Descartes

by A. C. Grayling

  Two of Descartes' biographers—Vrooman and Gaukroger— commented on the more contented tone of his correspondence in these years, and even "a certain enthusiasm and exuberance"; and they noted that he was trying to find a scientific method for reversing the greyness which was "coming with a rush" in his hair. He told Huygens that he was taking such good care of himself that he thought he might live another hundred years.1 Indeed he was engaged then, as intermittently he often was, in aspects of medicine, especially such as would prolong life. When Huygens once asked him for a few pages of explanation of mechanics, Descartes replied that he was too busy conducting research of importance for the "life and preservation of the human race."2 He proposed to write a treatise on medicine, aimed at "exempting [humankind] from an infinite number of illnesses of the body and the mind, and even perhaps the weaknesses of old age, if we had enough knowledge of its causes and of all the remedies that nature has provided us." He even, he claimed, planned to devote the whole of the rest of his life to this crucial enquiry.3 It is a tragic irony that his ambition in this direction so shortly preceded the death of Francine.

  He made friends with two Catholic parish priests in Harlem, who served as a post restante for his mail, and he had occasional visits from other friends, including Reneri and Huygens, the latter sometimes bringing other people with him. One of Descartes' visitors reported to Mersenne that he had just spent "half a day talking about music with our hero Descartes," but he might equally well have spent half a day in Descartes' herb garden, or watching him dissect (and vivisect) animals. Descartes once gestured towards some fish and rabbits he was dissecting and said, "this is my library." Despite his reply to Huygens about mechanics, his restless curiosity kept him busy thinking about the principles of cogs, levers, and screws, and writing about them to Mersenne.

  But the principal occupation of Descartes in these years was writing, and eventually publishing, the Meditations on First Philosophy. On 9 January 1639 he wrote to Mersenne to reassure him about his health, because "you and some other excellent people are very concerned on my behalf when two weeks pass without your receiving a letter from me . . . [but] I have acquired some little knowledge of medicine, and I feel very well, and look after myself with as much care as a rich man with gout."4 And then he told Mersenne that he had in mind a project for the rest of the winter which would brook no distraction, and therefore Mersenne must please not write again until Easter, unless there were an emergency; that he must not worry if he had no news from Santpoort, but must accept that Descartes was healthily and excitedly working on philosophy.

  Descartes wrote the Meditations in Latin—in that language the main title is Meditationes de Prima Philosophiae—and finished it in April 1640. It was published the following year in Paris by Michel Soly. The subtitle of the first edition ran: "in which are demonstrated the existence of God and the immortality of the soul." But because the book does not directly address the question of the soul's immortality, Descartes rewrote the subtitle into a more accurate version for the second edition: "in which are demonstrated the existence of God and the distinction between the human soul and the body." The second edition was published in Amsterdam by the Elzevir company, evidently chastened as a result of losing Descartes' first book to a rival. In 1647 the Meditations appeared in French, in a version approved by Descartes himself, translated by a young aristocrat, the due de Luynes.

  The title page of the first edition carried the words: "with the approval of the learned doctors." Descartes dedicated the book to the Dean and Doctors of the Faculty of Theology at the Sorbonne, and his dedicatory epistle to them drips with earnest sanctimony. Ever anxious to avoid offending the Church, and eager to have its approval, he thought by this means to secure both aims. Despite the title-page claim that their approval had been secured, however, the doctors of the Sorbonne had not given it, and despite Descartes' endeavours to steer clear of theological controversy, he was already in the middle of it long before the book was published. Perhaps, indeed, the dedication to the Sorbonne had the additional motive of getting the moral support of their approval in a battle he was fighting in the Netherlands with a new enemy: Gisbert Voetius.

  Voetius was the professor of theology at Utrecht, and within a few years was to become the university's rector. He was a figure of great influence in Church affairs in the Netherlands, and had a history of engaging with relish in theological controversy. Famous, learned and powerful, he was a formidable opponent, and he did not like either Descartes or his ideas. Trouble began when Descartes' friend and champion, Henry Reneri, died in March 1639. Two events consequent on his death fanned Voetius' animosity. One was the funeral oration delivered at Utrecht university by Reneri's friend Anton Aemelius, who praised Reneri's advocacy of Descartes' philosophy and Descartes as "the Archimedes of our century . . . the confidant of nature." The oration was published, which made it seem like an official approval of Cartesian ideas. This angered the traditional professors whose views were controverted by the new-fangled philosophy.

  Then Henry Regius, the recently appointed professor of medicine at Utrecht, took up the baton laid down by Reneri, and began to lecture on Descartes' views. He was a highly popular teacher, and an extrovert who was not in the slightest troubled by controversy. He even indeed courted it on Descartes' behalf, for they had become close—as a master and disciple are close—and remained so for a time, Regius helping Descartes to prepare the manuscript of the Meditations, and giving him an easy first set of "Objections" to be answered.

  In June 1640 Regius offered a set of Cartesian theses for public debate at the university, the better to advertise them. Voetius saw this as his chance to combat Descartes' growing influence in the university, and accepted the challenge. He proposed not only to demolish Cartesian philosophy, but Descartes himself.

  The stage was thus set for a struggle that lasted five years. Its opening salvos were complicated for Descartes by the fact that Francine died just three months later, while he was also in the midst of arranging the publication of the Meditations, which involved writing replies to the objections he had solicited, through Mersenne, from the leading thinkers of the day. The worst aspect of the controversy was the obstacle it represented to his hopes of eventual Church approval for his ideas. The seaside idyll of Santpoort seems to have vanished in a single season.

  Voetius' hostility to Descartes did not come out of the blue, but was a chapter in a longer-running saga of concerns stemming from the controversy that had wracked the Netherlands over Arminianism. In fact, the Arminian problem was not merely a religious but a political one—if questions of religion and politics can meaningfully be separated in that age—for it affected the question of the unity of the United Provinces.

  In essence, the Arminian controversy turned on the question of free will. Orthodox Calvinists held to Calvin's view of strict predestination— the thesis that God had, at the beginning of time, selected a fixed number of people for salvation, all the rest being condemned independently of merit. The injustice and irrationality of this view was repugnant to reflective minds, not least among them that of Jacobus Arminius (Jakob Hermanzoon, 1560—1609), professor at the University of Leiden, who began as an orthodox Calvinist preacher and teacher, but soon came to reject the decretum horribile of Calvin about absolute predestination, and was regarded as the leader of the "Remonstrants" who rejected this aspect of Calvin's doctrines. Arminius died in 1609, but the controversy generated by his opposition to predestination waxed, until the great Synod of Dort in 1618—19 emphatically rejected his views and reasserted orthodox Calvinism. Nevertheless, sympathies for the Arminian position remained, and since it was in this respect close to the Catholic doctrine of free will, aspects of Cartesian thought later came to be associated with it. This was chief among Voetius' motives for attacking Descartes.

  At the outset Regius's pro-Descartes lectures were confined to certain questions in physiology, and chiefly focused on the circulation of the blood. Had he listened to Descarte
s, or been a closer disciple of Descartes' views, he would not have laid himself open to the counter-attack that Voetius mounted. But Regius did not conceal his adherence to the Copernican view of the universe, and he also held that the soul and body are only accidentally united; if they were substantially connected, so the argument went, the body would be required to accompany the soul to heaven. Voetius saw this as heretical; in response Descartes told Regius to charge Voetius with holding that the soul is material. The charge and countercharge took the form of pamphlets, Regius's reply to Voetius being published on 16 February 1642. Descartes wrote to Regius, "As far as I hear from my friends, everyone who has read your reply to Voetius praises it highly—and very many have read it."Voetius used his influence to get the magistrates of Utrecht to ban Regius's pamphlet, which prompted Descartes to add, "Everyone is laughing at Voetius and says he has lost hope for his cause, seeing that he has had to call on the assistance of the magistrates for its defence."5.

  The brouhaha surrounding the battle between Regius and Voetius •was so great—it even involved student riots and much hurling of furniture—that the Senate of Utrecht University forbade Regius to teach physics, telling him to restrict himself to medicine. Descartes consoled him by writing, "You should not be upset that you have been forbidden to lecture on problems in physics; indeed I would prefer it if you had been forbidden even to give private instruction. All this will redound to your honour and the shame of your adversaries."6 But the university senate went further, and banned the teaching of Cartesian philosophy completely. This outraged Descartes. In the second edition of the Meditations he included a document, disguised as a letter to the French Jesuit priest Jacques Dinet, attacking Voetius bitterly, calling him quarrelsome, envious, foolish, a stupid pedant, a hypocrite, an enemy to truth, and much besides, and charging him with slander "sometimes public and sometimes surreptitious."7 The letter was excerpted and translated from Latin into Dutch by one of Voetius' enemies, thus giving it wide currency in the Netherlands and adding fuel to the flames. Voetius was of course infuriated by it.

  In the "letter to Dinet" Descartes gave the text of the University of Utrecht Senate's decree against him:

  The professors reject this new philosophy [i.e. Descartes' theories] for three reasons. First, it is opposed to the traditional philosophy which universities throughout the world have hitherto taught on the best advice, and it undermines its foundations. Second, it turns away the young from the sound and traditional philosophy and prevents them reaching the heights of erudition; for once they have begun to rely on the new philosophy and its supposed solutions, they are unable to understand the technical terms which are commonly used in the books of traditional authors and in the lectures and debates of their professors. And, lastly, various false and absurd opinion either follow from the new philosophy or can be rashly deduced by the young—opinions which are in conflict with other disciplines and faculties and above all with orthodox theology.8

  Descartes answered the charges one by one in his letter. He was of course pleased at the admission that his views upset the old Aristotelian orthodoxies, but he was especially troubled by the imputation of religious heterodoxy. He vigorously rejected this, and claimed that his views were every bit as consistent with religious orthodoxy as any other. "Indeed, I insist that there is nothing relating to religion," he wrote, "which cannot be equally well or even better explained by means of my principles than can be done by means of those that are commonly accepted."9

  To get his own back Voetius engaged a proxy, Martin Schoock, to write an attack on Descartes. The result, entitled The Admirable Method, appeared in 1643. It charged Descartes with atheism on the grounds that he had set aside the traditional proofs of God's existence in order to put in their place proofs so weak that they would encourage readers to reject the idea of God altogether. This was a tactic that Mersenne and others had attributed to Vanini, famously burned at the stake in Toulouse in 1619 for his heresies. Schoock indeed likened Descartes to Vanini several times in the course of his diatribe—"Rene may rightly be compared with that cunning champion of atheism, Cesare Vanini," he wrote—and later confessed that Voetius had especially encouraged this, because the other imputation laid against Vanini, namely of homosexuality, would suggest itself to readers too. The tactic had the desired effect; Descartes in his turn was so enraged—and so alarmed that the imputation of atheism would do him harm, as even the most unfounded of accusations have a bad habit of doing—that this time he replied direcdy in a Letter to Voetius, published by Elzevir in May 1643 in both Latin and Dutch. And he wrote not just to Voetius, but to the town council of Utrecht, to the university, and to Huygens, complaining of Voetius and saying that he sought to protect the town, citizens and students of Utrecht against Voetius' evil ways.

  His vituperation against Voetius scarcely knew bounds. He accused him of "atrocious insults," of being "base and commonplace," stupid, absurd, coarse, impertinent and impudent. "[I] declare that such criminal lies, such scurrilous insults and such atrocious slanders are contained in your book, that they could not be employed between enemies, or by a Christian against an infidel, without convicting the perpetrator of wickedness and criminality," he stormed.10 "Even if the philosophy at which you rail were unsound, which you have failed to show at any point, and never will manage to show, what vice could it possibly be imagined to contain great enough to require its author to be slandered with such atrocious insults? The philosophy which I and all its other devotees are engaged in pursuing is none other than the knowledge of those truths which can be perceived by the natural light [of reason] and can provide practical benefits to mankind; so there is no study more honourable, or more worthy of mankind, or more beneficial in this life . . . I have read many of your writings, yet I have never found any reasoning in them, or any thought that is not base or commonplace—nothing which suggests a man of intelligence or education."11

  The imputation of atheism was, if not the most galling of Voetius' charges, certainly the most dangerous. Descartes was uncompromising in his own defence. "You say that 'Rene may rightly be compared with that cunning champion of atheism, Cesare Vanini, since he uses the self-same techniques to erect the throne of atheism in the minds of the inexperienced.' Who will not marvel at the absurdity of your impudence? Even if it is true (and I insist it is) that I write against atheists and put forward my arguments as first rate, and even if it is true (which I strongly deny) that I reject the common traditional arguments [for God's existence], and that my own have been found to be invalid, it still would not follow that I should even be suspected—let alone guilty—of atheism. Anyone who claims to refute atheism and produces inadequate arguments should be accused of incompetence, not face a summary charge of atheism."12

  Voetius made the mistake of writing to Mersenne in the hope of enlisting his support against Descartes. But Mersenne was on Descartes' side, and forwarded Voetius' letters to him. This was not much of an advantage, though, for matters had already progressed too far. Voetius' response to Descartes' public letter was to sue him for libel. The authorities in Utrecht read both the "letter to Dinet" and the Letter to Voetius, agreed that Descartes had libelled Voetius, and forwarded the matter to the Utrecht police court. Since Descartes lived in the province of Holland and not in the province of Utrecht, and since it was exceedingly unlikely that the authorities would be bothered to extradite him for a libel hearing, matters could have rested there. But Descartes had no intention of letting them rest. He was well connected; he knew Huygens, and the French ambassador to the Hague, one La Thuillerie; he lobbied them, and secured the desired effect—which was that the Prince of Orange himself had a quiet word with the authorities in Utrecht, and the libel action went equally quietly into abeyance.

  But this was not quite enough for Descartes. As always, he wanted not just the negative, but the positive; as with his desire not just for Church tolerance, but approval, he wanted not just to escape, but to win. He pressed for action to be taken against Sch
oock, and this hapless pawn was duly arrested and put into prison for two very uncomfortable days. Schoock was so traumatised by this experience that, in the jargon appropriate to the case, he sang like a canary, putting all the blame onto Voetius and showing the authorities letters from Voetius that proved it. Schoock was released, Descartes wrote a final indignant letter to the Utrecht magistrates, and at last the quarrel subsided.

  The controversy had become a deeply unedifying one; from a dispute in philosophy it had degenerated into a personal squabble of a most undignified name-calling kind. During it Huygens advised Descartes to drop the matter; "Theologians are like pigs," he wrote, "when you pull one by the tail, they all squeal"; but Descartes would not listen. His amour propre was at stake, and so were his philosophical views; which is why, when the next controversy flared over them, he was just as energetic in defending himself—though this time without quite the same degree of personal animus, because he was not so closely acquainted with the people involved.