Search

The Genevan printer and bookseller Jean-Louis Dufour (1656-89) had a brief career, interrupted abruptly by a bankruptcy. He succeeded nevertheless during the first three years of his activity in finding his place in the world of the Geneva book trade. By adopting an original policy in the management of his activity, Dufour published various Latin translations, which at the time was the lingua franca of scholars and intellectuals in Europe. Among these translations we find the famous masterpiece of Nicolas Malebranche, De la Recherche de la vérité. The present study explores the history of this printer, his business strategies and his intellectual preferences through two main documents: a book sale catalogue of 1683 and the inventory of vacant goods established after his bankruptcy. In addition, this study devotes special attention to Dufour’s translation of De la Recherche de la vérité to show how this initiative contributed to the spread of Malebranche’s philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inspired by the Cartesian plan to construct a universal system of science based on certain knowledge, the Oratorian philosopher Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715) attempts to found a "science" of ethics which could serve to liberate practical knowledge from the restrictions of uncertainty and relativity in which it was confined. In applying to ethics the criteria established by Cartesian epistemology, the author highlights the necessity to study the stable and immutable principles of morality, from which could emerge, through rational arguments, a whole system of moral values. This project, first announced in the Search after Truth is developed in the Treatise on Ethics, in which Malebranche's vision comes to life as an original theory. His strictly rationalist and intellectualist approach -- focusing on the challenge of rational knowledge of moral truths -- converges with a Christian and the ocentric conception, true to the strong apologetic requirements that direct the author's thinking. In this text, using the form of philosophical reasoning, Malebranche proposes and demonstrates as certain the principles of religion ultimately achieving a philosophical definition of Christian virtue and its rational justification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]