The A to Z of Descartes and Cartesian Philosophy by Roger Ariew & Dennis Des Chene & Douglas M. Jesseph & Tad M. Schmaltz & Theo Verbeek

Author:Roger Ariew & Dennis Des Chene & Douglas M. Jesseph & Tad M. Schmaltz & Theo Verbeek
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
Published: 2003-04-06T05:00:00+00:00

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JANSENISM. See JANSENIUS, CORNELIUS (1585–1638).

JANSENIUS, CORNELIUS (1585–1638). A member of the Theology Faculty at the University of Louvain and later the bishop of Ypres, Jansenius is known primarily for his posthumously published Augustinus (1640). In this work, Jansenius offered an Augustinianism that claimed to find in Augustine a view that emphasizes the depth of human sin and the irresistibility of divine grace. In France Antoine Arnauld and other individuals associated with the convent of Port-Royal were concerned to defend this view against the Jesuit charge that it gives aid and comfort to the Calvinists. The counter was that the Jesuit view is in line with a heretical Pelagianism.

The French First Minister Cardinal Mazarin sided with the Jesuits, and pressure from him brought about the 1653 condemnation of five propositions drawn from Jansenius’s text by Pope Innocent X. In response to the claim of Arnauld and others that this text does not endorse these propositions, Pope Alexander VII declared in 1656 that they are in fact to be found in the Augustinus in their condemned sense. Arnauld rejoined by distinguishing between matters of faith (droit), on which the pope’s word is authoritative, and matters of fact (fait), on which the pope has no special authority.

The great 19th-century historian of Cartesianism, Francisque Bouillier, has claimed that there is “a natural alliance of the doctrine of Jansenius with that of Descartes.” This association of Jansenism with Cartesianism goes back to the 17th century, as indicated by the remark in Gabriel Daniel’s 1690 Voiage du Monde that “there are very few Jansenists who are not Cartesians.” This association was no doubt due in large part to Arnauld, who was a powerful defender both of Descartes and of Jansenius. Yet Daniel’s comment belies the fact that there was significant opposition among Jansenists to the Cartesian reliance on human reason. Moreover, even Arnauld complained at one point that Descartes’s views on free will were Pelagian. The relations between Jansenism and Cartesianism are thus less straightforward than Bouillier’s thesis suggests.

JESUITS. Jesuits are members of the Society of Jesus, a Catholic religious order founded by Saint Ignatius of Loyola that was officially recognized in 1540. Though the Society was primarily a missionary order, it also established schools throughout Europe. It was in fact a Jesuit school, La Flèche, where Descartes received his education. Descartes made disparaging remarks concerning his training there in the 1637 Discourse on Method, but around the same time he recommended La Flèche to a correspondent as a model school. Moreover, Descartes had a continuing interest in making his philosophical views acceptable to the Jesuits. Thus, he sent copies of his Discourse to his old teachers at La Flèche for comment, and later engaged in a friendly correspondence with another Jesuit instructor there, Denis Mesland. Some of Descartes’s Jesuit contemporaries were critical of his system, particularly Pierre Bourdin, who sent Descartes an incomplete set of objections that focuses on the use of the method of doubt in the Meditations. Though this set of

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