Descartes: A Biography

c CUNYB/Clarke     December, :

Metaphysics in a Hornet’s Nest (–) 

In the accompanying letter for Hayneuve, Descartes acknowledged that

Bourdin had written his critique without consulting other Jesuits, that it

was never his (Descartes’) intention to suggest otherwise, and that he was

merely hoping to provoke the Jesuits collectively into an examination of

his work. Stretching credibility to its limits, he added: ‘I am clearly not

someone who is offended if my views are refuted. On the contrary, those

who oppose them with serious and solid arguments make me very grateful’

(iii.–). Although these letters were both written onAugust, they

were not given to a messenger until Descartes returned from Francine’s

funeral onSeptember.

Descartes’ duplicity is evident again in October, when he uses Mersenne

to entrap the reluctant Jesuit critic. He asks that Mersenne make sure

that the Jesuits have copies of all the relevant correspondence, and that

they know that Descartes knows that they have them. If they reply only

orally, thereby depriving Descartes of a record of their response, he asks

Mersenne to make a Latin summary, to give it to the Jesuits, and to mention

‘in passing’ when writing to Descartes that he has shown the summary

to the Jesuits. Descartes is almost artificially fomenting a contest with

extremely reluctant adversaries, in the course of which he vows ‘to interpret

in future everything that comes from one of them as if it came from their

whole society’ (iii.).

The first edition of theMeditationswas published in Augustwith-

out any contribution from the Jesuits, despite Descartes’ importunate

efforts to extract from them either an official endorsement or written

objections. This did not deter him, however, from continuing his efforts

to provoke them. He wrote to Mersenne in December, with another letter

to be shown to the superior of the Jesuit province in Paris, suggesting that

any comments from these learned religious should be written down, so

that they could not retract them later.This unrelenting badgering even-

tually worked. In January, Descartes received a letter from Father

Bourdin, but it did not quite satisfy his anxious requests. He was evidently

expecting a set of objections to theMeditations, written by Bourdin – with

the assistance, perhaps, of other Jesuits – and he was relying on Huygens to

guarantee their safe delivery by messenger. He increased the pressure on

the Jesuits by threatening to use one of their textbooks as a target for a sus-

tained critique of scholastic philosophy, although he had already decided

bythis time not to implement that plan.He also wrote to Huygens, as

another useful intermediary, that the printing of the second edition of the