The Materialist Reception of the Cartesian Physics in Naples

The aim of this chapter is to show how the particular context in Naples during the Early Enlightenment represented a kind of laboratory from which emerged an original materialist reception of Cartesian thought. The particular conditions under which the novatores had to work led them to privilege the Cartesian physics and downplay the metaphysics which they considered either as an archaic remnant that Descartes had not managed to suppress or as a mere facade that allowed the French philosopher to “advance under disguise.”