The Sociology of Philosophies

(Wang) #1

11. Secularization and Philosophical Meta-territoriality



  1. Compare the general model of political revolutions in Skocpol (1979) and Gold-
    stone (1991).

  2. In Figure 9.7, this is the lineage of prominent Scotists and nominalists (see 295
    and 299 in the key), of whom the most notable was John Mair (314), the teacher
    of the reformer John Knox; Mair’s successors include Dullaert of Ghent (315),
    Thomist natural philosopher and editor of Buridan; Vives; and the leading
    Thomists of the period—all of whom were now teaching in Spain—Crockoert,
    Vitoria, Cano, de Soto, and Medina (335, 337, 338, 340, 341).

  3. Aquinas had held that only in God are existence and essence united. Suarez held
    that this is true of finite beings as well. This sharpens the problem of how to
    characterize contingency, which led Leibniz to his distinction among kinds of
    necessity, logical and physical (Funkenstein, 1986: 118–121, 198).

  4. Kagan (1974); Collins (1979: 4, 92). By comparison to Spain, consider the fact
    that England also was in an educational boom period during 1580–1670, when
    university students were about 1 percent of the late teen population, according to
    Stone’s (1974a) calculations, a ratio which dropped back to one third this level in
    the 1700s. In both Spain and England, the educational boom went along with an
    outburst of intellectual activity.

  5. Bérulle is one of the main connections to Spanish movements. He was ambassador
    to Spain, and introduced the Carmelites—Saint Teresa’s order—into France. The
    conflict of the Oratorians versus the Jesuits structurally continued earlier battles
    in Spain (EP, 1967: 2:345–355; Ariew, 1990). See 31, 88, and 134 in the key to
    Figure 10.1.

  6. Truchet (1967). The contemporary Spanish Jesuit, Balthazar Gracian, whose Art
    of Prudence (1647) is a manual on how to survive in a treacherous world by using
    deceit, had provided a model admired by Mme. de Sablé. Here we see the inner
    affinity of Jansenists and Jesuits beneath their surface antagonism.

  7. In the same way the Cambridge Platonists, who published most of their works
    during this time, were absorbed in the flux of attention by more striking formula-
    tions of spiritual primacy. Henry More’s tutee Lady Anne Conway formulated a
    monistic ontology of spirits emanating from God, with matter at the lowest level
    as congealed spirit (Audi, 1995: 162, 513). Conway made little impact on the
    attention space: in part from sexist disregard of women, in part from her conver-
    sion to Quakerism, and above all because this Neoplatonist-sounding position was
    upstaged. On the other side, Locke produced the most defensible version of the
    primacy of extended matter, which eclipsed the earlier efforts on this side of the
    turf: those of Gassendi, who was not wholeheartedly modernist or secularist, and
    Hobbes, whose reputation survives because of his political philosophy rather than
    his ontology.

  8. In Figure 10.1, note in the network 19, 31, 43–45, 97–98 and their ties. On the
    episodes recounted in the text, see Popkin (1979) and the relevant articles in EP
    (1967). The first round of controversy began with the arrival of Uriel da Costa, a
    crypto-Jew (i.e., forced convert to Christianity) who had studied at Coimbra, which


Notes to Pages 573–590^ •^999
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