L'angelo e la bestia. Metafisica dell'istinto tra Pierre Chanet e Marin Cureau de La Chambre

In this essay I address the debate between Pierre Chanet and Marin Cureau de La Chambre on animal instinct, analyzing it and connecting it to the question of the relationship between God and secondary causes. While Chanet considers instinctive actions as the result of a direct intervention by God, that would conduct his creatures beyond their natural limits, Cureau places them in the cognitive structure that God has given to the animals, doing of instinctive actions natural actions in the strict sense. Starting from that, Cureau can introduce a bizarre analogy between animal's innate capability to act in the environment beyond any previous experience and the innate knowledge of angels. This comparison is strongly criticized by Chanet and probably persuades Cureau to change his presentation of the soul in his late masterpiece, "Le Systéme de l'âme". My conclusion is that both Chanet's and Cureau's accounts for animal instinct are functional to an anthropocentric metaphysics that keeps human soul as an intellective, individual and separable substance; but they also provide - especially with Cureau - a good example of a compromise between hylomorphism, dualism and mechanism.