Les libertins néerlandais / The Dutch Libertines

This two-day workshop is dedicated to the 17th-century Dutch libertine tradition broadly construed. It takes a transversal look on political, theological, moral, and philosophical libertinism, and addresses themes of Machiavellism and reason of state, enthusiasm and Anabaptism, pornography and sexual liberation, atheism and spinozism, etc. It is planned in view of the 2022 volume of the book series Libertinage et Philosophie à l’époque classsique, dir. N. Gengoux, P. Girard, M. Lærke (Paris : Classiques Garnier). The work shop is organised in collaboration between the Maison Française d’Oxford, the Labex Comod (Université de Lyon), and the Oxford Centre for Intellectual History (CIH).

Programme (NB : ALL TIMES ARE UK)

Thursday 28 October

13:00-13:15 Welcome

13:15-14:00 Jo Spaans (Utrecht University), “Twists and Turns. The Life and Works of Berend Hakvoord.”

14:00-14:45 Maxime Rovere (Rome), “Lights and Words : Pieter Balling’s Account of Truth and Reason in the Collegiant Practices.”

14h45-15h00 Pause

15h15-16h00 Eric Jorink (Huygens Institute, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences / Leiden University), “Cartesian sex. Dutch Anatomists on Female and Male bodies, Procreation and Lust.”

16h00-16h45 Karen E. Hollewand (Utrecht University), “Sex and Scandal : Dutch scholars in polemics and prison.”

16h45-17h00 Pause

17h00-17h45 Catherine Secretan (IHRIM, ENS de Lyon), “Were there Libertines in the Dutch Republic ?”

Friday 29 October

9:00-9:45 Mogens Lærke (Maison Française d’Oxford), “Homo Politicus : Spinoza, Pacificus a Lapide, and the Politics of Flattery and Friendship.”

9:45-10:15 Sonja Lavaert (Vrije Universiteit Brussel VUB), “Considérations politiques d’un libre penseur : Franciscus van den Enden.”

10:15-10:30 Pause

10:30-11:15 Jonathan Israel (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton), “Spinoza’s Libertine ‘French Circle’.”

11:15-12:00 Wiep van Bunge (Erasmus University, Rotterdam), “Seventeenth-Century Dutch Libertines : Classicists, Spinozists, and Travelogues.”

12:00-12:15 Pause

12h15-13h00 Barbara de Negroni (Saint Quen), “Histoire, critique, tolérance : les enjeux de l’Histoire des juifs de Basnage de Beauval.”