THE HYPERBOLIC WAY TO TRUTH FROM BALZAC TO DESCARTES: “TOUTE HYPERBOLE TEND LÀ, DE NOUS AMENER À LA VÉRITÉ PAR L’EXCÈS DE LA VÉRITÉ, C’ESTÀDIRE PAR LE MENSONGE”1
Giulia Belgioioso*
In Th e History of Scepticism From Savonarola to Bayle Richard Popkin refers to Guez de Balzac only four times,2 and never alone: in every reference Balzac is joined with some other relevant intellectual fi gure, such as Antoine Arnauld, the Jesuits, Jean Silhon and—in two occur- rences—Descartes. In his view, these fi gures represent ‘Catholic fanati- cism,’ fi gures who set themselves against La Mothe Le Vayer, assumed to be a monster who threatens religion and faith. According to a hypothesis René Pintard advanced in 1937,3 but now much disputed, La Mothe Le Vayer’s Dialogues could be construed as the “méchant livre” to which Descartes refers in his letter to Mersenne4 of May 6, 1630. Popkin is right to introduce Balzac as the heir of Roman Catholicism as reformed by the Council of Trent, very far from humanist writers and reformers such as Erasmus and George Buchanan (1586–1582). My aim in this paper is not to rehabilitate Balzac, however. Rather, I am especially interested in his notion of “hyperbole”—what he called “the way to reach truth through lying”—for I believe Descartes took advantage of such a hyperbolic procedure in his fi rst three Meditations. Important evidence for this reading is to be found, as I will later show, in the discussion between Descartes and Antoine Arnauld.
* Università del Salento, Italy. 1 Pagination used: AT = René Descartes, Œuvres, éd. par Ch. Adam et P. Tannery, nouv. présent. par J. Beaude, P. Costabel, A. Gabbey et B. Rochot, 11 vols. (Paris, Vrin, 1964–1974); B = René Descartes, Tutte le lettere, ed. by G. Belgioioso, with the col- laboration of I. Agostini, F. Marrone, F. A. Meschini, M. Savini and of J.-R. Armogathe (Milano, Bompiani, 2005). 2 Richard Henry Popkin, Th e History of Scepticism from Savonarola to Bayle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 83, 85, 104, 136. 3 René Pintard, Descartes et Gassendi, Travaux du IXe Congrès International de Philosophie (Congrès Descartes), 3 vols. (Paris: Hermann, 1937), II 115–122. 4 B 31, 148. But see B 31, p. 147, note n. 19. 270 giulia belgioioso
Starting with two famous defi nitions of the XVIIth century as “the age of the ‘révolution scientifi que’ ” (Lenoble) and/or “the ‘âge de l’élo- quence” (Fumaroli),5 Bernard Beugnot, a great scholar of Guez de Balzac, has shown how the language of science is rhetorical: Dès lors que le souci du public impose ses exigences ou ses codes, dès lors que sont pris en compte les moyens d’assurer au texte scientifi que une effi cacité ou des eff ets propres à un auditore ou à des nsfi déterminées, il y a manifestation rhétorique.6 Beugnot, however, overlooked cases in which scientifi c and literary texts use the same rhetorical devices: that, in my opinion, is the case with Balzac’s hyperbole. Balzac, a renowned reformer of French literary language (together with Malherbe, who is, by unanimous agreement, the “reformator” of French poetry), fi rst turned hyperbole from a rhetori- cal fi gure into a methodological tool for searching aft er the truth. Th e philosopher Descartes inherited the insight that in all fi elds in which hyperbole operates it allows the most extraordinary achievements. As geometrical lines, hyperbolae are used to make optical lenses “useful to detect whether any inhabitant lives on the Moon”;7 in the case of doubt, hyperbolic doubt is the road to reach the highest truths of metaphysics, such as the immortality of the soul and the existence of God. Accord- ingly, in the Cartesian texts we fi nd hyperbolic lenses invented to correct ‘false’ images produced by spherical lenses due to the phenomenon of aberration. But we fi nd also hyperbolic doubts: they are the roads a thinker has to travel to rid himself of falsehood and mistakes, through the maximum amplifi cation of falsehood and mistake. My defense of this hypothesis will come in a number of stages. First, I will discuss some essential elements of Balzac’s and Descartes’s education. Th en I will set out a few but, in my opinion, signifi cant examples, the defi nitions of rhetorical and geometrical hyperboles/æ and how they were treated in the XVIIth century. And fi nally, I will examine how the term “hyperbole” changed meaning in passing from Balzac to Descartes.
5 Robert Lenoble, La révolution scientifi que de XVIIe siècle (Paris: PUF, 1958), Marc Fumaroli, L’âge de l’éloquence (Genève: Droz, 1980). 6 Bernard Beugnot, “De quelques lieux rhétoriques du discours scientifi que clas- sique”, Revue de synthèse (1981): 101–102 (esp. 12). 7 See also To Beeckman, 23.4.1619 (B 4, 11).