Pierre Gassendi*

Biography as a Medium of Philosophy and the History of Philosophy: Pierre Gassendi*

Michael Weichenhan

And now to begin with the De vita moribusque Epicuri, which I have divided into eight books or booklets. The first and second books will contain an unadorned depiction of Epicurus’ life and death, thereupon a short list of his works and then of his intimates and successors. As his moral conduct must also be treated—a point on which his reputation has been maligned—a third book will be necessary to indicate the cause and instigators of this malignity. The fourth book will then repudiate the charge of impiety made against him on account of his lifestyle, the fifth the charge of malice, the sixth the charge of gluttony, the seventh the charge of lasciviousness, and the eight the charge of despising the liberal arts. For these are the main accusations brought against Epicurus. There is no need to distinguish the Epicurus treated here from others of the same name. Diogenes Laertius mentions three others:1 Epicurus the son of Leonteus and Themista, Epicurus of Magnesia, and Epicurus the master-at-arms. One could also add another Epicurus, the son of Metrodorus,2 whom our Epicurus mentions in his will.Thucydides names an Epicurus who was the father of Paches,3 Plutarch refers to another, a companion of Demophilus,4 and Galen yet another whose green bandage promised great powers.5 But we are speaking of the philosopher Epicurus, who is sufficiently well known.

* My thanks are due to Patrick Baker, colleague and friend, for translating this essay. For a much expanded treatment of the topic, see: Michael Weichenhan, Leben unter dem Blick eines vortrefflichen Mannes. Die Biographie als Medium der Philosophie bei Pierre Gassendi (Nordhausen: T. Bautz, 2015). 1 Diog. Laert. 10.26. 2 Metrodorus of Lampsacus, married to the hetaira Leontion, was a favorite student of Epicu- rus; the will mentions both Epicurus and a son of Polyaenus, stipulating that both should be financially supported as long as they belong to the school. See Diog. Laert. 10.19. 3 See Thucydides 3.18.4, where the name is actually Epicures; Paches was an Athenian general in 428/427b.c. 4 See Plutarch, Vit. Phoc. 38.2. 5 An empiricist from Pergamon and a teacher of Galen, a fact that is attested by the portion

You have two images of him. One is copied from a gem that the excel- lent Eric van der Putte6 gave to me when I once went to Leuven, which he described as follows in his letters: “Behold, my friend, in these outlines the still-living mind of a great man. It is Epicurus. Thus were his eyes, thus his countenance. Behold the image, worthy of these outlines, of these hands, and of the eyes of all.”7 The other comes from a statue in Rome, standing at the entrance to the park of the Villa Ludovisi. Our friend Naudé8 gave it to me, basing the visage on a study by Henri Howen, a painter in the retinue of the same cardinal.9 Place here whichever one you want, since, as you see, they are quite similar to one another. Furthermore, I recall that both resemble another image owned by the nobleman Gaspard de Mon-

of the commentary to Hippocrates’ Epidemics that is only preserved in Arabic. See Galen, “Galens Kommentare zu dem vi. Buche der Epidemien des Hippokrates: Buch vi 6,5–viii: Aus dem Arabischen ins Deutsche übertragen von Franz Pfaff,” in In Hippocratis Epidemi- arum: Librum vi commentaria i–viii, ed. Ernst Wenkebach and Franz Pfaff, Corpus Medi- corum Graecorum 5:10, 2, 2 (Berlin: in aedibus Academiae litterarum, 1956), 353–507, at 412. Gassendi’s source is Galen, De compositione medicamentorum per genera v. See Galen, Opera omnia, ed. Carolus Gottlieb Kühn, 20 vols. (Leipzig, 1821–1833), 13:807; and Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, ed. Georg Wissowa, Suppl. vol. 9, 64. 6 Eric van der Putte, also known as Erycius Puteanus (1574–1646), was a philologist in Leu- ven and one of the central inspirers of Gassendi’s Epicurus project; see Pierre Gassendi, Opera Omnia, 6 vols. (Lyon: Sumptibus Laurentii Anisson, & Ioan. Bapt. Devenet, 1658; fac- simile reprint Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann, 1964), 6:393b–394b. Puteanus’ fondness for Epicurus, like Gassendi’s, was based on his character; see Erycius Puteanus, Disserta- tionum ludicrarum et amoenitatum scriptores varii, editio nova et aucta (Leiden, 1644), exerc. 17, pp. 582–586, esp. 582: “philosophus is demum est, qui vitam instruit.” 7 Erycius Puteanus, Epistolarum reliquiae centuria v et postrema (Louvain, 1612), 142–143. 8 Gabriel Naudé (1600–1653). The letter of 6 March 1632 sent with the drawing is in Gassendi, Opera omnia, 5:404b–406b and Gabriel Naudé, Epistolae (Geneva, 1667), 221–237; cf. Bernard Frischer, The Sculpted Word: Epicureanism and Philosophical Recruitment in Ancient Greece (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1982), 138–140; and Sylvie Taussig, “Gas- sendi, Naudé et La Mothe Le Vayer,” in Libertinage et philosophie au xviie siècle, 13 vols. to date (Saint-Étienne: Publications de l’université de Saint-Étienne, 1996–), vol. 2 (1997): La Mothe Le Vayer et Naudé, 63–74, at 72. 9 I have not been able to identify this painter; cf. Gassendi, Operaomnia, 6:405a: “Eminentissimi Cardinalis mei pictor Henricus ab Hovven.” The cardinal is Giovanni Francesco Guidi di Bagno (1578–1641), elevated in 1629. Naudé became his librarian in 1631. See Gabriel Naudé, Bibliographia politica (Venice, 1633), 7; idem, Epistolae, “Elogium,” 3r/v; and Gassendi, Opera omnia, 6:402b–403a.