Conférence “Animal Minds in the Early Modern Age”, KU Leuven, 14-15 février 2025
Institute of Philosophy, Kardinaal Mercierplein 2 & Online
Organized by Mattia Mantovani (KU Leuven, De Wulf-Mansion Centre) and Sophie Roux (ENS Paris, République des savoirs)
The conference takes place on campus, but it can be followed online via this link:
https://zoom.us/j/94130107504?pwd=tzLoNBIYuUxoSoiOVYRrIXIdBDsX0U.1 (Meeting ID: 941 3010 7504; Passcode: 7gGcg6)
In case you plan to attend in person – and for any query – please email mattia.mantovani@kuleuven.be
Program:
Friday, 14 February, Raadzaal: Debating the Animal Mind
14:30-14:40 Welcome Address
14:40-15:30 Jean-Pascal Anfray (École Normale Supérieure, Paris)
Divisible Souls. A Late-Scholastic Debate about the anima brutorum
15:50-16:40 Gideon Manning (Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles)
Asking about Animal Minds. Ontology, Epistemology and Conception
17:00-17:50 Raphaële Andrault (CNRS, IHRIM, École Normale Supérieure de Lyon)
From Human to Animal. The Ethology of Early Modern Anatomists
Saturday, 15 February, Kardinaal Mercierzaal: Minds in the Making
09:20-10:10 Simone Guidi (CNR-ILIESI, Rome)
Marin Cureau de La Chambre on Animal Intelligence and Passions
10:30-11:20 Simone Bresci (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice)
Brutis rationem restituo. Pierre Gassendi on Animal Reasoning
11:40-12:30 Lucia Oliveri (University of Münster)
Neither with Descartes nor with Locke. Leibniz on Animal Cognition
Conference Presentation
“What is an animal? This is one of those questions that prove all the more puzzling the more one knows about philosophy”.
The entry on “animal” of the Encyclopédie wasn’t alone in voicing this predicament. Debates on the nature of animals loomed large throughout the early modern age, and grew to the point of calling into question as fundamental issues as the general metaphysics of the mind and the overall epistemology of perception. Their far-reaching implications challenged theology, culture and society at large: suffice it to consider the controversies over the mortality of the soul and the growing concerns over animal exploitation. Early modern thinkers conceived of animals in the most disparate fashions: as blind pieces of clockwork or, at the opposite, as fully rational beings, capable of outsmarting humans. Polemics escalated to the point that, by the eighteenth century, “one cat was enough to disarrange all of philosophy”.
The conference investigates the competing theories of the animal mind worked out from the Italian Renaissance to the German Enlightenment, and their broader implications for the philosophical and scientific debates of the time, all over Europe. The conference intends thereby to provide new insights into the shifting understanding of the human-animal divide and the early modern theory of the mind – indeed, of minds.
OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
Jonas Amar (20 janvier 2025). Conférence “Animal Minds in the Early Modern Age”, KU Leuven, 14-15 février 2025. Mathesis. Consulté le 17 février 2025 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/133yl