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 philosophers take a critical approach, considering the logic and merit of the arguments of past thinkers almost as though they are engaging in contemporary 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 complete 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]

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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 either 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 analytic 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 important 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 natural 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).

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snippets from several of Gassendi’s works. In harmony with the positivist historiography of science of the early 1970s, he selected passages that concerned 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 philosophical 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

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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 different 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 account not only as a restorer of Epicurus, but also as an Epicurean himself—leading a life of moderation and enjoying the joys of friendship, al- beit as a pious follower of that sect. Nicolas Taxil’s funeral oration notes parallels between Gassendi’s life and the life of Jesus. And Samuel Sorbière portrays him as a sort of Christian Socrates. The fact that these ªrst biographers impose set literary forms on Gassendi’s life raises questions about the very possibility of writing biographies free from our own preconcep- tions. Hence this book has interesting parallels with the recently published Early Biographies of Newton (Iliffe, Keynes and Higgitt 2005), which reveals how Newton’s ªrst biographers labored (often against the evidence) to portray him as a hero, a genius, and a paragon of Anglican virtue. Jean Peyroux has published a Latin-French-facing page translation of Gassendi’s two “Letters” on the science of motion, De motu impresso à Motore translato and De proportione qua gravia decidentia accelerantur (2001). In these works, published in Latin in Volume 3 of the Opera omnia, Gassendi pre- sented the results of Galileo’s work on motion, and published the earliest “correct” formulation of the principle of inertia. In making these letters more widely accessible, Peyroux has facilitated the scholarly assessment of Gassendi’s role in seventeenth-century physics. Gassendi’s Epicurean project is the key to understanding his arguments

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and assertions in the Syntagma Philosophicum. In discussing atomism, Gassendi addressed the concerns of early seventeenth-century natural philosophers. While he was genuinely interested in articulating a new philosophy of nature and in ªnding a convincing answer to the skeptics (see Popkin 1979), he had another concern, largely foreign to the twentieth- century, and that concern was theological. In the aftermath of the Refor- mation, the Humanist revival of a multitude of ancient philosophies, the skeptical crisis, and the decline of Aristotelianism which had been closely linked to both natural philosophy and theology, European thinkers had profound worries about the rise of materialism and atheism. Gassendi’s concern with these issues is easy to document. He never discussed problems about atomism as merely physical or mathematical problems. For example, he was not so much concerned to prove the existence of God, something he took for granted, as he was to establish the rule of divine providence in the world in order to refute Epicurean anti-providentialism (Gassendi [1658] 1964, 1:283–337). Similarly, he was not concerned with the mind-body problem in the manner of modern philosophers. Rather, he wanted to prove the immateriality and immortality of the human soul in order to refute Epicurean (and Hobbesian) materialism and thereby stipu- lating the limits to his mechanization of nature ([1658] 1964, 2:620–58). In divorcing Gassendi’s interest in atomism from his theological and ethi- cal concerns, some scholars have failed to consider Gassendi’s own conception of his Epicurean project.2 In addition to the context deªned by the philosopher’s project, a broader—but still intellectual—context can be found in the immediate cultural context of the day. A number of Gassendi’s philosophical views, notably those regarding fortune, fate, and divination, make sense only within the context of post-Reformation debates about free will and divine foreknowledge ([1658] 1964, 2:811–860; see also Osler 1994, chap. 3). These issues had wide-ranging relationships with even broader institu- tional and political controversies. Finally there is the long history of ideas that forms the context within which these issues arose. For example, Gas- sendi’s views on divine will grew out of the medieval distinction between God’s absolute and ordained power and the ancient philosophers and early Church fathers that Gassendi regularly cited in elaborating his ideas. Gassendi’s thought has most frequently appeared in two scholarly ven- ues: in comparison with Descartes and as one of the seminal ªgures instru- mental in creating the mechanical philosophy. Scholars in both settings

2. Here I take issue with Olivier René Bloch (1971) who argues that Gassendi was really a materialist and inserted theological material into the Syntagma Philolsophicum simply as a ruse to avoid persecution by the Church.

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have tended to ignore the broader context of his thinking. Philosophers— largely analytic philosophers—know Gassendi mainly from the ªfth set of “Objections” to Descartes’ Meditations. Here they tend to focus on Gassendi’s criticisms of Descartes’ arguments for the existence of God, on his theory of matter and mind, and on the two philosophers’ divergent approaches to human knowledge. Because Gassendi’s “Objections V” was es- sentially an occasional piece, it does not contain a systematic account of his philosophy and natural philosophy. Similarly, treating Gassendi as one of the primary founders of the mechanical philosophy has often led scholars to form a rather truncated view of his philosophy. For example Marie Boas (Hall), in a scant ªve-page discussion, conªned her discussion to a consideration of his atomism and his theory of the properties of atoms, but did not touch on his reasons for modifying the Epicurean theory (1952, pp. 429–433). The mid-twentieth-century practice of basing histories of science on topical snippets did nothing to enlarge the historical understanding of Gassendi’s project (see Dijksterhuis 1961, pp. 425–431). Several factors contributed to these partial approaches to Gassendi’s thought. His collected works ªll six massive tomes. He wrote in a com- plex Neo-Latin. And in contrast to Descartes’ approach to writing philosophy, a style that modern philosophers have generally adopted, Gassendi wrote as a Renaissance humanist, larding his text with quotations from classical authors. As Lynn Joy noted, he revisited virtually the entire history of philosophy on the question at hand before expressing his own opinion (1987). Modern scholars and philosophers ªnd this style difªcult to penetrate, especially when they are seeking clear arguments about issues of current interest expressed in logical schemata. In addition to stylistic problems, Gassendi’s texts challenge the prejudices of both historians of science and analytic philosophers who claim to be interested in the history of philosophy. Looking for modern issues in the past, these scholars have frequently neglected or rejected the relevance of themes that Gassendi considered central to his philosophizing. For example, one modern commentator states that “[i]n his Syntagma philosophicum [. . .], Gassendi bafºingly posited a special human soul, infused by God at conception that was nonatomic and incorporeal” (Wilson 2008, p. 122). This author’s bafºement, while reºecting her commitment to secular materialism, misses the fundamental aim of Gassendi’s project, namely, to modify Epicureanism to ªt in with his own theological commitments so that seventeenth-century Christian philosophers would ªnd it a useful foundation for natural philosophy. Doing so required rejecting the materialism of the ancient Epicureans and asserting the existence of an immaterial, immortal soul. In addition to ªnding it difªcult to take Gas- sendi’s theological concerns seriously—for what respectable analytic phi-

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losopher would ªnd merit in early modern Christian theology?—these in- terpreters project modern preoccupations onto the historical ªgure who may not have shared them at all. Taken to the extreme, these anachronistic approaches have obscured our vision of the historical Gassendi. Some of the most inºuential historians among those who have formu- lated and promoted the historiography of the Scientiªc Revolution, have equally imposed their own prejudices on Gassendi and have thus contributed to the neglect of a broader understanding of his philosophy and his role in seventeenth-century thought. Alexandre Koyré identiªed the mathematization of nature, which he considered to be a form of Platon- ism, as the key to the positive developments of the sciences in the seventeenth century. Comparing Gassendi to Galileo, Koyré downplayed Gas- sendi’s contribution to the science of his time. He lamented Gassendi’s empiricist epistemology, which he thought contradicted his ontology of atoms and the void, and he faulted Gassendi for failing to make the modern distinction between science and philosophy (1968). Basically, Koyré criticized Gassendi for not being Galileo. Koyré’s anachronistic judgment prevented him from seeing the broader signiªcance of Gassendi’s project. Completely failing to understand Gassendi’s humanist project to restore and baptize Epicureanism, Richard S. Westfall skewered him with devastating wit: His principal work, Syntagma Philosophicum (1658), is an unreadable compilation of everything ever said on the topics discussed, a compilation further which intended to exhaust discussable topics. The work grew like Topsy, and was published in its ultimate form only as a posthumous work, when the author was ªnally beyond the possibility of adding and patching. In a word, Gassendi was the origi- nal scissors and paste man, and his book contains all the inconsistencies of eclectic compilations. At least three different conceptions of motion are put forward in it with no effort whatever to reconcile them. From the tradition one system appealed to him above the others, however, and the Syntagma was unmistakably an exposition of atomism. (Westfall 1971, p. 39) Both Koyré and Westfall imposed on Gassendi their own rather similar views on what science should be and, consequently, failed to understand the nature of their subject’s project. Given that traditional historians of science have not found much of value in Gassendi’s works, how has he fared in the history of philosophy? Starting in the seventeenth century, historians of philosophy emphasized three aspects of Gassendi’s philosophy: the status of his theological commitments, his project to restore Epicureanism, and his differences with

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Descartes. The question of Gassendi’s piety and the possibility that he was a closet materialist have haunted his reputation. Scholars viewed the possibility that he was a skeptic or a materialist as either a virtue or a lia- bility, depending on their own circumstances and outlook. His reputation among his contemporaries does not support the accusation of materialism. Natural philosophers in the seventeenth century did not consider Gas- sendi to be a dangerous free thinker (such as Thomas Hobbes, whom they reviled for his alleged atheism and materialism). The pious Robert Boyle (1627–1691), for example, rejected the Epicureans who denied divine providence and design and explained the origin of the world in terms of chance, but he always considered Gassendi to be an exception.3 From the writings of Pierre Bayle (1647–1708) through the early twentieth century, most historians of philosophy have emphasized Gassendi’s restoration of Epicurus. Although they also mentioned the notorious libertines, mate- rialists, and free thinkers—some of whom were Gassendi’s friends—they tended not to ªnd Gassendi guilty by association (see Osler 2005). The tide turned in 1943 with the publication of René Pintard’s Le libertinage érudit dans la première moitié du XVIIe siècle. In this inºuential book, Pintard argued that Gassendi associated with a group of libertins érudits, a learned group of free thinkers (1980, pp. 132–3, 138). In particular, Pin- tard claimed that Gassendi denied the immateriality and immortality of the soul. Elsewhere I have argued against Pintard’s interpretation, which, I think, resulted from the particular circumstances of his own life in Nazi- occupied France (Osler 2005). Whatever the sources of Pintard’s interpretation, other scholars have adopted it uncritically and it has become the received view among many scholars (see Spink 1960; Gregory 1961). Endorsing Pintard’s claim that Gassendi was really a libertine in priest’s clothing, subsequent scholars have added further details about his alleged heterodoxy. For example, Olivier René Bloch, himself a materialist with an interest in clandestine literature (Bloch 1982; 1985, pp. 124–5), regards Gassendi’s theological objections to his opponents, both ancient and modern, as “the seasoning of a polemic whose point was purely secular and scientiªc” (Bloch 1971, p. 312; my translation). Bloch sees Gassendi as a closet materialist who used methods of dissimulation similar to those employed by Bayle and the encyclopédistes, and argues that Gassendi used the language of orthodoxy in a superªcial way to mask the profane materialism that he really espoused. To support this contention, Bloch cites what

3. For example, Boyle stated, “For Epicurus and most of his Followers (for I except some few late ones, especially the Learned Gassendus) Banish the Consideration of the ends of things; because the World being, according to them, made by Chance, no Ends of any Thing can be suppos’d to have been intended” ([1688] 2000, 11: 81).

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he interprets as various anomalies and juxtapositions of contradictory the- ses within Gassendi’s writings. Since Gassendi the priest could not openly endorse materialism, Bloch interprets the tensions in his thought as evidence of deliberate dissimulation (1971, Chaps. 9–11). Bloch defends this claim by insisting that Gassendi interpolated the abundant theological material into the section of the Syntagma Philosophicum called “Physics” in the early 1640s, and then only in order to hide his materialism of which he was becoming increasingly aware (1971, pp. 476–81). But Bloch over- looks an outline of his Epicurean project that Gassendi sent to his friend and patron Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc (1580–1637) in 1631. This early sketch includes all the rubrics under which Gassendi later discussed theological subjects. These include the existence of the divine nature, its form, its immortality; the cause that produced the world, providence, fate and fortune, the end of the world, and the immortality of the soul.4 Bloch’s claim to the contrary notwithstanding, Gassendi’s commitment to including theology in his project was present from the outset. So, although Gassendi may have restored Epicureanism to serious consideration and Epicureanism may have eventually provided the foundations for modern materialism, it does not follow that Gassendi himself endorsed materialism. Unfortunately, many more recent scholars have uncritically fol- lowed the lead of Pintard and Bloch. Viewing Gassendi as a materialist has served to reinforce their own philosophical views and causes them to make anachronistic assessments of the historical ªgure. Several books, more interesting to historians of science, appeared in the late 1980s and 1990s. Marco Messeri (1985) examined Gassendi’s views about cause and explanation in light of his empiricist and probabilistic theory of knowledge. He argued that Gassendi’s nominalist critique of Scholasticism led him to alter the concept of essence to refer to the atomic structure of individual objects rather than to Platonic or Aristotelian forms. These individual essences are neither immutable, immortal, nor in- dependently subsistent. They come into being with the individual thing and pass away with its destruction. Messeri acknowledged that, unlike Descartes, Gassendi ascribed a certain activity to matter. He linked all these properties of the material world to his empiricist methodology. Barry Brundell (1987) wrote an account of Gassendi’s creation of a new natural philosophy by substituting a modiªed Epicureanism for Aristotel- ianism. At the same time Lynn Joy (1987) interpreted aspects of Gas-

4. See Gassendi’s letter to Peirsec ([1631] 1888, 4:250–252; reprinted in Osler 1994, pp. 78–9). Key aspects of the “Ethics” are not present in this sketch. Sarasohn, following Bloch’s analysis of the manuscript evidence, argues that the “Ethics” was “written and re- written” after 1641 when Gassendi met Hobbes (Sarasohn 1996, pp. 208–14). For a more recent discussion of the development of Gassendi’s project, see Palmerino (1999).

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sendi’s atomism in light of his use of the history of philosophy. Two books dealing with the relationship of Gassendi’s theological commitments and his philosophy more generally appeared in the mid-1990s. In Divine Will and the Mechanical Philosophy (1994), I argued that Gassendi’s voluntarist theology provided the conceptual background for his epistemology and his theory of matter. In the only full treatment of Gassendi’s ethics, Lisa T. Sarasohn (1996) examined Gassendi’s moral and political philosophy in the context of his Christianization of Epicureanism. Each of these studies dealt with aspects of Gassendi’s philosophy within the framework of his Epicurean project. For the most part they did not impose anachronistic conceptions or concerns on their historical subject, but considered one or another aspect of his philosophy within the broader context of his own time and preoccupations. The 1980s witnessed an upsurge of scholarship on Gassendi, setting the stage for more recent studies. In 1981, Howard Jones published Pierre Gassendi 1592–1655: An Intellectual Biography. After running through the events of Gassendi’s life, Jones discussed Gassendi as a critic of the Aristo- telians, Descartes, and Herbert of Cherbury, who is sometimes called the father of English deism. Jones devoted the ªnal section of his book to “Gassendi the Philosopher,” discussing his Epicurean project. Jones’ main interest, however, was Gassendi’s logic, as developed in the Syntagma Philosophicum.5 Jones’ discussion of Gassendi’s Epicureanism is limited to an account of his atomism, with no attention either to the natural philosophical content of his work or to his ethics and political philosophy. Two recent books illustrate the problematic character of writing the history of philosophy in light of twenty-ªrst century agendas. Both Saul Fisher and Antonia Lolordo are meticulous scholars and deal carefully and accurately with a broad range of Gassendi’s writings. But both of them consider questions in ways that reºect the concerns of twenty-ªrst century philosophers more than to those of a seventeenth-century natural philosopher. The problem with both studies has to do with the neglect of context, which thus raises urgent questions about how to think about the history of philosophy and the history of science. Both Fisher and LoLordo tend to neglect the broader intellectual and cultural context within which Gassendi worked, as well as the overall goal of his Epicurean project. Both books open with biographical chapters, but neither book considers the inºuence of post-Reformation debates on Gas- sendi’s thinking. Fisher is primarily concerned to demonstrate that Gassendi’s empiricist argument for atomism is circular and that his theory

5. Jones also published an English translation of the last part of the “Logic”. See Jones (1981b).

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of motion is inconsistent. LoLordo urges contemporary philosophers, who have generally been discouraged by Gassendi’s erudite, humanist style, to take a new look at his writings and to take him seriously as a philosopher. To this end, she concentrates “on the aspects of Gassendi’s natural philosophy that count as more philosophical in our sense of the term” (2007, p. 2). Although both projects produce interesting arguments and conclu- sions, neither considers Gassendi as an historical subject in his own terms. At bottom, both books engage in a dialogue across the centuries, according to which philosophers in other periods are dealing with fundamentally the same questions as philosophers today and should therefore be judged by modern standards. In Pierre Gassendi’s Philosophy and Science, Saul Fisher rejects what he calls “the contextualist” approach, proposing instead to analyze and criti- cize Gassendi’s thought on the basis of logic and modern philosophy of science. His “exploration of Gassendi’s thought assumes the view that the history of philosophy is an ongoing conversation across the generations” (2005, p. xxiii). The result is a frustratingly anachronistic analysis of Gassendi’s philosophy and natural philosophy. Fisher’s approach leads him to make some claims that reveal his lack of understanding of current scholarship. He states that “to present the philosophical richness of Gassendi’s thought is to depict his philosophical and scientiªc pursuits as part of one and the same project” (p. xxi). Given the current state of scholarship on the early modern period, this view is hardly surprising. Historians have recognized that there is not a one-to-one correspondence between seventeenth-century natural philosophy and modern science. Disciplinary boundaries have changed. Natural philosophy included subjects now excluded from the sciences, such as discussions of creation, providence, and the immortality of the human soul; and it excluded topics such as optics and astronomy, which were called mixed mathematics, disciplines that are now included among the sciences. Indeed, one of Newton’s most revolutionary moves is reºected in the title of his master- work, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, combining disciplines that had traditionally been considered distinct (see Cunningham 1991; Gaukroger 2006). Consequently, Fisher’s thesis that Gassendi’s “philosophical and scientiªc pursuits . . . [were] part of one and the same project” is not late-breaking news. The same was true for virtually every other early modern natural philosopher. Fisher’s main point is to argue that the relationship between Gassendi’s atomism and theory of knowledge is circular. He argues that Gassendi based his empiricism on his theory of perception, which in turn he based on his atomism. But, since Gassendi attempted to provide empirical foundations for his atomism, the argument is circular. Fisher notes a further

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problem with Gassendi’s system: Gassendi’s account of motion at the atomic level is not consistent with the inertial physics that he develops for describing macroscopic bodies. This inconsistency, says Fisher, results from Gassendi’s having adopted the Epicurean notion that atoms are en- dowed with an internal tendency to move and that this tendency is incom- patible with the principle of inertia. What is the point of noting inconsistencies and bad arguments in the thinking of an historical ªgure? Such anomalies should provoke the histo- rian to consider further questions. Is the contradiction a sign of intellectual development? Did Gassendi change his mind about motion or knowledge? The anomalies should trigger an interrogation of the tensions in Gassendi’s thinking and to ask to what sorts of intellectual or external pressures he was responding. Dealing with such questions would lead Fisher into a consideration of context, an approach that he dismisses from the outset. Consequently, he is left with a third option of judging Gassendi as a weak philosopher, a conclusion which may or may not be true, but which adds little to our understanding of the history of philosophy and science and of Gassendi’s role in that history. LoLordo’s book is much more sophisticated, but still suffers from problems of anachronism. By selecting topics in Gassendi’s philosophy that re- main interesting to philosophers today, she does not provide a historically meaningful account of his thinking. After chapters on Gassendi’s life and times and his philosophical opponents, she considers his theories of perception and knowledge, his ideas about space and time, his theories of matter and motion, his explanations of living things, and his views on faith, reason, and the immaterial soul. In each chapter she gives a detailed account of Gassendi’s views and then subjects them to philosophical analysis and criticism. Her accounts of his thinking are based on a close analysis of portions of his text, but she does not situate these topics within the framework of his larger project. Isolating these topics, largely drawn from the part of the Syntagma Philosophicum called “The Physics,” LoLordo fails to elucidate them in the broader context of Gassendi’s attempt to create a new, complete philosophy. LoLordo vastly underestimates the role theology played in Gassendi’s thinking by discussing it under the heading of “Faith and Reason,” as if it were a separate topic, rather than seeing that theology permeates his philosophical project, as it did for most thinkers in the seventeenth century. In this concluding chapter of her book, LoLordo argues that in- sufªcient evidence exists to support the claim that Gassendi’s underlying theological assumptions inform his natural philosophy. She argues that Gassendi did not develop an explicit theological system, and that assum- ing that “Gassendi’s Christian beliefs are integral to his system” implies

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“that they must be reºected in theological engagement” means that “any writer in the period who does not discuss theology explicitly has strong subterranean commitments to an entirely implicit theology” (2007, p. 252). Both of these points—which I think are mistaken—result from the fact that LoLordo ignores important contextual points. One example, of many, illustrates the limitations of LoLordo’s approach. Among the philosophical topics that Gassendi developed was the nature of space and time, fundamental components of his philosophy of nature. The chapter on time in the Syntagma Philosophicum bears the title “Quid sit Tempus, & quod illius ab Æternitate discrimen” (“What Time is and its distinction from Eternity). LoLordo devotes most of her discussion to Gassendi’s concept of time and his endorsement of Francisco Patrizi’s view that time, like space, is neither a substance nor an accident and thus com- prises something that does not ªt within the traditional Aristotelian cate- gories. That focus is ªne, as far as it goes. But she pays little attention to Gassendi’s extensive discussion of eternity, and actually errs in claiming that Gassendi identiªed eternity and sempiternity (p. 127), when, in fact, he clearly denied the legitimacy of that identity. Although Gassendi wrote that “Eternity can be understood as nothing other than perpetual duration, or described as time that lacks a beginning and an end,” he immedi- ately noted the problem with this deªnition, because time is a continual succession of before and after, whereas Eternity “is all at the same time, it lacks a past and a future, and it is present and immobile” ([1658] 1964, 1:225). Here Gassendi distinguished between what Boethius called sempiternity—an inªnite, linear temporal sequence—from eternity, although he did not use those words (see Sorabji 1983, pp. 115–117). Ac- knowledging his debt to Boethius, he called Boethius’ deªnition of eternity “commendable.” Whatever therefore comprehends and possesses at once the whole fullness of boundless life, and is such that neither is anything future lacking from it, nor has anything past ºowed away, that is rightly held to be eternal, and that must necessarily both always be present to itself, possessing itself in the present, and hold as present the inªnity of moving time.” (Gassendi [1658] 1964, 1:225)6 The divine mind, Boethius said, “Uno mentis cernit in ictu” (Gassendi [1658] 1964, 2:392–3). The key to this deªnition, the feature that 6. Gassendi cited Boethius from The Consolation of Philosophy, V, 6. “Quid igitur inter- minabilis vitae, plenitudinem totam partier comprehendit ac possidet, cui neque future quidquam absit nec preteriti ºuxerit, id aeternum esse jure perhibetur, idque necesse est et sui compos prasens sibi simper adsistere et inªnitatem mobilis temporis habere prasentem” (1978, pp. 422–425).

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Gassendi admired, is the fact that it clearly demarcates the concept of Eternity from any notion of the ºow of time. God is everywhere all at the same time. In the remaining parts of his discussion of Eternity, Gassendi criticized other deªnitions of the term. He found fault with both Plato and Plotinus for suggesting that Eternity is everlasting duration. Duration implies succession of past, present, and future. As time, it ºows. Even if it is an everlasting series having neither beginning nor end, it is not all at once— “totum simul: all at the same time or lacking either succession or ºow.” He rejected what he called more recent ideas that Eternity is “duration that has a beginning but no end, which is attributed to the Heavens, the Intelligences, and Rational Souls,” all of which are created by God but re- main immortal (1:226). This kind of immortality is, after all, a kind of succession, even if it goes on forever. In this connection, he turned to Scripture: “Mutabis eos, et mutabuntur; tu autem idem ipse es, et anni tui non deªciens.”7 Gassendi noted that “[y]ears are attributed to God, but not changes of substance; thus although our brief years drop off, his duration is not exhausted.” He also rejected the possibility of measuring time as some proportion of Eternity: “There are certain proportions [. . .] between the life of a mayºy compared to ours; but compared to the Divine, there is no proportion whatsoever” (1:227). The distinction between time and eternity also gave Gassendi a way to explain the vexing theological problem of the relationship between divine foreknowledge and human free will. Gassendi acknowledged that this problem had troubled both philosophers and theologians since antiquity. He rejected the Calvinist doctrine of predestination that held that the members of the elect and the reprobate had been chosen from eternity. He also rejected the Dominican view that God’s foreknowledge deprives human agents of their freedom. Instead, he opted for the more liberal, Molinist position. According to Gassendi, God created both people with free will and the causal order of the world. He knows how an individual will respond in any particular situation, even though that individual will respond freely. In this way, God’s foreknowledge in no way restricts the liberty of free agents. Even if everything is included within the domain of divine decree, that inclusion does not eliminate human freedom, for God created free agents as well as determined ones. One can only conclude that LoLordo’s dismissal of the importance of theology in Gassendi’s thinking has caused her to misread his text. This problem affects not only her reading of Gassendi’s views on the difference

7. Gassendi was quoting this verse from Psalm 101 in the Latin Vulgate. In modern translations the verse is from Psalm 102.

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between time and eternity but also her reading of many other aspects of his philosophy as well. In the opening sentence of the Syntagma Philosophicum, Gassendi stated that: “Philosophy is the love, study, and practice of wisdom. Moreover, it is nothing other than the disposition of the rational soul [animi]toper- ceive things rightly and to act rightly in life” ([1658] 1964, 1:1). Physics and ethics, thus, are both at the heart of philosophy. He proceeded to state that philosophy will lead to happiness, which “consists of tranquility of the mind and freedom from bodily pain” (1:4). Tranquility results both from understanding the world and from seeking the right sort of pleasure. We learn only in “The Ethics” that the greatest pleasure is the beatiªc vision of God in heaven (2:715). For Gassendi, the omnipotent God pro- vides the foundations and context for his physics, points made explicitly in chapters on the origin and end of the world along with his extended argument for the immortality of the soul, which he called “crown of the treatise” and the “last touch of universal physics” (2:620). Physics, ethics, and theology were profoundly interconnected in Gassendi’s thought. It is impossible to understand his philosophy without taking into account the larger context of his project. As for LoLordo’s implication that it would be irrational to argue that “any writer in the period who does not discuss theology explicitly has strong subterranean commitments to an entirely implicit theology,” (2007, p. 252) natural philosophy in the seventeenth-century was, in fact, deeply infused with theological assumptions and implications. Virtually all natural philosophers grew up and were educated in one or another theological tradition. Regardless of their state of faith, their thinking bears the mark of their respective backgrounds. Why should Gassendi be exceptional in this respect? Recent scholarship on Gassendi has increased the resources for studying his philosophy and natural philosophy, but much work remains to be done. Two further projects would enhance our understanding of Gassendi’s role in seventeenth-century thought. A thorough account of Gassen- di’s philosophy and natural philosophy, including careful analysis of the many sources upon which he drew would replace the fragmented, the ideologically-motivated, and the anachronistic studies that currently exist. An account of Gassendi’s work in the sciences—his contributions to astronomy, the science of motion, and his study of vision, among other things—would situate him clearly within the community of natural philosophers of his day. Rather than measuring the signiªcance of Gassendi’s work by comparison with Descartes, by asserting its inºuence or lack thereof on Newton, or by determination of its internal consistency, a thoroughly contextual-

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ized study of his philosophy and natural philosophy would provide an understanding of his views rather than a guided tour of the preoccupations of modern scholars. The work necessary to carry out these studies would be prodigious, but would enhance our understanding of the important role he played in the intellectual world of his day.

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