Gassendi, Pierre | Margaret J. Osler (essay date 1994)
Margaret J. Osler (essay date 1994)
SOURCE: “Providence and Human Freedom in Christian Epicureanism: Gassendi on Fortune, Fate, and Divination,” in Divine Will and the Mechanical Philosophy: Gassendi and Descartes on Contingency and Necessity in the Created World, Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp. 86-101.
[In the following excerpt, Osler explicates the voluntarism that permeates Gassendi's work, placing his development of a mechanical philosophy in the context of seventeenth-century theological controversies. The critic finds that Gassendi's insistence on human free will, in addition to divine free will, distinguishes him from other materialist thinkers, including Thomas Hobbes.]
Fate is the decree of the divine will, without which nothing at all is done, … [and] Fortune is the concourse of events that, although unforeseen by men, nevertheless were foreseen by God.
Pierre Gassendi, Syntagma...
[The entire page is 9829 words long]
Navigate
