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Dinet, Jacques (1584–1653)
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- By Vlad Alexandrescu, Universitatea din Bucureşti
- Edited by Lawrence Nolan, California State University, Long Beach
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- The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon
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- 05 January 2016
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- 01 January 2015, pp 196-197
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Born in Moulins in 1584, Dinet joined the Society of Jesus in 1604 and spent his noviciate period in Nancy; he studied philosophy in Pont-à-Mousson and became tutor of poetry and rhetoric at the College of Rouen (1607–10), after which he studied theology at La Flèche, where he was prefect of studies until 1614, at the time when Descartes was a student there. After a year of religious probation in Paris (1614–15), he received various appointments in Jesuit establishments: preacher in Rouen, Blois, Bourges, and Orléans; professor in Rennes, rector of the Colleges of Orléans (1620–23) and Rennes (1628–31); and, later on, provincial of France (1639–42) and of Champagne (1643–47). He was confessor to Louis XIII (March–May 1643) and assisted the king at his deathbed; subsequently he was confessor to young Louis XIV (June–December 1653). He died in Paris in 1653.
Descartes appealed to Dinet in his capacity as provincial of the French Jesuits to arbitrate his polemics with Pierre Bourdin, author of the Seventh Objections (AT III 468), for which Descartes was grateful (“I am much obliged to the R[everend] F[ather] Dinet for the frankness and prudence he made use of on that occasion” [AT III 596]). Descartes also thanked him for his support when, during his voyage to Paris in 1644, Dinet organized a reconciliatory meeting between Descartes and Bourdin (“I know it is you in particular that I owe the happiness of this agreement; and I am therefore particularly indebted to you for it” [AT IV 143]) and in 1644 sent copies of the Principles of Philosophy to Bourdin to circulate among the Jesuits, including Dinet himself (AT IV 143).
It was Dinet whom Descartes chose as witness to his first great polemical writing, Letter to Father Dinet, which was published together with the second edition of the Meditations (a copy of which Huygens already saw on May 26, 1642 [AT III 788]), and in which he compares the “calumnies” of Bourdin to the attacks by Gysbertus Voetius against the Cartesian program of studies at the University of Utrecht.
Vatier, Antoine (1591–1659)
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- By Vlad Alexandrescu, Universitatea din Bucureşti
- Edited by Lawrence Nolan, California State University, Long Beach
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- The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon
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- 05 January 2016
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- 01 January 2015, pp 745-747
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Among the Jesuits, Vatier seems to have been one of the persons whom Descartes considered to be the most sympathetic to his philosophy. This is the drift of his letter to Vatier of November 17, 1642, where, after having responded to Pierre Bourdin's Seventh Objections, Descartes shares with Vatier the wish that “one should abstain from blaming what one does not understand” (AT III 594–97).
Born in Oreilly-le-Tosson, diocese of Séez, on May 19, 1591, Antoine Vatier joined the Society of Jesus in 1613. Just after Descartes’ departure, he studied philosophy at the Collège Henri IV de La Flèche (1615–18) and kept a position as tutor of grammar from 1618 to 1620, then studied theology in the same place from 1620 to 1624, and was professor of mathematics from 1624 to 1626. Subsequently he was professor of logic, physics, and mathematics in Paris (1626–29), where he had occasion to meet Descartes before the latter's departure to the Netherlands. He returned to La Flèche (1630–32 and either 1634–38 or 1634–42) as professor of theology, with an interlude in Bourges to teach logic and physics (1632–34). In the autumn of 1642, he moved to the college in Orléans, apparently because of the opiniones peregrinae that he seems to have taught his students. In 1650 he translated and edited the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, a book that enjoyed numerous issues until the end of the seventeenth century. Kept away from teaching, he died in Paris in 1659.
Vatier was among the first to whom Descartes had sent copies of the Discourse. He received them very favorably in two letters that are now lost. Descartes’ replied on February 22, 1638 (AT I 558–65, CSMK 85–88), finding “as much appreciation as anyone could wish for” (AT II 28 and 661), and answers objections that Vatier had doubtlessly raised while admitting to the “obscurity” and poverty of the proofs for the existence of God in Discourse IV (AT I 560, CSMK 85–86).
Foucher, Simon (1644–1696)
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- By Vlad Alexandrescu, Universitatea din Bucure'ti
- Edited by Lawrence Nolan, California State University, Long Beach
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- The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon
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- 05 January 2016
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- 01 January 2015, pp 299-301
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Born in Dijon and educated at the Jesuit college of Dijon, Foucher joined the order, then left for Paris, where he attended the courses of the Faculty of Theology at the Sorbonne. He was in contact with Jacques Rohault and took part in the meetings of the latter's circle, where he criticized Descartes’ philosophy from a skeptical vantage point. He made experiments in hygrometry, of which he published several accounts. He engaged in a long polemics with Malebranche and Rohault. During Leibniz's visit to Paris from 1672 to 1676, Foucher was introduced to him; a long correspondence between the two men followed, as well as the publication, under Foucher's care, of some of Leibniz's writings in the Mémoires de l'Académie des Sciences and the Journal des Sçavans. He died in 1696, while writing a second critique of Leibniz's theory of monads.
In the Critique de la Recherche de la vérité, Foucher takes aim at Descartes for having affirmed the simplicity of the soul and the existence of necessary truths outside mathematics and theology. One cannot identify necessary truths in physics, medicine, and morals, since individuals are subject to change and their essences could be “but ideas.” Foucher criticizes Descartes’ theory of the creation of eternal truths from several perspectives. From the point of view of the liberty of God, he thinks that it is by grace, not nature, that God preserves the immutable truths. On the other hand, in terms of the principle of noncontradiction, he questions God's liberty to change the eternal truths. As for proving the necessity of the eternal truths by means of the immutability of God's will, Foucher affirms that this is “proving too much,” since the immutability might concern all creatures and thus block all of the changes in the world. On the other hand, if one were to maintain after all, in view of the free determination of God's will, that these truths are necessary by their nature and that this necessity derives from the immutability of the divine will, then one would need to suppose one possessed “the science of the existence of God, of his will, of his liberty and of his power,” which is to trespass on the domain of faith.