Descartes: A Biography

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The French Liar’s Monkey and the Utrecht Crisis 

rector of the ‘anonymous’ Dutch university to his Jesuit correspondent in

France:

He passes for a theologian, a preacher, and a dialectician. He has become very famous

and influential among the uneducated because he displays his indomitable and pro-

tective religious zeal by inveighing against the Roman religion or other religions that

differ from his own, or against the powerful, all the while caressing the ears of the

masses with his scurrilous comments. He also publishes, daily, many tracts that no

onereads, citing many authors (most of whom oppose him rather than support him,

and are possibly known only from the indexes of books), and he writes about all

kinds of sciences as if he were an expert in them. By speaking very confidently, but

ignorantly, he appears very learned to the uneducated. However, those who are more

educated know how importunate he has always been in provoking others; how often,

in disputes, he has offered insults rather than arguments and then retreated in dis-

grace and defeat. If they differ from him in religion they openly mock and despise

him, and some have treated him in that way so publicly that it seems as if nothing

new could be written against him. If however they share his religious beliefs, although

they excuse and tolerate him as much as possible, they do not agree with him in their

hearts. (vii.–)

Here was Descartes, a French Catholic immigrant in the United

Provinces, offering a portrait of the professor of theology at Utrecht, rec-

tor of the university (untilMarch), a prominent member of the

Synod of Dort on the anti-Remonstrant side and, therefore, an extremely

orthodox, influential, and public proponent of Calvinism. The lack of

diplomacy involved was compounded by the fact that a French philoso-

pher was trying to win support from Jesuits in France by regaling their

provincial superior with stories about the ignorance, ineptitude, and moral

weakness of a Dutch Calvinist theologian. Descartes went on to describe

Voetius as bullying other faculty members into agreeing with his con-

demnation of the professor of medicine, and as acting as both judge and

prosecutor in the academic senate’s condemnation of Cartesianism.

This critique of Voetius in the letter to Father Dinet was the immedi-

atecause of the Utrecht controversy. It began, however, with Descartes’

friendship with Regius and the latter’s support for the introduction of

Cartesian natural philosophy into Utrecht University.

Regius and Descartes

Regius first became acquainted with some of Descartes’ ideas from one

of his university colleagues in Utrecht, Henricus Reneri, and by reading