Theological Origins of Modernity

notes to pages 182–187 335
53. Gaukroger, Descartes, 136.
54. Ibid., 136–37.
55. Descartes to Villebressieu, summer 1631, AT 1:213. Th is story fi rst appears in
Baillet’s biography, and some modern historians have questioned its authenticity.
Watson argues that Baillet’s account is almost certainly based upon a letter that
was probably fabricated by Clerselier. Cogito, 142. While this may have been the
case, it is diffi cult to deny some of the essentials of the account, and particularly
Descartes’ rejection of probable reasoning.
56. Watson argues that the link to Bérulle was part of an eff ort to transform Descartes
into an orthodox French Catholic. Bérulle was a totalitarian, “genocidal maniac,”
whose chief goal in life was the elimination of Protestantism through the extermination
of Protestants. Descartes, by contrast, maintained friendly relations with
many Protestants throughout his life. Th is alternative reading of Descartes also
helps to explain why France’s preeminent philosopher abandoned an increasingly
intolerant France to spend most of the rest of his life in the Protestant and republican
Netherlands. Watson, Cogito, 146–53.
57. Descartes to Mersenne, end of November 1633, February 1634, and April 1634. AT
1:270, 281, 285. See also Gaukroger, Descartes, 292. Th is maxim was the motto of
the Rosicrucians. Watson, Cogito, 32.
58. AM 1:204.
59. He remarks in the “Olympica” section of the Little Notebook, for example, that,
“Genesis says that God separated the light from the darkness, meaning that he
separated the good angels from the bad. Because it is impossible to separate a
positive quality from a privation, this cannot be taken literally. God is pure intelligence.”
Cole, “Olympian Dream,” 29.
60. Descartes to Mersenne, May 27, 1630, AT 1:151.
61. AT 1:70; CSM 3:7.
62. Watson, Cogito, 166.
63. AT 6:60; CSM 1:142.
64. Gaukroger, Descartes, 304. See also Lefèvre, L’Humanisme de Descartes, 187.
65. Watson has suggested that the autobiographical character of the work was a response
to Balzac’s request for a story of his intellectual development. Cogito, 182.
66. David Lachterman, “Descartes and the Philosophy of History,” Independent Journal
of Philosophy 4 (1983): 37, 39. Descartes here rejects the humanist notion that
we know ourselves in and through our friends, a position that he certainly knew
from Montaigne, if not from Plato and Aristotle. Ibid., 41.
67. Descartes here seems to be moving toward the Baconian notion of an autocratic
scientist. Kevin Dunn, “‘A Great City is a Great Solitude’: Descartes’s Urban Pastoral,”
Yale French Studies 80, Baroque Topographies (1991): 97. It is useful to remember
that the Discourse was originally entitled “Th e Project of a Universal Science
Which Can Elevate Our Nature to its Highest Degree of Perfection.” Lachterman,
“Descartes and the Philosophy of History,” 35.
68. Th e technician will of course be diff erent than the Aristotelian craft sman because
his technique will rest on science.