Amours. Fénelon, Descartes e l’amore di Dio

This article illustrates a possible example of the ‘philosophical history of love’ proposed by Paolo Cristofolini through an inquiry into Fénelon’s conception of love, which is one of the main targets of the seventeenth-century "querelle du pur amour". In particular, it demonstrates that Fénelon’s opposition between self-love and the love of God depends more on the definition of love which Descartes presented in his famous letter to Chanut on February 1, 1647, and Passions of the Soul than on Augustine’s distinction between two kinds of love as elaborated in The City of God. After recalling the key elements of discussions on quietism that took place in France at the end of the seventeenth century as well as Fénelon’s position on love, the article addresses Descartes’s notion of love and clarifies its connections with Aquinas’ analysis of the love of God. The conclusion suggests that a commonality of these philosophers was the value they ascribed to the human will in attaining God, a position which was repeatedly accused of Pelagianism