Publication Details

Abstract

This closely specific paper is to be a contribution to a systematic elaboration of Slovak philosophy. The author has concentrated her attention on Metaphysics of the best known and scientifically fittest philosopher of Trnava University, J. B. Horváth. While the works of Trnava philosophers from the period after the reform of the university in the year 1753 are typical products of a transitory period and contain residua of scholasticism upon which ideas of natural philosophy of the New Age are piled, Horváth, being of younger generation, adheres unaquivocally to the most progressive traditions. As the first philosopher in this country he asserted Newton’s dynamics in cosmology definitively in this country, the „vis motrix41 of bodies and backed Newton’s laws against scholastic objections. In Metaphysics a mechanistic colouring of his cosmological views can be noticed. But his mechanicism incorporated also Newton’s idea of the world that served him as a presupposition that the world was subordinated to exact and simple natural laws. The scientific erudition modifies his theism into pantheism and deism. The gnozeological views are formulated by Horváth on the basis of his own objectively idealistic standpoint and in polemic with the views of the day initiated by empirism with rationalism.