Descartes: A Biography

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

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

and to write to a number of potential defenders, including Huygens, to

help resist the new pressure from Utrecht.

Pollot advised that he contact Dirck Graswinckel, whose role was simi-

lar to that of an attorney general for the province of Holland. He suggested

wisely that Descartes not make matters worse by writing provocative let-

ters to Utrecht or Groningen.Pollot also advised Descartes to seek the

protection of the French ambassador to The Hague, the Marquis Gaspard

Coignet de la Thuillerie, and, through him, to request that theStadtholder

intervene in the case.TheStadtholderwas sufficiently sympathetic that

the Utrecht magistrates agreed, informally, to close the case. The ambas-

sador’s secretary wrote to Descartes, regretting that the Dutch republic

had not forced him to leave the country, because France would thereby

have gained a benefit equivalent to their loss.The ambassador also wrote

onhis behalf to the states of Groningen, probably in March,argu-

ing that the public interest required that Descartes be allowed to enjoy

the freedom and noninterference required to complete his intellectual

project.

Descartes was equally anxious to achieve a satisfactory resolution with

Groningen. He explained to Pollot that he did not wish to harm Schoock,

whom he always understood as a relatively na ̈ıve pawn in the controversy.

His main objective was to put a stop to menaces from Utrecht.Accord-

ingly, he wrote a letter to explain his situation, without any addressee,

and he sent it to Pollot to ask advice about who to send it to: the French

ambassador, the academic senate at Groningen, or the states of the corre-

sponding province.Descartes’ original claim about the authorship ofThe

Admirable Method, perhaps initially based on a mistaken hypothesis about

its author before the title page was added, was to some extent vindicated

when Schoock accepted, two years later (April), that the initiative

to write the book came from Voetius. This late development included a

number of acknowledgments that were very damaging for Voetius.

()Schoock undertook to writeThe Admirable Methodonly because he was

asked to do so by Voetius, who in turn suggested a number of criticisms

of Descartes, including the charge of atheism.

()While most of the text had been written by Schoock in Utrecht, another

unidentified hand had added some of the most virulent accusations to the

text.

()The tone of the work was unbecoming a scholarly debate; in particular,

Schoock had never meant to compare Descartes to Vanini.