Filosofia malebranchiana e tradizione cartesiana nel primo illuminismo napoletano

Malebranchean Philosophy and Cartesian Tradition in the Early Neapolitan Enlightenment. The aim of this article is to show how the particular context in Naples during the Early Enlightenment represented a kind of laboratory from which emerged an original reception and use of Malebranche and Cartesian thought. The particular conditions under which the novatores had to work lead them to privilege the Cartesian physics and downplay the metaphysics which they considered either as an archaic remnant that Descartes had not managed suppress or as mere facade that allowed the French philosopher to “advance under disguise”. This being so, the particular attention they paid to Malebranche gave them an occasion to refute the opponents of the Cartesian philosophy