CHAPTER NINE

CAUSES, CONSERVATION AND CONCURRENCE

Wie niet en heeft te recht den Schepper leeren kennen Die sal sijn herte noyt tot rechte wijsheyd wennen

Anna Maria van Schurman

Voetius saw great dangers for theology. Having for some time played a waiting game, he first struck at the New in December 1641.2 Displaying an extraordinary capacity for foreseeing what was to be expected from the mechanical standpoint, Voetius listed a catalogue of possible consequences of the New Philosophy in his essay On the Natures and Substantial Forms of Things. Whether it was a case of Platonizing, occasionalist, Spinozist, or Leibnizian radicalisations of , all were more or less foreseen and rejected by Voetius in 1641. At the same time, these interpretations of the New Philosophy were based on old antagonisms. We have already seen in what way objections to the occasionalist theory of the Islamic Mutakallimûm, which had for centuries formed part of the received commentary tradition, re-surfaced in Voetius' essay against Descartes and other anti-Aristotelians of his kind. Such objections might well be relevant to seventeenth-century discussions,3 but they had previously been

Two lines from a poem written by Anna Maria van Schurman at the occasion of ' Opening Sermon of University, on 13 March 1636: "He who has not rightly learned to know the Creator [of things], will never accommodate his heart to proper wisdom." The poem was printed at the end of the finer edition which was printed of Voetius' Sermoen by iEgidius and Petrus Roman, the University printers. See also: Duker Π, p. 134. On Van Schurman, see chapter 8, note 44. 2 See section 1.4, above. For instance, Voetius rightly observes that in Cartesian philosophy, there would be no causes secundas. His warning is formulated in terms of the objections made to the Mutakallimûm and a variety of Platonic and atomist thinkers. It nevertheless does anticipate the ideas Malebranche was later to draw from Cartesian philosophy. In the case of the Mutakalllimûm moreover, it is interesting 262 CHAPTER NINE formulated with respect to other rivalling Aristotelianism. Cartesianism was accordingly seen as a revival of old errors.

9.1 Aristotelian Causes, Common Sense and Christian Theology If the merit of new philosophical systems and schools could be evaluated in terms of a position for or against Aristotle, it was the singularity of the Aristotelian theory of causes that made this possible. The great question of Greek philosophy had been how to explain natural change. It was still alive in the discussions between Voetius and Descartes in the sense that if individual forms—which put potency into act—were rejected, natural change would have to be explained by alternative sources of action. Such alternatives were not thought to seriously rival the "sane and sober philosophy" of Scholasticism. Indeed, what would be won by the re-introduction of Platonic Forms, of separate intelligences, of the God of the "occasionalist" philosophies, of fantastic atoms displaying a force of their own, or, finally of a world-soul moving the matter of its body? The anti-Aristotelians are of the opinion that one could do without the forms since the effects of natural objects can be sufficiently explained by, and reduced to, other principles.4 However, says Voetius, none of these philosophers agree as to what should replace them: For the ancients, whom Basso praises and Aristotle refutes in Book Π of the [Physics]5, explain them in one way, modem philosophers in that Aquinas argues that their theory is at odds with what experience teaches us. If God directly causes all natural action, we would be deceived by our judgement of sense. This argument strikes us because of its obvious Cartesian ring. In fact it hints at the opposition that exists between Aristotelian and non-Aristotelian philosophies as regards the truthfulness of common sense experience. As in the case of the Mutakallimûm, likewise in that of Descartes, perception of sensible qualities is thought to have become problematic since it is no longer immediate. 4 Voetius, Narratio, p. 44 / Select. Dispp. I, p. 876 / Responsio, p. 23 / Querelle, p. 109. Voetius does not mention the Physics as such, but refers to "lib. 2. Akroas." Now Aristotle's "akroamatic" or esoteric writings are those which were supposedly not written for a large audience, but solely for use in the Lyceum. The Physics form only one example of the numerous texts of this type which have survived. Accordingly, Theo Verbeek for instance also mentions the second book of the Metaphysics as a possible reference for what Voetius has in mind (Querelle, p. 473, note 80). However, not only does the context of finding the right principles of