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Les lieux de la rationalité de D’Alembert à Destutt de Tracy

Jean-Pierre Schandeler

Abstracts

The sphere of rationality from D'Alembert to Destuttde Tracy
The common aim of both Encyclopedism and “ Idéologie ” was to escape from former metaphysics. Science is seen as the sphere of rationality, which should justify the validity and ensure the value of knowledge. Different paths can be followed in reaction to this central problem of the Enlightenment, and these paths mark the dividing line between the two schools of thought. For D'Alembert, the encyclopæcdic order of science, organised around the three faculties, is only a relative and arbitrary representation, which cannot alone guarantee rationality. The concept of “ element of science ” is the touchstone, which implies the invalidation of a stable architecture and a refusal of “ episteme-centrism ”, or the refusal of any science presiding over the order of all things. Destutt de Tracy both rejects the epistemological legitimacy of the three faculties as organisers of knowledge and constructs the whole of the body of sciences on the analogy of the operation of the judgement. This unifying representation of knowledge reinstates an “ episteme-origin ”, the science of ideas, or in other words Ideology itself, which guarantees the rationality of knowledge.

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References

Electronic reference

Jean-Pierre Schandeler, “Les lieux de la rationalité de D’Alembert à Destutt de Tracy”Recherches sur Diderot et sur l'Encyclopédie [Online], 25 | 1998, Online since 04 August 2007, connection on 28 March 2024. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/rde/1281; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/rde.1281

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Jean-Pierre Schandeler

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