HoP 486 Friends of the Truth: Arnauld and Jansenism

Peter Adamson· Host0:00

[instrumental music] Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to The History of Philosophy Podcast, brought to you with the support of the Philosophy Department at King's College London and the LMU in Munich. Online at historyofphilosophy.net. Today's episode, Friends of the Truth: Arnauld and Jansenism. Hands up, who remembers Thomas Bradwardine? He was an archbishop we covered when looking at medieval philosophy. If you do remember him, it will probably be because his name kept coming up in the context of various debates of the 14th century. He anticipated later teachings on grace by insisting on God's predestination, produced innovative writings about logic, including a solution to the liar's paradox, and even got a mention in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Today's subject, Antoine Arnauld, has put me in mind of Bradwardine because like him, Arnauld is not terribly famous, yet seems to be pervasive in the philosophical literature of his time. Like Bradwardine, he wrote on both philosophy and theology, making important contributions in logic under the former heading, and in his theological writings, developing a position on grace that Bradwardine might have found sympathetic. He was also a man of the church, though he did not rise within the hierarchy as high as Bradwardine did. To the contrary, he became the intellectual