c CUNYB/Clarke December, :
The French Liar’s Monkey and the Utrecht Crisis from the theologians at the Sorbonne, was to contrast the hostility to his
ideas in France with the emerging sympathy and support for Cartesian
philosophy in the United Provinces. During the final months of
and the first months of the following year, however, he was distracted by
areversal of fortune in the gathering storm of opposition from theolo-
gians and philosophers at Utrecht. Accordingly, when he was drafting
replies to Bourdin’s objections, in preparation for the second edition of
theMeditations,hewas acting as chief philosophical advisor to Regius. It is
understandable, then, that when focusing on winning Father Dinet’s sup-
port, he lapsed into the same kind of contrast that he had used earlier, only
this time between the support and advice he hoped to get from France and
the petty, ignorant, and uninformed comments of Calvinist theologians at
an unnamed Dutch university. This was not the first time that Descartes
had expressed regret publicly at the failure of others to acknowledge his
philosophical contributions. The lapse of judgment involved here was
not out of character. On this occasion, however, it carried a heavy price,
both personally and professionally. Utrecht had been the first university
to hire a professor who supported Cartesian philosophy. It was now to
become the first of many to condemn Cartesianism and to prohibit its
teaching.
Any impartial reader today cannot fail to be struck by the bitterness and
intensity of the language used by Descartes. Voetius is described as direct-
ing his ‘machinations’ against a rather defenceless Regius, attempting to
dismiss him from his chair, of being ‘stupid’ and ‘malicious’, of propos-
ing arguments that were ‘ridiculous, vicious and false’, and of being a
‘quarrelsome and incompetent Rector’ (vii.,,,). He is also
described as abusing his position as university rector to defeat Regius by
immoral strategies rather than by open argument. For example, Descartes
claims that Voetius complained to the theology faculty about the con-
tent of Regius’ pamphlet and also arranged, at the same time, to have it
confiscated so that no one could check the validity of his complaints.
When Descartes analyzed the arguments used by Voetius and the the-
ology faculty, he claimed that ‘the Rector maliciously tried to conquer
his opponent by authority, having been vanquished by his arguments’
(vii.). In a word, Voetius was presented as an immoral, quarrelsome,
stupid, malicious, vindictive, and unfair theologian who abused his tem-
porary authority as rector in order to suppress philosophical ideas simply
because they were novel.