Claude Buffier: Common Sense, Metaphysics, and Sociability

Claude Buffier: Common Sense, Metaphysics, and Sociability ventures into the largely unexplored territory of his philosophical contributions to early modern thought, unlocking the complexity of his ideas while situating him within the broader context of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophy. Instead of arguing that the foundation of all knowledge is grounded in either rational speculation or empirical observation, Buffier proposes a "third way": his appeal to common sense seeks to show that, when we have exhausted all the justifications for our claims to knowledge, the bedrock where our spades are turned is the irreducible social and emotional dimension of our epistemic practices.

This collection of essays explores the central tenets of Buffier's philosophy of common sense, reflects on his metaphysics of the self, identity, and duration, and examines Buffier's thought on social life, with chapters on his conceptions of freedom, social order, and the equality of the sexes. While focusing on arguments and claims central to Buffier's thought, all chapters seek to place him in his intellectual context by tracing the positions which he responded to and those he built on. Studying Buffier's philosophy contributes to widening our understanding of the main philosophical issues at stake in the early modern period. More specifically, it shows how some understudied philosophers played a crucial role in developing alternatives to Cartesianism and Locke's philosophy. It also shows how Jesuit philosophers adapted and responded to the challenges that the "new philosophy" posed to the scholasticism that had dominated Jesuit philosophy until the mid-seventeenth century.

This volume seeks to re-admit Buffier into the intellectual debate, of which he was once a natural and crucial part. It clarifies what exactly was perceived as a challenge and which implicit arguments figured in the background of well-known debates.

Anik Waldow is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney and specializes in early modern philosophy, with a focus on Hume, Descartes, Locke, Rousseau, Herder and Condillac. She has published articles on the moral and cognitive function of sympathy, early modern theories of personal identity and the role of affect in the formation of the self, skepticism and associationist theories of thought and language. She is the author of Hume and the Problem of Other Minds (2009) and Experience Embodied: Early Modern Accounts of the Human place in Nature (2020) and has edited several volumes of collected essays, among them Sensibility in the Early Modern Era: From Living Machines to Affective Morality (2016) and Herder: Philosophy and Anthropology (with DeSouza, 2017).

Dario Perinetti is a Professor of Philosophy at University of Quebec at Montreal. His research focuses on Hume, the history of early modern epistemology and ethics and on the importance of history for our thinking about normativity. His published work has appeared in the Cambridge History of Eighteenth Century Philosophy (2002), the Oxford Handbook of British Moral Philosophy in the Eighteenth Century (2013) and The Routledge Companion to Eighteenth Century Philosophy (2014). He is the co-editor of The Rationalists: Between Tradition and Revolution (with Carlos Fraenkel and Justin Smith, 2010) and La Phénoménologie de l'esprit de Hegel: lectures contemporaines (with Marie-Andrée Ricard, 2009). His article "Hume at La Flèche: Skepticism and the French Connection" (2018) was awarded the best article prize by the Journal of the History of Philosophy.

Sandrine Roux is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Quebec at Montreal. Her research focuses on early modern philosophy, especially Descartes and Cartesianism, the mind-body problem, and the works of proto-feminist philosopher Gabrielle Suchon. She is the author of L'Empreinte cartésienne: L'interaction psychophysique, débats classiques et contemporains (2018) and the editor of Le corps et l'esprit: Problèmes cartésiens, problèmes contemporains (2015). Her publications include several articles and book chapters on Descartes, La Forge, Cordemoy, Malebranche, and on the receptions and uses of Descartes's theory of mind in contemporary philosophy of mind and cognitive science.