Dr. Eszter Kovács

Keynote Title: About some lesser-known influences on the essay On Freedom: Malebranche

Abstract: Émilie Du Châtelet’s essay On Freedom presents an interesting blend of influences to form an original account of free agency. Among the complex network of influences, that of Malebranche is less evident. He is not named in the essay although his impact can be shown in the reflection on the argument of our inner feeling of being free. However, Du Châtelet’s unpublished manuscript notebooks contain some other notes taken from Malebranche, one of which expressly concerns his idea about the end of motion (cessation du mouvement) and divine will. I will thus suggest that Du Châtelet’s study of Malebranche was more important at the time of composing On Freedom than thought before.

CV:

Eszter Kovács (PhD)

Postdoctoral research fellow in the ERC StG Project VERITRACE (https://veritrace.eu/ )

Eszter Kovács earned her PhD in French literature under joint supervision at the ENS de Lyon and the University of Szeged (2008) and her PhD in philosophy at the Eötvös Loránd University (Budapest). She is specializing in the philosophy of Denis Diderot and Émilie Du Châtelet.