Locke has often been hailed as the father of an empiricism that provided a philosophical basis to natural science in the Age of Enlightenment. In this article his empiricism is compared with that of the little known Dutch Aristotelian professor Gerardus de Vries. There are striking parallels between Locke's brand of mechanist empiricism and the pragmatic and flexible Aristotelianism of De Vries. These parallels put strictures on both the archaic character of the Aristotelianism embraced by De Vries and on the modern and forward-looking character of Locke's philosophy of science.

The volume offers the first large-scale study of the teaching of Descartes' philosophy in the early modern age. Its twenty chapters explore the clash between Descartes' "new" philosophy and the established pedagogical practices and institutional concerns, as well as the various strategies employed by Descartes' supporters in order to communicate his ideas to their students. The volume considers a vast array of topics, sources, and institutions, across the borders of countries and confessions, both within and without the university setting (public conferences, private tutorials, distance learning by letter) and enables us thereby to reconsider from a fresh perspective the history of early modern philosophy and education.

This article examines the immediate Dutch reception of the Tractatus theologico-politicus. Using newfound archival sources it demonstrates that the anti-Spinoza activity of the Cartesians in Utrecht extends far beyond the well-known writings of Lambertus van Velthuysen and Regnerus van Mansveld. Their Cartesian network not only produced the very first public refutation to appear, but also formed a center for coordinating much of the Dutch response to Spinoza. This engagement, it is argued in closing, must be accounted for in Spinoza reception history, and forms the background to the mysterious visit Spinoza paid to Utrecht in the summer of 1673.

The early history of Utrecht University (founded 1636) reflects an emerging public sphere (Habermas’s ‘bürgerliche öffentlichkeit’) of a major town in the Netherlands. This public sphere was a contested field among the different groups establishing and administering the university: university professors, town magistrates and representatives of the newly established Reformed Church and the former dominant Catholic Church. The factionalised magistrates developed a public sphere, while also trying to limit the passionate but destabilising debate concerning the new philosophy of Descartes. They supported the Calvinistic anti-Descartes movement while permitting, and even advocating, the establishment of the new philosophy at the university. They ambivalently protected the academy from the consistory’s control while simultaneously trying to safeguard their own (financial) position. It is concluded that the Habermasian framework has to be fleshed out in local histories, such as this case study of Utrecht University, to demonstrate the ‘messy’ complexities in reality.

René Descartes hat einen festen Platz in der Philosophiegeschichte, sein Rationalismus hat die europäische Aufklärung geprägt. Zu Lebzeiten hingegen erfährt er nicht nur Wertschätzung, insbesondere unter den Theologen hat er entschiedene Gegner. Im Herbst 1649 folgt er einer Einladung der schwedischen Königin Christine nach Stockholm. Wenige Monate später stirbt der französische Philosoph dort – wie es heißt, an einer Lungenentzündung. So jedenfalls die „offizielle“ Version, wie sie sich bis heute in Descartes-Biographien findet. Doch bereits kurz nach Descartes Tod kursierten Gerüchte, es sei Gift im Spiel gewesen. Theodor Ebert geht diesem Verdacht nach und rollt den „Fall Descartes“ noch einmal auf. Anhand vorliegenden, aber bislang wenig beachteten Dokumenten rekonstruiert er zunächst den Krankheitsverlauf. Dabei ergeben sich erhebliche Zweifel an der Diagnose „Lungenentzündung“, viele Indizien deuten darauf hin, daß Descartes tatsächlich keines natürlichen Todes gestorben ist. In einem zweiten Schritt erörtert der Autor, wer ein Motiv und wer die Möglichkeit für einen Mord an Descartes gehabt haben könnte. Am Ende der akribischen Untersuchung erscheint der rätselhafte Tod des René Descartes in einem neuen Licht. Der Anhang enthält zahlreiche Dokumente in Übersetzung, die es den Lesern ermöglichen, die Argumentation des Autors nachzuvollziehen und sich ein eigenes Urteil zu bilden.

This study provides an overview of the life and work of the seventeenth-century Utrecht professor of philosophy Henricus Reneri, with special focus on his close relationship with René Descartes. Reneri met Descartes during the winter of 1628/29. At that time he worked as a tutor in Amsterdam. Thirteen years earlier, he had fled the Prince-Bishopric of Liège as a Calvinist convert and had come to Leiden, where he enrolled in theology. After he broke off his studies he found work tutoring children of patrician families. But Reneri had higher ambitions. He wanted to teach philosophy, which he had studied at Leuven University before his conversion. In his free time Reneri carried out experiments and constructed instruments for the investigation of nature, such as the thermometer. Discontented with traditional philosophy, he participated in the search for a method to advance science. At that stage he met Descartes. In Descartes Reneri immediately recognized a genius who would change the face of philosophy. They became best friends, and when Reneri was appointed as professor of philosophy at the Deventer Illustre Gymnasium in 1631, followed by an appointment at the Utrecht Illustrious School (which became a university in 1636) three years later, Descartes followed him to both towns. Already from the founding of the Utrecht Illustrious School in 1634, Reneri tried out Cartesian explanations in his classes. The result was a reformed Aristotelianism, which combined Aristotle’s physics with elements from that of Descartes and from other corpuscular theories into an eclectic mix of his own. Initially Reneri was reluctant to openly promote Descartes’ philosophy, but the publication of the Discours de la méthode in 1637 made him more confident. In 1638, he publicly taught the Discours and supervised the defence of fully Cartesian theses. Moreover, Reneri encouraged Descartes to write and publish. Furthermore, Reneri played an important role in the formation of Descartes’ network in the Republic and introduced his friends to Descartes’ philosophy. These findings not only fill a lacuna in the scholarship on the early Descartes, but also shed new light on the earliest philosophical instruction at Utrecht University. Reneri was an educational reformer. He taught Aristotelian physics, but in order to make philosophy useful and popular again he wanted to make observation and experiment part of natural philosophy teaching. For this purpose, he devised a programme inspired by the empirical and inductive method of Francis Bacon, in which students were to actively participate. With this plan he was ahead of his time. In addition, Reneri was working on a method of logic in the Ramist tradition aiming at the organization of knowledge. His plans, however, were hardly noticed by the Aristotelians working in academia. Accordingly, his international scholarly network mainly consisted of non-academics. Reneri’s course of life also shows the importance of networks and the possibility of social ascent in the Republic. By building up a network of influential connections, he climbed up from a poor refugee to a professor who married into the Utrecht regent patriciate