Descartes: A Biography

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 Descartes: A Biography

and the temporal dimension of God’s interventions in human actions, he

supported a more tolerant attitude toward other religious traditions whose

members, according to his account of divine grace, retained the possibility

of religious conversion and ultimate salvation.

This dispute, although initially concerned with one of the finer points

of Reformed theology, divided Dutch society, its public representatives,

and its city councils. It also threatened to destabilize the fragile unity of

the United Provinces just at the time when their truce with the Spanish

was about to expire (in), because it drew unwelcome attention to

the constitutional ambiguity of the new political entity. For, despite the

depth and seriousness of the division of allegiance among Dutch Calvin-

ists, it was unclear whether such a fundamental dispute should be resolved

separately by each individual province, or whether it should be decided

bythe States General on their behalf. The Synod of Dordrecht (–

) decided after lengthy debates to support the anti-Remonstrant or

Gomarist position. This led to the purging of Arminians from town coun-

cils, the imprisonment of the greatest Dutch jurist of the period, Hugo

Grotius (–), his famous escape from Loevestein Castle in,

and his subsequent exile in France.

Descartes’ first visit to the United Provinces, therefore, coincided with

the deliberations of the Synod of Dordrecht, the consequent official

repression of dissident religious sects, including Catholics and Luther-

ans, the uncertainty about the political unity of the secessionist provinces,

and the early years of a Dutch recovery of its international commercial

and shipping pre-eminence. It was also a time of significant immigration

of refugee Calvinists from the southern provinces and from Germany, and

of the consolidation of the religious ethos of the emerging republic. The

relative instability and inhospitality of such a state did not deter the aspir-

ing young Frenchman, when he arrived in Holland with vaguely military

ambitions and a willingness to learn from what he called ‘the great book

of the world.’

Although one must have some reservations about the retrospective his-

tory of this period that Descartes provides in the autobiographical para-

graphs of theDiscourse on Method, his comments inhave the feel of

authenticity. For example, he recalls almost with disbelief that, on leaving

college, he was na ̈ıve enough to think he knew the difference between

valid sciences and their pseudo-competitors. ‘As far as false doctrines are

concerned, I thought that I already knew their value well enough not to be