A Contextualist History of Cartesian Philosophy: Roger Ariew’S Descartes and the First Cartesians
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A Contextualist History of Cartesian Philosophy: Roger Ariew’s Descartes and the First Cartesians Domenico Collacciani Sorbonne Université–République des Saviors (USR3608) 1. Introduction The title Descartes and the First Cartesians only partly reflects the scope of the research presented in Roger Ariew’s latest book. To be sure, this study does offer a new and extensive account of the work of the first Cartesians and thus a new perspective on the historical phenomenon that was seventeenth century Cartesianism. Yet it does so on the basis of a vast survey of the Scholastic context from which the new philosophy emerged. The investigation of Cartesianism is thus given shape by the inquiry into Scholasticism (somewhat vague at first, the term is subsequently presented in all its nuances). From this point of view, Descartes and the First Cartesians takes up and completes the research Ariew presented in his 1999 Descartes and the Last Scholastics.Atfirst sight, then, the field surveyed is the tran- sition from one way of doing philosophy, one that is reaching its end, to the new philosophy just beginning. The guiding question seems to be whether and how Descartes’s philosophy succeeded in replacing Aristotle’s. Yet, as Ariew has demonstrated throughout his work, while there is indeed a transition taking place in the seventeenth century, it is in no way the case that one knowledge replaced another. The approach of Descartes and the First Cartesians thus consists in study- ing the transition from the viewpoint of an unchanging element, in defin- ing a trait that characterizes philosophy before and after Descartes. In considering the relationship of the new philosophy to Scholasticism, Ariew focuses on a specific context: the teaching of philosophy in the seventeenth century. He thus examines a sizable corpus of textbooks published before and after Descartes with the aim of measuring the effects of the encounter between Cartesian thought and a well-established traditional structure of Perspectives on Science 2018, vol. 26, no. 5 © 2018 by The Massachusetts Institute of Technology doi:10.1162/posc_a_00286 521 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/posc_a_00286 by guest on 01 October 2021 522 Contextualist History of Cartesian Philosophy knowledge. At the center of his study is the well-known fact that Descartes initially conceived of his own textbook as an annotated edition of an earlier text (his choice had fallen on Eustache de Saint-Paul’s Summa quadripartita) and only later settled on publishing an autonomous work. The major strength of this method of research derives no doubt from the fact that the Cartesians were openly “rivaling” with the Scholastics (Ariew 2014, p. xvi). Historians of Cartesianism are well familiar with the polariza- tion of the debate. On the one hand, the Cartesians—Du Roure, Arnauld, Clerselier, and Rohault—explicitly and forcefully took up their master’s teachings (Azouvi 2002). On the other, the anti-Cartesians—Huygens, Oldenburg, Huet, and, starting the 1660s, the Jesuits—openly called out and criticized their adversaries’ sectarianism. Ariew turns this particular feature of the reception of Descartes into a principle for selecting his corpus. In fact, he remarks, there is no necessary and sufficient condition for calling an author “Cartesian.” Whether on the issue of doubt or of the cogito,ofthe divisibility of matter, and so on, there will always be an assuredly Cartesian author who will nonetheless reject one of these ideas central to Descartes’s philosophy. Yet the set of problems to be discussed in the book requires that the central category “Cartesian” leaves no room for doubt: “My rule of thumb is to think of ‘Cartesian’ as an actor’s category in the intellectual universe of the seventeenth century. The authors I cite as Cartesians published works with Descartes’ name prominently displayed in their titles or subtitles; they saw themselves as Cartesians and others saw them as such” (Ariew 2014, p. xvi).1 The first two chapters deal with Scholasticism before Descartes. The first describes Descartes’s position within the institutional setting, throw- ing light on the didactic practices of the religious orders that at the time enjoyed a de facto monopoly over education: the Oratorians, the Doctri- naires, and above all the Jesuits. In the second chapter, the author gives an account of the four part textbook prior to Descartes. The two last chapters show how a Cartesian textbook was constructed, first in the Prin- ciples of Philosophy, then in the work of the first Cartesians. 2. Chapter 1 The events relating to Descartes’s condemnation by the Roman Church have been the object of ample study in the critical literature. Contempo- raries noted that the attack on substantial forms mounted by mechanized 1. For a recent attempt at defining Cartesianism from a “non-essentialist” point of view via a study of these controversies, see Roux 2013. Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/posc_a_00286 by guest on 01 October 2021 Perspectives on Science 523 physics could imply a criticism of the dogma of the Eucharist.2 Nonethe- less, the sources are not entirely clear on this point: despite its significance, the 1663 censure by the Roman Church seems not to have been circulated in France. In keeping with its decidedly contextualist orientation, Ariew’s study thus turns primarily to Louis XIV’s 1671 condemnation whose effect on the spread of Cartesianism is indeed easily discernable. While the partisans of the new philosophy famously polemicized against any kind of philosophical sect, Ariew stresses that even before Descartes the field we call Scholastic philosophy was very heterogeneous. Around the middle of the century, Thomist Aristotelianism is still the doctrine of ref- erence; Scotism, meanwhile, seems to have established itself just as much, judging from the fact that, beside Thomism, it is attacked by the Cartesians as one of the main philosophical sects. Like “Cartesian,” however, the his- toriographical categories “Thomist” and “Scotist” are not invented by later historians; they are self-descriptions often explicitly used by the authors. It is thus possible to choose a paradigmatic text, draw certain general theses from it, and attribute these to one or the other of the categories. Ariew chooses the twenty-four Thomist (and anti-Scotist) theses articulated by the Dominican friar Antoine Goudin as a tool with which to “measure” the degree to which other authors are Thomists or Scotists. As for the institutions charged with teaching at mid-century, beside the colleges of the University of Paris, the market was dominated by the Oratorians and the Jesuits. Each of these schools was different and thus reacted differently to Descartes’ work. At the Sorbonne, instruction was based on the Scotist theses of Eustache de Saint-Paul’s Summa philosophiæ quadripartita, namely: the subject of metaphysics is the being shared by God and creatures; it is possible to have an idea of God even if it cannot be demonstrated a priori; there is a third distinction in addition to real and rational distinction, etc. The Oratorians’ teaching stands out in that it was being conducted in French and inspired by the Platonism of the order’s founder, Pierre de Bérulle. Matters are more complicated in the case of the Jesuits: even if the ratio studiorum demanded fidelity to Thomas, authors like Cériziers and Gautruche managed to have their Scotist lessons published. While the Society’s authorities in Rome and Spain were Thomist, those in Paris seem to have held less clear-cut positions. Descartes first came into contact with the Society of Jesus during his education in the collège at La Flèche, and the relationship with the order continued throughout his life. It can be divided into three periods: the first around the publication of the Discourse on the Method; the second dating to the 1640s and marked by the polemic with Bourdin; the third characterized 2. On the debate between Arnauld and Mesland, see Armogathe 1977. Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/posc_a_00286 by guest on 01 October 2021 524 Contextualist History of Cartesian Philosophy by the correspondence with Mesland. According to Ariew, the Jesuits—with the notable exception of Bourdin—were not hostile toward Descartes. After his death, however, they become more and more critical of Cartesian philosophy: the main difficulties they saw concerned its newness, its re- duction of physics to mathematics, and the explanation of the Eucharist. Descartes’s exchanges with the Oratorians were similarly rich. Ariew points to the meeting with Bérulle at Chandoux’s lecture and the cor- respondence with Gibieuf, whom Descartes asks for assistance in obtaining approbation for publishing the Meditations. In general, the Oratorian order was favorably disposed toward Descartes. Ariew cites the work of Nicolas Poisson, editor and commentator of some of Descartes’s posthumous works; Lamy and Fromentier, who taught Cartesian philosophy and were censored on that count; and, of course, Malebranche. Their adherence to Cartesianism, however, is never mere uncritical acceptance, as a look at de la Grange’s refutation of Descartes shows. By studying the history of Cartesianism via academic institutions, Ariew succeeds in combining several heterogeneous subjects within a stable per- spective. One remarkable result of this approach is that he is able to present the classic historiographical categories from a new angle. In 1978, Gouhier referred to a specifically French tendency within the reception of Descartes as “Augustinized Cartesianism,” which sought to correct Descartes’ system by grafting onto it theses backed up by the authority of Saint Augustine. In his study, Ariew demonstrates that this phenomenon is almost exclu- sively confined to Oratorian schools. Studying the pedagogical practices of the religious orders here leads to a remarkable result: the coherence of the themes of Augustinized Cartesianism reveals itself to be above all a doc- trinal coherence characteristic of a particular religious order.