Menin, Marco <br/><br/>
The Morality of the Stars 

 -  2015.<br/>							 
<br/><br/> 21 
<br/><br/> Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s cosmological meditation proves invaluable for understanding his philosophy – generally overlooked by scholars – and especially the anthropocentric providentialism that is at the heart of his epistemology. Saint-Pierre’s astronomical beliefs are articulated in two major theoretical works : The Studies of Nature in 1784, and more notably in The Harmonies of Nature, written over the last twenty years of his life and published posthumously in 1814. The ninth and last book of this work is specifically devoted to cosmology, as its title indicates: The Harmonies of the Sky, or Worlds. Bernardin firmly rejects the interpretations of the Cosmos, like those of Laplace, that consider God a useless recourse for explaining celestial mechanics, in order to analyze the only principle that he recognizes as timeless and universal: divine providence. Drawing upon specific methodological premises (rejection of synthesis, primacy of feeling, intuitive method, etc.), Saint Pierre constructs a theological cosmology that combines a «meditated sky» inspired by Huygens and Herschel, and a «dreamt sky», characterized by mystical ideas and an obvious component of moral normativity. This original and occasionally fecund synergy of different inspirations is particularly noticeable in issues relative to the plurality of worlds and to the habitability of the Sun.