Cartesianism Revisited1

Eric P. Lewis
Virginia Tech

In the summer of 2006 Daniel Garber opened the FME International
Seminar in Early Modern Thought by commenting: “This has become the
place to be.” The unexplained utterance generated smiles among the
small room full of scholars, and could easily have been written off as an in-
nocent bit of self-lauding or an ironic reference to the remoteness—even
obscurity—of the seminar’s site.2 The list of seminar participants con-
tained half a dozen philosophers from prestigious universities dotting the
globe. Their research garnered a wide, if not deep, following. However,
the dozen or so others listed on the program included graduate students,
and tenured and non-tenured faculty who labored in greater obscurity in
several academic disciplines. Together, these scholars seemed an unlikely
group to deªne the remote town in Romania (at least at that moment) as
“the place to be” for researchers of early modern thought.

The seminar title, “Disseminating Knowledge in the Seventeenth Cen-
tury: Centers and Peripheries in the Republic of Letters,” though innocu-
ous enough, is indicative of a style of philosophical research that until
fairly recently remained marginalized within the majority of English

1. This article discusses several recently published works about the reception of Des-
cartes in the seventeenth century. It argues that the categories traditionally used by mod-
ern philosophers to deªne the early modern period have been corrupted by the studies and
works represented here. The result is not just a more nuanced view of early modern philos-
ophy, but also a substantially different picture of the intellectual landscape. The editors of
the books in this review share a similar methodological approach to their subject, an ap-
proach that separates them from a more analytical style of philosophy that is practiced by
many of their colleagues. The publications under review are: Ariew and Garber 2002,
Schmaltz 2002, Schmaltz 2005, and Lennon 2003.

2. The seminar was held in the town of Bran, Romania, best known for the castle asso-

ciated with Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Perspectives on Science 2007, vol. 15, no. 4
©2007 by The Massachusetts Institute of Technology

493

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
p
o
s
c
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

1
5
4
4
9
3
1
7
8
9
4
7
3
p
o
s
c
.
2
0
0
7
1
5
4
4
9
3
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

494

Cartesianism Revisited

speaking philosophy departments.3 The fact that Garber, chair of the de-
partment of philosophy at Princeton, could conªdently make his opening
proclamation underscored a methodological struggle to which he success-
fully dedicated a career. Garber recently explained:

What my generation of historians was reacting against was a bun-
dle of practices that characterized the writing of the history of phi-
losophy in the period: the tendency to substitute rational recon-
structions of a philosopher’s views for the views themselves; the
tendency to focus on an extremely narrow group of ªgures (Des-
cartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume in my pe-
riod); . . . the tendency to treat the philosophical positions as if
they were those presented by contemporaries; and on and on and
on.” (Garber 2004, 2.)

The young and old present at the seminar likely wished that more of
Garber’s generation acted in concert with him; yet the emphasis of “pe-
ripheries” and “disseminating knowledge” is precisely the result of this
philosophical style.

Similar conferences have cropped up over the last decade, often self-
consciously struggling with the terminology of “outsiders” and “peripher-
ies” as they have explored the role of the contemporaries of Descartes,
Hobbes, Spinoza and Leibniz.4 Philosophers such as Walter Charleton,
John Davies, Bernardo Telesio, Pierre-Daniel Huet, Pierre-Sylvain Regis,
and Robert Desgabets, to name a few, were in no conventional way “out-
side” their respective intellectual communities, yet they have been largely
excluded from modern discourse about early modern philosophy.5 The par-
ticipants of these conferences typically focus much less on the perceived
internal coherence of a text such as Descartes’ Meditations than on under-
standing the text through the reactions of the author’s contemporaries; or,
conversely, understanding a primary philosopher as a reaction to his con-
temporaries. They share an assumption that lay behind Garber’s criticism:

3. I call this a “style” of philosophy because I wish to avoid creating false dichotomies.
As will be discussed, recent research into late scholasticism and the reception of Cartesian
thought demonstrates a rich spectrum of views that challenge the dichotomies tradition-
ally drawn. Likewise, modern methods of research span a spectrum that can best be de-
scribed in terms of tendencies.

4. Participants at a colloquium titled “Outsiders in Early Modern Philosophy,” The
Warburg Institute, London, Fall 2003, discussed the fallacy of calling the subjects of their
research “outsiders” when many were at the center of their intellectual community.

5. We might also successfully apply the terms “outsiders” and “peripheries” in a self-
reºective way. The methodological struggle precipitated by Garber and others has, at
times, elicited attempts to ostracize those whose research has had a greater contextual fo-
cus.

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
p
o
s
c
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

1
5
4
4
9
3
1
7
8
9
4
7
3
p
o
s
c
.
2
0
0
7
1
5
4
4
9
3
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

Perspectives on Science

495

researchers can better recover the meaning of a text when their efforts are
applied to intellectual context. The fact that Garber proclaimed to a group
of scholars, united in their study of “centers and peripheries,” that they
were in “the place to be” is nothing if not ironic as these scholars and their
research subjects become better recognized on the “inside” of their respec-
tive philosophical circles.

No shortage of words has been spilled by philosophers concerning the
merits of this increased emphasis on context.6 The late Margaret Wilson
called Garber and Michael Ayers to task for comments they wrote in the
introduction to The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy. As
editors, Garber and Ayers claimed that commentators in the “analytic tra-
dition” not only ignored the philosophical complexities of their subjects
and “distorted [philosophy’s] achievements, but also often denied them-
selves the tools necessary for the interpretation of the very words and sen-
tences they continue to expound” (Garber and Ayers 1998, 4).7 For her
part, Wilson promoted a “softening of the ideological division, rather than
to advocate any general thesis, factual or normative, about the relation of
philosophy and history” (Wilson 1992, 195). But Wilson worried that the
“detail and professionalism . . . of the sort desired for their volume by the
Cambridge History editors . . . can tend to discourage “use” of historical
ªgures by contemporary philosophers of a certain conscientiousness” (Wil-
son 1992, 205). She quoted David Lewis who admitted that he had not
discussed Leibniz’s views about the plurality of worlds in a recent work
because he lacked the expertise to conªdently represent the philosopher’s
ideas on the subject. Lewis had the choice between publishing something
that he admitted might be “undeserving of others’ attention,” or sparing
philosophers from those pages. Ostensibly, he had a further choice: to de-
vote much more attention to Leibniz’s work on the topic. But Lewis said
that after reading “what serious historians of philosophy” had to say, he
gave up because of the lack of consensus among them (Wilson 1992, 204).
He apparently had little desire to tackle the primary sources himself and
instead appealed to “serious” historians of philosophy, whomever they
might be. Pragmatic concerns thus trumped, in this case, any discussion
of Leibniz’s contribution to the issue of the plurality of worlds. Wilson la-
mented that Lewis failed to stray from his narrower philosophical project
because the demands of current historical research were so high. Lewis

6. A conference titled: “Do Historians and Philosophers of Science Have Anything to

Say to Each Other?” was recently held at Duke University, March 2007.

7. Wilson’s criticisms were published in The Philosophical Review, January 1992, well
prior to the actual publication of the volume that contained Garber and Ayer’s comments.
Garber (2004) later characterized his comments above as a “cartoon version of the “ana-
lytic” history of philosophy” and a “useful demon to posit.”

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
p
o
s
c
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

1
5
4
4
9
3
1
7
8
9
4
7
3
p
o
s
c
.
2
0
0
7
1
5
4
4
9
3
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

496

Cartesianism Revisited

simply left his reader to wonder how (or why) he would have used Leibniz
in his work if there had been a consensus on his doctrine of the plurality of
worlds, and if we should consider this shortage of words problematic.

Beyond the pedagogical issues facing philosophers working in early
modern history, Bernard Williams claimed that the two different styles of
research inevitably yielded incompatible products “in rather the way that
Impressionism, by exploring as intensely as possible the surface effects of
light, was thereby debarred from giving as much information about struc-
ture as was accessible to some other styles of painting” (Williams 1994,
20).8 Though Williams did not explicitly tell his reader which of the two
styles was analogous with Impressionism, his claim that the more histori-
cally inclined “naturally looks sideways to the context of a philosopher’s
ideas” seemed to answer the question.

The negative connotations of a “sideways” look may be avoided if Wil-
liams meant that the resulting picture exists, or should exist, independ-
ently of what he calls “present problems” in philosophy. Context, in this
case, may say something novel and interesting about the ideas of an histor-
ical ªgure such as Descartes, but tell the modern philosopher nothing (or
worse—something distorting) pertaining to one’s present philosophical
objectives. However, if Williams is correct, doesn’t this make the two
“styles” irrelevant to each other?

In Descartes Reinvented (2005) Tom Sorell, like Wilson, purports to offer
a reconciliation of sorts between philosophers and their more historically
oriented colleagues. He rightfully states that his latest book does not be-
long “to the genre history of philosophy,” but adds that it “lies somewhere
between studies of Descartes’ writings and their context and current work
in philosophy of mind, metaphysics and epistemology” (Sorell 2005, xx).
Sorell begins by making a distinction between what he calls “unrecon-
structed Cartesianism” and “innocent Cartesianism.” He calls the former
“Cartesianism as it is represented in Descartes himself” (Sorell 2005, x).
Innocent Cartesianism, on the other hand, consists of the “reinterpreta-
tion, and sometimes the outright revision, of unreconstructed Cartesian-
ism so as to meet some of the scruples of twentieth- and twenty-ªrst cen-
tury philosophy” (Sorell 2005, xiii). Although Williams’ analogy raised
the possibility of incommensurability, Sorell pays lip service to a perceived
common ground between the two Descartes he recognizes.

8. Williams sometimes calls the differences in methods a difference in “approach” or
“style.” However, his distinction appears more qualitative. He labeled one style “the his-
tory of ideas” and the other “the history of philosophy.” The latter he claimed “admits
more systematic regimentation of the thought under discussion.”

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
p
o
s
c
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

1
5
4
4
9
3
1
7
8
9
4
7
3
p
o
s
c
.
2
0
0
7
1
5
4
4
9
3
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

Perspectives on Science

497

Even where the claims of his modern detractors are poorly
grounded in Descartes’ text, or where they seem to be warranted
only by a perverse reading, they belong to a kind of folk memory of
Descartes in twentieth- and twenty-ªrst-century philosophy that is
important to understand in common with what the historical Des-
cartes said. Calling attention to this common ground is likely to be
far more effective in promoting a serious reevaluation of Cartesian-
ism than trying to persuade modern critics of Descartes that they
are so wrong about him that they must have some other philoso-
pher in mind. (Sorell 2005, xxi.)

Unfortunately, as the works reviewed below suggest, the historical Des-
cartes, or rather the phenomenon know as Cartesianism, tends to be more
interesting and more complex than Sorell’s unreconstructed Cartesianism.9
As we will see, the eclectic physician Walter Charleton, the French
Cartesians Géraud de Cordemoy, François Bayle, Pierre-Sylvain Regis,
Robert Desgabets, and Antoine Le Grand, don’t ªt most modern construc-
tions of Cartesianism. Yet Descartes wrote for this audience: these were his
contemporaries or near contemporaries, the people he hoped to persuade.
They shared his concerns, critiqued his philosophical and theological
views, offered solutions and criticisms, and created an intellectual climate
obscured by the over-simpliªed dichotomies reiterated by so many mod-
ern commentators.10 Research into these lesser-known philosophers has
produced a very different understanding of the early modern era and con-
tinues to challenge the story of modern philosophy’s debt to its past.

Daniel Garber, Roger Ariew, Tad Schmaltz, and Thomas Lennon, the
authors and editors of the works under review here, all share a common re-

9. The issue of deªning “Cartesianism” becomes more complicated still because Sorell
often uses the term as “a philosophical folk memory outside of the history of philosophy, a
folk memory largely created and sustained by those who are hostile to Cartesianism” (Sor-
ell, xxi). It is this particular form of Cartesianism that he wishes to correct with a dose of
something unreconstructed. But his narrow focus on Descartes Meditations (in a modern
English translation) to create the “unreconstructed” version fails to address Garber’s origi-
nal objections. As we will see, the authors under review here use “Cartesianism” in very
different ways. Consequently, Sorell rarely enters into conversation with historians of phi-
losophy.

10. Pierre-Daniel Huet’s Censura Philosophiae Cartesianae, now available in an English
translation thanks to Thomas Lennon’s efforts, is a comprehensive and often damning cri-
tique of Descartes’ thought. Many of Huet’s arguments anticipate critiques offered by the
present generation of anti-Cartesians. It should be required reading for anyone worried
about the methodological success of radical doubt, Descartes’ proofs for the existence of
God, the reliability of the cogito, or the circularity arising from his reliance on the criteria
of clarity and distinctness.

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
p
o
s
c
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

1
5
4
4
9
3
1
7
8
9
4
7
3
p
o
s
c
.
2
0
0
7
1
5
4
4
9
3
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

498

Cartesianism Revisited

search interest in the reception of Descartes’ thought among his contem-
poraries. Roger Ariew recently produced a new and signiªcantly revised
translation of Pascal’s Pensées (2005). The results of his research, which are
published in a preceding article, challenge the reader to reconsider Pascal’s
supposed anti-Cartesianism. Ariew and Margorie Grene edited and trans-
lated Montaigne’s once immensely popular Apology for Raymond Sebond
(2003). These works follow Descartes and the Last Scholastics (1999), a col-
lection of essays that together explore the varieties of Aristotelian thought
available in the seventeenth century and the challenges they posed for
Cartesianism. Ariew, with John Cottingham and the aforementioned Tom
Sorell, also edited and published a similarly valuable selection of original
works: Descartes’ Meditations: Background Source Materials (1998). Although
Ariew and Garber had not previously focused on the English reception of
Descartes, the publication of the ten-volume Descartes in Seventeenth-Cen-
tury England nicely dovetails with their ongoing interest in illuminating
the intellectual context of Descartes’ work.

In the introduction to Descartes in 17th-Century England Ariew and Gar-
ber modestly state that the purpose for publishing the ten-volume collec-
tion is to bring greater complexity to philosophical discussions too often
limited to simple contrasts between the Continental Rationalist and Brit-
ish Empiricists. To accomplish this task the editors assembled twenty
works falling under one of four categories: Descartes’ Works in Transla-
tion, Biographies of Descartes, Critiques of Descartes, and Works by Car-
tesians in English Translation. They also added three works by the pro-
fessed admirer of Descartes and advocate of Gassendi’s atomism, Walter
Charleton. All of these works are republished in their original pagination
and print by Thoemmes Press, which conveniently scaled them to ªt in
the encyclopedia-style volumes. Except for Johannes Schuler’s Examinis
philosophiae Renati Des-Cartes specimen (1692), they are all English language
texts, and few until now have been readily available to early modern stu-
dents and scholars. The collection thus represents an important assem-
blage of largely unexploited primary source material.

The editors’ voice is virtually silent in the collection, as it should be.
Besides a short introduction that provides descriptive details about the se-
lected authors and a brief sketch of their published works, the editors
speak only through their choice of texts. Ariew and Garber included three
original works and a (likely) translation by the eclectic physician Walter
Charleton (1620–1707). Charleton’s The darkness of atheism dispelled by the
light of nature (1652), The immortality of the human soul, demonstrated by
the light of nature (1657) and Natural history of the passions (1674), expose
the author’s liberal yet selected use of Descartes’ arguments and his pas-

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
p
o
s
c
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

1
5
4
4
9
3
1
7
8
9
4
7
3
p
o
s
c
.
2
0
0
7
1
5
4
4
9
3
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

Perspectives on Science

499

sion for theology. The three works consume the greatest number of pages
by any single author in the collection.

Charleton’s prominence in the collection is justiªed by his illustrious
medical career and proliªc writings in natural philosophy, theology and
medicine. Charleton earned his M.D. from Oxford in 1643, and later be-
came physician in ordinary to Charles I. During the Civil War, he traveled
to France where he met Thomas Hobbes and became familiar with the
mechanistic philosophies of Descartes and Gassendi. He maintained close
ties to the brothers Charles and William Cavendish as well as to Lady
Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle. Following the Restoration, he was ap-
pointed physician to Charles II, elected a member of the Royal Society of
London and served as President of the Royal College of Physicians (1689–
91).

Despite his proliªc writing career, a highly regarded medical practice,
and inclusion in the highest circles of the community of natural scientists
in England, until recently Walter Charleton has been largely ignored by
early modern scholars. In part this lack of attention can be attributed
to the common view that he never developed a systematic philosophy
nor maintained consistent metaphysical commitments. His name has
been virtually absent from discussions concerning scientiªc methodology,
though he has been falsely described as an anti-rationalist and advocate of
metaphysical views akin to those held by Paracelsus (1493–1541) and
Johannes Baptista van Helmont (1579–1644). Other accounts portray
Charleton as a renaissance alchemical philosopher who converted to a
mechanistic atomism after assimilating the work of Descartes and Gas-
sendi.11 He has also been classiªed by Stephen Shapin as a virtuoso and
avid experimentalist in the fold of a like-minded Royal Society.

The ªrst comprehensive attempt in English to understand Charleton in
terms of his chosen profession, with a focus on his medical writings, is
Emily Booth’s A Subtle and Mysterious Machine (2005). Though other au-
thors have noted the importance of the physician’s commitment to a
methodological eclecticism, none has mined his medical works to produce
a nuanced account of the relationship between Charleton’s profession
and his broader philosophical commitments. Instead of focusing on his
more general works of natural philosophy, including Physiologia Epicuro-
Gassendo-Charltoniana (1654) for which he is best known in the secondary

11. Given Charleton’s admitted admiration for Descartes, his (likely) translation of
Compendium musicae, and a liberal use of Descartes’ thought, the physician could easily be
subsumed under the title “Cartesian.” However, Charleton’s self-proclaimed eclecticism
and advocacy of a Gassendist atomism prohibits such a label.

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
p
o
s
c
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

1
5
4
4
9
3
1
7
8
9
4
7
3
p
o
s
c
.
2
0
0
7
1
5
4
4
9
3
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

500

Cartesianism Revisited

literature, Booth exploits Charleton’s often overlooked Natural History
(1659), Enquiries into Human Nature (1680) and Three Anatomic Lectures
(1683). She offers a corrective to his identiªcation as a ‘virtuoso’ natural
philosopher and reveals a Charleton very different from the collaborative
experimentalist who embraced innovation in opposition to ancient au-
thority.12 Her account also corrects the description of Charleton as an un-
abashed convert to the mechanistic philosophy. Instead, she claims that
the doctor avoided a general attempt to explain bodily functions with ap-
peal to mechanical causes, though he sometimes tentatively agreed with
speciªc mechanical descriptions. Particularly compelling is Booth’s dis-
cussion of Charelton’s translation and augmentation of Giovanni Alfonso
Borelli’s (1608–1679) De motu animalium in the former’s Three Anatomic
Lectures. Though Lectures preserved Borelli’s largely mechanical description
of the function of the heart, and even refuted the agency of fermentation
included in Borelli’s account, Charleton omitted the Italian’s extensive
mechanical and mathematical demonstrations. Booth exposes Charleton’s
willingness to use ªnal causes, analogy, textual authority, and both deduc-
tive and inductive reasoning; thus his thoroughly eclectic approach to his
subject.

Though Booth illustrates the physician’s consistent methodological
eclecticism, her claims that Charleton’s identity “depended also upon the
preservation of the traditional status of physicians (founded on sober judg-
ment and classical learning),” and that his eclecticism “allowed him to
reconcile an interest in modern developments with a devotion to the an-
cients” need a bit more examination. She does not, for instance, adequately
tie the political struggles of the College and the chaotically complex Eng-
lish medical community to Charleton’s eclecticism. It is not obvious that
Charleton’s eclecticism offers the solution Booth implies. For instance, his
early writings in natural philosophy and theology may be easily read as di-
rect challenges to tradition. Many of his contemporaries, Sir Kenelme
Digby for instance, were by any account ‘eclectic’ in their assimilation of
mechanism and ancient authority; but Charleton uniquely advocated
multi-source borrowing. Booth may be correct about the political beneªts
eclecticism afforded Charleton, but the claim remains largely an assump-
tion in her work.

A Subtle and Mysterious Machine is, nevertheless, an important contribu-
tion to the growing body of secondary literature about the English recep-
tion of French mechanistic thought, and its importance extends beyond

12. The characterization of Charleton as an advocate of “collaborative experimental-
ism,” or as an anti-rationalist, follows too easily when one accepts the simple dichotomies
Ariew and Garber wish to extinguish.

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
p
o
s
c
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

1
5
4
4
9
3
1
7
8
9
4
7
3
p
o
s
c
.
2
0
0
7
1
5
4
4
9
3
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

Perspectives on Science

501

the narrower purpose of refuting simplistic and false characterizations of
Charleton. The physician’s voluminous writings in medicine, natural phi-
losophy and theology, most of which have been given only cursory treat-
ment to date, are ªnally becoming part of a greater discussion about the
complexities of mechanistic thought and experimental practice in early
modern England. As scholars such as Booth challenge current models of
understanding early modern science, these mostly ignored texts will
ªnally get the attention they deserve.

Booth’s emphasis on the demands of Charleton’s medical career can
only aid in understanding his more generally philosophical works and
how the physician assimilated Cartesian thought. The darkness of atheism
dispelled by the light of nature (1652) reproduced Descartes’ rationalist argu-
ments for the existence of God, including Descartes’ epistemological reli-
ance on clear and distinct ideas, and the distinction between mind and
body as extracted from the Meditations (1641). Charleton professed that
Descartes “by vast excesses” surpassed all his objectors. But the physician
also borrowed liberally from Epicurus, Democritus, and Gassendi, among
others. He took care to refute the possibility of a random creation of the
world from a chaos of atoms, only to conclude by advocating the hypothe-
sis of atoms as the material principle of all bodies. Charleton included ex-
tensive discussions about man’s free will, fate, and God’s providence. As in
earlier work, he justiªed his transgressions into theology with an attack on
the authority of divines. He claimed that philosophers must take the lead
in the battle against atheism; and to this end, he appealed to the French
mechanists Descartes and Gassendi for inspiration. As a result, Charleton’s
appropriation of Descartes’ arguments for God’s existence and the imma-
teriality of the soul represent the ªrst renditions of Descartes’ Meditations
in English.

Descartes’ inºuence on the English doctor preceded the 1652 attack on
atheism, however. In his translation of John Baptist van Helmont’s
Disputatio de magnetica vulnerum naturali et legitima curatione (1634), Charle-
ton revisited a topic which generated considerable controversy in the early
decades of the seventeenth century. Scholarship on Charleton has tended
to ignore the signiªcance of Ternary of Paradoxes and attributed Charleton’s
interest in the remote cure of wounds to the waning inºuence of Renais-
sance alchemistic thought. No doubt Charleton felt van Helmont’s work
worthy of translation, but both his introduction and postscript to the
translation reveal a signiªcantly different commitment to matter theory,
though both claimed that the cure could be explained naturalistically.13

13. This was an attempt to avoid the charge that the cure wrought by weapon salve re-

quired demonic assistance.

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
p
o
s
c
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

1
5
4
4
9
3
1
7
8
9
4
7
3
p
o
s
c
.
2
0
0
7
1
5
4
4
9
3
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

502

Cartesianism Revisited

Charleton, unlike van Helmont, explained that blood on a weapon could
have communication with the body of its origin through the emission of a
continual stream of atoms between the two. With the application of a
proper unguent to the weapon stained with the victim’s blood, the wound
could be healed. The atoms of blood remaining on a sword or other object,
since they could be redivided almost inªnitely, produced a healing effect
over a great distance as they diffused in the air between their living source
and the object. Charleton’s atomistic explanation of how a wound could be
cured by application of an unguent to the offending weapon reads quite
differently from Helmont, who rejected any material connection. Dis-
tancing himself still farther from the traditional explanation of the cure,
Charleton included nothing but disparaging remarks about the considered
originator of the cure, Paracelsus. He even denied, against the near unani-
mous opinion, that Paracelsus invented the recipe for the healing powder.
These contrasts between Helmont and Charleton suggest that the English
doctor considered the occult issue fully explicable in terms of an exchange
of material particles, though he retained much of the vocabulary of van
Helmont and once referred to the atoms as “semi-immaterial.” Charleton
famously disavowed the effectiveness of the salve for curing wounds in
Physiologia (1654), but his explanation of the cure in Ternary remained
consistent with the explanation of several occult phenomena that the doc-
tor translated from Gassendi and reproduced in the later work. Since
Charleton referred to Descartes’ rationalist method in the introduction of
Ternary and directly referenced Descartes’ Discourse on Method, one can con-
clude that his interest in reopening the occult topic at least coincided with
his assimilation of French mechanistic thought, and was likely an attempt
to apply the corpuscularian principles gleaned from Descartes as a solution
to a phenomenon formally explicable as action at a distance.14

Charleton’s interest in Descartes and the occult may have motivated the
English translation of Compendium musicae (1653). Though the physician is
not mentioned in the work itself, there are three voices represented in the
English translation: the commentator William Brouncker (1620–84),

14. Modern research on Descartes has tended to either ignore or dissociated his mecha-
nistic physics from issues of the occult. This tendency was not shared by his contemporar-
ies. For instance, Claude Gadroys claimed that Descartes is like the “famous navigators
who, discovering a new country, leave its cultivation to those who come later” (Preface to
Discours sur les inºuences des asters, 1671, translated by Ariew). Gadroys extended Descartes’
principles to the effects of astrology and talismans. Charleton and his friend Sir Kenelm
Digby likewise use Descartes as motivation to explain the weapon salve, though Digby’s
debt to Descartes may be much less than enthusiasm for mechanistic explanations more
generally. Several English astrologers and self-pronounced followers of Paracelsus were em-
powered in their explanations of occult phenomenon by the novel mechanistic philosophy.

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
p
o
s
c
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

1
5
4
4
9
3
1
7
8
9
4
7
3
p
o
s
c
.
2
0
0
7
1
5
4
4
9
3
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

Perspectives on Science

503

Descartes, and the translator. In his edition of the Abrégé de musique, F. de
Buzon concluded that Charleton translated the work (Descartes 1987, 38).
Charleton was mentioned as the translator in the Transcript of the Register of
the Worshipful Company of Stationers; from 1640–1708 A.D. (London 1913),
vol. I, p. 402. Given Charleton’s previous interest in Descartes, his interest
in translating Compendium would not be a surprise. In addition to repro-
ducing the English translation of Descartes, the editors of Descartes in 17th-
Century England have added the “announcement for Renatus Des-Cartes
excellent compendium of musick,” which concludes with Descartes’ open-
ing comment from the Compendium about the sympathy of voices between
friends and the antipathy of sounds created by two drums made alter-
nately of sheep skin and wolf hide: “that a drum headed with a sheep’s
skin yields no sound though strucken, if another drum headed with a
wolf’s skin be beaten upon in the same room” (Ariew & Garber 2002, p.
xxvii). Charleton would have had no reason to feel that Descartes’ refer-
ences to occult qualities were inconsistent with his mechanistic agenda,
after all, Descartes’ French version of the Principles (1647) offered the pos-
sibility of a corpuscularian explanation of why a corpse bleeds in the pres-
ence of its murderer and how thoughts can be exchanged telepathically.
Unfortunately, these passages from the Principles rarely make it into con-
temporary English translations of Descartes. Yet these occult phenomena
would have been of interest to the royal physician and his contemporaries.
Ariew and Garber chose not to republish the doctor’s Physiologia
Epicuro-Gassendo-Charltoniana, either because it is mostly a translation of
parts of Gassendi’s Animadversiones (1649), or because it was made avail-
able in a modern reprint edition in 1966. Yet this work represented
Charleton’s mitigated acceptance of the mechanistic philosophy and his
rejection of plenism in favor of atoms and void space. Nevertheless,
Charleton praised Descartes as the epitome of the class of novel philoso-
phers, separately classiªed Gassendi as a ‘renovator’ of ancient Epicurean
atomism and, despite the atomistic intent clearly manifest in his title, de-
clared his own commitment to an eclectic methodology.

In Natural History of the Passions (1674), Charleton again praised Des-
cartes, while he admitted to borrowing from the works of Hobbes and
Gassendi as well. Yet the doctor translated several pages of Descartes’ Pas-
sions of the Soul in an effort to refute his illustrious contemporary’s claim
that man had only one indivisible soul, and that its seat was located in the
pineal gland. On the contrary, Charleton claimed that man had a corpo-
real, divisible, sensitive soul that was coextensive with the entire body. He
likened this soul to a ºame and claimed it was distributed throughout the
body by the blood. He considered the immaterial rational soul conjoined
with this sensitive soul, and he suggested that the rational soul could in-

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
p
o
s
c
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

1
5
4
4
9
3
1
7
8
9
4
7
3
p
o
s
c
.
2
0
0
7
1
5
4
4
9
3
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

504

Cartesianism Revisited

teract with the corporeal soul because the later approached nearer the na-
ture of spirit due to its ºame-like constitution. Charleton thus lived up to
his self-described eclecticism. He praised Descartes’
innovation, at-
tempted to describe ‘occult’ phenomena in terms of matter and motion,
advocated Descartes’ rationalist attempts at proving the existence of God
and the immaterial of the soul, and brought Descartes into the English
speaking world. Yet Charleton also criticized Descartes’ account of the
natural passions, preferred the hypothesis of atoms and void (thought he
sometimes remained ambiguous over the extent of material divisibility),
and, especially in his early work, referred to spiritual (spiritus gorgonicus) or
seminal (semen petriªcum) principles to explain the generation of bodies. He
remained, like many of his contemporaries, deeply interested in alchemi-
cal recipes.

Charleton’s sometimes inconsistent application of the novel mechanis-
tic philosophies can be explained by his self-professed eclecticism. But un-
like Charleton, Sir Kenelm Digby, an English Catholic who became
widely known for use of the weapon salve and associated treatise, at-
tempted to produce a single systematic corpuscularian physics. Digby
cited Galileo, and to a lesser extent, Descartes in defense of his physical
theories. However, as much as he repudiated scholastic rhetoric, Digby
never tried to escape his Aristotelian heritage. Rather, he described his
mechanistic physics in Aristotelian terminology. Ariew and Garber do not
reproduce Digby’s lengthy Two Treatises (1644) in their encyclopedia, but
some discussion of the work is prudent for understanding the reception of
mechanistic thought in England.

Of Bodies, by length the major part of Two Treatises, began with the
claim that quantity was the ªrst affection, and basis for all other affections
of bodies. Digby warned his reader, in what sounded like a rejection of real
qualities, that philosophical discourse easily goes awry when the true na-
ture of things becomes equated with the conceptions framed in the mind.
But the Catholic scholar used his notion of quantity, described in terms of
divisibility, to interpret traditional Aristotelian arguments against atoms
and both interstitial and extended vacuum. He adopted what he consid-
ered to be Aristotle’s deªnitions of rarity and density (rare bodies are more
divisible than dense ones) and added the notion of gravity, which for him
had a special relation with dense bodies. From gravity, rarity, and density,
Digby derived the four qualities hot, cold, moist and dry, and their associ-
ated elements. A body rare enough that gravity would not have an effect is
dry. A moist body had gravity disproportionate to its density. Likewise,
Digby established the qualities of hot and cold. Once he had done this, he
explained phenomena in mechanistic terms and claimed that all opera-
tions of bodies were directly or indirectly a result of local motion. Despite

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
p
o
s
c
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

1
5
4
4
9
3
1
7
8
9
4
7
3
p
o
s
c
.
2
0
0
7
1
5
4
4
9
3
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

Perspectives on Science

505

his arguments against atomism, Digby referred to atoms as the least sort
of natural bodies, but not indivisibles. When describing how a ªre con-
sumes a harder body, a piece of wood for instance, Digby claimed that the
ªre penetrated the pores of the substance, pushing out the little bodies
therein. The compounding effects resulted in the destruction of the wood
as pieces of it were separated by the action of the ªre atoms. If a dense
body had no pores, ªre would eventually affect it by wearing away the sur-
face and bending the atoms (Digby 1669, 38). The action was thus de-
scribed in terms of the motion of particles of one substance operating on
the particles of another.

Light, however, did not always follow Digby’s otherwise mechanical ac-
count of the actions of bodies. Although he counted it among “corporeall
things” and argued that it was “no other thing but the nature and sub-
stance of ªre” (Digby 1669, 48), he claimed that of all material things it
came the closest to a spiritual nature. Since it was freed from the mixture
of all other gross bodies; its sphere of activity, indeed its activity itself, ex-
ceeded that of other rare bodies such as ªre. In order to explain his own
version of the weapon salve, Digby laid out six principles “according to
the method of geometrical demonstrations” (Digby 1669, 152). The pow-
der of sympathy relied on the great sphere of activity created by light-per-
meated air to carry with it like substances: “if it happens that within the
air there be found some dispersed atoms of the same nature with the body
that draws them; such atoms are more powerfully attracted, than if they
were bodies of a different nature” (Digby 1669, 173). The powder of sym-
pathy could work, more or less mechanically, because of the attraction be-
tween like substances (blood) on the weapon and the wound it caused.
Upon application of the medicine to the blood stained weapon, the atoms
of the vitriol became mixed with, and inseparable from, the atoms of the
blood. Sending off its own streams of atoms, the wound could ‘reach’ the
now combined blood and vitriol on the weapon because the surrounding
air, permeated by incessantly active light, formed a bridge of sorts be-
tween the weapon and wound. Thus the two like substances were reunited
and the medicine brought in contact with the wound.

Digby realized that unless he could explain the attraction of like sub-
stances, his account would hardly be novel. Consequently, he based the re-
semblance of nature in bodies on weight, degree of rarity and density, and
ªgure as he had explained in Two Treatises. Originally published in French,
Digby later translated Of the Powder of Sympathy (1657) into English and
appended it to the larger work. It thus provided, along with his treatise on
plants, what he believed was a mechanical explanation of an otherwise oc-
cult phenomenon. The popularity of Of the Powder of Sympathy was well
demonstrated by its frequent publication and translations. Even though

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
p
o
s
c
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

1
5
4
4
9
3
1
7
8
9
4
7
3
p
o
s
c
.
2
0
0
7
1
5
4
4
9
3
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

506

Cartesianism Revisited

Walter Charleton published his translation of van Helmont seven years
prior to Digby’s discourse on the weapon salve, the physician acknowl-
edged his Catholic contemporary as the “choicest ºower” regarding the is-
sue.

Digby offered his lengthy discussion on bodies as the prelude to a much
shorter treatise on the soul. It has been suggested that Digby’s interest in
immortality, which seems to include lectures given at Gresham College on
the revitiation of plants and the subsequent treatise, A Discourse concerning
the Vegetation of Plants (1669), resulted from the sudden loss of his beloved
wife Venetia Stanley in 1633. Regardless of his motivation, Digby’s the-
ory of spiritual substance resembled Descartes,’ however, instead of repro-
ducing Descartes’ “rationalist” argument about distinct ideas of material
and immaterial substances, Digby largely appealed to the failure of the
corpuscularian account of nature to explain aspects of human behavior.

Descartes’ metaphysics produced a substantially different, yet mostly
sympathetic response from a loosely knit group of divines primarily asso-
ciated with Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Though there is little consen-
sus among scholars about the membership of the group known as Cam-
bridge Platonists, Benjamin Whichote (1609–1683), Henry More (1614–
1687), John Smith (1616–1652), and Ralph Cudworth (1617–1688) are
generally referred to as key constituents of the group. Of these theologians
only Whichote failed to exploit Cartesian dualism as evidence for the im-
mortality of the soul. The divines generally adopted and modiªed Des-
cartes’ metaphysics to suit their own theological goals. In his earliest writ-
ings, Philosophical Poems (1647), Henry More expressed his interest in
Cartesianism, and thus he should be counted as one of the ªrst proponents
of Descartes in England. More soon entered into correspondence with Des-
cartes, presumably to convince his counterpart to reconsider his metaphys-
ical claims, particularly concerning the relationship between body and
soul. More accepted a qualiªed version of atomism, and equivocated Car-
tesian matter theory with Democritus’ atomism. He argued that both
body and soul were extended substances. Soul, however, could be pene-
trated but not divided. Body was impenetrable and divisible. Space was
thus an attribute of spiritual substance, and matter shared in extension by
subsisting in spirit. The coextension of matter and spirit provided More
with an explanation of the motion of bodies: spirit thus became the princi-
ple of activity in all matter. More also believed that animals had souls. In
his correspondence with Descartes, the divine insisted that the doctrine of
omnipresence implied that God was extended and coextensive with
inªnite space. He closely identiªed space with God, though he was careful
to avoid the pantheistic implications of a complete identity. While More
maintained that matter was indeªnitely divisible in thought and by God,

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
p
o
s
c
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

1
5
4
4
9
3
1
7
8
9
4
7
3
p
o
s
c
.
2
0
0
7
1
5
4
4
9
3
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

Perspectives on Science

507

it still could be naturally indivisible. Eventually More became frustrated
with Descartes’ reluctance to revise his views and, in his later writing, pre-
sented Descartes as a dogmatist.

In his lifetime, Ralph Cudworth published one philosophical work,
True Intellectual System of the Universe (1687). Cudworth, much like More,
was principally concerned with proving the existence of God and demon-
strating his wisdom and benevolence as Creator. To this end he attempted
to extricate the corpuscularian philosophy from the taint of atheism, and
he argued that an atomistic interpretation of mechanism actually led one
to belief in God. Like Descartes, but showing a greater debt to Platonism,
he adopted a rationalist epistemology. He described matter as extended
and completely inert, and claimed that its principal attributes of divisibil-
ity, ªgure, position, motion and rest were deducible from the idea we have
of it. He deviated from the simple dualism of Descartes by adopting a
vitalistic hypothesis which he referred to as Plastic Nature, or an incorpo-
real medium between God and creation that carried out God’s regular and
orderly directives (in terms of motion) on matter. Thus Charleton, More
and Cudworth, in adopting aspects of Cartesian matter theory, also posi-
tioned themselves against the implications of atheism they found so repul-
sive. More and Cudworth both directed their ire toward the materialism of
Thomas Hobbes.

Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle, must be counted
among one of Descartes’ more vocal English critics. Although her life and
work has generated a great deal of interest of late, her inºuence as a natu-
ral philosopher should be considered marginal. Until recently her reputa-
tion survived primarily as a result of her biography of her late husband The
Life of the Thrice Noble High and Puissant Prince William Cavendishe, Duke,
Marquess, and Earl of Newcastle (1667). The biography was translated by
Walter Charleton into Latin and republished in 1668. Nevertheless, Cav-
endish wrote proliªcally, developed her own natural philosophy, and at
various times offered unsympathetic critiques of scholastics and moderns
(including Descartes, Hobbes, More and van Helmont) alike. Cavendish’s
metaphysics changed dramatically during her publishing career: she even-
tually rejected atomism in favor of a form of monistic plenism. Matter, she
thought, could explain all natural phenomena, and she rejected the com-
prehensibility of any non-material substance. She considered matter of
two different types however: self-moving and not self-moving. She further
subdivided moving matter into that which operated freely, or without the
“burden” of other not self-moving parts; and that which moves with such
burden. This distinction, one she called a distinction of “degrees,” allowed
her to differentiate between rational (freely self-moving), sensitive (bur-
dened self-moving) and inanimate matter (not self-moving). Armed with

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
p
o
s
c
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

1
5
4
4
9
3
1
7
8
9
4
7
3
p
o
s
c
.
2
0
0
7
1
5
4
4
9
3
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

508

Cartesianism Revisited

her classiªcations (or “degrees”) of matter, she thought she could give a
materialistic explanation to rational thought, sense perception and the in-
teraction of inanimate bodies. Cavendish also argued that all of nature had
life and knowledge, though only those parts with greater liberty and pu-
rity had “rational perception.” Despite her simple ontology, Cavendish did
not always seem prepared to give up the existence of real qualities. In Ob-
servations upon Experimental Philosophy (1666), a point-by-point critique of
Robert Hook’s Micrographia (1665) and the empiricist method implicit
therein, Cavendish criticized “some of our modern Philosophers” who de-
nied that color resided in an object of perception. She claimed that ªgure
and color were both in the object itself and in the eye. Cavendish thus pro-
vided a unique, if not utterly comprehensible, alternative to the mechanis-
tic dualism of Descartes and others. With the exception of her husband,
her contemporaries had few and unsympathetic words about her philo-
sophical labors.

Ariew and Garber do not include works by More, Digby, Cudworth, or
Cavendish in their collection. It would be difªcult to classify Digby as ei-
ther a Cartesian or a critic of Descartes, though in some sense he bridges
this seemingly contradictory gap. He could be described rather as a com-
mitted mechanist who grounded his project in scholastic tradition. More’s
work, as well as secondary scholarship about his philosophy and the Cam-
bridge Platonists, is widely available to scholars. The plethora of studies
recently issued about Margaret Cavendish’s role in early modern science,
and the subsequent reprints of her major works, makes her absence incon-
spicuous here as well.

The editors provide a rich arrangement of Descartes’ critics, however.
Edward Howard’s Remarks on the new philosophy of Des-Cartes (1700) re-
ºected the author’s late-century nationalistic biases. Howard gave a thor-
ough and systematic attack on Descartes’ method, theory of matter,
deªnition of the soul, and even the heliocentric theory of the solar system.
He claimed that Francis Bacon provided an “experimental confutation of
the failings of [Descartes]” and rejected Descartes’ rationalist method,
noting, “that nothing is in the intellect, which was not ªrst in the senses”
(Howard 1700, d4). He also belittled Descartes’ mathematical skills, sug-
gesting that the Frenchman plagiarized from the works of Thomas
Harriot.

Also included in the collection is John Davies’ Reºections upon Monsieur
Des Cartes’ Discourse of a Method (1654). Davies claimed that the work was
a translation of an anonymous French author. Indeed it is difªcult to know
which John Davies is the claimed translator here. Regardless of the origin
of the work, the author unsympathetically rejected Descartes’ method in
favor of Aristotle’s syllogism, criticized Descartes’ arguments of the exis-

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
p
o
s
c
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

1
5
4
4
9
3
1
7
8
9
4
7
3
p
o
s
c
.
2
0
0
7
1
5
4
4
9
3
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

Perspectives on Science

509

tence of God by saying that the idea I have of a more perfect nature is not
more perfect than I, and he rejected the use of the cogito as a ªrst princi-
ple. Davies’ conclusion chastised Descartes, asking if he composed the
Discourse while awake or asleep.

Closing out the English critics, Ariew and Garber include Cambridge
Professor Johannes Schuler’s Examinis philosophiae Renati Des-Cartes specimen
(1685) and English translations by the French critics of Descartes: Ignace
Gaston Pardies’ A Discourse of Local Motion (1670) and Gabriel Daniel’s
popular and satirical A Voyage to the World of Cartesius (1692). The transla-
tor of the later work, alluding to the popularity of Descartes’ philosophy
in Parisian salons, claimed that his purpose for rendering Daniel in Eng-
lish was to please the minds of English ladies whose French counterparts
“pride[d] themselves more in being accounted partisans of a sect, than
leaders in dress and fashion” (Daniel 1692, A3).

In the ªnal volume of their set, Ariew and Garber include the English
translations of Cartesians Geraud de Cordemoy and François Bayle.
Cordemoy’s ªrst work, A philosophical discourse concerning speech . . . (1668)
attempted to differentiate between actions that could be ascribed to the
soul and those that could be accounted for by the physical organs or,
rather, between reason made manifest in speech and the mechanistic re-
sponses of animals which are endowed with voice. The second work re-
printed here, A discourse written to a learned frier . . . (1670) likewise consid-
ers the relationship between man and brute animals, but the author
presented his argument as a Cartesian exegesis of Genesis, concluding that
animals were mere machines while men were uniquely endowed with im-
mortal souls. Despite Cordemoy’s self-professed commitment to Des-
cartes’ metaphysics, in Le discernement du corps et de l’ame (1666), a work ap-
parently never rendered in English, the author departed signiªcantly from
Descartes. Although he accepted Descartes’ deªnition of body as “ex-
tended substance,” he claimed that it was indivisible, and he allowed for
the possibility of void space. Matter, he claimed, was an aggregate of body
and could be divided. Thus Cordemoy championed atomism and yet con-
sidered himself a follower of Descartes.

The ªnal work reproduced by the editors, François Bayle’s The general
systeme of the Cartesian philosophy (1670) survives only in the English trans-
lation, though several references to a text with the Latin title Systema gener-
ale philosophiae can be found. The English translation, however, claims to
have been translated from a French text or manuscript, also unfound. Al-
though Bayle’s work remains largely unknown by modern philosophers,
he wrote proliªcally on subjects ranging from medicine, the Eucharist and
Cartesian metaphysics. He received a doctorate in medicine from the Uni-
versity of Cahors and eventually found employment as a member of the

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
p
o
s
c
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

1
5
4
4
9
3
1
7
8
9
4
7
3
p
o
s
c
.
2
0
0
7
1
5
4
4
9
3
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

510

Cartesianism Revisited

Faculty of Medicine at Toulouse. If Fermat’s letters to Oldenburg are to be
believed, Bayle’s intellectual reputation was well established in Toulouse
by 1668. Bayle met and lectured with Pierre-Sylvain Regis at the Carte-
sian Conferences in Toulouse from 1665 to 1671. There has been some
speculation about Bayle’s inºuence on Locke,15 and Locke’s journal entries
mention several of Bayle’s works. At one time Locke’s library held seven of
the French doctor’s texts. Though it remains difªcult to ªnd direct
inºuence on Locke’s philosophy, Bayle’s wide reputation as a Cartesian and
empiricist are well established.

General System roughly followed the style and order Descartes’ Principles.
It began with a truncated explanation of Descartes’ metaphysics and es-
tablished the existence of the self. Bayle reproduced both of Descartes’
proofs for the existence of God, and God’s guarantee of the epistemic ve-
racity of clear and distinct ideas. However, when he outlined Descartes’
proof for the existence of the external world, Bayle claimed that we not
only have a clear and distinct idea of corporeal nature and of substance in
general, but we also have clear and distinct ideas of certain particular bod-
ies:

Being most assured, that there is a God, and his Nature being such,
that he cannot deceive us, we are certain, that we shall never erre in
things we know clearly and distinctly. Wherefore having clear and
distinct Idea’s of the Corporeal Nature, or of Substance in general,
and also in particular of some bodies which present themselves
dayly to our mind by the senses; and knowing besides, that we are
not the Causes of those Idea’s, since we often have them against our
will; we must necessarily conclude, that they are excited in us by
sensible Beings that are without us and actually exist in the World;
and that these Beings are really distinct from the Soul.16 (Bayle
1670, pp. 71–72.)

Bayle thus applied Descartes’ criterion of clear and distinct ideas much
more broadly and established the epistemological basis for knowledge
from the senses. Of the works reprinted by Ariew and Garber, only Bayle
and Cordemoy have been published in modern editions, but neither are
widely available. Bayle’s work represents a particularly valuable exception
to the pretended dichotomy between French rationalism and English em-

15. See Lennon 1992, 31–36.
16. Lennon claims that “Bayle’s empiricism is not at all evident in his General
Systeme” but becomes much more so in his later Discours sur l’expérience et la raison (1675).
See Lennon 1992, 36–37. Nevertheless, the move to include particular bodies as things
that we can have clear and distinct ideas about is rather radical.

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
p
o
s
c
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

1
5
4
4
9
3
1
7
8
9
4
7
3
p
o
s
c
.
2
0
0
7
1
5
4
4
9
3
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

Perspectives on Science

511

piricism. It is appropriately republished here alongside the work of the
Cartesian atomist Cordemoy.17

What is missing from the collection? Four works may seem conspicu-
ous in their absence: Samuel Parker’s Disputationes de Deo et providentia
divina (1678), The Franciscan Antoine Le Grand’s Apologia pro Renato Des-
Cartes contra Samulem Parkerum (a response to Parker), his Entire Body of
Philosophy according to the Principles of the famous Renate Descartes (1694), and
Rohault’s system of natural philosophy (1697) as translated and augmented by
John Clarke. The last two of these works are quite large. They were also
popular and not difªcult to ªnd in one of their various editions. Parker’s
Disputationes and Le Grand’s Apologia, since neither text is in English,
would be out of place in the collection. Although perhaps too large, any
one of the English editions of Rohault’s system of natural philosophy would
make a ªne compliment to the collection. In each subsequent printing,
John Clarke added commentary notes taken from his interpretation of
Isaac Newton’s philosophy. In its later editions, Clarke’s lower margin
comments signiªcantly displaced the Cartesian text. The work thus be-
came a dialogue between a French interpreter of Descartes and an English
representative of Newton. Despite Clarke’s correctives, the translator gen-
erally presented the two texts as philosophically consistent with each an-
other.

The collection of texts assembled by Ariew and Garber, including those
they discuss in their introduction but do not include, show the many faces
of Cartesianism in England and blur boundaries between Descartes’ fol-
lowers and his critics. In some cases it seems enough to call oneself in-
debted to Descartes to qualify as a Cartesian, as is the case of Digby, or,
perhaps, Charleton. By accepting matter as extended substance, Digby
portrayed himself as a mechanist even though he resorted to an Aristote-
lian ontology. In Charleton’s case, he praised Descartes but settled on an
atomism borrowed from Gassendi. Similarly, Cordemoy could be de-
scribed as a Cartesian atomist who gave an occasionalist answer to the
mind-body problem. Other ‘critics’ of Descartes often read much of his
work sympathetically. More, Cudworth, and Charleton all saw Descartes
as an ally in their battle to prove the existence of God and the immortality
of the soul, though the two former Englishmen departed radically from
Descartes when addressing the mind-body relationship. Other authors
were much less eclectic in their response to Descartes. Howard, Daniel,
Davies, and Pardies all launched comprehensive criticisms, though Par-

17. Bayle’s English translation of General System was originally published in 1670 with

a translation of Cordemoy.

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
p
o
s
c
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

1
5
4
4
9
3
1
7
8
9
4
7
3
p
o
s
c
.
2
0
0
7
1
5
4
4
9
3
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

512

Cartesianism Revisited

dies evidently developed a reputation as a “Cartesian sympathizer.” This
fate could not be ascribed to the more sardonic Davies and Howard.

Classifying the English commentators by religious afªliation explains
little about the reception of Descartes in England. Perhaps More’s Latitu-
dinarian theology predisposed him to adopt aspects of the novel philoso-
phy. Certainly Descartes’ dualism looked more appealing than Hobbes’
materialism to many divines. The mechanical philosophy of Descartes also
appealed to the Catholic Digby and his friend Charleton, who both used it
for their own theological agendas, and their respective naturalistic expla-
nations of the weapons salve. Thus Descartes’ arrival in England changed
natural philosophy by creating a variety of disparate interpretations that
further blurred the lines between the scholastic tradition and the new
mechanistic philosophy.

Cartesians and their critics in France also escape easy characterization,
yet trends counter-intuitive to modern sensibilities emerge. No work in
English makes this point better than Tad Schmaltz’s Radical Cartesianism
(2002). Schmaltz speciªcally addresses his book to philosophers not so ac-
customed to wandering “far from the beaten path.” Yet he begins with a
subject many of his less historically inclined colleagues may ªnd of ques-
tionable value: the 1671 decree from Louis XIV intended to subdue the
perceived threat posed by Descartes’ metaphysics to “the explanation of
our mysteries.” The particularly problematic “mystery” was, of course, the
Eucharist and the doctrine of Transubstantiation as codiªed in 1551 at the
thirteenth session of the Council of Trent. One can only imagine a sigh of
disapproval from some readers as they begin the ªrst chapter. The intro-
duction, after all, promises that even though the research goes “even far-
ther aªeld to explore what is, for Anglo-American scholars, at least, the
unfamiliar terrain of the Radical Cartesianism of Desgabets and Regis”
(Schmaltz 2002, 19), the less historically inclined reader shall ªnd some-
thing of philosophical relevance.18 Nevertheless, Schmaltz delivers on his
promise.

The historical importance of the Eucharist cannot be denied, and
Schmaltz does an admirable job describing how the complexities of com-
peting Eucharistic theologies informed seventeenth century debates about
Cartesian matter theory. Although one can ªnd a surprising lack of con-
sensus among Descartes’ contemporaries concerning the speciªcs of
Eucharistic change, Aristotle’s hylemorphic theory provided the basis for

18. The reader is told: “there may be those who share my interest in both the historical
and the philosophical aspects of Cartesianism.” Those readers are encouraged to read the
work “from start to ªnish.” But Schmaltz suggests that those “who favor rational recon-
structions of positions” may want to skip the historical narratives, and thus the chapter on
the Eucharist, which sandwich the more detailed philosophical discussion in the middle.

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
p
o
s
c
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

1
5
4
4
9
3
1
7
8
9
4
7
3
p
o
s
c
.
2
0
0
7
1
5
4
4
9
3
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

Perspectives on Science

513

the orthodoxy of “real presence”: the accidents (species) of the bread and
wine continued to exist although the underlying matter changed to
Christ’s body and blood. Thus the consecrated bread and wine are body
and blood, but not perceived as such by the senses.19 Rhetoric in Medita-
tions demonstrates Descartes’ self-awareness that any explicit denial of real
qualities may provoke accusations of Eucharistic heresy. Arnauld com-
plained that “according to the author’s doctrines it seems that the
Church’s teaching concerning the sacred mysteries of the Eucharist cannot
remain completely intact” (Descartes 1964–74, 7: 217), so Descartes re-
minded his sympathetic critic that he had not denied that real accidents
exist, but merely supposed that he did not have knowledge of them. He
added that his claim that modes are intelligible only through a substance
“should not be taken to imply any denial that they can be separated from a
substance by the power of God” (Descartes 1964–74, 3: 785). But Des-
cartes’ rhetorical ºourishes did little to soothe his critics, and by 1663 his
works found their place on the Index of Prohibited Books “until corrected.”
Immediately prior to Louis’ 1671 decree, an anonymous text Considéra-
tions sur l’état présent appeared in Amsterdam. The text, Schmaltz tells us,
argued against the view attributed to Scotus and his followers that miracle
of the Eucharist occurred as a result of God’s annihilation of the matter of
the bread and wine. But instead of simply supporting a competing “scho-
lastic” explanation, the text offered a solution that appears to be taken
from Descartes’ unpublished correspondence with the young Jesuit Mes-
land: that “the matter of the bread is changed into the body of Jesus Christ
by its substantial union to His soul and to His divine person” (Schmaltz
2002, p. 33).20 In due course we learn that the author, Robert Desgabets,
and later, Peirre-Sylvain Regis (1632–1707), through protracted defense

19. Ironically, Aristotle’s doctrine of hylemorphism had been subjected to condemna-
tion in 1277 because it supposedly denied the miracle of the Eucharist. In response to these
perceived shortcomings of Aristotle’s doctrine and the Condemnations of 1277, medieval
scholars went to great lengths to prove their orthodoxy. The ripple effect continued
throughout the seventeenth century. For instance, Scipion Dupleix, tutor to Henry IV’s son
and king’s historian in the service of Cardinal Richelieu, attacked Thomas Aquinas and his
followers for denying that “God can make prime matter subsist without any form.”
Dupleix insisted that if, as “all true Christians believe,” God can make the accidents of
bread subsist without the bread, then God could also do the reverse. Dupleix claimed that
Scotus and others “convict Saint Thomas out of his own mouth” (Ariew, 1998, 119).

20. Schmaltz indicates that Desgabets, the author of the text, is “concerned here about
defending a more Thomistic account of transubstantiation.” Thomas explained that God
preserved the quantity of the host, and that the afªnity of the other accidents with quan-
tity allowed that they could be persevered supernaturally despite the material change. I
have less conªdence than Schmaltz that Scotus was truly committed to a theory of annihi-
lation, but that point is largely irrelevant since the view was prevalent and attributed to
Scotus in the seventeenth century. Nevertheless, Schmaltz demonstrates how Desgabets

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
p
o
s
c
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

1
5
4
4
9
3
1
7
8
9
4
7
3
p
o
s
c
.
2
0
0
7
1
5
4
4
9
3
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

514

Cartesianism Revisited

of Descartes’ Eucharist theology and God’s creation of eternal truths, de-
veloped a form of Cartesianism that is counter-intuitive to our modern
sensibilities.

Speciªcally, Desgabets defended the following three theses in his recon-
struction of Descartes: 1) the indefectibility of matter; 2) the idea of body
requires the real existence of its object; 3) all human thought requires a
union between the body and soul. The ªrst proposition followed from
Desgabets’ interpretation of Descartes’ doctrine of eternal truths and the
anti-annihilistic position he took to defend against Eucharistic heresy.
Descartes held that God’s will was unconstrained even by logical necessity.
However, once created, eternal truths were immutable since God’s will
does not change. The result, as interpreted by Desgabets, was that matter
would not, or could not, be destroyed. Consequently, the real presence of
Christ in the Eucharist host could not occur by annihilation of the matter
of the bread and wine, the doctrine most closely associated with Scotus.
Schmaltz explains that the ostensibly anti-dualist claim that even pure
thoughts require a body can be identiªed with Desgabets’ response to an
Auvergne physician Pastel who claimed that the most Descartes could say
concerning real presence is that Christ’s soul is united to the bread “as an
assisting from, and in the manner which an angel is in a bodily phantasm”
(Schmaltz 2002, 38). Desgabets answered that the soul has an essential,
not accidental connection to the human body: “Since a body is a human
body just in case it is united with a human soul, according to Desgabets,
one can say that the bread becomes Christ’s body after consecration”
(Schmaltz 2002, 39). Propositions one and three are thus directly linked
to Desgabets’ attempts to create a more orthodox explanation of the Eu-
charist while remaining consistent with Descartes’ doctrine of eternal
truths. They are also a continuation of philosophical problems rooted in
medieval discussions about matter, space, and place. The second proposi-
tion, Desgabets believed, followed from the temporal nature of human
thought and was directly linked to the indefectibility of matter. Desgabets
considered, as many philosophers do today, that one of the primary
“faults” of Descartes was his failure to acknowledge that all human
thoughts depend on a union of soul and body.21

Schmaltz weaves the very complex details of Desgabets’ empiricist and
realist Cartesianism into the equally complex dialogues involving his clos-

could simultaneously link Thomas’ appeal to the preservation of the quantity of the bread
with Descartes’ response to Arnauld in the “Fourth Replies” and a seemingly contradictory
correspondence with Mesland.

21. Desgabets considered the other “fault” to be Descartes’ failure to recognize that our

ideas of substances presuppose their existence outside our mind.

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
p
o
s
c
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

1
5
4
4
9
3
1
7
8
9
4
7
3
p
o
s
c
.
2
0
0
7
1
5
4
4
9
3
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

Perspectives on Science

515

est follower, Regis, and the famous Cartesians Arnauld, Rohault, and
Melebranche. Along the way, Schmaltz adds several nifty graphical repre-
sentations of the various philosophical and theological commitments of
his actors to keep the reader on track. The result is a rich tapestry of Carte-
sians whose philosophical commitments, in isolation, often seem both
very modern and very un-Cartesian. Yet as far as Desgabets and Regis
roam from Descartes on certain epistemological issues, they remain at the
core committed to Descartes’ doctrine of eternal truths and a normative
program to correct Descartes’ philosophy of “some faults” as well as to ex-
tend his principles to phenomena left untouched by their mentor. Al-
though Schmaltz claims that after Regis’ death “Desgabets’ views ceased
to play any serious role in discussions of Cartesianism” (Schmaltz 2002,
9), there is a sense in which Radical Cartesianism proves the opposite point:
Philosophers such as François Bayle, Arnauld, Malebranche and Rohault
constructed their own versions of Cartesianism at least in part as a re-
sponse to Desgabets and Regis.22 Certainly following Pierre-Daniel Huet’s
acrimonious response to Regis in his ªfth edition of Censura Philosophiae
Cartesianae (1694), the long-term impact of Desgabets’ empirical Carte-
sianism was assured.23 Schmaltz should be commended for bringing this
philosophical dialogue to the Anglo-American community of philoso-
phers and historians.

Although Schmaltz emphasizes theological condemnation in his de-
scription of the genesis of Desgabets’ empiricism, ambiguities in Des-
cartes’ texts justify a reevaluation of his rationalist epistemology. Descartes
noted in the last part of the Discourse on Method that experiment [expérience]
should play an essential part in determining how any given phenomenon
depended on principles that are “so simple and general.” More famously,
in Principles of Philosophy III, 46 Descartes acknowledged a sort of under-
determination thesis: “Seeing that these parts [of matter] could have been
regulated by God in an inªnity of diverse ways; experience alone should
teach us which of all these ways He chose. This is why we are now at lib-
erty to assume anything we please, provided that everything we shall de-

22. Schmaltz provokes a discussion about what constitutes a “radical Cartesian.”
Clearly Desgabets and Regis both saw themselves as followers of Descartes and were seen
by their contemporaries as such. But others, such as François Bayle, radically altered Des-
cartes and considered themselves as part of his legacy. Bayle’s empiricism grew even more
radical than Desgabets’ and Regis’. The former turned to the senses for the source of clear
and distinct ideas. Desgabets simply rejected radical doubt and dispensed with Descartes’
ªrst two Meditations.

23. Huet’s ªrst published Censura in 1689, but his motivation appears to be
Malebranche’s Search After Truth (1674). Leibniz wrote to Huet in 1692 and proposed add-
ing his own criticism to a future edition of Censura.

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
p
o
s
c
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

1
5
4
4
9
3
1
7
8
9
4
7
3
p
o
s
c
.
2
0
0
7
1
5
4
4
9
3
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

516

Cartesianism Revisited

duce from it is entirely in conformity with experience.” Descartes’ corre-
spondence also afªrms the philosopher’s interest in scientiªc experiment.
There are thus internal reasons to question any rigidly rationalist interpre-
tation of Descartes’ epistemology. The life and works of Desgabets, Regis,
and François Bayle instantiate the importance of the internal ambiguities
regardless of the theological and political trouble generated as a result of
Descartes’ publications.24

The last chapter of Radical Cartesianism is devoted to one of Descartes’
and Cartesianism’s most devastating critics, the erudite Pierre-Daniel
Huet. Huet’s self-described intellectual life made him an unlikely critic of
Descartes. He claimed to have “for many years closely engaged in the
study of Cartesianism,” adding that he “long wandered in the mazes of
this reasoning delirium, till mature years and a full examination of the
system from its foundations compelled [him] to renounce it” (Lennon
2003, 24). Thomas Lennon claims that Malebranche’s disdain for human-
ist values, manifest in his Search After Truth, likely motivated Huet to re-
evaluate his relationship with Cartesianism. Nevertheless, by the time
Huet ªnished his ªrst edition of Censura philosophiae cartesianae (1689) his
sympathies for Descartes’ philosophy were deeply buried.

Since the publication of Schmaltz’s Radical Cartesianism, Thomas
Lennon has translated and published Huet’s Censura Philosophiae Carte-
sianae into English for the ªrst time.25 The translation relies on the ªfth
edition of Censura published in 1694. This later edition contains Huet’s
corrections and signiªcant expansions made in response to Regis’ Système
de philosophie (1690) and, most obviously, Réponse au livre qui a pour titre P.
Huetii . . . Censura Philosophiae Cartesianae (1691).26 Thus Lennon’s transla-
tion implicitly embodies a ªerce debate among Cartesians and anti-

24. Roger Ariew notes that empiricism predominated among Cartesians in the second
half of the seventeenth century. He adds Bernard Lamy and Jacques Du Roure to the list of
Cartesian empiricists. See Ariew 2006.

25. Censura follows a line of other primary works Lennon has made available in English.
Patricia Ann Easton and Lennon published François Bayle’s General System and Discourse to-
gether in 1992. P. J. Olscamp and Lennon also translated and published Malebranche’s
Search After Truth and Elucidations of the Search After Truth in 1997. Together, these works
provide English-speaking philosophers a rich set of resources for understanding French
Cartesianism and its historic and philosophical importance.

26. Schmaltz downplays the signiªcance of Huet’s response to Regis in the 1694 edi-
tion of Censura: “Although Huet made several notes in his copy of Regis’ Rèponse that were
incorporated into the 1694 edition of Censura, he never responded in print to Regis”
(Schmaltz, 2002, 233). Lennon, on the other hand, says: “Huet was led by Regis’ Rèsponse
to publish a much-expanded edition of the Censura of 1694, in which he interpoleated re-
buttals of Regis’ replies to the ªrst chapter, which is on the Cartesian doubt” (Schmaltz,
2005, 66).

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
p
o
s
c
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

1
5
4
4
9
3
1
7
8
9
4
7
3
p
o
s
c
.
2
0
0
7
1
5
4
4
9
3
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

Perspectives on Science

517

Cartesians, and represents the most thoroughly developed philosophical
criticisms of Descartes and Regis presented by Huet. Elsewhere, Lennon
does not hide his sentiments about the veracity of the arguments found in
Censura: he calls Huet’s criticisms “the most comprehensive, unrelenting
and devastating reception Descartes’ philosophy ever received” (Lennon
2005, 64).

If Lennon is correct, we may assume that modern anti-Cartesian com-
mentators should ªnd something of signiªcance in Huet’s work.27 Huet,
like many more modern critics, shares an inordinate focus on the epistem-
ological issues concerning the method of doubt and the cogito. This is
particularly true of the revised 1694 edition of Censura where the ªrst two
chapters devoted to the subject comprise over half the text. So why did
Huet change the emphasis of anti-Cartesianism from more explicitly theo-
logical considerations to the epistemological foundations of Descartes’ sys-
tem?

Gassendi, Hobbes, and Bourdin, the author of the Seventh Objections,
all criticized Descartes’ use of hyperbolic doubt in the Meditations, and to
varying degrees, Descartes addressed their concerns in his respective Re-
sponses. But Huet took hyperbolic doubt to be the Achilles heal of Des-
cartes’ system—a corrupt foundation. Here again, Descartes could not es-
cape the theological implications of his epistemology. In October of 1691,
Archbishop Harlay presented the members of the Paris philosophy faculty
with a formulary condemning eleven propositions. The ªrst read: “One
must rid oneself of all kinds of prejudices and doubt everything before be-
ing certain of any knowledge.” It was followed by 2: “One must doubt
whether there is a God until one has a clear and distinct knowledge of it;”
and 3: “We do not know whether God did not create us such that we are
always deceived in the very things that appear the clearest.” The ªrst two
propositions imply that Descartes’ reader, should he become unable to ex-
tract himself from hyperbolic doubt, could end up falling into the pit of
atheism. The nature of Descartes’ skepticism thus became a point of focus,
and Huet exploited an ambiguity therein.

Huet’s criticism of Descartes’ method of doubt in the ªrst edition of
Censura echoes the concerns of Bourdin in the Seventh Objections. Huet
claimed that Descartes held “that everything is not just uncertain, but
false” (Lennon 2005 69). He emphasized the distinction, used by Regis,

27. Huet’s Censura is critical of Descartes’ matter theory and its failure to account for
the Eucharist. He writes: “What is more serious is the following, that his doctrine entirely
upsets the holiest sacrament of the Eucharist . . . It is so clear and obvious that, according
to the judgement of equitable people, Cartesians have not found, and will never ªnd, any
response to it” (Lennon, 2003, 179). But Huet is much more concerned with epistem-
ological failures of Descartes’ philosophy.

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
p
o
s
c
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

1
5
4
4
9
3
1
7
8
9
4
7
3
p
o
s
c
.
2
0
0
7
1
5
4
4
9
3
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

518

Cartesianism Revisited

between doubting something and taking it to be false, and developed the
distinction into a core criticism of Descartes’ philosophy. Although the
Meditations famously used radical doubt to strip away one’s preconceived
beliefs, Descartes was less than consistent when discussing the reality of
that doubt and the extent of its application. For instance, Lennon reminds
us, Descartes himself seems to suggest that his “metaphysical” doubt
should not be applied to practical life. “He makes a similar claim in the
Synopsis that ‘no sane person has ever doubted [that here really is a world,
and that human beings have bodies and so on]’.” Lennon adds: “Here
[Descartes] says that the point of his arguments resolving such doubts is
not to establish the truth of things doubted, but rather to show the rela-
tively lesser strength of those arguments and lesser certainty of what they
establish” (Lennon 2005, 64). The extent and sincerity of Descartes’ doubt
can thus be called into question.

Regis objected to Huet’s interpretation that Descartes’ doubt required
not merely that one consider things uncertain, but rather false. Desgabets’
protégé instead claimed that Descartes’ doubt was methodological or
feigned, not real. Huet, tipping his hat to his own skeptical commit-
ments, argued that Descartes had good reason to doubt; Descartes’ text
supported his reading of Descartes; and that the doubt was very real. But
as long as Descartes considered all things false, he could not, according to
Huet, ever establish the cogito. In attempting to overcome the skepticism
of his hyperbolic doubt, Descartes only strengthened it by not ruling out
the possibility of “universal divine deception.” Huet thus maintained that
Descartes’ constructive program was disingenuous because, though he be-
gan as a skeptic, he resorted to dogmatism given his failure to emancipate
himself from his own skeptical dilemma. Unlike true skeptics, who re-
main true to their principles, Descartes “pretends to pretend, lest he be
forced to expose the faults of sincere doubt” (Huet 1694: 82/from Lennon
2005, 72). Consequently, if Regis interpreted Descartes correctly, Des-
cartes’ fabricated doubt must be considered dishonest. If the doubt were
real, as Huet maintained it should be, Descartes only pretended to over-
come it; so he remained disingenuous. According to Huet then, true skep-
tics were both more consistent and intellectually honest.

Lennon claims that Huet anticipates “the familiar Popkin thesis of Des-
cartes the skeptic malgré lui” (Lennon 2005, 71). Where Popkin had Des-
cartes beginning as a dogmatist and ending as a skeptic because he was
unable to escape his own doubts, Huet’s Descartes begins as a skeptic and
resorts to dogmatism for the same reasons. Lennon says: “Nonetheless, the
result in a secondary, internal dialectic is skepticism, indeed skepticism
malgré lui, because dogmatism fails on the grounds just mentioned, ulti-
mately that universal divine deception cannot be ruled out” (Lennon

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
p
o
s
c
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

1
5
4
4
9
3
1
7
8
9
4
7
3
p
o
s
c
.
2
0
0
7
1
5
4
4
9
3
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

Perspectives on Science

519

2005, 71). Huet attacked virtually every aspect of Descartes’ epistemology
and metaphysics. Many of these arguments have strong afªnities with far
more recent anti-Cartesian literature. Yet few philosophers have referred
to these works.28 Tad Schmaltz’s and Thomas Lennon’s portrayal of the
evolutions of Cartesian and anti-Cartesian thought in mid to late seven-
teenth century France, particularly with regards to the purity (or lack
thereof) of the intellect, probabilism, the relation of ideas to the external
world, and the use or rejection of hyperbolic doubt, beg the question of
how far many recent critiques of Descartes have strayed from their seven-
teenth century counterparts.

The histories of the reception of Descartes offered anew by Garber,
Ariew, Schmaltz and Lennon not only suggest that certain presentist con-
cerns have been anticipated, but also that the traditional categories many
philosophers use to teach and understand early modern science have been
applied inappropriately.29 The dichotomy between French rationalism and
English empiricism, for example, fails as an accurate description of an his-
torical episode.30 Indeed these authors reveal that Cartesian empiricism is
a signiªcant, if not dominant, philosophical force in France in the middle
of the seventeenth century. The works of Charleton, Digby and More, to
name three of the most prominent authors, suggest that the English re-
ception of Descartes ªts standard dichotomies no better. One need not
look for long to ªnd Cartesian atomists, Cartesian Newtonians, Newto-
nian occultists, and Aristotelian mechanists.31 The original works made

28. Huet’s accusations seem to imply a Strausian read-between-the-lines style of inter-

pretation, and suggest an atheist reading of Descartes.

29. François Poullain de la Barre’s Three Cartesian Feminist Treatises (2002), annotated by
Marcelle Maistre Welch and translated by Vivien Bosley, represent another important ad-
dition to Cartesian literature made available to Anglo-American philosophers and histori-
ans of feminism.

30. Exposing the mutability of terms is fundamentally an historical exercise with im-
portant implications for philosophers. We should consider, for instance, why “Cartesian”
has been often divorced from its historical roots and what the implications are for this im-
poverished use. The recent Historical Dictionary of Descartes and Cartesian Philosophy, 2003,
by Ariew, Dennis Des Chene, Douglas M. Jesseph, Schmaltz and Theo Verbeek provides
‘deªnitions’ of terms commonly used by Descartes and Cartesians, demonstrating the am-
biguities of their use as well as the context speciªc meaning. In many cases Historical Dic-
tionary exposes the non-equivalency between how terms have been used by Descartes and
his contemporaries, and modern commentators attempting to reconstruct Descartes’ phi-
losophy.

31. Paul Chamberlen, for instance, published A Philosophical Essay Upon Actions on Dis-
tant Subject (1715). He dedicated the work to the Royal Society. A major portion of the
work attempted to explain “according to the principles of the new philosophy, and Sir Isaac
Newton’s Laws of Motion” why a nose successfully transplanted on a man fell off one day in
Brussels on the occasion of its donor’s death.

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
p
o
s
c
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

1
5
4
4
9
3
1
7
8
9
4
7
3
p
o
s
c
.
2
0
0
7
1
5
4
4
9
3
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

520

Cartesianism Revisited

available by Garber, Ariew, and Lennon, as well as commentaries on those
works now available in English, make the ripe history of Cartesianism eas-
ily accessible to Anglo-American philosophers. A less impoverished un-
derstanding of how contemporaries exploited, corrected, and criticized
Descartes may not at ªrst sight be useful to many modern philosophers;
however, we may still hope that these ‘new’ narratives replace the naïve re-
constructions of our recent past and fall on fertile philosophical soil.

References
Ariew, R. 2006. “Cartesian Empiricism.” Revue roumaine de philosophie 50:

71–85.

———. 1999. Descartes and the Last Scholastics. Ithaca: Cornell University

Press.

Ariew, R. and Garber, D., Eds. 2002. Descartes in Seventeenth-Century Eng-

land. 10 Vols. Bristol: Thoemmes Press.

Ariew, R., Cottingham, J., and Sorell, T., Eds. 1998. Descartes’ Meditations:
Background Source Materials. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ariew, R., Des Chene, D., Jesseph, D., Schmaltz, T., and Verbeek, T.
2003. Historical Dictionary of Descartes and Cartesian Philosophy. Lanham,
Maryland: The Scarecrow Press.

Bayle, François. 1670. The General Systeme of the Cartesian Philosophy. Lon-

don.

Booth, Emily. 2005. ‘A Subtle and Mysterious Machine’ The Medical World of

Walter Charleton (1619–1707). Dordrecht: Springer.

Chamberlen, Paul. 1715. A Philosophical Essay Upon Actions on Distant Sub-

jects. London.

Charleton, Walter. 1674. Natural history of the passions. London.
———. 1657. The immortality of the human soul, demonstrated by the light of

nature. London.

———. 1654. Physiologia Epicuro-Gassendo-Charltoniana. London.
———. 1652. The darkness of atheism dispelled by the light of nature. London.
———. 1650. Ternary of Paradoxes. London.
Cordemoy, Géraud de. 1670. A Discourse Written To a Learned Frier. Lon-

don.

———. 1668. A Philosophicall Discourse Concerning Speech. London.
Descartes, René. 1984–91. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. Vols. 1
and 2, trans. J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, and D. Murdoch. Vol. 3,
trans. J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, D. Murdoch, and Anthony Kenny.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

———. 1983. Principles of Philosophy. Trans. V. R. Miller and R. P. Miller.

Dordrecht: Reidel.

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
p
o
s
c
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

1
5
4
4
9
3
1
7
8
9
4
7
3
p
o
s
c
.
2
0
0
7
1
5
4
4
9
3
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

Perspectives on Science

521

———. 1964–74. Oeuvres de Descartes. Ed. C. Adam and P. Tannery. 2nd

ed. Paris: Vrin.

Digby, Kenelm. 1661. A Discourse concerning the Vegetation of Plants. Lon-

don.

———. 1658. A Late Discourse . . . Touching the cure of wounds by the powder

of sympathy. London.

———. 1644. Two Treatises in the one which, The Nature of Bodies; in the

other, The Nature of Mans Soule, is looked into . . . London.

Garber, Daniel. 2004. “Philosophy and the Scientiªc Revolution.” Pp. 1–
17 in Teaching New Histories of Philosophy. Princeton: University Center
for Human Values.

Garber, D. and Ayers, M. 1998. The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-
Century Philosophy. 2 Vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Cavendish, Margaret. 1668. Grounds of Natural Philosophy. London.
———.1667. The Life of . . . William Cavendish, Duke, Marquess, and Earl

of Newcastle. London.

———. 1666. The Description of a New World, called the Blazing World.

London.

———. 1666. Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy. London.
———. 1664. Philosophical Letters. London.
———. 1655. The Philosophical and Physical Opinions. London.
Clucas, Stephen. 1994. “The Atomism of the Cavendish Circle: A Reap-

praisal.” The Seventeenth Century, 9.2: 247–73.

Daniel, Gabriel. 1692. A Voyage to the World of Cartesius. London.
Davies, John. 1654. Reºections upon Monsieur Des Cartes’ Discourse of a

Method. London.

Howard, Edward. 1700. Remarks on the New Philosophy of Des-Cartes. Lon-

don.

Huet, Pierre-Daniel. (1694) 2003. Against Cartesian Philosophy. Translated

by Thomas Lennon. Amherst: Humanity Books.

Lennon, Thomas M. 2005. “Huet on the reality of Cartesian doubt.”

Pp. 63–79 in Receptions of Descartes. London: Routledge.

Lennon, Thomas M., and Patricia Ann Easton. 1992. The Cartesian Empiri-

cism of François Bayle. New York: Garland.

Lewis, David. 1986. On the Plurality of Worlds. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Pardies, Ignace Gaston. 1670. A Discourse of Local Motion. London.
Pascal, Blaise. (1670) 2005. Pansées. Translated and edited by R. Ariew.

Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.

Schmaltz, Tad M. 2005. “French Cartesianism in context: the Paris For-
mulary and Regis’ Usage.” Pp. 80–96 in Receptions of Descartes. London:
Routledge.

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
p
o
s
c
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

1
5
4
4
9
3
1
7
8
9
4
7
3
p
o
s
c
.
2
0
0
7
1
5
4
4
9
3
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

522

Cartesianism Revisited

———. 2002. Radical Cartesianism. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.

Schulero, Johanne. 1685. Examinis philosophiae Renati Des-Cartes specimen.

London.

Shapin, Steven. 1994. A Social History of Truth. Chicago: The University of

Chicago Press.

Sorell, Tom. 2005. Descartes Reinvented. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.

Williams, Bernard. 1994. “Descartes and the Historiography of Philoso-
phy.” Pp. 19–27 in Reason, Will, and Sensation: Studies in Descartes’
Metaphysics. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Wilson, Margaret D. 1992. “History of Philosophy in Philosophy Today;
and the Case of the Sensible Qualities.” The Philosophical Review, Vol.
101, No. 1: 191–243.

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
p
o
s
c
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

1
5
4
4
9
3
1
7
8
9
4
7
3
p
o
s
c
.
2
0
0
7
1
5
4
4
9
3
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
Download pdf