Experience and reason in modern thinking

• Grant number: 02/06736-4
• Support Opportunities: Research Projects - Thematic Grants
• Start date: October 01, 2002
• End date: January 31, 2007
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - History of Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: Maria das Graças de Souza
• Grantee: Maria das Graças de Souza
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Pesquisadores principais: Franklin Leopoldo e Silva ; Marilena de Souza Chauí ; Olgária Chain Féres Matos

Abstract

The project examines a theme which has concerned researchers on seventeenth-century thought for some time: the relation between experience and reason in the formulation of Philosophy and Modern Science. Therefore, the project will be organizes in three main directions: 1) an epistemic direction, in which we reject the traditional distinction between empiricism and rationalism in classical thought; since rationalism is the mark of modern thought, the difference between "empiricists" and "rationalists" simply consists of the place which they attribute to experience and to reason in the basis of knowledge; 2) an ethical-political direction, in which we will examine the birth of modern ethical-political thought on the basis of the place that experience comes to occupy in the formulation of a theory of human actions whose rationality depends, exactly, on the relation between practical experience and its elaboration by reason; 3) an ontological direction, in which we will examine the relation between experience and reason, philosophy and science, theory and practice on the basis of the idea of the positive infinite or the actual infinite. (AU)