Descartes: A Biography

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 Descartes: A Biography

book was nearly completed and, if he received Bourdin’s objections, that

he should send them immediately to Van Hogelande’s house in Leiden.

The long-awaited objections arrived aboutJanuary. Descartes

expressed his reaction in the following colourful military metaphor: ‘I

received the writing of the Jesuits four or five days ago. It is a prisoner

who is under my control and whom I wish to treat as courteously as I can.

However, I find it so guilty that I cannot see any way to save it. Every day

I assemble my council of war on this topic, and I hope that you will see

the trial within a short time’ (iii.). The ‘trial’ in question was made

public when Bourdin’s objections, together with Descartes’ replies, were

printed in the second edition of theMeditationsas the Seventh Objections

and Replies (vii.–).

In general, Bourdin’s objections were as quibbling or nitpicking as

Descartes had complained. They relied excessively on the kind of rhetor-

ical tricks that might have been effective in oral disputation, by focusing

onindividual words, quoting texts inaccurately, and using sarcasm or

funny stories to sway listeners. That style did not work as well for readers.

Descartes’ reaction was correspondingly acerbic. He regretted that this

‘reverend Father’ was so anxious to quibble that he imitated ‘the vilest

comedian on the contemporary stage by raising a laugh by his own inep-

titude’ (vii.). However, Bourdin made some telling points against the

Meditations, especially by showing that the argument that the mind is not

material assumes, unjustifiably, that we already know all the properties of

matter. Unfortunately, he expressed even this valid point by telling a story

about a peasant who knew only four kinds of animal, and then argued,

onseeing a novel animal, that it must not be an animal because it did not

correspond to anything in his previous experience.

Descartes’ dismissive attitude to Father Bourdin is complemented by

a lengthy and obsequious letter to his superior, Father Dinet, which was

written as an Appendix to the second edition of theMeditations.Here

Descartes acknowledges that Bourdin could not have been acting on behalf

of the Jesuits, since his objections fail to display the charity, understand-

ing, and scholarship that characterize that religious order. ‘It is very evi-

dent from the dissertation of the reverend father that he did not enjoy

that good health that is found in the rest of your body [i.e., the Jesuits]’

(vii.). Once again, Descartes explains that he is in the process of writ-

ing a new book (i.e., thePrinciples of Philosophy) that would benefit from

the advice of the Jesuits. Their suggestions would be so highly esteemed