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The Search for the Historical Gassendi The Search for the Historical Gassendi Margaret J. Osler University of Calgary Writing about the history of science and the history of philosophy in- volves assumptions about the role of context and about the relationships between past and present ideas. Some historians emphasize the context, concentrating on the intellectual, personal, and social factors that affect the way earlier thinkers have approached their subject. Analytic philoso- phers take a critical approach, considering the logic and merit of the arguments of past thinkers almost as though they are engaging in contem- porary debates. Some philosophers use the ideas of historical ªgures to support their own philosophical agendas. Scholarly studies of the French natural philosopher Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655) exemplify many of these approaches. What, then, is context? At the most basic level, the context is the text itself. The most acontextual scholars examine only snippets of the text. In- terested in ideas about necessity, arguments for the existence of God, or ideas about matter and gravity, they mine the writings of historical ªgures for their views on these questions without considering the author’s aim for the book or project as a whole. This approach has frequently characterized discussions of Gassendi’s philosophy. His major work, the Syntagma Philo- sophicum, is a massive treatise in difªcult neo-Latin, daunting to all but the hardiest (or most foolish) of scholars. Consequently, of those philosophers and historians who deal with Gassendi at all, many rely on the bits that have been translated into English or French or those that deal with speciªc topics and seldom consider the entirety of his work, but the work as a whole gives the parts their meaning. Gassendi aimed to develop a com- plete philosophy to replace Aristotelianism. He accepted the ancient idea that a complete philosophy consists of three major parts: Logic, Physics, and Ethics. He organized his magnum opus accordingly (Gassendi [1658] Perspectives on Science 2011, vol. 19, no. 2 ©2011 by The Massachusetts Institute of Technology 212 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/POSC_a_00037 by guest on 27 September 2021 Perspectives on Science 213 1964, 1:26–30). In the manner of the humanists, he sought an ancient model for his philosophizing (see Osler 2000, pp. 93–208; Gassendi [1958] 1964, 1:30). For a variety of reasons—including the fact that he found Epicureanism the ancient philosophy most compatible with his own voluntarist theology—he selected the Greek atomist and hedonist Epicurus (341 b.c.–270 b.c.) for his model (Osler 1994, p. 42). As a Cath- olic priest, Gassendi sought to transform Epicureanism into a theologi- cally acceptable philosophy. The project of baptizing Epicurus was thus the aim and goal of the Syntagma Philosophicum.1 An important reason for the relative neglect of Gassendi’s philosophy stems from the paucity of texts available in modern languages. The difªculty and length of his writing poses an obstacle to many scholars. Fortunately, a slow but steady stream of new translations is providing an improved basis for considering his philosophy. Although his exchange with Descartes—the Fifth “Objections” to the Meditations and Descartes’ “Reply”—is readily available in most modern languages, it gives a limited and somewhat distorted view of his philosophy. The exchange follows Descartes’ agenda in the Meditations and thus fails to convey the nature ei- ther of Gassendi’s Epicurean project or of his concerns and involvement with the sciences of the day. Seeing Gassendi only in relation to Descartes has distorted his image in much English-language scholarship, where ana- lytic philosophers have considered his philosophy only in terms of his re- action to Descartes (in whose ideas they tend to be far more interested) without appreciating the broader compass of his philosophy. Further study of the relative roles of Gassendi and Descartes in seventeenth-century thought as well as their inºuence on later thinkers is needed to elucidate the nature of the seventeenth-century intellectual community as well as the sources of modern philosophical prejudices (see Osler 2010). Bernard Rochot published facing-page translations of two of Gassendi’s works: the Exercitationes paradoxicae adversus Aristoteleos (1624), Gassendi’s ªrst published work which is a skeptical attack on the Aristotelians; and the Disquisitio Metaphysica (1644) (see Gassendi 1959, 1962). Despite some inevitable ºaws in Rochot’s translations, these books made impor- tant aspects of Gassendi’s writings accessible to a wider audience. Unfor- tunately, they did not deal explicitly with either Gassendi’s Epicurean project, a topic on which Rochot had also written an important mono- graph (Rochot 1944), or with his broader interests in the sciences and nat- ural philosophy. The only translation of Gassendi’s works into English is The Selected Works of Pierre Gassendi (1972). In this edition, Craig B. Brush selected 1. On Gassendi’s motives and theological orientation, see Osler (1994, Chaps. 2–4). Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/POSC_a_00037 by guest on 27 September 2021 214 The Search for the Historical Gassendi snippets from several of Gassendi’s works. In harmony with the positivist historiography of science of the early 1970s, he selected passages that con- cerned logic and physics, neglecting to include any of Gassendi’s extensive writings on theology or ethics, both of which play central roles in the Syntagma Philosophicum and other writings. Although this volume is useful for what it covers, it presents only a limited view of Gassendi’s philosophi- cal concerns. Recently, the availability of translated texts is improving. Sylvie Taus- sig has published a series of French translations of sections of the Syntagma Philosophicum. To date, she has translated Books Three and Four of the ªrst section of the “Physics”—“On the Material Principle” (2009) and “On the Efªcient Principle, or the Causes of Things” (2006)—as well as Book Three of the “Ethics”—“On Liberty, On Fortune, On Fate, and On Divi- nation” (2008). These three sections of the Syntagma Philosophicum lay out the foundations of Gassendi’s philosophy. They formulate his atomism, his notion of causality, aspects of his theology, and, in Book III of the “Eth- ics”, his rejection of the hard determinism of Calvin and Hobbes. Taussig has translated the two sections of the Syntagma Philosophicum that most clearly express Gassendi’s theology in contrast to the studies by analytic philosophers that tend to downgrade or overlook that aspect of his thought. Taussig has also translated Gassendi’s Latin letters from Volume 6 of his Opera Omnia. An enormous set of notes to the letters, published in a separate volume, is deeply ºawed by Taussig’s failure to mention the work of other scholars, as well as by factual and bibliographical errors. She has neither translated the letters, also in Volume 6, that others wrote to Gassendi, nor has she dealt with additional letters that exist in various Eu- ropean archives. Nonetheless, her translations have made far more of Gassendi’s writings accessible to a wider audience, and this development bodes well for an increasingly thorough and nuanced understanding of his ideas. In addition to her translations, Taussig has produced two books dealing with Gassendi’s life as a philosopher. In one, Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655): Introduction à la vie savante, Taussig summarizes various aspects of Gas- sendi’s life and career from 1621–1655, the years covered by the published correspondence. Basically summarizing the letters published in Volume 6 of the Opera omnia, this book has sections on Gassendi’s biography for these years, the nature of the correspondence, Gassendi’s science, his Epicurean project, his interactions with various notables, and his role in the history of his time. In fact, the book is little more than a topical analysis of the letters. Despite the inclusion of an extensive—but incomplete—bibliog- raphy of scholarship on Gassendi, the notes to Taussig’s text refer to the Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/POSC_a_00037 by guest on 27 September 2021 Perspectives on Science 215 letters but barely mentions any secondary sources. A second volume edited by Taussig and Anthony Turner, Mémoire de Gassendi: Vies et célébrations écrits avant 1700, contains the early biographies of Gassendi. Each of these works recounts the same series of events, although each emphasizes differ- ent aspects of Gassendi’s life. They all recount his birth to modest parents in the village of Champtercier a few miles outside of Digne in the region of Haute Provence. They note Gassendi’s precocious interest in the stars, his piety, and his intellectual acumen that resulted in his attending school in Digne and proceeding on to university in Aix. At a young age he de- cided on a career in the Church, studied both theology and philosophy, and was later ordained as a priest. They trace Gassendi’s interactions with various scholars and savants in France, including his friend and patron Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc and the intellectual broker, Marin Mersenne. Ultimately Gassendi was appointed to the Collège Royal as a Professor of Mathematics. Each of the Vies describes Gassendi’s ªnal days and death in the home of Henri Louis Habert de Montmor—a patron of natural philosophers, where he lived for the last two years of his life. The editors of this volume focus on the literary qualities of these documents. They note, for example, the parallels between Antoine de La Poterie’s manuscript and Gassendi’s Life of Peiresc, which, in turn, reºects the form of his Life, Opinions, and Morals of Epicurus. Gassendi emerges in this ac- count not only as a restorer of Epicurus, but also as an Epicurean him- self—leading a life of moderation and enjoying the joys of friendship, al- beit as a pious follower of that sect.
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