← History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps
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Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with the support of the Philosophy department at King's College London and the LMU in Munich. Online at historyoffphilosophy.net Today's changing by French Scholasticism I'd like to start today's podcast with a shout out to my Uncle Fred, who, in addition to being a devoted listener of the podcast, a song and dance man and a fanatical theatergoer, holds a PhD in history. He tells me that some decades ago he attended a talk by the British historian GR Potter, at which Potter raised what was then already a cliched question when did the Middle Ages end? Potter joked that since he was a medievalist and was just working on a biography of Ulrich Zwingli, who died in 1531, the medieval period must have ended in 1531. I think I can go him one better, though, since the defining feature of medieval philosophy was scholasticism. It stands to reason that the medieval period lasted as long as scholasticism did, which by my reckoning means that it lasted at least until the French Revolution at the end of the 18th century. On the eve of the Revolution, people were still criticizing the university masters for clinging to the same old theses, which are daily attacked in the same way and with the same arguments. And that was a complaint that came from colleagues within the university itself, not from libertine freethinkers or partisans of the new science. But we should not be too quick to assume that the scholastics were irredeemably conservative, stubbornly repeating the verities of medieval Aristotelianism for generation after generation, even as the world changed around them. From previous episodes, we know that there were plenty of changes already in the 16th century. Spanish scholastics like Suarez and Molina displayed formidable sophistication and innovation, albeit within the broad framework laid down by the medievals. And from the same context came commentaries on Aristotle that benefited from the highest standards of humanist philology. There's also the phenomenon of Protestant scholasticism to consider. They had their own institutions, like the Huguenot Academy at Saumur in the Loire Valley, where the instructors were commanded in 1620 to teach in a scholastic manner. Teenage students, whether Catholic, Lutheran, or Calvinist, were put through a traditional course that made them fully fluent in Latin, followed by a couple of years studying philosophical disciplines like logic and physics, before possibly graduating to one of the advanced subjects, namely law, theology, and medicine. In all these fields, the scholastics sought to strike a balance between abandoning the old ideas and ignoring the new ones. Actually, this is itself fairly Medieval scholasticism had been constantly evolving for centuries while still basing itself around the interpretation of Aristotle, Augustine and other authorities. This was still the plan in the 17th and 18th centuries. As the Parisian professor Jacques de Cerrul said in 1629, we should seek out Aristotle's opinion, but on the occasions his opinions are faulty, we should only embrace what he ought to have thought. The same policy applied to the great medieval authorities. One of the foremost French scholastics of the 17th century was scipion Dupleix. He served as tutor to the royal family and wrote a widely consulted textbook in the French language called Body of Philosophy. He disdained those who followed the teachings of Aquinas, even when his views were clearly wrong, comparing this to soldiers who willingly fight in what they know to be an unjust war. Besides, Aristotle himself had rejected the ideas of his own teacher, Plato, on the grounds that we should prefer truth to our friends. And that was one point where Aristotle was absolutely right. The schoolmen also enjoyed considerable doctrinal freedom simply because of the long running debates within scholasticism itself. At the early modern universities, the relative merits of Aquinas and Duns Scotus metaphysics were still being litigated from the year 1668, for instance, we had the theologian Antoine Godin writing a work called Philosophy in Accordance with The Principles of St. Thomas, a textbook that polemicizes against Scotus. Gudin was a Dominican like Aquinas, so it's not too surprising to see him standing up for Thomism. But sometimes figures we'd expect to be partisans of Aquinas showed themselves open to Scotist philosophy. Despite being Jesuits, those 16th century Spanish scholastics often agreed with Scotus over Aquinas. This tradition too was carried on in the 17th century when a figure like Rene de Serizier opted for doctrines from both Aquinas and Scotus. Among the topics still being debated were does being belong to God in the same sense as it does to creatures, as Scotus thought? Or only analogically, as Aquinas had held? Do substances have only one form, as Aquinas believed, or many forms, as pretty much everyone else believed? Is there a real distinction between essence and existence? Can God create a void space, even if he never does? How about matter without form? Could God make that exist? What is the principle that individuates two substances of the same type of. In short, all the problems of medieval scholasticism were still as problematic as ever. But the continuation of the so called Wegischstreit or dispute over methods between different Aristotelian approaches is probably less interesting to us than the schoolmen's response to the so called new science and new philosophy. It's here that the scholastics really have a reputation for conservatism. But this reputation is not entirely deserved. Consider the question of cosmology. While it's true that the heliocentrism of Copernicus and Galileo was widely rejected at the universities, it was quite popular to embrace another modern cosmological system, namely that of Tycho Brahe, according to which the sun goes around the Earth, but some planets go around the sun. Apart from the familiar points that the Earth doesn't seem to be moving and that Aristotelian physics would be undermined if it did, there was the persistent worry that the Bible seems to say that the Earth is unmoving and that the sun goes around it. Since the Copernican and the Tychonic cosmologies were both thought to be consistent with the observed phenomena, this religious consideration could tip the balance towards Tycho. Thus one scholastic wrote in 1675, Though natural reason does not convince us, yet the Tychonic system must be placed before the Copernican because of the singular authority of Scripture. Our intellect must be held in captivity out of our obedience to Christ. When it came to physics more generally and to questions of metaphysics. The question was of course, how the scholastics would respond to the challenge laid down by Cartesianism. Descartes himself tried not to make that challenge too confrontational. If we think only of the Meditations, many features of that work show that he wanted to persuade the Skullman to rather than defeat them in open battle. Most obviously there was his appeal to the theologians of Paris. In the preface he also made use of Scholastic terminology and was deliberately cagey about the relation between the Meditations and his anti Aristotelian physical theory. And as we saw in episode 471, one of the scholars invited to compose objections to the Meditations was a Jesuit. Descartes was concerned enough about Scholastic opinion that he took pains to consult their writings. We also saw in episode 466 that he asked Mersenne for advice about this, and Mersenne pointed him towards one Eustachius of Santo Paulo. This was a good choice. Eustachius, four part compendium of philosophy from 1609, was a dominant scholastic text of the period and typical in accepting ideas from various strands of Scholasticism. There are even ideas in Eustachius that reappear in Descartes, not least the contrast between confused and distinct ideas, which plays such a key role in the Meditations. Descartes duly expressed satisfaction with Mersenne's recommendation, calling Eustachius work the best ever written on scholastic thought. The compliment was not always returned, though I don't mean by Eustachius himself, but by the scholastic establishment more generally, whose response to the rise of Cartesianism ranged from cautious to caustic. Many followed a middle path, something I'll illustrate with just two thinkers of 17th century Paris, both named Jean Baptiste Jean Baptiste Maurin in the first half of the century and Jean Baptiste Duhamel in the second half. Morin was a contemporary of Descartes and expressed his disquiet about the changes brought on by the new science, remarking that there was nothing more seditious and pernicious than a new doctrine. Yet he wrote a conciliatory letter to Descartes saying, like you, I seek the truth about things in nature alone and no longer put my trust in the schools which serve me only for terminology. And he complained that his colleagues were too slow to engage in experimentation so as to test the new science against the old science. Our second, Jean Baptiste Duhamel, was likewise open minded and especially interested in the use of mechanistic explanations in physics, as we'll see shortly. This openness was typical of the Paris Academy of Sciences, which Duhamel was a founding member. He cautioned, though that mechanism did not reveal the physical principles of ABSA phenomena. Ultimately, modern science would simply illuminate the teachings of the ancients, which he was unwilling to abandon. Duhamel was also a member of the oratory, which seems to be the best place to look for institutionalized acceptance of Cartesianism in the 17th century. We already know that one of its founders, Pierre Berulle, was was on good terms with Descartes himself and that the most famous oratorian thinker, Malebranche, was deeply indebted to the Cartesian project. Another oratorian priest, Bernard Lamy, was disciplined along with three other colleagues for teaching Cartesianism too enthusiastically. He wasn't brought to heel, though, describing Descartes as the one who has spoken the best about the mind and who has distinguished its functions from those of the machine of the body with the greatest clarity. The leaders of the oratory became nervous about all this and formally banned the teaching of Descartes Physics in 1678. In that same decade, another oratorian wrote against the new philosophers, including Descartes Gossendi and Malebranche. You'll never guess his first name. That's right, Jean Baptiste. I guess if you're christening a baby in the early modern period, the name John the Baptist comes naturally to mind. This anti Cartesian oratorian, Jean Baptiste de la Grange, said that though the newfangled ideas seemed much easier, they were in fact dangerous. Higher authorities were forced to agree, or rather, they tried to force others to agree with them and to turn against Descartes. As I've mentioned in previous episodes, his works were placed on the Church's index of prohibited books in 1663, with the caveat until corrected. Arnauld complained that since there was no indication of the needed corrections, this was tantamount to banning them indefinitely. An anonymous treatise in defense of Cartesianism, probably also written by Arnauld, made another point that I find historically remarkable. He was reacting to the charge that Descartes physics was incompatible with the Church's understanding of the Eucharistic miracle. It would, he argued, be tactically unwise of the Church to press this objection. So many people accepted the new physics that the upshot would be to undermine belief in the Church's theological position. Of course, Arnould was hardly an unbiased observer, but if he was right about this, then it marks a seismic shift in European intellectual history. In the time of Aquinas, and for some time after, it was clearly bad news for philosophy if it contradicted Church doctrine. Now we're starting to see the reverse. It's a point that had been made in scientific contexts, especially the controversy over Galileo's Copernicus. But this is the first time I can recall seeing anyone argue that religion would bring itself into disrepute if it challenged a properly philosophical doctrine. That same confidence was expressed in another anonymous piece from the Cartesian camp, a 1671 burlesque that mocked the Church authorities for being so stupid as to declare widely accepted discoveries to be false. Aping the legalistic language of their opponents, the authors devised a parody in which it is decreed that Aristotle would be taught by university professors without their being required to read him. It is furthermore decreed that the heart continue to be the principle of the nerves. The edict goes on to banish reason from the schools of the university, prohibit it from entering there from troubling or bothering the aforementioned Aristotle. But the anti Cartesian camp gave as good as it got. A theology professor at Algiers wrote in equally satirical terms about the spread of Cartesianism. It is no longer fashionable to believe that fire is hot that marble is hard, that animate bodies sense pain. These truths are too ancient for those who love novelty. Among the novelties he decried were the notion that animals are mere machines, the denial of substantial forms, and the implication that no one needs a teacher because we are all born with true innate ideas. These polemics show that there was genuine antipathy between the partisans of the new science and the defenders of older ideas. But, as I've been saying, this is somewhat misleading. Scholasticism was continuing to evolve quietly, absorbing ideas from that same new science, while also putting forward new ideas of its own. Take logicthat essential discipline of the traditional curriculum. Descartes was pretty dismissive of the Aristotelian logical training he had received, saying that the forms of the syllogisms are of no help in perceiving the truth of things. But Eustachius, the author recommended by Mersenne, anticipated Descartes by thinking of the study of reasoning as an inquiry into the different operations of the mind. In subsequent treatments, we find this psychological approach to logic presented alongside traditional Aristotelian material. Good examples are the Port Royal logic and a 1648 textbook by Louis de la Clache, which organizes that traditional material under the headings of mental operations, Conception, Judgment, Consequence, and Method. Logic is an area where Descartes ideas had a significant impact on the scholastics. His method of systematic doubt often made them nervous, since it seemed to suggest that when doing philosophy we ought to set aside anything we believe by religious faith. Yet the schoolmen recognized that it could be a useful method for isolating absolutely certain axioms of rationality. Thus, in 1744, a Jesuit wrote that Descartes has provided for our service a new way of doubting, not one that is skeptical and pyronic, but one that is cautiously fearful and where progress is slow, yet one all the same, out of which the most lucid principles gradually emerge and develop, and which, when once linked together, embrace in their web all nature's parts. Again, though, the scholastics clung to Aristotelian ideas even as they embraced new Cartesian ones, in this case, by taking the most certain axiom to be not the cogito I think, therefore I am, but the principle of non contradiction, this being a fundamental rule of reason discussed in Aristotle's metaphysics. I think today's logicians would mostly agree, so score one for the schoolmen. We also see developments in scholastic ideas about ethics and free will. We've already spent plenty of time on debates over grace and salvation, so I won't get into that again. Now Instead, I'll mention the dispute over the ethical positions called probabilism and laxism. The idea is that in our moral lives we are often uncertain about the right thing to do. In such cases, we are allowed to follow the course of what is only probably right. This is a typical move in Jesuit casuistry, which involved reasoning about moral dilemmas. Suppose I promised to hold on to a weapon for someone and then realize it might have been used in a murder. I might not be sure whether I should turn it into the police, since that would involve breaking my promise. Probabilism would allow me to go with the option that seems more likely to be right in this case, that the obligation to keep a promise is outweighed by the demands of justice. The related theory of laxism states that if there is any probability that an action could be right, you're free to choose it without fault. So if I don't want to implicate my friend in a murder, I could use the rationale that, after all, I did make a promise which just might be the decisive moral consideration. Unsurprisingly, the Church was not impressed with all this and condemned both probabilism and laxism. In 1749, another debate concerned what you might think of as the reverse case. What happens when you know with absolute certainty what is right to do? Well, not so much when you know what you should do, but when God with his omniscience, knows what he should do. A Protestant scholastic at Nimes named David Derradon proposed that God had created the world necessarily, since he knew it would be good for him to do so. And being perfectly good, he must do whatever he recognizes to be good. A colleague of his went further, saying that God even had to create this particular world, it being the best possible world. Here we see debates going on in a university setting that have clear echoes among much more famous secular philosophers, in this case, Leibniz. Leibniz isn't someone we're covering in this series, since he wasn't French. But it would be remiss of me not to mention that in the 1670s he spent four years in Paris, where he got to know such luminaries as Arnault, Malevranche and the Dutch scientist Christian Huygens. Huygens was in turn involved in an enterprise that shows how the new science could work in concert with powerful authorities, the Paris Academy of the Sciences. Huygens was brought to the city in 1666 as one of the 15 founding members of the Academy, which had its first meeting in December of that year, and in the King's private library, no less. There wouldn't be a public meeting for another 33 years. But that shouldn't be taken to suggest that the organization was unimportant or inactive. It became the mechanism by which the Crown gave approval to scientific publications and new inventions, which of course were themselves usually mechanisms. That renegade Cartesian of the oratory, Bernard Lamy, noted in 1683 that people no longer believe that something is known unless they can explain it mechanically. The work of the Academy bears that out, as this royally sponsored institution focused on mathematics and physics, with an emphasis on empirical testing by the scientific community. Another leading member of the Academy, Claude Perrault, said that science had previously been undertaken by lone individuals who were prone to error. By contrast, the Academy's approach could be described as all the facts brought forth are verified by a great many eyes, all clairvoyant, where arguments are discussed by a great many minds, all enlightened. It is on such works that one can, as on solid foundations, build the edifice of science without fear. The bricks of that edifice were announced in a publication put out by the Academy, modestly called the Journal of Wise Men, Journal des Savants. We can feel another seismic shift happening here. As Roger Hahn argued in a 1971 book about the Academy, this was one of the first organizations to focus on science in something like the modern accounts of the physical world based on mathematics and careful observation. Even the university masters were converting to this point of view, as we can see from the increasing use of experiments in classroom teaching around this same time. I suspect that this allowed some parts of traditional scholastic thought to persist for longer than one might have expected. After all, non empirical philosophical disciplines like metaphysics were not going to be disproven by air pumps or anatomical dissections. But it marks a steady drift of science away from the former meaning of the Latin word scientia, namely demonstrative knowledge of all aspects of reality, ranging from ethics and physics to metaphysics and theology. Maybe the medieval age was finally ending after all. Unlike our series on 17th century French philosophy, which is going to continue by branching out in an unfamiliar direction, inspired by the establishment of another important research institution, the Jardin du Roi, or Royal Garden, and the parallel creation of the garden at Versailles under King Louis xiv, I thought that we might dig into a topic that I've barely mentioned over nearly 500 episodes of podcasting Plants and gardening. What could this possibly have to do with philosophy? Am I just barking up the wrong tree? I'm rooting that you'll join me to find out Next time on the History of Philosophy without any gaps.