Descartes: A Biography

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The French Liar’s Monkey and the Utrecht Crisis 

claims, partly ambiguous and ridiculous, partly dangerous, extracted from a

Treatise recently written in Defence of the Establishment and Institution among

the Reformed of Confraternities of St. Mary,...offered by G. Voetius to the

Dutch churches, their faithful pastors and elders.Voetius argued, predictably,

that there were never circumstances that could excuse Calvinists if they

joined such a popish sodality and compromised their faith by superstition

and idolatry. This intervention by Voetius into the affairs of a town that

was outside the jurisdiction of Utrecht provided Descartes with more evi-

dence to support his characterization of the one-time rector as someone

who thrived on controversy.

The Principles of Philosophy

By focusing on the Utrecht controversy one gets the mistaken impres-

sion that Descartes devoted almost all his energies, during this period, to

quarrels with his Dutch Calvinist hosts. In fact, he had been working con-

sistently on a major book that was to be published inasThe Principles

of Philosophy. Descartes reported to Huygens onJanuarythat he had

reached the sections of thePrinciplesin which he discussed magnetism.

Huygens thought he might assist by sending him a copy of a book by

Athanasius Kircher (–), entitledThe Magnetic Art, which had

been published in Rome in.Incharacteristic style, Descartes took

‘enough patience to leaf through it’ by reading only ‘the chapter titles and

the marginal notes’, and he then suggested that the Jesuit author was more

‘a charlatan than an expert’ (iii.).

This reluctance to be distracted by reading the work of others – or,

perhaps, Descartes’ disdain for their work – is illustrated by the number

of books that he refused to read during this period. It is understandable

that, when he was extremely busy completing the text of theMeditations,

he had not read one of the most famous theological books of the time,

theAugustinusof Jansen, which had been published in Louvain in.

However, he also declined to read Fermat’s geometry, and a new publica-

tion by Gassendi on motion, entitledTwo Letters on Motion impressed by

a Body in Motion.‘Ihavemore or less read only the index that he put at

the beginning, from which I learned that he did not discuss any subject

matter that I need to read’ (iii.).He refused to read Hobbes’ essay

onthe tides, with the dismissive comment: ‘I am not interested in seeing

the writing of the Englishman’ (iii.).