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Skepticism and Belief in Early-Modern France: the Fideism of Bishop Pierre-Daniel Huet

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Skepticism and Belief in Early-Modern France: the Fideism of Bishop Pierre-Daniel Huet University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons CUREJ - College Undergraduate Research Electronic Journal College of Arts and Sciences March 2007 Skepticism and Belief In Early-Modern France: The Fideism of Bishop Pierre-Daniel Huet Anton M. Matytsin University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/curej Recommended Citation Matytsin, Anton M., "Skepticism and Belief In Early-Modern France: The Fideism of Bishop Pierre-Daniel Huet" 23 March 2007. CUREJ: College Undergraduate Research Electronic Journal, University of Pennsylvania, https://repository.upenn.edu/curej/57. This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/curej/57 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Skepticism and Belief In Early-Modern France: The Fideism of Bishop Pierre- Daniel Huet Abstract Bishop Pierre-Daniel Huet (1630-1721) was an influential scholar of the seventeenth century, whose posthumously published Treatise Concerning the Weakness of Human Understanding (1723) shocked many of his Jesuit friends for its controversial and heretical content. This thesis has investigated the origins and the development of Huet’s skepticism, analyzing not only the author’s published works, but his marginalia, correspondence, and manuscripts as well. Thus, this thesis attempted to reconcile Huet’s published works, including his memoirs, with his private correspondence and manuscripts, resolving the tensions between his private and public images and revealing the development of his skepticism. Such reconciliation demonstrated the continuity from Huet’s earlier dogmatic works to his scandalous treatise. In so doing, the thesis showed that Huet’s intentions were misunderstood by his friends. His skepticism, while appearing to be a heterodox set of arguments, aimed to preserve theological doctrines from the unscrupulous scrutiny of rational analyses of the Cartesians. Thus, by showing the weakness of natural human reason and its inability to know anything with certainty, Huet hoped to prove that natural philosophy had no place in theology and to convince his readers to submit to faith in the Christian Revelation. By historically analyzing Huet’s ideas in the context of both his Jesuit education and the debates in which he participated, this thesis has resolved the seeming incongruity between Huet’s philosophical skepticism and religious devotion, showing how such a seemingly contradictory position was possible in seventeenth-century France. Keywords Skepticism, Fideism, Huet, Descartes, Humanities, History, Alan Charles Kors, Kors, Alan Charles This article is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/curej/57 University of Pennsylvania Skepticism and Belief in Early-Modern France: The Fideism of Bishop Pierre-Daniel Huet A senior thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for Honors in History by Anton M. Matytsin Philadelphia, PA March 23, 2007 Faculty Advisor: Alan Charles Kors Honors Director: Julia Rudolph For those who love me ii Table of Contents Acknowledgments.............................................................................................................iv Introduction..............................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: The Unintended Consequences of a Traditional Education..........................16 Chapter 2: The Cartesian Context: Huet’s Critique of the Presumption of Reason.........44 Chapter 3: “It Is Certain Because It Is Impossible”..............................................72 Conclusion.......................................................................................................96 Bibliography..............................................................................................................100 iii Acknowledgments Composing a work of this magnitude for the first time, one feels indebted to so many people that it becomes difficult to remember everyone who kindly lent their helping hand. However, I will try to thank the following people. In the first place and above all others, I would like to thank my parents (both sets of them) for financing my studies and allowing me to engage such an obscure yet intellectually stimulating topic. I hope that upon reading this work, they will not find their investment in vain. I could have neither begun nor completed this thesis without my Faculty Advisor and friend Alan Charles Kors. When I first became interested in the revival of skeptical thought I came to Alan and told him that I wanted to write my thesis on this topic. He provided me with a multitude of articles from which I eventually narrowed in on Huet. When I planned to go to Paris to do primary source research Alan wrote a recommendation for a grant on the shortest possible notice. Throughout my senior year, he guided me through the intimidating task of researching and writing about this difficult topic. Alan shared his conceptual understanding of seventeenth-century intellectual history to improve my own analytical skills of the skeptical phenomenon. Finally, and not to his liking, Alan has been my most critical and most useful proofreader. I would like to thank Julia Rudolph, my Honors Director, for her guidance in the research process and her useful criticism of my writing and research methods. She was able to give me sound conceptual and stylistic advice despite having to read hundreds of pages of other theses. iv John Pollack of the Rare Books and Manuscripts library has helped me tremendously with my research and my trip to France. I would not have been able to navigate the bureaucratic tides of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France without him. In conjunction with John, I would like to give my great thanks to Professor Roger Chartier, whose letter got me into the BNF and allowed me to access the rarest and the most useful primary sources. My trip to France could not have happened without my good friend Ronan Crepin and the Crepin family who allowed me to stay in their home for over three weeks, while I went to Paris every day to research Huet’s marginalia and manuscripts. I also owe a great deal of gratitude to Jean-Marc Chatelain, curator of Rare Books at the BNF, for providing me with a list of all the Huet books. His assistance facilitated my task tremendously. My first and second student readers, Emily Magnuson and Aviva Horrow, supplied me with insightful and healthy critiques and patiently tolerated the obscure terminology that permeated my thesis. I would like to give a special thanks to my girlfriend Caitlin Anderson for proofreading my thesis, for her moral support, and for being the only person to figure out what “Alnetanae” means. v Introduction Bishop Pierre-Daniel Huet (1630-1721) enjoyed an eminent career for a seventeenth-century scholar. Huet was born in Caen to a family of Protestant converts to Catholicism and rose to become one of the most respected intellectual figures of his age. He was appointed as the assistant tutor to the dauphin in 1670. Four years later he was elected to the Académie française. In 1686 he was appointed Bishop of Soissons, though his post was later transferred to Avranches. Huet had a productive scholarly career, having published the Traitté de l’origine des romans (Treatise on the Origin of Romances – 1670), the Demonstratio Evangelica (Proof of the Gospel – 1679), the Censura cartesianae philosophiae (Critique of Cartesian Philosophy – 1689), the Alnetanae quaestiones de concordia rationis et fidei (Alnetian Questions Regarding the Agreement between Reason and Faith – 1690), and the Nouveaux mémoires pour servir à l'histoire du Cartésianisme (New Memoirs to Serve the History of Cartesianism – 1691) in addition to other minor but erudite works. Despite his extensive scholarly accomplishments and contemporaneous renown, Huet likely would have been forgotten by subsequent generations were it not for the posthumous publication of his skeptical treatise, Traité philosophique de la faiblesse de l'esprit humain (A Philosophical Treatise Concerning the Weakness of Human Understanding – 1723). Most of those who considered Huet a friend were startled and unsettled by his explicit embrace of philosophical skepticism. The views articulated in the Traité seemed so distant from those expressed in Huet’s earlier works that some of his contemporaries erroneously argued that he could not have written the skeptical treatise. This was particularly true of Huet’s Jesuit friends, who were startled by its 1 heretical content and asserted that the work was a forgery.1 The tension between the author’s likely intentions and the reception of his work raise a number of revealing and historically significant questions. How could Huet, given his deep religious commitment to Catholicism, have written such a heterodox and heretical work? If his objective was not to undermine but to sustain orthodoxy and to preserve the faith from the assaults of reason, why was he so misunderstood by his colleagues? Historians have addressed the subject of Huet’s skepticism tangentially, but very little scholarship is dedicated solely to Huet’s intellectual world and itinerary. Most of Huet’s works remain untranslated, and most of his correspondence is still unpublished. While there are two biographies and a number of articles devoted to analyzing Huet’s thought, no books in modern intellectual history are devoted entirely to Huet’s skepticism. Richard Popkin, generally recognized as the leading authority
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