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James Dundas on Seneca, Descartes and the Fall

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James Dundas on Seneca, Descartes and the Fall CHAPTER 10 James Dundas on Seneca, Descartes and the Fall Alexander Broadie In the burgeoning narrative concerning the appropriation of the classics by seventeenth-century Scottish philosophers, one important example of such appropriation that is only now beginning to receive due attention is a manu- script entitled “Idea philosophiae moralis”, written in 1679 by James Dundas (c.1620–1679), first Lord Arniston.1 The MS contains discussion of, or at least reference to an immense array of sources, including more than fifty classical authors. These include Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, Cicero, Democritus, Epictetus, Epicurus, Lucretius, Seneca, Sextus Empiricus, Tertullian, Lactantius, Augustine and Boethius. Moreover, as evidence that Dundas’ reading extended far beyond classical thinkers, he also quotes or refers to more than forty medieval and post-medieval thinkers, including Anselm of Canterbury, Aquinas, Henry of Ghent, John Duns Scotus, Ramus, Amyraut, Bacon, Bellarmine, Beza, Bramhall, Buchanan, Burgersdijck, Cajetan, Fonseca, Molina, Julius Caesar Scaliger, Descartes, Gassendi, Grevinhovius, Grotius, Heerebord, Hobbes, Hornebeck, Keckermann, Lipsius, Maccovy, Culverwell, Henry More and Samuel Rutherford. This immense learning does not mark Dundas out as a unique figure in seven- teenth-century Scotland; many of the theses philosophicae that were composed by the university regents of the period for the graduation ceremonies bear wit- ness to the regents’ grasp of an impressively wide range of classical philosophi- cal sources, sources to which the students were introduced in the course of their lectures. Thus Dundas, who registered as a student at St Leonard’s College, St Andrews in 1635, aged fifteen at most, would quickly have been introduced to classical philosophy if he had not already been exposed to it. It is beyond doubt that the philosophical scene in Scotland during the seventeenth century was deeply informed by the writings of the classical philosophers. Among the classical writers in whom Dundas had a special interest was the Roman statesman and Stoic philosopher Seneca the Younger (c.1BC–65AD), 1 The ms is in the library of Arniston House, Gorebridge, Midlothian. With the permission of Althea Dundas-Bekker of Arniston, Dr Giovanni Gellera and I are preparing an edition of the MS. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi ��.��63/9789004330733_0�� 248 Broadie whose writings deeply informed later classical philosophy.2 Prominent in his writings were his concepts of self-improvement and of the role of our will in enabling us to control our emotions and thereby both to govern our lives, and also to govern nations, under the concept of virtue. That many should wish, with Seneca’s help, to explore these most human ideas and to benefit from them, is understandable. Since these concerns of Seneca’s are well-nigh universal, it is also under- standable that his brilliant explorations of them contributed significantly to the growing interest in Stoicism that occurred among philosophers of the Renaissance and the early modern period, including, as will be noted later, many Scottish philosophers of the time. One of the philosophers who responded to Seneca was Descartes, whose philosophy also engages at a deep level with the question of the power of the will and the will’s role in enabling us to live in the light of truth. Descartes’ response to Seneca was committed to paper as a result of a practical question posed to him by his pupil and friend the Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia. A volume containing the pupil’s question and the master’s response came into the hands of James Dundas, and from his “Idea philosophiae moralis” we learn what he thought of Seneca’s and Descartes’ judgments on a topic perceived to be at the heart of Stoic think- ing subsequent to the earliest generations of Stoics. It is Dundas’ rejection of the judgments of Seneca and Descartes that is the topic of this paper. First, however, we must appreciate the immediate personal and historical context of Dundas’ rejection. The context will teach us a good deal about the consider- ations that motivated Dundas’ position on Stoicism. I shall seek to argue that central to the motivation of his response is the fact that he was a Calvinist, and that his Calvinism deeply informed his moral philosophy. Who was James Dundas? First some words on James Dundas.3 He was born into a distinguished fam- ily, the Dundases of Arniston, owners of the Arniston estate, a large tract of 2 J.M. Rist, The Stoic Philosophy (Cambridge, 1969); R.W. Sharples, Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics: An Introduction to Hellenistic Philosophy (London, 1996); M.L. Clarke, The Roman Mind: Studies in the History of Thought from Cicero to Marcus Aurelius (London, 1956). 3 For information biographical and philosophical on James Dundas see G.W.T. Omond, The Arniston Memoirs: Three Centuries of a Scottish House, 1571–1838 (Edinburgh, 1887); A. Broadie, “James Dundas and his concept of moral philosophy”, Journal of Scottish Thought, 2 (2009), 99–111; A. Broadie, “James Dundas on the Hobbesian state of nature”, Journal of Scottish Philosophy, 11 (2013), 1–13..
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