Antone Arnauld was a major figure in the intellectual landscape of France for the majority of the seventeenth century. Most of Arnauld’s intellectual energy was spent engaging with theological issues of the day, but he also wrote many directly philosophical works and in many cases his thought simultaneously engages with both philosophical and theological issues. One of the main obstacles to a better understanding of Arnauld’s philosophical thought is identifying his key philosophical texts, so in this introductory chapter I offer a brief overview of his life and introduce some of those texts. I focus on texts that are crucial to understanding his philosophical thought, illustrate his influence, and/or contain work of relevance to contemporary philosophical debates.
In order to offer such an introduction, I divide Arnauld’s works and life into four broad periods that are distinguished by key events in his life. The first group of Arnauld’s texts, addressed in Section 1.1, were written in the 1630s and 1640s; some of these are directly related to Arnauld’s studying and teaching at the Sorbonne. The most important texts from this period are from the 1640s. In Section 1.2, I consider the second set of texts, which were written after his expulsion from the Sorbonne in 1655 and include those written through a period called the “Peace of the Church.” His expulsion from the Sorbonne was directly related to his involvement with the French Catholic movement of Jansenism and the closely related convent(s) of Port-Royal.Footnote 1 The Jansenists were often subject to persecution, but the Peace of the Church offered a short reprieve. When this peace came to an end in 1679, Arnauld fled from France to the city of Mons in the Spanish Netherlands (now Belgium) and would spend the rest of his life in exile. The third set of texts – which I consider in Section 1.3 – are distinguished from the second set by having been written after his going into exile. These texts include his famous correspondence with Leibniz and debate with Malebranche. The fourth and final set of texts, considered in Section 1.4, are from the late 1680s and the 1690s. The third and fourth groups of texts are not as clearly distinct as the other sets. Nevertheless, this fourth group is noteworthy because Arnauld’s views seem to shift towards Thomism during this period. While I think Arnauld’s “Thomistic turn” in these later works is less pronounced than often supposed, there is no doubt that the later texts represent their own period in Arnauld’s intellectual life. This turn to Thomism is not merely a contemporary assessment, but was discussed by Arnauld’s peers and subsequent Jansenists.Footnote 2 Finally, I offer some concluding remarks.
1.1 From Nominalism to Cartesianism: 1612–1648
Arnauld was born on February 6, 1612 in Paris. His parents, Antoine (père) and Catherine, had twenty children, ten of whom survived infancy, and he was the youngest. The Arnaulds were a prominent family in France in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and many of Arnauld’s siblings and other relations also played key roles in significant events and movements.Footnote 3 According to Arnauld’s biographer Noël de Larrière, Arnauld’s father put a lot of concern into Arnauld’s early education and had hoped Arnauld would become a teacher. After he passed away in 1619, Arnauld’s mother took over his education. She was more interested, we are told, in “inspiring piety than in cultivating his talents,” but she did not neglect the latter and Arnauld was sent to the Collège de Calvi-Sorbonne where he studied the humanities.Footnote 4 Arnauld considered, for a time, pursuing a career in law; however, at least partially under the influence of Jean Duvergier de Hauranne (Saint-Cyran), he decided to pursue the priesthood.Footnote 5
Arnauld began his studies in theology at the Sorbonne in 1633.Footnote 6 He defended his tentative (a public defense of theses often written by one’s teacher) in November of 1635 and earned his bachelor’s degree. From November 12, 1638 through December 18, 1641, Arnauld defended a series of four theses as part of his doctoral degree.Footnote 7 During these two years (October 1639–1641), Arnauld was teaching a course in philosophy at the Collège de Mans in Paris. One of his students, Charles Wallon de Beaupuis, defended his tentative on July 25, 1641. This tentative – the Philosophical Conclusions [Conclusions] – was edited by Arnauld himself, probably on the basis of the course he taught. The Conclusions are the earliest work of philosophical import from Arnauld. Arnauld was ordained a priest in September of 1641 and became a doctor of theology at the Sorbonne in December of that same year.
During the same two years that Arnauld was teaching his course at the Sorbonne he burst onto the philosophical scene with his response to Descartes’s Meditations on First Philosophy [Meditations]: The Fourth Set of Objections to Descartes’s Meditations [Fourth Objections]. Arnauld had received Descartes’s Meditations by December of 1640 and wrote the Fourth Objections sometime between December of 1640 and February of 1641.Footnote 8 Thus, Arnauld wrote the Fourth Objections at the end of his teaching duties, but before the defense of the Conclusions (and before acquiring his doctorate). While the chronology here is a bit nuanced, it is best to first examine the Conclusions and then move on to the Fourth Objections as this will best follow the development of Arnauld’s philosophical views.
1.1.1 The Philosophical Conclusions
The Conclusions are a key work for understanding Arnauld’s first philosophy and his views undergo key changes in the 1640s. While I do address the Conclusions later in the book – in Chapter 10 – they are not a large focus. Since the Conclusions are important for establishing Arnauld’s early views, I shall spend a bit more time on it here.
In an insightful paper, Vincent Carraud has argued that the Conclusions illustrate that Arnauld’s early philosophical views are broadly Ockhamist, perhaps even a Cartesianizable Ockhamism.Footnote 9 I generally agree with Carraud’s interpretation. Arnauld mentions William of Ockham explicitly in that text and later in this section I compare passages from the Conclusions with passages from Ockham to further make this case. However, rather than think of Arnauld’s early views as Ockhamist per se, I suggest we should think of them as keeping with the broadly nominalist tradition of philosophy that had been especially prominent at the University of Paris in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.Footnote 10 While nominalism might bring to mind only a specific view of universals, the nominalist tradition represented a school of philosophy in this period.Footnote 11 Perhaps the three most important historical sources and inspirations for nominalism are John Buridan, Marsilius of Inghen, and Ockham, though the former two are often considered more important.Footnote 12 Other thinkers associated with this nominalist tradition include Gregory of Rimini, John Mair (or Mayor), and Gabriel Biel.Footnote 13
Philosophical education during Arnauld’s time at the Sorbonne often revolved around the use of textbooks and, within these texts, philosophical thought was often divided into many schools. Roger Ariew observes that textbooks from the seventeenth century note as many as four “great systems of philosophy” – namely, Thomist, Scotist, Nominalist (or Ockhamist) and Averroist.Footnote 14 While Nominalism is not as prominent as Thomism or Scotism in the seventeenth century, it was still discussed and well-known.Footnote 15 While ultimately speculative, there are any number of paths by which Arnauld may have studied nominalism while at the Sorbonne. One source may have been the classes of Jacques du Chevreul. L. W. B. Brockliss, based on his study of manuscripts in Parisian libraries, notes that du Chevreul taught courses at the University of Paris on logic and ethics in 1623/24, 1625/26, and 1633/34 and on metaphysics and philosophy in 1628/29 and 1634/35. Of particular interest, Brockliss adds that du Chevreul was “under the influence of the Nominalist conception of God,” and held the view that “God must be able to do everything.”Footnote 16
Returning to nominalism generally, Calvin Normore identifies what he calls a “Nominalist Catechism,” where he summarizes much of what captures nominalism (focusing on sixteenth-century nominalism). Included in Normore’s catechism are the nominalist view of universals; that “anything is possible that does not involve a contradiction, and God can do anything that is possible”; and that “most of theology depends upon revelation, and natural reason can prove less about God than one might think – perhaps not even that God exists.”Footnote 17
The Conclusions itself is divided into five sections: Logic; Mathematics; Morals; Physics; and Metaphysics. We can begin with the most famous component of nominalism: the nominalist view of universals. According to nominalism, universals are merely names (or perhaps concepts) used to pick out many particulars. Ockham and the Conclusions defend a similar view of universals:
Conclusions: Whatever is, is singular and something through itself. What, then, is universal? Either a sign, which, without varying, personally and immediately represents many singulars; or many singular natures represented by a common notion and a univocal name … Universals can easily be made through the work of reason.
Ockham: The universal is not a thing outside the mind … every substance is numerically one and a particular … every universal is an intention of the mind which, on the most probable account, is identical with the act of understanding.
Both texts suggest that a universal could simply be a name, or perhaps a concept, which suggests something closer to what we would today call conceptualism rather than nominalism. In either case, the texts endorse a similar view.
Another aspect of the Conclusions that is reminiscent of Ockham and/or nominalism is the relation between the essence and existence of things:
Conclusions: Ockham plausibly thought that extension is not really distinguished from extended things.
Ockham: We shall make a digression for a while and consider … whether the existence of a thing and its essence are two entities extra-mentally from each other. It appears to me that they are not two such entities, nor does ‘existence’ signify anything different from the thing itself … We have to say, therefore, that essence and existence are not two things.
Here we have Arnauld claiming that extension is not really distinct from extended things, where Ockham claims that existence and essence are not distinct ‘extra-mentally.’Footnote 19 Further, both Ockham’s and Arnauld’s interests in this question seem tied to the Eucharist and the seeming tension created by Ockham’s view (or the Cartesian view) and the accepted account of transubstantiation.Footnote 20
Finally, both Ockham and the Conclusions defend the doctrine of univocity:
Conclusions: Being pertains synonymously to God and to creatures, to substance and to accident.
Ockham: I claim that ‘being’ is predicated univocally and in quid of the name ‘God’ and of the names ‘substance’ and ‘quality’ – and this in the strict sense of univocal predication.
Arnauld defends the doctrine of univocity, the view that some predicates (in this case ‘being’/‘ens’) when applied to creatures and God have the same meaning. This view is most often contrasted with the doctrine of analogy – held by Thomas Aquinas, for example – that holds such predicates have the same meaning in only an analogical sense. All in all, the Conclusions seem to put Arnauld in the nominalist camp.Footnote 21
1.1.2 The Fourth Objections to Descartes?s Meditations
Arnauld received the Meditations towards the end of 1640, which puts his writing of the Fourth Objections at nearly the same time as the Conclusions. When Arnauld received the Meditations, he was already familiar with Descartes’s Discourse on Method and its accompanying scientific essays, and thought very highly of them.Footnote 22 The Fourth Objections are written to Marin Mersenne, and Arnauld writes: “What exactly do you want? You can hardly be after my opinion of the author, since you already know how highly I rate his outstanding intelligence and exceptional learning.”Footnote 23 Both Arnauld’s Fourth Objections and Descartes’s responses, the Author’s Replies to the Fourth Set of Objections [Fourth Replies], were included in published editions of the Meditations.
The Fourth Objections are notable in many respects. Arnauld offers many philosophically and historically important objections to Descartes’s Meditations, and his objections seem to reveal a general sympathy for the Cartesian worldview as opposed to pushing a different worldview altogether – for example, the Thomism of the First Objections or the empiricism of the Fifth Objections. Arnauld distinguishes between two sorts of objections: “philosophical objections regarding the major issues of the nature of our mind and of God” and “the problems which a theologian might come up against.”Footnote 24 Arnauld invokes in this early text a distinction that is (as we shall see in Chapter 2) paramount in his method. Arnauld’s distinction is not merely practical, but reveals a substantive difference in the correct method between philosophical issues (roughly, issues approached via reason and/or the senses) and issues best approached by the authority of others (which include, but are not limited to, many matters of faith and theology).
One important feature of the Fourth Objections for understanding his eventual Cartesianism is that Arnauld begins his discussion on the philosophy of mind by claiming that Descartes “has laid down as the basis for his entire philosophy exactly the same principle as that laid down by St Augustine.”Footnote 25 Arnauld cites the similarity of Descartes’s discussion of the evil deceiver with Augustine of Hippo’s claims in On the Free Choice of the Will, Book II, chapter 3. While the extent to which Augustine and Descartes in fact build their philosophy on the same principle is beyond the scope of this chapter, there is no doubt that their relation is important to Arnauld, and his Cartesianism is in part motivated by the similarities between the two. I address much of the rest of the discussion related to the nature of the mind in Chapters 3 and 4.
When discussing theological difficulties, Arnauld suggests that Descartes should emphasize that he never actually doubted God’s existence and that the standard of clear and distinct perception applies only to philosophical matters, not to matters of faith or “the conduct of life.”Footnote 26
Arnauld is also the first to offer the infamous charge that the argument of the Meditations is circular. He tells Descartes:
I have one further worry, namely how the author avoids reasoning in a circle when he says that we are sure that what we clearly and distinctly perceive is true only because God exists.
But we can be sure that God exists only because we clearly and distinctly perceive this. Hence, before we can be sure that God exists, we ought to be able to be sure that whatever we perceive clearly and evidently is true.
This worry, which has become known as the “Cartesian circle,” concerns whether Descartes’s reasoning in the Meditations is circular insofar as he argues (or seems to argue) that the validity of our clear and distinct perception is grounded in God’s existence and our confidence that God exists depends on our clear and distinct perception of God. Whether Arnauld is correct is beyond the scope of this chapter, but suffice to say much great scholarship has been devoted to this question.Footnote 27
1.1.3 Jansenism and Theological Works 1641–1645
While Arnauld was affiliated with the Sorbonne he also composed several works focused on theological issues and controversies. While they by and large are not of direct philosophical import, they are significant enough in his life and intellectual journey to warrant at least brief mention. In order to understand these texts, we must first discuss Jansenism.
Jansenism was a movement within French Catholicism, ultimately coming out of the Counter Reformation.Footnote 28 Jansenism was so named because of Cornelius Jansen’s posthumously published Augustinus and its influence on the movement. Jansen began writing Augustinus in 1628, completed it in 1636, and it was published posthumously in 1640 (Jansen having succumbed to the plague in 1638). Augustinus is a robust three-volume work. The first part considers the heresy of Pelagianism; the second part argues, in effect, that Augustine of Hippo is the ultimate authority in matters of grace; and the third part considers the relation between free will and grace.Footnote 29 I consider Jansen’s account of grace and freedom in Chapter 6.
While there is no doubt that Jansenism is related to this work (especially the doctrine on grace), central aspects of the movement pre-date Augustinus. Alexander Sedgwick, in his histories of Jansenism and the Arnauld family, identifies the first phase of the Jansenist movement as beginning with Arnauld’s sister Jacqueline Marie (Angélique) Arnauld and the journée du guichet (a 1609 event where Angélique prohibited her family from coming on convent grounds) and ending with the death of another central figure, Saint-Cyran, in 1643.Footnote 30
The convents of Port-Royal are also connected to both Jansenism and Arnauld (and his family). There are two such convents: Port-Royal-des-Champs (the original) and Port-Royal-de-Paris. The nuns that came to be associated with Jansenism initially lived at Port-Royal-des-Champs and started to move to Port-Royal-de-Paris in 1625 due to the poor state and unsafe conditions of Port-Royal-des-Champs.Footnote 31 These convents also became associated with a group of men called the Port-Royal solitaires. In 1637, the solitaires began to take up residence at the original Port-Royal and rehabilitated the facilities, as well as starting their famous schools – the petites écoles. In 1648 some of the Port-Royal nuns reoccupied the original convent and both convents were governed together.
Antoine Arnauld decided to join the Port-Royal solitaires in 1639 and had joined them by December of 1641. In the 1640s, he gave some of his inheritance to Port-Royal in return for an annual stipend and was serving as a confessor to the nuns of Port-Royal.Footnote 32 In 1641 he wrote a posthumously published work called On the Necessity of Faith in Jesus Christ and in 1643 he published On Frequent Communion. In these texts, he defends a rigorist account of the sacraments inspired by Saint-Cyran and other views associated with Jansenism. Jansen’s Augustinus created controversy almost immediately, as did Arnauld’s On Frequent Communion. In 1643, Pope Urban VIII offered a modest reproach of Augustinus, though it did not seem to have much impact.Footnote 33 In 1644 Arnauld penned an explicit defense of Jansen in response to attacks – most notably Isaac Habert’s Défense de la foy de l’église. This first defense of Jansen was called the Apologie de Monsieur Jansénius, but has since become known as the Première Apologie pour Jansénius [Première Apologie]. In 1645, Arnauld wrote another defense – the Seconde Apologie pour Jansénius [Seconde Apologie] .Footnote 34
1.1.4 Quod est nomen Dei? and the New Objections
On February 9, 1647, Wallon de Beaupuis once again publicly defended theses under the direction of Arnauld, namely Quod est nomen Dei? The central import of this text, as I address in Chapter 10, is that it helps confirm that several of Arnauld’s views shift from his broadly nominalist early view to a more Cartesian view by 1647.
Finally, in 1648 Arnauld exchanged two letters with Descartes, known as the New Objections to Descartes’s Meditations [New Objections]. The exchange between Arnauld and Descartes is significant. Arnauld begins his first letter with a noteworthy claim when he identifies himself as “As one who agrees with almost everything you have taught in first philosophy.”Footnote 35 He asks several further questions of Descartes in these letters on the human mind, God, the nature of extension and the Eucharist, and the possibility of a vacuum.
1.2 The Fronde and the Expulsion from the Sorbonne: 1648–1679
The key event demarcating this period of Arnauld’s life is his expulsion from the faculty of the Sorbonne on February 16, 1656. However, this event in Arnauld’s life occurs in a specific geopolitical context in France that greatly impacted Arnauld and the Jansenist movement. One central component of this context begins in 1648, namely the Fronde. The Fronde was a series of civil wars in France, which lasted until 1653.Footnote 36 Arnauld’s last major philosophical contribution from the first period of his life are his letters to Descartes in 1648, so I use 1648 as both the final year in the first stage of Arnauld’s life and the first year in the second stage.
The events that led to Arnauld’s expulsion from the Sorbonne trace back to the works mentioned in Section 1.1.3. The first significant censure of Augustinus came on May 31, 1653. Pope Innocent X condemned the following five claims:
1. Some commandments of God are impossible for righteous men, although they wish to fulfill them and strive to fulfill them in accord with the power they presently possess. They lack the grace that would make it possible.
2. In the state of fallen nature, interior grace is never resisted.
3. In order to deserve merit or demerit in the state of fallen nature, freedom from necessity is not required in men; rather, freedom from constraint is sufficient.
4. The Semi-Pelagians admitted the necessity of prevenient and interior grace for each action, even for the beginning of faith; but they were heretics in that they held that this grace is such that the human will can either resist it or obey it.
5. It is an error of the Semi-Pelagians to say that Christ died or that he shed his blood for everyone without exception.Footnote 37
As is often noted, while there is not explicit refence to Augustinus or Jansen in this condemnation, it was known to be directed at Augustinus. Arnauld (perhaps at Pierre Nicole’s suggestion) responded by making a distinction between questions de droit and questions de fait. In a posthumously published manuscript dated to 1653 or 1654, Arnauld explains the distinction this way:
They concern le droit, when we argue over whether a doctrine is Catholic or heretical, or if it is good to observe or not to observe some point of discipline.
They concern le fait, when we argue over whether a particular person is a heretic or a Catholic; whether the sentiments that we attribute to an author are really his sentiments or not; whether a book is [merely] supposed to be by a [particular] author or whether it really is by that author.
With respect to the former questions, those concerning le droit, that is to say, the doctrine itself, or the general discipline, when the Church has spoken … all Catholics who recognize its authority must submit to the judgment of the Church and change not only their language, but also their sentiments, if they had any previously contrary to the decision.
But in the latter questions, which concern only le fait and individuals, the Church has never attempted to oblige her children to go beyond a submission of humility, of respect and of silence, and often the Church does not oblige them to do so; permitting Catholics to hold opinions contrary to what was decided with respect to matters de fait.
Though intuitively the distinction is rather straightforward, a full parsing of it – especially as it played out in the controversy – is no easy matter, at least in part because different people and groups seem to use the distinction differently. Questions de fait may rather uncontroversially be translated as ‘questions of fact.’ Questions de droit has been translated as ‘questions of law’ or ‘questions of faith.’ Arnauld himself, in a work cited later, indicates that these questions de droit concern faith and Church doctrine.Footnote 39
In essence, Arnauld argues that the pope has the authority to declare what is or is not a heresy, but that this authority and infallibility do not extend to certain factual matters, including what views Jansen defends in his book. The pope has authority over questions de droit, but not questions de fait. Thomas Lennon accurately describes Arnauld’s position: “The Pope no doubt condemned something, and correctly, but he did not condemn Jansenism.”Footnote 40
In 1655, the duc de Liancourt – well-known for his Jansenist sympathies – was denied absolution at the church of Saint Sulpice and was also told it was due to his association with Port-Royal.Footnote 41 Arnauld responded almost immediately with his Lettre d’une Docteur à une personne de condition and followed up with a second letter – Seconde letter à un duc et pair. These letters reignited the controversy over the five propositions, with Arnauld doubling down on the distinction between fait and droit, and denying that the relevant propositions are in Jansen.Footnote 42 This ultimately lead to Arnauld’s expulsion from the Sorbonne. This is also the controversy that instigated Blaise Pascal’s writing the Provincial Letters defending Arnauld. Several months before Arnauld’s expulsion, in the fall of 1655, he took up residence near Port-Royal-des-Champs, though he spent much of his time up to 1669 in hiding.Footnote 43
There are three main works from this period that warrant mention, two of which are related to the petites écoles. These works are the Nouveaux éléments de géométrie [Géométrie], the Port-Royal Grammar [Grammar], and the Logic or the Art of Thinking often called the Port-Royal Logic [Logic]. Arnauld wrote the Géométrie in the mid 1650s (published in 1667) after reading Pascal’s Introduction to Geometry. Arnauld’s purpose was to fix some methodological problems he saw in Pascal’s text. The Géométrie is designed as a textbook to accompany the reading of Euclid’s Elements and includes an important preface by Nicole.Footnote 44
Arnauld wrote the Grammar with Claude Lancelot which was first published in 1660. Grammar, according to the authors, is “the art of speaking,” where “speaking is explaining one’s thoughts by signs which men have invented for this purpose.”Footnote 45 The book is divided into two parts, mirroring the two different questions about these signs: their nature and their signification. The Grammar was influential, especially in France, where it was frequently taught. Several commentaries on the Grammar were published, including two major ones in the 1750s.Footnote 46 The Grammar received a resurgence of interest after the publication of Noam Chomsky’s Cartesian Linguistics in 1966, in which Chomsky credited the Grammar with anticipating some of his own linguistic theory.Footnote 47
Arnauld co-wrote the Logic with Nicole.Footnote 48 There are some disputes about who wrote which parts, but Arnauld is most often treated as the work’s primary author.Footnote 49 The Logic is a work of great influence and plays a large role in this book. The first edition was published in 1662, and underwent four substantive revisions, with the fifth edition coming out in 1683.Footnote 50 Claude Clerselier provided a manuscript of Descartes’s Rules for the Direction of the Mind to the authors after the first edition, and the influence of that work can be seen in the later editions.Footnote 51 The 1981 critical edition by Pierre Clair and François Girbal lists sixty-three French editions (forty-nine of which were published after the death of the authors), ten English editions, and thirteen Latin editions.Footnote 52 And, as is often noted, the 1818 English edition was used as a text at Cambridge and Oxford.Footnote 53 One can see the direct influence of the Logic on thinkers like John Locke and Mary Astell.Footnote 54
The 1683 edition of the work itself has a preface, foreword, first and second discourse, and four major parts.Footnote 55 The authors define logic as the “art of conducting reason well in knowing things” and break this art down into four main operations: conceiving, judging, reasoning, and ordering.Footnote 56 Each operation is the focus of one part of the Logic.
The Logic describes conceiving thus:
The simple view we have of things that present themselves to the mind is called conceiving, as when we represent to ourselves a sun, an earth, a tree, a circle, a square, thought, and being, without forming any explicit judgment about them. The form by which we represent these things is called an idea.
As such, Part I of the Logic is devoted to ideas, including discussions of the origin and nature of ideas, the objects of ideas, clear and distinct versus obscure ideas, and a discussion of definitions. In chapter 6 of Part I, the authors distinguish between the extension and the comprehension of an idea. They define the comprehension of an idea as “the attributes that it contains in itself, and that cannot be removed without destroying the idea,” and the extension as “the subjects to which this idea applies.”Footnote 57 This distinction is often noted as a significant achievement, and has been considered as a precursor to modern set theory, modern semantics, and Fregean notions of sense and reference, though there is much debate about whether these suggestions are well-grounded.Footnote 58 The authors also discuss the concept of external/extrinsic denominations – one which will prove important in Chapter 5.Footnote 59
Part II of the Logic focuses on judging and propositions. Arnauld and Nicole note that, after we conceive things by our ideas, we compare them and unite or separate them and make judgments.
They go on to claim that “this judgment is also called a proposition.”Footnote 60 The act of judging is the bringing together of ideas, and this judgment is also called a proposition and so propositions are mental entities. Most of Part II of the Logic is devoted to propositions.Footnote 61 Arnauld’s account of propositions in general, as well as the account offered in the Logic, has been the focus of discussion by scholars, often in comparison with Locke’s account. Among the debates are the relation between forming a proposition or judgment and asserting that proposition.Footnote 62
With Part III of the Logic, the authors move to consider reasoning. This part opens with a note of caution on the value of reasoning and the extent to which it is useful.Footnote 63 Throughout this part, they focus on assorted rules for, and ways of, categorizing syllogisms. Part IV of the Logic concerns method. This part of the Logic is especially rich and will be central to my treatment of Arnauld’s method in Chapter 2 and many other chapters throughout this book.
1.3 The Exile Years: 1679–1689
In 1679, Arnauld fled France and spent the rest of his life in exile, mostly in what is now Belgium. His years in exile were the most philosophically active of his life (at least in terms of writing). There are three especially key texts (or sets of texts) from this period: the Examen d’un écrit qui a pour titre: Traité de l’essence du corps, et de l’union de l’âme avec le corps, contre la philosophie de M. Descartes [Examen], the Malebranche polemic, and the Leibniz correspondence.
1.3.1 Examen
Arnauld wrote the Examen in 1680, in response to a now lost attack on Cartesianism by M. Le Moine. Le Moine’s treatise was sent to Arnauld by his niece Angélique de Saint Jean.Footnote 64 In the posthumously published work, Arnauld generally defends Cartesianism from Le Moine’s attacks.Footnote 65 The work is divided into four parts. In part one, Arnauld defends Descartes’s philosophy in general, including the relation between philosophy and theology. He points out, for example, that philosophies like Descartes’s that revere the mysteries of faith, stay within the scope of reason, and accept revelation are not, as Le Moine suggests, “the mother or sister of heresy.”Footnote 66 And Arnauld focuses on passages that accentuate the distinction between philosophy and theology in Descartes.Footnote 67 In part two, Arnauld considers issues with Descartes’s positions and the Eucharist.Footnote 68 In part three, he discusses the nature of the body and its relation to the “glorious body.” In part four, he considers the union of mind and body and defends an occcasionalist account, which I address in Chapter 4.
1.3.2 The Arnauld–Malebranche Polemic
The Arnauld-Malebranche debate was one of the central intellectual events in Europe in the later decades of the seventeenth century. It was followed closely by thinkers like Locke, Leibniz, and Pierre Bayle and influenced subsequent thinkers, not least Thomas Reid.Footnote 69 Following Denis Moreau, we can divide the debate into five stages. The first stage, which Moreau calls the preliminary stage, concerns the relations between Malebranche and Arnauld prior to Arnauld’s publication of On True and False Ideas [VFI].Footnote 70 Until the late 1670s, Malebranche and Arnauld appeared to be on good terms.Footnote 71 Malebranche cites the Logic in the first edition of the Search after Truth [Search], even praising the “wise author” of that text.Footnote 72 Arnauld, we are told, initially loved Malebranche’s Search. The Marquis de Roucy writes to Malebranche that Arnauld is “charmed by” the Search and that he cites it often and “preaches it everywhere.”Footnote 73 Some confirmation of Arnauld’s positive view of the Search is his citing it in the Examen quite favorably, almost as if Malebranche were the spokesperson for Cartesianism.Footnote 74 This period appears to last until around 1679 when their disagreements over grace and theodicy, and very likely the “Elucidations” added in 1678 to the Search, soured the relationship. In May of 1679, just a month before Arnauld was to flee France, de Roucy hosted a meeting to try and reconcile the two, for which there are competing reports of the dynamics, but it resolved little.Footnote 75 Malebranche then sent a manuscript of the Treatise on Nature and Grace [Traité] to Arnauld for comment. Malebranche never received a response from Arnauld (though there is disagreement over why) and Malebranche published it in 1680.Footnote 76
The next four stages each involve numerous works from both thinkers.Footnote 77 The second stage of the debate revolves around ideas and Malebranche’s view of intelligible extension. This stage includes VFI, which is central to Arnauld’s view of ideas discussed in Chapter 5.
The third stage of the polemic revolves around issues more directly tied to theodicy and providence. This stage includes Arnauld’s Dissertation de M. Arnauld sur la manière dont Dieu a fait les fréquens miracles de l’ancienne loi par le ministère des anges, 1685 [Dissertation]; his Neuf Lettres de Monsieur Arnauld Docteur de Sorbonne au Révérend Père Malebranche, 1685 [Neuf lettres]; and book I of Arnauld’s Réflexions philosophiques et théologiques sur le nouveau système de la nature et de la grâce, 1685 [Réflexions]. I cite each of these texts later in the book, and the Réflexions is especially important (including books II and III which are part of the next stage of the debate) in my analysis of Arnauld’s account of God.
Stage four of the Malebranche–Arnauld polemic concerns grace. As noted above, this stage of the debate contains books II and III of the Réflexions (1686). And finally, in stage five, the two thinkers return to ideas and also discuss pleasure. The polemic outlasts Arnauld, with Malebranche’s final contribution coming in 1704.
1.3.3 The Leibniz–Arnauld Correspondence
In the late 1680s, Leibniz and Arnauld exchanged a series of letters concerning an outline of what would become Leibniz’s Discourse on Metaphysics [Discourse]. This correspondence has garnered much attention from scholars and rightly so. Yet most of the scholarly interest in the correspondence revolves around its impact on the development of and use for understanding Leibniz’s philosophy. Arnauld’s own contributions have received considerably less attention.Footnote 78 In Chapter 7, I focus on one such contribution, namely his actualist account of modality.
One important fact about their correspondence is that Leibniz later amended some of his letters.Footnote 79 Many of the standard editions of the letters do not include Leibniz’s letters as they were received by Arnauld, but only the letters after Leibniz had revised them. Geneviève Rodis-Lewis discovered the letters as received by Arnauld at the National Archives at The Hague and published them in 1952.Footnote 80 So, it is necessary to also consult those letters to fully appreciate all aspects of the correspondence.Footnote 81
In Arnauld’s letter from March of 1686 he calls Leibniz’s outline “shocking” and suggests it would be better if Leibniz abandon “these metaphysical speculations which cannot be of any use to him or others.”Footnote 82 After this awkward beginning, Arnauld in his second letter (May 1686) apologizes for the “unduly harsh” language.Footnote 83 He then offers a more thorough assessment of his worry about Leibniz’s views, especially Leibniz’s account of substance. Arnauld’s next letter engages with Leibniz’s view on “the hypothesis of the concomitance and harmony between substances” (pre-established harmony) and Leibniz’s defense of substantial forms.Footnote 84 Arnauld’s fourth letter (March 1687) and fifth letter (August 1687) largely continues the discussion on these latter two issues.
1.4 Arnauld’s Thomistic Turn: 1689–1694
The fourth set of texts were also written while Arnauld was in exile. They are distinguished from the third set not on account of any biographically significant event, but by their content. In these later texts, at least in some of them, Arnauld surprisingly seems to move towards Thomism in interesting ways. There are numerous texts in this period that warrant mention. I’ll distinguish between two groups: texts related to freedom and texts written as part of controversies.
1.4.1 Freedom Texts
The central freedom-centric text from this late period is De Libertate. The exact date of the work is unknown, but most scholars suggest Arnauld wrote it around 1689.Footnote 85 This work has been the focus of some recent scholarship especially on the question of whether Arnauld abandons compatibilism for a type of libertarianism. These later texts on freedom are central to my discussion in Chapter 6, where I argue he does indeed adopt a libertarian view. Several other texts are worth introducing from this period that I discuss later. One such text is the Disquisitio utrum juxta Sanctum Thomam in Sua Summa amor beatificus sit liber ea libertate quam Theologi vocant a necessitate [Disquisitio] which includes many quotations from Aquinas.Footnote 86 Another relevant text is the Instruction sur la Grâce, selon l’Ecriture & les Pères [Instruction]. This work was published posthumously in 1700, and though we do not know the exact date of this text, it is clear it belongs to his later texts on freedom. Finally, this is one area where Arnauld’s correspondence is helpful, and he considers freedom in a handful of letters in his later period.
1.4.2 Controversies
There are two related controversies in this period that warrant highlighting. The first involves Nicole and primarily concerns grace, though it does branch into other areas as well, not least the possibility and nature of pensées imperceptibles or imperceptible thoughts. In brief, Nicole proposed an account of “general grace” that is an Augustinian type of illumination of all minds, which, if properly grasped, would allow all people to do good and avoid sin.Footnote 87 The debate between Arnauld and Nicole started in 1688 or 1689 when Arnauld read Nicole’s Abrégé de théologie. Arnauld responded with Premier écrit sur la Grâce générale selon la méthode des géomètres (1688/1689) and a series of responses between the two continued.Footnote 88
The second controversy in this period can be seen as an extension of the Malebranche polemic as well as the Nicole debate. At one point, while responding to Arnauld, Nicole cites the thought of Gommaire Huygens. This led to Arnauld responding with his Dissertatio Bipartita (1693).Footnote 89 Then Arnauld wrote the Règles du bon sens [Règles], also in 1693, in response to a now lost text by François Lamy who had responded to Arnauld at Nicole’s request. As noted by Moreau, there are three key themes or questions in the Dissertatio Bipartita and the Règles: whether we see necessary and immutable truths in God; the love of virtue in God; and pensées imperceptibles. The first thesis has many similarities to Malebranche’s vision in God doctrine that is the focus of Arnauld’s first work against Malebranche (see Chapter 5). The latter two are centrally related to Nicole’s project on grace. In these two texts, we can see why Arnauld is thought to move towards Thomism as he often cites Aquinas and does so favorably.Footnote 90 Arnauld died on August 8, 1694, in Liège.
1.5 Conclusion
As is clear from this introduction, Arnauld produced a remarkable amount of writing in his life. His works fill forty-two large folio volumes and are incomplete. His philosophical writings, though only a small percentage of his overall writings, on their own amount to quite a substantive body of work. In this book, it is inevitable that I will focus on some texts to the exclusion of others, but I have made a point of engaging with texts from each of the periods of Arnauld’s life.
