Bucharest-Princeton Seminar 2011


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We are happy to announce the 11th edition of the annual Bucharest-Princeton Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy to be held in Bran, July 2-7, 2011. The Seminar gathers together scholars interested in various aspects of early modern thought. Its aim is to create a stimulating environment for discussing papers and ideas. Traditionally, the seminar has two components: morning workshops and afternoon discussions of work-in-progress. The languages of the seminar are English and French.


Theme of this year: Collaborative aspects of early modern thought: philosophical correspondence and the Republic of Letters



July 2


9.30 Departure to Bran from Hotel Flowers, Plantelor str. 2, Bucharest (lunch on the way in Brașov)


17.00 Arrival in Bran (Vila Andra)


19.00 Dinner


July 3


9.30-10.30 Conference: Igor Agostini (Lecce): La correspondence Descartes-Elisabeth et la traduction Picot des Principes de la philosophie (1647)


10.30-10.45 Coffee break


10.45-13.00 Reading group (I): The Descartes-Henry More Correspondence. Convenors: Igor Agostini, Vlad Alexandrescu, Sarah Hutton


Texts: Descartes Correspondance avec Arnauld et Morus, texte latin et traduction, éd. Geneviève Lewis, Paris, Vrin, 1953, p. 94-187; english translation of Descartes’ letters in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. III, translated by J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, D. Murdoch, A. Kenny, CUP, 1991, p. 360-367, 371-375, 380-382.

Link to the English file (only Descartes’ letters)| Link to the Latin-French file (all the selected letters)


13.00-15.00 Lunch break


16.00-16.35 Alexandra Anisie (Cluj): On susbtance in Bruno’s Concerning the Cause, Principle, and the One


16.35-16.50 Coffee break


16.50-17.25 Katherine Dunlop (Brown): Gassendi on the Ontological Status of Spatial Dimensions

17.25-18.00 Michael Funk-Deckard (Lenoir-Rhyne): The act of admiration: wondrous women in early modern philosophy


19.00 Dinner


July 4


9.30-10.30 Conference: Sarah Hutton (Aberystwyth University): The correspondence of seventeenth-century women philosophers: Anne Conway and Damaris Cudworth Masham


10.30-10.45 Coffee break


10.45-13.00 Reading group (II): The Leibniz-des Bosses Correspondence, Convenors: Daniel Garber, Lucian Petrescu, Vlad Alexandrescu


Texts: G.W. Leibniz, The Leibniz-Des Bosses Correspondence, latin texts and english translations, intoroduction by Brandon C. Look and Donald Rutherford, Yale University Press, 2007:

Leibniz to des Bosses, 15th February 1712, p. 220-235

Des Bosses to Leibniz, 20th July 1715, p. 340-347

Leibniz to Des Bosses, 19th August 1715, p. 347-357

Leibniz an des Bosses, 29th May 1716, p. 365-378

Link to file (Latin and English)

Monadologie, 1714, ed. A. Robinet, Paris, P.U.F., 2e éd., 1986

Link to the French text | Link to the English translation


13.00-15.00 Lunch break


16.00-16.35: Barnaby Hutchins (Ghent), Subvisible mechanical systems in Descartes’ late physiology


16.35-16.50 Coffee break


16.50-17.25 Alexander Xavier Douglas (Birkbeck): Dutch Cartesianism and the Separation Idea

17.25-18.00 Lucian Petrescu (Ghent): Salt, silver, oxygen. Real Qualities in Descartes’ and Fromondus’ Meteors.



19.00 Dinner



July 5


9.30-10.05 Radu Toderici (Cluj): “Communication d’imagination”: Pascal, Malebranche and the Social Transmission of Knowledge

10.05-10.40: Anton Matytsin (Pennsylvania): The Specter of Skepticism and Sources of Certainty in the Early Enlightenment Interest: philosophical and historical skepticism in the early 18th century


10.40-11.00 Coffee break


11.00-13.00 Reading group (III): The Newton-Hooke Correspondence, Convenors: Katherine Dunlop, Dana Jalobeanu, Grigore Vida


Texts: Newton's letter, Hooke's, Linus' and Pardies' letters

Link to file


13.00-15.00 Lunch break


16.00-16.35 Kristin Primus (Princeton): Immanent Causation in Spinoza’s Ethics


16.35-16.50 Coffee break


16.50 -17.25 Filip Buyse (Paris I): The Gunpowder Reaction: A Controversy between Boyle and Spinoza

17.25-18.00 Jo Van Cauter (Ghent): The betrayal of Christ: Jesus as statesman (Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus)


19.00 Dinner


July 6


9.30-10.30: Sorana Corneanu (Bucharest), Koen Vermeir (CNRS, Paris): The magician’s imagination in Francis Bacon


10.30-10.45 Coffee break


10.45-11.20 Doina Rusu (Bucharest): Baconian natural histories in the correspondence and in The Instauratio magna

11.20-11.55 Madalina Giurgea, Laura Georgescu (Bucharest): Bacon and Descartes : The Creative Role of Experiments

11.55-12.30: Dana Jalobeanu (Bucharest): Francis Bacon's Senecan natural history of the heavens or the case of 'missing' natural history

12.30-13.00: Raphaele Garrod (Cambridge): Whales, Starfishes and the John Dory in Pierre Viret's Instruction Chrétienne (1564): From Natural Theology to Natural History?


13.00-15.00 Lunch


16.00-16.35 James Lancaster (London): Natural history of religion: a new form of natural history?


16.35-16.50 Coffee break


16.50-17.25 Mihnea Dobre (Bucharest): Jaques Rohault and Samuel Clarke

17.25-18.00 Grigore Vida (Bucharest): The Changing Fate of Newton’s Cosmology and the Interaction between Theology and Natural Science


19.00 Dinner


July 7



9.30 Departure to Bucharest


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Organized by the Research Centre for the Foundations of Modern Thought (FME), University of Bucharest and the Philosophy Department, Princeton University.






Artwork for the poster (c) Thomas Albdorf, 2010