Akademik

The Cistercian foundation which was the home of the Jansenist sect in France. In 1662 Arnauld and Pierre Nicole (1625–95) published La Logique, ou l’art de penser, often called the Port-Royal Logic. It showed an impatience with traditional Aristotelian or scholastic logic, and sympathizes with modern movements of thought, in particular the methodology of ‘clear and distinct’ ideas of Descartes, and his geometric and rationalistic approach to the investigation of nature. As Jansenists, the members of Port-Royal believed in predestination, and the utter impossibility of words, prayers, or deeds altering one's pre-ordained fate of going to heaven or hell. The tragedian Racine was of a Jansenist family, and the historian and critic C.-A. Sainte-Beuve (1804–69) perhaps understandably lost his faith while writing the history of the monastery.