The Seventeenth Century PDF
Preview The Seventeenth Century
THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY THE SEVENTEENTH by EMILE ,BREHIER TRANSLATED BY WADE BASKIN THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS CHICAGO AND LONDON 677 H 210153 Originally published in 1938 as Histoire de la philosophic: La Philosophic moderne. I: Le dix-septieme siecle. © 1938, Presses Universitaires de France The present bibliography has been revised and enlarged to include recent publications. These have been supplied by the translatorand others. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 63-20912 The University of Chicago Press, Chicago & London The University of Toronto Press, Toronto 5, Canada © Translation 1966 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 1966 Printed in the United States of America WW CONTENTS i General Characteristics of the Seventeenth Century i ii Francis Bacon and Experimental Philosophy 21 in Descartes and Cartesianism 46 iv Pascal 126 v Thomas Hobbes 141 vi Spinoza 155 vii Malebranche 197 viii Leibniz 225 ix John Loc\e and English Philosophy 267 x Bayle and Fontenelle 292 INDEX 307 — GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY i The Conception of Human Nature: Authority and Absolutism no century has exhibited less confidence than the seventeenth century in the spontaneous forces of unbridled nature. Where could we find a more wretched portrait of natural man — the hapless victim of conflicting passions than that provided by political thinkers and moralists of the seventeenth century? On this point Hobbes agreed with La Rochefoucauld and La Rochefoucauld with the Jansenist Nicole: Hobbes held that men in the state of nature were sinister beasts of prey that could be subdued only by an absolute ruler, and the Jansenists were unwilling to admit that any charitable or altruistic impulse in men given, through sin, to concupiscence could have its source outside divine grace. The seventeenth century was also the century of the Counter- reformation and of absolutism. The Counterreformation eradicated the pagan elements of the Renaissance and brought into full bloom a Catholicism aware of its obligation to offer guidance to the minds and souls of men. The Jesuit Society, which had more than two hundred schools in France, provided educators, spiritual directors, and missionaries. Thomism as formulated by the Jesuit Suarez was universally taught and finally supplanted the doctrine of Melanch- i THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 2 thon, even in the universities of Protestant countries. The Counter- reformation was instigated in Rome and drew its support from private efforts. The French royalty itself was Gallican and the English royalty was Anglican. Still, the rulers of France did not shrink from using violent means to assure religious unity, and the final blow came when the revocation of the Edict of Nantes simply did away with Protestantism. The absolutism of the king was not the power of a strong indi- vidual to exact obedience from his subjects through personal pres- tige or by violent means; it was a social phenomenon which en- — — dured independently of the person who exercised it even during long minorities when omnipotent ministers exercised it in the name of the prince. This social phenomenon, of divine origin, imposed duties even more than it imposed rights, and the king, who is abso- lute by divine right but who is first subjugated to his task by elec- tion of God, is the exact opposite of the Renaissance tyrant. Thus harsh measures were accepted and tolerated in religion and in politics by people who understood their necessity as well as their benefits. Rigid rules constituted not thraldom but support, and with- out them man would fall, disjointed and uncertain, like Montaigne in his Essays. Ceremony was his guide in social relations just as ritual was his guide in church. There were instances of resistance, however, and they were fre- quent. In England, absolutism grounded on divine right twice col- lided with the common will and succumbed; in France, religious unity was established only at the price of periods of persecution. Throughout the seventeenth century Holland served as a refuge for — the persecuted from all countries the Jews from Spain and Portu- gal, the Socinians from Poland, and later the Protestants from — France but it was a precarious refuge where their lives were often endangered. The Catholic religion was itself threatened in France, its adopted country, by the quarrel of the Jansenists and the Moli- nists and, at the end of the century, by the stir raised by Mme Guy- non's mysticism. Behind these known facts lay hidden an intellectual ferment which was translated into thousands of incidents, books, or CHARACTERISTICS OF THE CENTURY 3 lampoons now forgotten. Declarations in support of freedom and tolerance did not begin in the eighteenth century; they were heard continually throughout the seventeenth century, especially in Eng- land and in Holland, and the century drew to a close with a bitter debate between Bossuet, who supported the divine right of kings, and Jurieu, the Protestant statesman who defended the sovereignty of the people. On closer examination, however, we find that these protestations and debates bear the mark of the century they were not penned by : individualists concerned only with promoting their private opinions. Here we should note that one of the most characteristic produc- tions of the century was the De jure belli ac pacts (1625) of Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), the author of the doctrine of natural law, who claimed he had discovered universal laws binding on all men even when they resort to the use of force. Not individuals but impersonal reason determines whether a war is just or unjust, whether a prince has the right to impose a religion on his subjects, and what is the legitimate scope of his authority. Where Machiavelli saw conflicts between individual forces that could be resolved only through violence, Grotius saw clearly defined relations based on law. Natural law is a rule of reason that commands or prohibits an action de- pending on whether such action is in harmony or disharmony with the nature of rational beings. The rule is in no way arbitrary and could not be changed by God himself. Natural law is joined to posi- tive law, which is established either by God (in matters of positive religion) or by the sovereign (in matters of civil legislation); the one great rule of positive law is not to contradict natural law. By the same token, within these limits, it is the law of nature to respect positive law. Consequently, Grotius' system leads generally to the conclusion that the established powers must be respected. For ex- ample, it does not recognize the right of the people to resist their sovereign; indeed, the reason why the people formed a nation and accepted a sovereign was that the individuals were too weak to subsist alone. Moreover, there was nothing to prevent them from — giving their sovereign absolute control over their lives the control THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 4 a master has over his slaves. The tendency of his argument is obvi- — ously to justify rationally certain positive laws the laws of warfare, punishment, property, and sovereignty. Law exists not for the purpose of making men independent of each other but for the purpose of uniting them. Although Grotius pleaded for tolerance toward all positive religions, he drew the line when it came to atheists and to those who denied the immortality of the soul: natural religion is as binding as natural law. The question of tolerance was posed in the same spirit. In Eng- land, for example, pleas for tolerance were of two kinds: either they were made by men who thought that they were rediscovering reason through a natural religion comprehensive enough to unite all churches and bring an end to dissension, or they were directed toward freedom of interpretation of the Bible, "the only religion of the Protestants," according to Chillingworth. Associated with pleas of the first kind were men like Herbert of Cherbury, who in his De veritate (1628) advocated a means of ending religious contro- versies and "the stubbornness with which wretched men embrace all the opinions of the doctors, or reject them wholesale, as if they do not know how to choose." * The choice was to be made by — separating common notions which were primitive, independent, — universal, necessary, and certain from all adventitious beliefs. These common notions constituted a veritable credo which predi- cated a sovereign power that must be worshiped and which taught that worship consisted mainly in a virtuous life, that vices must be expiated through repentance, and that vices would be punished — after death just as virtue would be rewarded a natural religion that established universal peace, though not without a trenchant criticism of the illusion of "private revelations" and especially of the notion that divine grace, individually bestowed, was necessary for salvation. At the end of the century Locke still clung to the same notions. Associated with pleas of the second kind were men who pre- served the spirit of free thought inherited from the Reformation. 1 1639 edition, p. 52.
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