries and immediate posterity.
First, I trace the origin of the expression exilium mortis back to Leibniz himself. Second, I consider the critical interventions in the 1710s and early 1720s by philologist Pierre Des Maizeaux, theologian Christoph Matthäus Pfaff, alchemist Johann Conrad Creiling, physician Elias Camerarius, philosopher Christian Wolff and others. The questions raised by the disputants still prove engaging from both a historical and theoretical perspective: is the banishment of death a novelty or just an updated version of some traditional belief? How can the living body preserve its own identity through the dramatic transformations caused by death? On the other hand, the general hostility that surrounded the banishment-of-death doctrine suggests that the denial of natural mortality was actually perceived as a threat to Christian dogma – which invites us to revise the naive assumption that immortalist claims should always be regarded as expression of a philosopher’s pious concerns.

Rivista di filosofia, 2023

What makes philosophy a science? According to the received interpretation, Christian Wolff consid... more What makes philosophy a science? According to the received interpretation, Christian Wolff considers the scientific method alone to be the key to rendering philosophical knowledge scientific. By contrast, this paper argues that the scientific character of Wolffian philosophy also depends on its object, namely on its being “the science of all possible things”. By comparing and analyzing the various formulations in which Wolff, between 1709 and 1728, proposed this famous definition of philosophy, the paper shows how the different meaning Wolff ascribed over time to the modal concept of “possible” has eventually obscured the original sense of that very definition. Thus, Wolff’s idea of philosophy as the science of possible things turns out to be rooted in the causal conception of modalities that belonged to Wolff before his adoption of Leibniz’s logical modalities. According to Wolff, philosophy is a science not only because it proceeds by demonstrations, but also because it explains the possibility (or producibility) of effects from their possible causes.

F. Baldassarri, A. Blank (eds.), Vegetative Powers: The Roots of Life in Ancient, Medieval and Early Modern Natural Philosophy, Cham: Springer (International Archives of the History of Ideas 234), pp. 419-438, 2021

A committed supporter of mechanism, Christian Wolff mentions the vegetative soul as a notable exa... more A committed supporter of mechanism, Christian Wolff mentions the vegetative soul as a notable example of an "empty term" or meaningless expression. In spite of this unconditional rejection of the vegetative soul, his major disciple in the field of natural philosophy felt the need to reintroduce something similar. In the 1760s, Michael Christoph Hanov revised Wolff's account of vegetation and life by claiming that life is the product of a vegetative force and not of pure mechanism. After reconstructing both Wolff's and Hanov's accounts, this paper explores the reasons and implications of the latter's revival of vegetative powers and argues for its relevance to the early history of biology.

Intellectual History Review, 2022

In eighteenth-century post-Leibnizian German philosophy, the debate on immortality did not concer... more In eighteenth-century post-Leibnizian German philosophy, the debate on immortality did not concern only the fate of the soul after death but also the fate of the body. Leibniz had famously maintained that no animal ever dies, for the soul is never entirely deprived of its living body. In spite of Bilfinger's almost isolated defense, this doctrine never became dominant, even among Leibniz's followers. Christian Wolff, long considered a mere popularizer of Leibniz's philosophy, departed from this account of immortality and replaced it with the traditional Platonic model, based on the survival of separated souls. After reconstructing Leibniz's, Wolff's, and Bilfinger's positions, this paper considers how the debate evolved within the so-called Wolffian school during the 1730s and 1740s. Both partisans and detractors of separated souls diverged from Leibniz on a crucial point: namely, they argued that another key Leibnizian doctrine, pre-established harmony, entails that the soul need not be forever united to its body. Furthermore, the cases of Johann Heinrich Winckler, Johann Gustav Reinbeck, Israel Gottlieb Canz, and even Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten show that the post-Leibnizian detractors of separated souls drew, in fact, more inspiration from the neo-Platonic and esoteric doctrine of the subtle body than from Leibniz's original immortalism.

P.R. Hardie, V. Prosperi, and D. Zucca (eds.), Lucretius Poet and Philosopher: Background and Fortunes of De rerum natura, 2020

Although recent scholarship accepts that Leibniz was familiar with De Rerum Natura, only a little... more Although recent scholarship accepts that Leibniz was familiar with De Rerum Natura, only a little attention has been devoted so far to how Leibniz actu-ally presents, uses, criticizes, or endorses several key Lucretian doctrines. This paper offers a detailed reconstruction and assessment of Leibniz’s enduring fas-cination with Lucretius. Sections 1–2 bring to light the philosophical background of Leibniz’s interest in both Marchetti’s Italian version of De Rerum Natura and Polignac’s anti-Lucretian poem. Section 3 considers Leibniz’s vindication of nat-ural finalism against Lucretius’ denial of divine providence and design. Sections 4–5 argue that Leibniz was, on the one hand, attracted by the combinatorial strand of ancient atomism and, on the other hand, repelled by Lucretius’ commit-ment to casualism, indeterminism, and emergentism. Rather than Lucretius’ ma-terialism, it was his endorsement of the clinamen doctrine with its consequent violation of the principle of sufficient reason that most bothered Leibniz.

Morfologie dal rapporto parti/tutto, edited by Giuseppe D’Anna et al., Milan: Mimesis, 2019

Nell’opera di Christian Wolff, la teoria del tutto e delle parti diventa oggetto dell’ontologia o... more Nell’opera di Christian Wolff, la teoria del tutto e delle parti diventa oggetto dell’ontologia o filosofia prima, fornendo una sorta di mereologia generale che trova poi applicazione in un ampio ventaglio di discipline più specialistiche (cosmologia, fisica, fisiologia, teleologia, ma anche teodicea e teoria della perfezione), rispetto alle quali la teoria del tutto e delle parti assume un ruolo fondazionale. Dopo aver esaminato le definizioni generali che Wolff offre dei concetti di parte e tutto nelle opere tedesche e latine, questo studio ricostruisce il ruolo svolto da questi concetti nella fondazione wolffiana delle scienze naturali. Il passaggio dal concetto di intero al concetto di ente composto mediante il concetto di connessione delle parti apre la strada alla teoria cosmologica dei corpi. A sua volta, l’intersezione tra la mereologia dei corpi e la teleologia permette a Wolff di elaborare una teoria del corpo organico basata sulla considerazione dell’organo come parte funzionale.

G. Lorini and R.B. Louden (eds.), Knowledge, Morals and Practice in Kant’s Anthropology, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 43–61, 2018

The concept of inner sense plays a prominent role in Kant’s attempts to define the character and ... more The concept of inner sense plays a prominent role in Kant’s attempts to define the character and scope of anthropology. Moreover, Kant denounces the terminological confusion between inner sense and apperception as a source of paralogisms. Who were his targets? In recent years, scholars have pointed to the existence of a German tradition on inner sense (perhaps independent from Locke) as a plausible source for Kant’s elaboration. However, some specific aspects of the German treatment of inner sense have been so far completely overlooked. This paper focuses on Jungius, Leibniz, Wolff, and Lambert, to show that they all referred to inner sense or inner experience as a privileged source of knowledge, immune to error and free from the ontological limits of the external senses. In this tradition, inner sense was ascribed with the epistemological function of providing a foundation not only for psychology but also for logic and metaphysics. Such a radical empowerment of the role of inner sense, which culminated in Lambert’s work, is the most plausible target of Kant’s criticism. Relegating the contribution of inner sense to the fields of anthropology and empirical psychology was part of Kant’s effort to purify logic and metaphysics from any reference to inner experience or sensation.

British Journal for the History of Philosophy

How did the traditional doctrine of parts and wholes evolve into contemporary formal mereology? T... more How did the traditional doctrine of parts and wholes evolve into contemporary formal mereology? This paper argues that a crucial missing link may lie in the early modern and especially Wolffian transformation of mereology into a systematic sub-discipline of ontology devoted to quantity. After some remarks on the traditional scholastic approach to parts and wholes (Sect. 1), Wolff's mature mereology is reconstructed as an attempt to provide an ontological foundation for mathematics (Sects. 2-3). On the basis of Wolff's earlier mereologies (Sect. 4), the origin of this foundational project is traced back to one of Wolff's private conversations with Leibniz (Sect. 5) and especially to the former's appropriation of the latter's notion of similarity as a means to define quantity (Sect. 6). Despite some hesitancy concerning the ultimate characterization of quantity (Sect. 7), Wolff's contribution was historically significant and influential. By developing a quantitative, extensional account of mereological relations, Wolff departed from the received doctrine and paved the way for the later revival of mereology at the intersection of ontology and mathematics.

Alvearium, 2017

Kant sometimes characterizes spirit as a thinking being that is able to exist even without a body... more Kant sometimes characterizes spirit as a thinking being that is able to exist even without a body, and he claims that this concept sustains the ambition of rational psychology to develop into a science of spirits or pneumatology, understood as the doctrine that investigates the otherwordly state of separated souls. Who were the upholders of this spiritualistic view of the mind? Though dismissed by some as expression of a generic Leibniz-Wolffian philosophy, the claim that disembodied spirits exist is, in fact, the very issue on which not only Crusius but also Wolff himself radically parted ways with Leibniz and moved back to Cartesian positions.

F. Fabbianelli et J.-F. Goubet (dir.), "L’homme entier. Conceptions anthropologiques classiques et contemporaines", Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2017

This paper explores the connections between Wolff’s system and the birth of philosophical anthrop... more This paper explores the connections between Wolff’s system and the birth of philosophical anthropology. Sections 1-2 consider Wolff’s view on the disciplinary status of anthropology and his influence on Halle’s school of philosophical medicine (esp. J. G. Krüger). Sections 3-5 focus on Hanov’s treatise on general anthropology (1768) and the tension between his professed Wolffian inspiration and his holistic concern for the union of soul and body. Hanov’s ambiguous attitude towards Wolff is part of a widespread reaction against psychophysical parallelism.

Revue Roumaine de Philosophie, 2017

After reconstructing the general puzzle on sense perception and representational failures, I show... more After reconstructing the general puzzle on sense perception and representational failures, I show that Leibniz (1) is well aware of the difficulty and (2) does actually propose a solution. This solution, on the one hand, enables him to make the admission of false pre-judgmental representations consistent with his claim that perceptions are always true. On the other hand, it requires Leibniz to depart from naif realism and recognize that our representation of the world is, up to an important degree, a mental construction – a picture that can always turn out to be inaccurate, or deceptive, or 'false', so that finally monads can hardly be taken to be merely mirrors of the world.

Quaestio, 2016

In the late 1720s and early 1730s, Christian Wolff writes a series of short treatises on general ... more In the late 1720s and early 1730s, Christian Wolff writes a series of short treatises on general medical concepts such as health, disease, cause of disease, symptom, etc. The paper makes the claim that these texts should be considered as a pioneering attempt at developing a systematic philosophy of medicine based on metaphysical and epistemological investigations on medical concepts, doctrines, and practices. The main focus is on Wolff’s analysis of the concepts of health and disease in functional terms and its connection to his teleological characterization of both natural and artificial machines. This also explains Wolff’s use of the normatively loaded concepts of fitness and nature to clarify the distinction between health as good functioning and disease as dysfunction. The conclusion is that Wolff’s mechanist view of living bodies and his realism about biological functions are just one side of the coin; the other is his commitment to a normative view of the human body’s nature and purposes.

Society and Politics, 2017

Throughout his life, Leibniz showed serious interest in the construction of clocks and actively c... more Throughout his life, Leibniz showed serious interest in the construction of clocks and actively contributed to their technical improvement. He described the mechanical and especially the pendulum clock as a paradigmatic kind of machine, and therefore as a suitable model for exploring the nature and boundaries of mechanistic philosophy. After an overview on Leibniz " s technology and physics of clocks (Section 1), this paper reviews the main occurrences of the clock analogy in his philosophical writings. Section 2 considers the epistemological use of the clock analogy and its evolution from an early stress on the hypothetical component of natural science to a later concern with the full inspectability and intelligibility of natural processes. Section 3 details the manifold uses of the clock analogy in metaphysics to illustrate features of the world, of both inanimate and living bodies, and even of God, the soul, and the soul-body union. The possibility of construing machine metaphors in terms of either structure or function solves the apparent ambivalence of Leibniz " s approach to the clock analogy. It also explains his persistent reference to perfection and standards of perfection, thereby bringing to the fore the teleological strand of this concept.

F.L. Marcolungo (ed.), "Christian Wolff e l'ermeneutica dell'Illuminismo", Hildesheim: Olms (Wolffiana VII), 2017

Christian Wolff was highly interested in hermeneutic issues and actively engaged in hermeneutic p... more Christian Wolff was highly interested in hermeneutic issues and actively engaged in hermeneutic practice. His concrete hermeneutic work, however, has been explored far less than his theoretical hermeneutic pronouncements. In this paper, I consider Wolff's method of interpretation from the point of view of its actual realization rather than its general presentations. In particular, I focus on the complicated affair of Wolff's occasionalism, that is, on his reception, critique, and reworking of what he calls the system of occasional causes. My aim is to show that Wolff's analysis of occasionalist philosophy constitutes a paradigmatic case of the kind of hermeneutic procedure that nowadays would be described as rational reconstruction.

Blityri, 2015

Despite the importance Leibniz ascribed to factual or empirical knowledge, scholars did not pay m... more Despite the importance Leibniz ascribed to factual or empirical knowledge, scholars did not pay much attention to his reflections on this subject. It is well known that Leibniz maintained that there are some primary truths among the so-called truths of fact as well as among the truths of reason, but the nature, scope, and role of the primary truths of fact still remain unclear. The present paper aims to account for Leibniz’s commitment to the existence of such truths, by clarifying some of the epistemic properties he ascribed to them – first of all their indubitability and indemonstrability. The explanation I propose is that Leibniz’s claims are rooted in his long-standing doctrine of the infallibility of immediate perception, which must be read in the context of his theory of perceptual error.

This paper aims to reconstruct Leibniz’s theory of error in the light of his metaphysics, epistem... more This paper aims to reconstruct Leibniz’s theory of error in the light of his metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. In the Discourse on Metaphysics, §14, Leibniz claims both that all of our perceptions are true because they always conform to one of God’s views of the universe and that only judments can be false because they “come from ourselves”. Starting from these claims, the first section discusses different readings of the veridicality principle and contrasts it with texts where Leibniz admits that even pre-judgmental items such as perceptual appearances can be false. Leibniz has, in fact, a three-stage account of perceptual error, where imagination plays a central role. The second section investigates Leibniz’s account of judgment and its possible voluntary suspension in order to clarify the step from perceiving to judging. The third section focuses on Leibniz’s views on ignorance and lack of attention as sources of error. The overall conclusion is that errors ultimately depend on the present degree of the agent’s perfection.

This paper explores Christian Wolff's pioneering contribution to the philosophy of translation. I... more This paper explores Christian Wolff's pioneering contribution to the philosophy of translation. It contains the first study of Wolff's long neglected treatise on the philosophical principles of translation: "De versione librorum juxta principia philosophiae nostrae adornanda" (1731).

Au seuil de la modérnité, la diversité des langues humaines pose aux philosophes non plus seuleme... more Au seuil de la modérnité, la diversité des langues humaines pose aux philosophes non plus seulement des questions théoriques, mais encore des problèmes pratiques, liés au progressif abandon du latin comme langue institutionnelle de la philosophie. La réflexion philosophique sur le langage se double d'une exigence pratique qui mène les philosophes à réfléchir sur leur propre langue. L'oeuvre de Leibniz est, à ce propos, exemplaire: outre à étudier " en théoricien " les langues naturelles, en les envisageant sous de multiples points de vue , Leibniz a traité à plusieurs reprises la question de la langue philosophique optimale, et il a concrètement expérimenté les performances expressives d'idiomes différents, jusqu'à se poser le problème de leur traductibilité réciproque. C'est principalement cette approche " pragmatique " au problème du langage qui retiendra ici notre attention, bien que pour comprendre les solutions leibniziennes il faudra questionner encore leur arrière-plan théorique.

The present article clarifies Kant’s use of the expression ens imaginarium by confronting this us... more The present article clarifies Kant’s use of the expression ens imaginarium by confronting this use, on the one hand, with the traditional (which is still present in Leibniz), and, on the other hand, with Wolff’s use. After considering the revival of the debate on the distinction between “imaginary” and “real” after the publication of the correspondence between Leibniz and Clarke (§ 1), the article illustrates Wolff’s transformation of the traditional concept of ens imaginarium, a transformation carried out through the theory of imaginary notions (§ 2). Contrary to the fictitious ens, Wolff’s ens imaginarium can work as a surrogate of the real ens, and thus play a heuristic function. In Kant, however, the expression ens imaginarium keeps the more traditional sense of “not real”: space and time are imaginary beings if we conceive them as contents of the representation, rather than as pure forms of it (§ 3). Thereby, Kant aims to oppose precisely the changes introduced by Wolff, which he considers incompatible with the a priori character of the concepts of space and time (§ 4).

Life and Death in Early Modern Philosophy, edited by Susan James, Oxford University Press, 2021

Rivista di filosofia, 2023

Intellectual History Review, 2022

P.R. Hardie, V. Prosperi, and D. Zucca (eds.), Lucretius Poet and Philosopher: Background and Fortunes of De rerum natura, 2020

Morfologie dal rapporto parti/tutto, edited by Giuseppe D’Anna et al., Milan: Mimesis, 2019

G. Lorini and R.B. Louden (eds.), Knowledge, Morals and Practice in Kant’s Anthropology, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 43–61, 2018

British Journal for the History of Philosophy

Alvearium, 2017

F. Fabbianelli et J.-F. Goubet (dir.), "L’homme entier. Conceptions anthropologiques classiques et contemporaines", Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2017

Revue Roumaine de Philosophie, 2017

Quaestio, 2016

Society and Politics, 2017

F.L. Marcolungo (ed.), "Christian Wolff e l'ermeneutica dell'Illuminismo", Hildesheim: Olms (Wolffiana VII), 2017

Blityri, 2015

09.30 Discurso de Boas Vindas do Director do Centro de Filosofia / Welcome ... more 09.30 Discurso de Boas Vindas do Director do Centro de Filosofia /
Welcome Greetings of the Director of the Center of Philosophy
Prof. Dr. António Pedro Mesquita

09.45 Introdução / Introduction
Gualtiero Lorini (Universidade de Lisboa)

Sessão da manhã / Morning Session
Fontes e influências na definição kantiana do conhecimento sobre o homem /
Sources and Influences in Kant’s Definition of the Knowledge Concerning the Man

Chair: Adriana Veríssimo Serrão (Universidade de Lisboa)

10.00 Jean-François Goubet (Université d’Artois)
La science de l'homme, un legs de Wolff à Kant ?

10.40 Discussão / Discussion

11.00 Pausa / Break

11.20 Matteo Favaretti Camposampiero (Università Ca’ Foscari, Venezia)
The Inner Sense of Anthropology: Kant and His Sources

12.00 Discussão / Discussion

12.20 Gualtiero Lorini (Universidade de Lisboa)
The Rules for Knowing Man: Baumgarten's Presence in Kant's Anthropology

13.00 Discussão / Discussion
13.20 Almoço / Lunch

Sessão da tarde / Afternoon Session
As peculiaridades do conhecimento antropológico em Kant: Metafísica, Psicologia, Lógica
The peculiarities of the anthropological knowledge in Kant: Metaphysics, Psychology, Logic

Chair: Pedro Alves (Universidade de Lisboa)

15.30 Henny Blomme (KU Leuven)
Kant on Unconscious Representations

16.10 Discussão / Discussion
16.30 Fernando Silva (Universidade de Lisboa)
Sobre a árvore do génio em Kant

17.10 Discussão / Discussion

17.30 Pausa / Break

17.40 Francesco Valerio Tommasi (Università Sapienza, Roma)
Anthropology as a Transcendental Premise to Metaphysics in Kant

18.20 Discussão / Discussion

18.40 Conclusão / Conclusion

Society and Politics, 2017

On the 2th October 2017, the Noble Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to three researche... more On the 2th October 2017, the Noble Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to three researchers who were able to elucidate how the internal, biological clock of living organisms adapts itself so that it is synchronized with the Earth’s revolutions.
Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695) was the first physicist to observe and analyze the phenomenon of synchronization. More precisely, the Dutch physicist and astronomer observed on the 1st March of 1665 that two pendulum clocks which were standing in front of him started to move in phase. He couldn’t believe his eyes and tried to find a mechanical explanation for this spectacular observation “which no one ever would have thought of.“. Initially, he interpreted ‘l’accord merveilleux’ as a kind of ‘sympathy’ but already one month later he discovered the real mechanical cause of this odd phenomenon.
In this volume, Dr. Kurt Wiesenfeld explains how his research group has examined synchronization by means of reconstructions of Huygens’ pendulum clocks. In another paper, Dr. Filip Buyse argues that Spinoza was in contact with Christiaan Huygens during the period of his spectacular invention. Hence, the Dutch physicist and astronomer might have influenced and inspired Spinoza (1632 -1677) in his views on the agreement between bodies in the universe. This would resolve Spinoza’s otherwise paradoxical phrases in his answer to Robert Boyle’s question, in his Letter 32 (1665) to the secretary of the Royale Society. Furthermore, Dr. Maxime Rovere argues in his paper that Spinoza might also have been influenced by the physics of oscillating pendulums in his theory of emotions.
Christiaan Huygens designed his pendulum clock in 1656 and it was built by his instrument maker Salomon Coster (ca.1622-1659). He patented his sophisticated machine in 1657. However, Huygens was not the first to conceive a pendulum regulated clock. As he reveals in his Horologium (1658), his invention was based on Galileo’s invention of the principle of isochronism. (A principle which is discussed by Dr. Mohammed Abattouy in this special issue.) There is historical evidence that Galileo had already started to do research on the movement of a pendulum in 1603. At that moment he was professor in Padua. In this issue, Fabrizio Bigotti and David Taylor reconstruct and discuss a seventeenthth century medical instrument designed based on the pendulum. This pulsilogium was probably invented by one of Galileo’s colleagues, Santorio Santorio (1561-1636). .....

https://synthesisonline.net/ A new journal for philosophy (editors Franco Aronadio and Francesco... more https://synthesisonline.net/

A new journal for philosophy (editors Franco Aronadio and Francesco Fronterotta). Visit the website for details.

The CREMT Bookshelf, 2020