Sujet : Bernier, François

Aperçu du corrigé : Bernier, François

Bernier was a minor figure who influenced the history of philosophy out of all proportion to his own strictly philosophical abilities. He was effective as a propagandist in the debates over the analysis of matter, and especially as a popularizer of the views of Pierre Gassendi, whose nominalism he sought to apply with greater consistency. Bernier was and remains the best-known disciple of Gassendi, whose eyes he is supposed to have closed at his death. In the seventeenth and for at least the next two centuries, Bernier was rather less known as a philosopher than as a traveller, especially for his Memoirs… of the Grand Mogul's Empire (1670-1), a classic that detailed his ten-year visit to the Indian subcontinent. Dryden based his Aureng-Zebe on this work, and Locke, a physician like Bernier, was interested in it, particularly as a source for his investigation of religious psychology under the rubric of 'enthusiasm'.