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1992
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Manlio Iofrida, « Matérialisme et hétérogénéité dans la philosophie de John Toland », Dix-Huitième Siècle, ID : 10.3406/dhs.1992.1850
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Materialism and heterogeneity in Toland's philosophy. In his Letters to Serena, Toland proposes a materialistic pantheism which breaks with Descartes's conception of passive matter, maintaining a sort of balance between vitalism and mechanism. In Pantheisticon, Toland's interest in biological problems, and references to geology and natural history, show a new attention to the problem of individuality and its relationship with totality or the world-system. This attention is confirmed by the atomism derived from CI. Bérigard's Circulus Pisanus. Thus, reason is at the centre of Toland's philosophy, but it is mainly the multifacious heterogeneous reason of biological science. That is why in Toland's concept of matter we find original differences and activity. Toland's conception of Being is marked by heterogeneity and dynamism, which shows that his thought, although classical in many respects, goes beyond classical metaphysics on some crucial points.