Fallen Nature, Fallen Selves: Early Modern French Thought II

FALLEN NATURE, FALLEN SELVES This page intentionally left blank Fallen Nature, Fallen Selves Early Modern French Th...

Author: Michael Moriarty

35 downloads 959 Views 2MB Size Report

This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!
Report copyright / DMCA form

DOWNLOAD PDF

FALLEN NATURE, FALLEN SELVES

This page intentionally left blank

Fallen Nature, Fallen Selves Early Modern French Thought II M I C H A E L M O R I A RT Y

1

1

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Michael Moriarty, 2006 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2006 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organizations. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by Laserwords Private Limited, Chennai, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn, Norfolk ISBN 0–19–929103–9

978–0–19–929103–8

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

In Memory of My Mother, Ellen Moriarty née O’Connor, 1917–2000


Preface This is a companion volume to my Early Modern French Thought: The Age of Suspicion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). In that volume, I dealt with philosophical issues in the writing of Descartes, Pascal, and Malebranche, with emphasis on a common posture of suspicion towards the promptings of everyday experience. Our condition as embodied and socialized creatures was seen as tending to engender illusions as to metaphysical reality and as giving rise to opinion (mostly false) rather than knowledge. In the present volume, a similar perspective is applied to seventeenth-century French writing about ethical and psychological issues. Human beings are seen as intensely vulnerable to illusion about the sources and moral status of their actions and feelings. In particular, they are shown to be, on the one hand, primarily concerned with their own gratification or advantage, or both, and, on the other, oblivious of this self-centredness. Their self-centredness and self-ignorance are symptoms of a human nature radically out of joint, incapable of living up to the ideals it is capable of formulating. One of the most powerful sources of this vision of human nature is the theology of St Augustine, especially as reinterpreted by seventeenth-century authors such as Jansenius, François Senault, and Pascal. The book therefore touches on theological issues, especially the Augustinian conception of original sin. I started work on the project of which this book and its predecessor are results some considerable time ago. My numerous debts therefore go back a long way. My previous employers, the University of Cambridge and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, granted me research leave to begin work on the project. Caius provided me also with very generous research support. This has been equally forthcoming from my present employers, Queen Mary, University of London, who also granted me research leave in 2000–1 and 2004–5.

viii

Preface

These leaves were funded in part by the Arts and Humanities Research Board, as it then was, and by its successor, the Arts and Humanities Research Council. A grant from the British Academy made possible a research visit to Paris. For all this assistance, I am most grateful. I have been no less fortunate in the assistance and support I have received from individuals. Some have given me the opportunity to present extracts from their work, or from related research, as conference or seminar papers. In this connection, I should like to thank Celia Britton, Knut Ove Eliassen, Nicholas Hammond, Eric Heinze, Susan James, Antony McKenna, John O’Brien, Melissa Percival, Jennifer Perlmutter, Michael Sheringham, Sarah Alyn Stacey, Bradley Stephens, and Kate Tunstall. Thanks are due also to all those from whose comments on these occasions I have benefited (or failed to benefit). I also gladly thank Bill Brooks, Editor of SeventeenthCentury French Studies, for permission to include material from my article ‘Images and Idols’ (Seventeenth-Century French Studies, 25 (2003), 1–20). John O’Brien and Nicholas Hammond have responded very generously to requests for advice on particular points. I am most grateful to Terence Cave, Emma Gilby, Marian Hobson, Susan James, Neil Kenny, Ian Maclean, Henry Phillips, Richard Scholar, Morag Shiach, and Quentin Skinner for their advice and encouragement. I was lucky to study early modern French literature as an undergraduate under such teachers as Peter Bayley, Dorothy Gabe Coleman, Edward James, Gillian Jondorf, and Odette de Mourgues, later my Ph.D. supervisor, and later to work with them and others in the Department of French at Cambridge. I have been no less fortunate in my colleagues at Queen Mary, University of London, in the School of Modern Languages and the Faculty of Arts. I am grateful also to the students, undergraduates and postgraduates, with whom I have been able to work on this material. Finally, I want to thank Tom Perridge at Oxford University Press for his help with bringing this project to publication, and to the Press’s anonymous readers for the care and insight with which they read the drafts. I have done my best to take account

Preface

ix

of their comments, criticisms, and suggestions. Jacqueline Baker has efficiently supervised the book’s progress through production, and Hilary Walford has been a most vigilant copy-editor. My thanks are due to them as well. For any remaining errors or omissions in this work I am naturally wholly responsible. My biggest debt of all is to my family. Michael Moriarty


Contents Note on Translations and References List of Abbreviations Introduction Moralistic ‘Psychology’: Critiques of Seventeenth-Century Writing Ethics and Psychology Psychology Without Ethics? (i) Montaigne Psychology Without Ethics? (ii) Literature, Again Psychology Without Ethics? (iii) The New Philosophies Descartes’s Ethics: (i) Humanity and the Divine Order Descartes’s Ethics: (ii) Virtue and Happiness Conclusion

xiv xvii 1 5 12 19 25 32 34 45 54

PART ONE. HUMAN NATURE 1. Approaches Human Nature: The ‘Descriptive’ Approach Talking about ‘Character’ Interiority in La Bruyère Women and Children Last The Problematic Approach The Fall 2. Original Sin Aquinas on Original Sin The State of Pure Nature

61 62 70 76 85 95 99 109 111 113

xii

Contents Senault: The Corruption of Nature by Sin Pascal Malebranche: Old Theology, New Philosophy Malebranche on the Two States of Humanity Malebranche: Mothers, Children, and the Transmission of Sin By Way of Conclusion

118 125 133 144 150 154

PART T WO. SELF-LOVE AND CONCUPISCENCE 3. Early Modern Religious Perspectives

159

Self-Preservation: The Stoics and Others Friendship and the Self Jansenius on Concupiscence and Self-Love Self-Love and the Fall: Pascal, Senault Self-Love, Pleasure, and Interest Self-Love and Others The Problem of Disinterestedness Enlightened Concupiscence and Self-Love

161 162 171 185 191 197 206 217

4. La Rochefoucauld on Interest and Self-Love

225

5. Malebranche’s Synthesis

249

The First Inclination: Love of the Good in General The Second Inclination: Love of Ourselves The Third Inclination: Love of Our Neighbour Love of Self and Love of Order

251 253 256 257

Contents

xiii

PART THREE. PROBLEMS OF SELF-KNOWLEDGE 6. Forms of Self-Knowledge

275

7. Literary Explorations

288

8. Self-Knowledge and Self-Ignorance in Context

305

9. La Rochefoucauld and Self-Knowledge

316

10. Religious Moralists Mind and Body Desire and Passion Self-Love and Self-Knowledge Narcissism Blindness and Lucidity Imperceptible Thoughts Nicole’s Theory of ‘General Grace’ ‘Imperceptible’ Thoughts: Nicole Thought and Language Freedom ‘Imperceptible’ Thoughts: Lamy Fighting Illusion

328 329 339 344 347 350 367 367 369 371 374 376 379

Conclusion

387

Bibliography Index

405 421

Note on Translations and References All quotations in foreign languages are given with an English translation. Sometimes with Latin works, and always with Greek, where the text used is the Loeb Classical Library edition I quote the translation given in that edition. I have consulted the translation of Aquinas by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province (The ‘Summa theologica’ of St Thomas Aquinas, 5 vols., (Westminster, MD.: Christian Classics, 1981 (rev. edn., 1st pub. London, 1920) ). Otherwise translations from French and Latin are my own. In giving references, my main aim has been to provide enough information for readers to locate the passage even if they are using a different edition from myself, or an English translation. Thus, I have adopted the following practices:

Descartes All references to Descartes are to Descartes, Œuvres, ed. Charles Adam and Paul Tannery, 11 vols., revised edn. (Paris: Vrin/CNRS, 1974–83) (abbreviated to ‘AT’). This is the standard edition, and its pagination is reproduced in many other editions, which means that AT references are a pretty universal currency in Descartes scholarship. However, I also give references to the excellent and easily accessible edition by Ferdinand Alquié (Descartes, Œuvres philosophiques, 3 vols. (Paris: Garnier, 1963–73) ). This gives both the Latin original and the French translation of the Meditations, but for the rest the texts are only in French. It is abbreviated as OP. The abbreviations AT and OP are followed by the volume number in roman. Thus a reference may take this form: Descartes to Chanut, 1 February 1647, AT IV, 601: OP III, 709. Where a text exists in both Latin and French versions, the Latin being the original, I give references to both, with the Latin first, thus:

Note on Translations and References

xv

Second Meditation, AT VII, 26/IX, 20: OP II, 183–4/417. That is, the Latin text is to be found at AT VII, 26, and on pp. 183–4 of the second volume of the Œuvres philosophiques, and the French version at AT IX, 20, and on p. 417 of OP II. Some references appear in the following form: Principles, I.41, AT VIII-1, 20/IX-2, 42: OP III, 115. Here there is only one reference to OP, since it gives only the French text of the Principles, not the Latin. For the Discours de la méthode, references are given only to the French text, since this is the published original. Les Passions de l’âme were also composed by Descartes in French.

Pascal I give references to two editions of Pascal’s works, one an easily available selection (Les Provinciales, Pensées, et Opuscules diverses, ed. Philippe Sellier and Gérard Ferreyrolles, Classiques Modernes, La Pochothèque: Le Livre de Poche/Classiques Garnier (Paris: Garnier and Librairie Générale Française, 2004) ) and one complete (Œuvres complètes, ed. Michel Le Guern, 2 vols., Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1998–2000) ). Unfortunately, each numbers the Pensées differently. The Sellier numbering seems increasingly to be establishing itself, but the Lafuma numbering, as found in Pascal, Œuvres complètes, ed. L. Lafuma, Collection L’Intégrale (Paris: Seuil, 1963), was normally used until recently, and Le Guern’s edition gives yet another numbering. So for each fragment there I give three number references: L (Lafuma number), S (Sellier), LG (Le Guern), thus: L 110/S 142/LG 101. The Brunschvicg numbering is little used nowadays by serious scholars, so I have not made use of it: but the editions cited in the Bibliography contain concordances enabling one to find a fragment using the Brunschvicg number. Of the readily available editions in English, Pensées, trans. A.J. Krailsheimer (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1995) uses the Lafuma numbering, whereas Pensées and Other Writings, ed. Anthony Levi, trans. Honor Levi, Oxford World’s Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press,

xvi

Note on Translations and References

1999) uses Sellier. So a reader using either of these translations should be able to find the passages without difficulty.

Malebranche Malebranche’s major works are all heavily divided and subdivided so that each section or sub-section is relatively short. For instance, De la recherche de la vérité is divided into books, some of which are divided into parts; the books or parts are divided into chapters, and these usually into sections. Other works consist of a series of short dialogues or meditations, each divided into sections. Thus it is easy to locate a particular passage by reference to Malebranche’s own divisions and subdivisions, thus: De la recherche de la vérité, II.i.5.i (i.e. Book II, Part I, Chapter 5, Section i). Entretiens sur la métaphysique et sur la religion, X.2–5 (i.e. Dialogue X, Sections 2 to 5). I also give page references to the edition of Malebranche’s Œuvres in two volumes by Geneviève Rodis-Lewis and German Malbreil (Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1979–92) ). As regards other primary sources, most of those studied here are divided into books or parts, each subdivided into chapters. I therefore give these divisions and subdivisions as well as page numbers. When a number in a reference in arabic is preceded by a full stop, it usually denotes a chapter; when by a comma, a page number. Thus: Charron, De la sagesse, II.5, 457 refers to Book 2, Chapter 5, p. 457 of the edition referred to.

Abbreviations AT C1 C2 DTC EM Ethics

L L/S/LG ME MMOD

MS OC ∗

René Descartes, Œuvres, ed. Charles Adam and Paul Tannery, 11 vols., rev. edn. (Paris: Vrin/CNRS, 1974–83) François Lamy, De la connoissance de soi-mesme, 1st edn., 5 vols. in 4, first two vols. paginated as one (Paris: André Pralard, 1694–8) François Lamy, De la connoissance de soi-même, 2nd edn., 2 vols. (Paris: André Pralard, 1699) Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, ed. Alfred Vacant and Eugène Mangenot, 15 vols. (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1899–1950) Pierre Nicole, Essais de morale, 14 vols. (Paris: Desprez, 1755–82) Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, ed. and trans. H. Rackham, 2nd edn., Loeb Classical Library (London: Heinemann, and Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1934) Liancourt MS (La Rochefoucauld) Lafuma/Sellier/Le Guern (Pascal references) Maximes ećartées (maxims that were ‘left to one side’, or not published) (La Rochefoucauld) François VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld, Maximes, Mémoires, Œuvres diverses [Maximes, Réflexions diverses, ed. Jacques Truchet, rev. Marc ´ Escola; Portraits, Mémoires, Grands Ecrivains de la France edition, rev. Alain Brunn], La Pochothèque: Le Livre de Poche/Classiques Garnier (Paris: Garnier, 2001) Maximes supprimées (discarded maxims) (La Rochefoucauld) ´ Marty, 3 vols. (Paris: Roland Barthes, Œuvres complètes, ed. Eric Gallimard, 1993–5) Pierre Corneille, Œuvres complètes, ed. Georges Couton, 3 vols., Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1980–7) Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin), Œuvres complètes, ed. Georges Couton, 2 vols., Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1971) Blaise Pascal, Œuvres complètes, ed. Michel Le Guern, 2 vols., Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1998–2000) Jean Racine, Œuvres complètes, i. Théatre-Poésie, ed. Georges Forestier, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1999)

xviii

OP PFSCL PL PPOD

RHLF ST VS

Abbreviations Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Œuvres complètes, 5 vols., ed. Bernard Gagnebin and Marcel Raymond, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1959–95) René Descartes, Œuvres philosophiques, ed. Ferdinand Alquié, 3 vols., Classiques Garnier (Paris: Garnier, 1963–73) Papers on French Seventeenth-Century Literature Patrologiœ cursus completus, Series latina, ed. J.P. Migne (Paris: Migne, 1844–55) Blaise Pascal, Les Provinciales, Pensées, et Opuscules diverses, ed. Philippe Sellier and Gérard Ferreyrolles, Classiques Modernes, La Pochothèque: Le Livre de Poche/Classiques Garnier (Paris: Garnier and Librairie Générale Française, 2004) Revue d’histoire Littéraire de la France St Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, rev. edn. (Milan: Editiones Paulinae, 1988) Montaigne, Les Essais, ed. Pierre Villey and V.-L. Saulnier, 3 vols. paginated as one (Paris: Quadrige/Presses Universitaires de France, 1992 (1st pub. 1924))

∗ Although this conventional abbreviation refers to editions of more than one author, it is always clear from the context which is being referred to.

Introduction This book is a continuation of a project, the first instalment of which was Early Modern French Thought: The Age of Suspicion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). The point of departure of the whole project was a sense of the ‘modernity’ (in the sense of ‘contemporaneity’, rather than in an opposition to ‘postmodernity’) of some aspects of the work of early modern thinkers such as Pascal or La Rochefoucauld—that is to say, their exploration of what, in the anachronistic language of ‘theory’, might be called ‘decentred subjectivity’, or, in more ordinary language, of a self at odds with and only imperfectly known to itself, a self with something rather like an ‘unconscious’. This initial perception, while not altogether discarded, needed to be corrected by a greater awareness of the risks of anachronism and of the historically prior discourses with which these writers certainly engaged (such as Augustinian theology). At the same time, this exploration of early modern thought had to take account of the perception, widespread in circles committed to ‘theory’, that early modernity was chiefly to be defined with reference to the emergence of a new ‘Cartesian’ form of subjectivity, an articulation of knowledge and power around the figure of a knowing and hence powerful ‘subject’. It was argued in Early Modern French Thought that this was only one strand in the early modern vision of human nature and of human beings’ relation to the world, and that, even as an account of Descartes, it is partial and potentially misleading. The texts studied belonged for the most part to the sphere of philosophy, especially metaphysics (in the

2

Introduction

broad early modern sense that incorporates the study of knowledge as a preliminary to investigating being). The concern was with the critique of experience—that is, of the image of ourselves, our bodies, other people, and the physical world that seems naturally to occur to us—to force itself on us—as we live and think our lives. The thinkers studied, Descartes, Pascal, and Malebranche, were shown to be working against the grain of that experience, to be striving to disclose what it conceals, but to reveal also the element of truth that it both contains and screens. As regards Descartes, I went beyond the metaphysical texts and considered those belonging to what he would have called ‘la morale’ (the treatise on the passions and the letters to Elisabeth), partly because my aim, echoing that of other commentators, was to show that we could not confine ourselves to the Meditations without risking a distorted and limited conception of Descartes’s account of selfhood or ‘subjectivity’.1 Pascal was examined chiefly with reference to those sections of the Pensées that specifically engage with philosophical rather than theological questions: here too, however, it was necessary also to consider texts whose preoccupations are moral and political, since Pascal refuses any attempt to consider human nature in isolation from moral norms and political and social frameworks. As regards Malebranche, I treated of those sections of De la recherche de la vérité whose subject matter is primarily our cognitive faculties and how we should direct them (books one to three and also book six), and had less to say on books four and five, which deal with the inclinations and the passions; I also considered works whose title announces their metaphysical preoccupations (again in the seventeenth-century sense of ‘metaphysical’): the Méditations chrétiennes et métaphysiques and the Entretiens sur la métaphysique et sur la religion. In the present 1 I was following, for instance, Susan James, who remarks, ‘By treating the Meditations on First Philosophy as Descartes’s philosophical testament, scholars have created a onesided interpretation of Cartesianism in which the division between body and soul is overemphasized and sometimes misunderstood’ (Passion and Action: The Emotions in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 106). For other works that display a similar orientation, see my Early Modern French Thought: The Age of Suspicion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 70 n. 46.

Introduction

3

volume, I shall deal with other sections of Pascal’s and Malebranche’s works (Descartes is discussed also, in this Introduction), and with a broader range of moral and religious writers, some more ‘literary’ than others. The concerns now will be those of ‘la morale’ in the seventeenth-century sense, which includes a good deal of what we would call ‘psychology’: all these terms are examined below. The dominant themes will be those of self-love and self-knowledge. The purpose of the study is twofold. First, from the point of view of intellectual history. We rightly perceive Nietzsche and Freud as outstanding demystifiers of psychological illusion, of both the individual’s and the species’s self-image, and Marx as the great critic of the illusions invested in social relationships. Yet if we seek precursors of their critiques, we do not find these only in the camp of the secular Enlightenment, whose work all three prolonged, as well as challenging. This book aims to demonstrate how the early modern Augustinian tradition, sometimes but not always infused with Cartesianism, offered powerful critical analyses of human desire, motivation, and relationships between self and others. It is not the case that the religious perspective occluded the social realm, nor that ‘Cartesian dualism’ imposed a perception of an atomistic individual subject reduced to a pure mind. Secondly, as regards literary history, I try to show how writers generally classed as non-literary (theologians and philosophers) offer rich psychological insights comparable to those we find in the literary canon of the period: but also to challenge a general perception of seventeenth-century writing as psychological in a narrow sense, as proffering an essentialist view of human nature that obscures the working of social relationships. The two purposes are therefore convergent. I have used the term ‘early modern’ in this and the earlier book. The label is certainly open to question.2 It may seem to carry a good many presuppositions about what it is in which ‘modernity’ 2

Its pertinence is examined and sometimes questioned by contributors to a forthcoming number of the journal Paragraph, entitled ‘Theory and the Early Modern’, edited by John O’Brien and myself.

4

Introduction

consists. The one most relevant here is concerned with institutions and conventions of knowledge. The writers from the late sixteenth or the seventeenth centuries discussed here do not for the most part operate within the scholastic model of intellectual enquiry, based on commentary of authoritative texts and disputation pro and contra about questions raised by these. Those scholastics mentioned are brought in for purposes of contrast. (Of course, scholasticism itself was changing and developing: Francisco Suárez’s Disputationes metaphysicae (1597) broke new ground as a free-standing treatise on metaphysics rather than a commentary on Aristotle’s work.) Some of them are crucially influenced by Descartes and his philosophical method, as well as his specific philosophical positions (one of them actually is Descartes). Even a book that does present itself as a work of exegesis of an authoritative text, Jansenius’s immensely influential theological treatise Augustinus, deliberately attempts to rescue St Augustine from the traditions and conventions of scholastic interpretation. The Augustinus and the Discours de la méthode might be felt to have little in common: but they agreed in breaking, each in its different domains, with Aristotelian approaches to the questions they discussed. Some of the writers studied are therefore working with powerful theoretical models (Cartesian philosophy or Augustinian theology, or both), but outside the scholastic context; others, however, have found a space where, although they draw on existing models, they use them more as prompts for their own thinking than as sources of truth in their own right (we could say this of Montaigne or La Rochefoucauld). This is the basic sense I am using the label ‘early modern’ to convey. No general narrative is therefore propounded here of the emergence of an early modern ‘self ’.3 But what can be said, at this stage, is 3 Two such narratives in particular shall be noted here. Charles Taylor’s deservedly well-known Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) traces the emergence of modern forms of subjectivity, especially in philosophical texts, stressing particularly the displacement of an older vision of ethics, in which human behaviour and values are measured against a transcendental rationality and goodness enshrined in the order of the universe, by a modern emphasis on humans as

Introduction

5

that the selves we find will, for the most part, be coupled intimately to a body, and interacting with a world of bodies; directed by basic underlying inclinations and suffused by surges of passion; selfseeking, but constantly alienated from themselves, swerving away from their real good; self-loving but unable to support that self-love except by the constitution of phantom ‘selves’; condemned to endless illusions about themselves.

Moralistic ‘Psychology’: Critiques of Seventeenth-Century Writing The writers of the French seventeenth century have, indeed, long been admired for their psychological acumen. But so established was this view that twentieth-century iconoclasm, as embodied by two major critics, Jean-Paul Sartre and Roland Barthes, turned it into a demerit. Their confidence in the possession of a position from which to criticize the past, and in the possibility of aligning writing with a progressive politics, may seem very alien in the early twenty-first century. But the criticisms are none the less substantial and significant, and it is fair to suppose that they were not without influence, so they will repay some attention. Sartre’s charge is that seventeenth-century literature is essentially moralistic (‘moralisateur’). He does not mean that it is naively didactic, but that it confines itself to the moral realm, because it takes for granted established solutions to religious, metaphysical, political, and social problems.4 That is to say, the creating their own values. Reason becomes a regulator of human procedure, rather than being defined by its substantial content. More recently, Jean Rohou’s Le XVIIe Siècle: Une révolution de la condition humaine (Paris: Seuil, 2002) provides a splendidly wide-ranging yet well-focused account of the social and cultural transformations of the period, drawing mostly but not at all exclusively on French material, from a very wide range of sources. His theme, not dissimilar to Taylor’s, is the emergence of a new relationship between man and the world, and, in parallel, new conceptions of human nature and personality: man is no longer to conform himself to a divine order exhibited in nature, but to treat nature as a field for the exercise of his own productive and transformative power. Of particular relevance to this study is Rohou’s stress on the emergence of the conception of human beings as defined by the pursuit of self-interest, of which more in later chapters. 4

Jean-Paul Sartre, Qu’est-ce que la littérature? (Paris: Gallimard, 1948), 104.

6

Introduction

literature recognizes no kind of freedom but a purely moral transcendence of passion: to transform religious or philosophical ideas and values, or political and social relationships, is simply unimaginable. No doubt this is why Sartre speaks of its presenting the reader with a silent image of himself to contemplate and to recognize (as distinct, say, from engaging him in dialogue that might eventuate in ideological challenge or political action). Sartre’s analysis finishes on an upbeat note: the seventeenthcentury writer’s work exerts an undoubtedly liberating effect, in that it liberates the reader from himself. But any euphoria here is tinged with pessimistic harmonies. The liberating effect is highly circumscribed, restricted to a class public. The writer is not complicit with the oppressive class; but he is totally assimilated by it. He does not commit himself to the liberation of any concrete category of the oppressed, because he cannot form a conception of the universal human being that goes beyond the actual individuals that happen to possess power (p. 104). This specific critique needs to be placed in the context of Sartre’s more general analysis of literary and social development. In the medieval period, he assures us, we have clerks writing solely for other clerks (pp. 90-4).5 By the seventeenth century, however, a broader public has emerged. The writer can still enjoy a ‘conscience heureuse’, an unproblematic sense of his activity, provided he is so imbued with the ideology of the privileged classes that he can conceive no alternative. His function is no longer to be an official guardian of dogma, like the medieval clerk: he is simply required not to challenge it; but the idea of doing so does not seem to enter his head (p. 94). Complicit with his public, he accepts the ideology of the elite without criticism (p. 98). 5 This is, to say the least, inadequate even as a simplification. Medieval writers and audiences existed in many forms, as is amply demonstrated by Sarah Kay, ‘Part I. The Middle Ages: From the Earliest Texts to 1470’, in Sarah Kay, Terence Cave, and Malcolm Bowie, A Short History of French Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 13–95.

Introduction

7

If we take ‘ideology’ in a rather restricted sense of ‘basic sociopolitical assumptions’, this analysis has a certain validity. Most seventeenth-century French writers accepted at least outwardly the existing order of things: a hereditary monarch at the apex of a social hierarchy determined by birth, with at the top those aristocrats whose rank was founded in principle on military service to the Crown (personal or ancestral), followed by those who held judicial or administrative office; beneath them, the common herd of those without nobility, in which the higher echelons (professional men and substantial merchants) enjoyed a certain status; below these, small tradesmen, well-to-do farmers, and craftsmen, with peasants and manual labourers at the bottom. Then again most French men and women of the period, including most writers, accepted at least outwardly the Roman Catholic faith, and, since the Church generally functioned, politically speaking, as a prop of the French monarchy, one could, at a pinch, include this faith within the ideology of the privileged classes. (In general, French Protestants were also loyal to the Crown, until the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes drove some into dissidence.) Beyond this point, the Sartrean analysis starts to lose its value. For one thing, this ‘acceptance’ of the established ideology has different modalities: it can be naive or detached. Pascal accepts the social order because order of some kind is better than anarchy, but no particular social order is founded in reason or divine will: they are all projections of earlier social conflicts. A similar critical edge is to be found in the social thought of Malebranche. Again, there are writers whose religious professions are entirely orthodox, but couched in such a way that the kindred spirit may recognize a certain scepticism, a detachment of the mind from the beliefs the mouth professes (La Mothe Le Vayer is a case in point). Of course, one can say that, when the chips are down, detached acceptance and naive acceptance of the established order tend to come to the same thing, unless detachment can convert itself into radical challenge. But when are the chips in fact down? They certainly were in Sartre’s time, the time of the Occupation. But even the Fronde, the unrest and intermittent civil

8

Introduction

war that lasted from 1648 to 1653 did not engender a crisis of the established order like that of the English Civil War, forcing people to adhere to their most fundamental loyalties. It seems preferable, from a historical point of view, to recognize and gauge degrees of ideological commitment. But, secondly, it is simply false to say that writers did not criticize the established ideology.6 One of the core elements in the ideology of the French aristocracy is honour: the sense of personal dignity that must be defended even at the risk of one’s life. Pascal’s attack on duelling in the fifth Provinciale specifically rejects the value of honour as false, as an idol. But this is not just the paradox of an eccentric genius: the same theme can be found in other moralists.7 Now, of course, for Sartre, that would prove nothing: religious writers, for one thing, do not count, because, obviously, they are adhering to the ideology of the privileged, just like La Bruyère, who criticizes the treatment of the peasantry from within, not from outside, the ideology he shares with his public (p. 97). But what this shows is that Sartre is wrong to speak of the ideology of the privileged classes. We might speak, if we chose to revive the language of Marxism, of a dominant ideology combining feudal and Christian elements, and ultimately functioning to sustain the rule of the dominant class: but the combination is unstable (partly for the social reason that clergy and nobility are distinct social groups), and different writers can 6 If one were instead to apply the Althusserian theory of ideology, as an identification or recognition of oneself in relation to various institutions, practices, and discourses, rather than a set of ideas or beliefs, the claim would be easier to sustain. One may doubt, piecemeal, the official beliefs to which one is expected to adhere without renouncing loyalty to the system that promulgates them if one cannot imagine oneself as anything other than a French Catholic. Until society can provide alternative positions, like that of the eighteenth-century philosophe, with which to identify oneself, dissent will remain for the most part clandestine, and many who doubted must have felt they had no option but to keep their doubts to themselves. 7 See e.g. Jean-François Senault, L’Homme criminel ou la corruption de la nature par le péché selon les sentimens de saint Augustin (Paris: Veuve J. Camusat and Pierre Le Petit, 1644), 613; La Bruyère, Les Caractères, ed. Emmanuel Bury, Le Livre de Poche Classique (Paris: Librairie Générale Française, 2004), ‘De la mode’, 3, and ‘De l’homme’, 129. Rohou discusses shifting attitudes towards duelling, even on the part of aristocrats (Le XVIIe Siècle, 148–9, 172–4, 230–2, 303–6).

Introduction

9

identify with different fractions of the dominant class.8 However, this leaves out the whole question of gender, and the querelle des femmes. In that case, there is hardly the kind of unproblematic submersion of writers in an established ideology of which Sartre speaks. Nor can one possibly assert, as Sartre does, that writers took the solution of all religious problems for granted in an age that produced the Jansenist controversy, by which many secular writers were affected, and which involved a clash between radically different visions of human nature and capacities. These simply cannot be lumped together in a single Christian ideology. Nor can we forget Protestants, or dissident or sceptical writers. These, it might be said in Dr Johnson’s words (he was speaking of Voltaire’s strictures on Shakespeare), are the petty cavils of petty minds: Sartre was one of the great thinkers of the twentieth century, not a literary historian. Very true: but it is because his insights into literary history are accredited by his philosophical achievements, and because, indeed, they contain an important measure of truth, that their shortcomings need to be pointed out. We find the same themes taken up in Barthes’s account of La Rochefoucauld. We cannot, incidentally, view Barthes’s writings on the French moralistes simply as a marginal aspect of his work, to which he might be supposed to have devoted little attention. The pieces on La Rochefoucauld and La Bruyère are substantial essays—that on La Bruyère in particular is brilliantly innovative and insightful—and their value is recognized by specialist critics. So they are worth taking seriously. The Maximes, he concedes, is a critical work, but the challenge it offers is not really dangerous, because it is not political, merely psychological (and also sanctioned by the ‘Christian climate’ 8 Of course the higher clergy tended to be recruited from the ranks of the nobility, but, once a young nobleman, or woman, had entered the ecclesiastical state, he or she passed into a distinct social group, and was called upon to assume responsibility for a distinct ideological code. The very language of dominant ideology and dominant class would be challenged by many seventeenth-century historians. I have tried to justify their pertinence in Taste and Ideology in Seventeenth-Century France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 24–38.

10

Introduction

of thought). Its criticism is harsh, but also inadequate: it defines the limits a caste must impose on its own questioning if it wishes this to be both purifying and risk-free—the limits of what, for three centuries, would be called ‘psychology’.9 Psychology then is a substitute for, and a screen for, the political. It goes with conformity to a religious outlook (again, presented as monolithic) and a fundamental class limitation of perspective.10 But Barthes’s diagnosis of ‘psychology’ as class-bound takes a different form elsewhere. He clearly (and rightly) perceives La Rochefoucauld’s class attachments as aristocratic, as his talk of ‘caste’ shows. But ‘psychology’ features on the charge-sheet in his critique of Racine as well. Racine, he says, failed, throughout his career, to write a pure tragedy, one in which interaction with the gods is all-determining, because he could never get rid of the corrupting ‘psychological’ element, which pertains not to tragedy but to the bourgeois drama (or melodrama) of which Barthes sees Racine as the founder. For Phèdre is sometimes presented as guilty (in accordance with a tragic conception), sometimes as jealous (in keeping with ‘une psychologie mondaine’).11 The ‘psychological’ viewpoint is seen as pernicious because it throws a veil over the political and social history that has produced human beings and been produced by them. It thus obscures the very possibility of changing history (and with it ‘psychology’) by modifying social and political structures. It is thus no accident (to use the old Marxist formula) that it should have proved so congenial to bourgeois culture. This seems plausible enough if, to revive the eternal contrast, one reflects on the profound political reflection that underpins the plays of Corneille, whereas those of Racine might seem to subordinate political to emotional forces (though I think this view is a simplification). Racine’s theatre 9 Roland Barthes, ‘La Rochefoucauld: Réflexions ou Sentences et maximes’, in Œuvres ´ Marty, 3 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1993–5), II, 1346. The essay was complètes, ed. Eric originally published in 1961. 10 Barthes’s rejection of ‘psychology’ is discussed more generally in my Roland Barthes (Cambridge: Polity, 1991), 45–6. 11 ‘Dire Racine’, in Sur Racine, OC I, 1082. ‘Mondaine’ here means both ‘worldly’ in the religious sense, and ‘associated with polite or fashionable society’.

Introduction

11

was thus less congenial to the progressive literary sensibility of the middle-to-late twentieth century, with its relish (Brechtian or Hegelian) for the spectacle of human beings making history, and therefore being capable of unmaking it.12 In connection with La Rochefoucauld, then, ‘psychology’ is aristocratic; in connection with Racine, bourgeois. There is no serious inconsistency in Barthes’s position here: the psychological perspective might have been developed in aristocratic culture, and appropriated by the bourgeoisie for its own use. But there is an interesting instability of another kind in his analyses. On the one hand, he is claiming that Racine, like La Rochefoucauld, is hopelessly complicit with a reductive and ideologically conservative psychological perspective on reality. On the other, the bulk of Sur Racine, the essay ‘L’Homme racinien’, is written on the assumption that we need to rescue Racine from that perspective. Hence Barthes’s attempt to displace the dreary clichés of secondary-school psychology: there are, in fact, no characters in Racine’s theatre (it is pointless to ask if Andromaque is a flirt or Bajazet really manly): there are only situations.13 This displacement of ‘character’ by ‘situation’ seems to be inspired by existentialist thought, which also tends to oppose the two terms.14 Immersed in a powerful solution of anthropological-psychoanalytic-existentialist 12 Bernard Dort, author of an excellent study of Corneille (Corneille dramaturge (Paris: L’Arche, 1972 (1st pub. 1957) ), was a collaborator of Barthes’s in the 1950s on the Brechtian journal Théaˆ tre Populaire. Serge Doubrovsky’s remarkable Corneille et la dialectique du héros (Paris: Gallimard, 1963) is Hegelian in inspiration. Lucien Goldmann would be an exception to this, since he sees Racine (and Pascal) as embodying a tragic world view that constitutes a more advanced stage of ideological development than the rational individualism he attributes to Corneille (and Descartes) (Le Dieu ´ caché: Etude sur la vision tragique dans les ‘Pensées’ de Pascal et dans le théaˆ tre de Racine (Paris: Gallimard, 1959 (1st publ. 1955) ), 32–49) ). 13 Barthes, Sur Racine, OC I, 998. 14 See e.g. Simone de Beauvoir, Le Deuxième Sexe, 2 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1976 (1st pub. 1949) ), II, 483; Jean-Paul Sartre, L’Etre et le néant: Essai d’ontologie phénoménologique (Paris: Gallimard, 1943), 398–400. Beauvoir is arguing that certain behaviour patterns traditionally identified as part of a female ‘character’ must be grasped as responses to a situation. Sartre allows a certain pertinence to the notion of individual character, while arguing that it can never be the term of an analysis: we invoke it only to transcend it (‘dépasser’), by seeking to grasp the individual’s behaviour, again, as responding to and modifying a situation.

12

Introduction

concepts, and read in terms of situation rather than character, Racine emerges as no longer a proto-bourgeois psychology-merchant. But it might be the case that other writers of the period cannot escape that taint. Take La Bruyère’s Les Caractères. Barthes notes that the concept of ‘character’ renders the text rebarbative to modern assimilation, because the word is one we cannot use with conviction: it seems either to denote features so universal as to be trivial or to belie the complexity of the actual person.15 The implication here is that ‘character’ is written into the text, instead of projected on it, so that we cannot reread it in terms of ‘situation’. As regards La Bruyère, then, we need to analyse whether his analysis of ‘character’ is ‘essentialist’, a screen making ‘situation’ invisible, or whether, on the contrary, it solicits us into recognizing a situation as such. If this were sustainable, it would tend to blunt the force of Barthes’s critique. I shall discuss this question below.

Ethics and Psychology So far I have merely described the field of the present study in the most general terms: seventeenth-century texts containing ethical and psychological reflection. ‘Psychological’, however, is a shorthand expression, since early modern culture does not recognize an independent field of knowledge corresponding to what we call ‘psychology’, the study of the human mind and its workings. Renaissance writers treated it as a branch of natural philosophy, to be studied with reference to Aristotle’s De anima and Parva naturalia.16 ‘Psychological’ discussion can be found in writings of many genres: there is, for instance, a political discourse of the passions (fear and love, contempt and hatred) in Machiavelli’s The Prince. But the abstract analysis of the human mind and its workings at this period is most fully represented in the discourse 15

Barthes, ‘La Bruyère’, OC I, 1337. Katharine Park and Eckhard Kessler, ‘The Concept of Psychology’, in Charles B. Schmitt and Quentin Skinner (eds.), The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1988), 455–63 (p. 455). 16

Introduction

13

of ethics or moral philosophy (morale). The scope of this discipline in early modern culture will appear more clearly if we look at its institutional implantation.17 Traditionally, in the medieval period, philosophy, including moral philosophy, was studied in the university arts course, which served as a preparation for the higher more specialized studies of law, medicine, or theology. But, in France, the teaching of philosophy tended, in the sixteenth century, to be devolved to the new collèges de plein exercice, residential colleges of the university teaching independently of the faculty of arts. This reinforced philosophy’s links with the study of Greek and Latin language and literature, also taught in the collèges, a development in line with the humanist pedagogical ideal, while weakening its links with the more specialized higher studies. Similar establishments were founded elsewhere in France, and these served as a model for the colleges founded by the Society of Jesus from the 1560s onwards, where two years of philosophy followed six years’ study of the humanities.18 In the first part of the Discours de la méthode, Descartes evaluates and criticizes the teaching he received at the Jesuit college of La Flèche. He mentions ethics (‘les ećrits qui traitent des mœurs’) as a distinct subject, separate from philosophy (by which he means logic, physics, and metaphysics), no doubt because it was often taught separately; and he speaks of reading

17 The emphasis in what follows is on institutions. But for a general account of the intellectual background of early modern philosophy, as distinct from its institutional dimension, see Stephen Menn, ‘The Intellectual Setting’, in Daniel Garber and Michael Ayers (eds.), The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), I, 33–86. There is a valuable presentation and selection of (mostly French) early modern philosophical texts in Roger Ariew, John Cottingham, and Tom Sorell (eds.), Descartes’ ‘Meditations’: Background Source Materials (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 18 Richard Tuck, ‘The Institutional Setting’, in Garber and Ayers (eds.), Cambridge History, I, 9–32 (pp. 15–19). For a more detailed account of the collèges and their Jesuit successor establishments, in particular La Flèche, where Descartes was educated, see Stephen Gaukroger, Descartes: An Intellectual Biography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 32–61. The fullest treatment is by L. W. B. Brockliss, French Higher Education in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: A Cultural History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987).

14

Introduction

ancient ethical authors.19 Stephen Gaukroger has noted, however, that much Jesuit moral teaching consisted in casuistry, the study of the practical application of moral principles to particular cases (p. 61). In general the teaching of moral philosophy in universities and colleges was still dominated by the Aristotelian tradition, in France as elsewhere.20 Now moral philosophy, as in Kant, can bracket out the study of actual human attitudes and desires (‘psychology’). But this does not apply to the Aristotelian variety, as can be shown both from the Nicomachean Ethics itself and from early modern works of moral philosophy within the Aristotelian tradition. True, Scipion Dupleix (1569–1661), who was writing technical philosophy in French long before the appearance of the Discours de la méthode, tells us that moral philosophy is not concerned with the soul or its faculties in themselves, only in so far as these are the subject in which habits, actions, passions, and affections inhere. He identifies the concern of ethics as human actions, in so far as these can be regulated by moral virtue (‘honnesteté’) and decency (‘bien-séance’).21 His own treatise follows the subject matter of the Nicomachean Ethics fairly closely, though importing material from theology, as in the discussion of heroic virtue in Book VII, or the reference to original sin (I, Preface, 2–3) and to man’s corrupt inclinations (I.7, 84). He discusses the good in general, the sovereign or ultimate good, the nature and divisions of moral virtue, and then particular virtues or kinds of virtue. He also discusses issues raised by non-Aristotelian theories, such as the Stoic theory of passion (III.10, 350–1; III.11, 367–8). He has to treat the passions anyway, since these are the subject matter of virtue, though not its whole 19 Descartes, Discours de la méthode, I, AT VI, 6, 7–8: OP I, 573, 575. See also ´ the notes on this section in the edition of the Discours by Etienne Gilson, 6th edn. (Paris: Vrin, 1987 (1st pub. 1925) ), 116–19. 20 Jill Kraye, ‘Conceptions of Moral Philosophy’, in Garber and Ayers (eds.), Cambridge History, II, 1279–1316 (pp. 1279–80). 21 ´ Scipion Dupleix, L’Ethique ou Philosophie morale (Paris: Laurent Sonnius, 1610), 33.

Introduction

15

matter, since virtue also pertains to actions of the soul such as speech (III.10, 344); but his treatment of them (III.10–11, 341–70) is not extensive, and he does not discuss them individually. There is thus relatively little here of ‘psychological’ interest. But, even though ethics does not investigate the nature of the soul as such, Aristotelian ethics rests on a certain image of the soul, as a hierarchy of powers. It has, Aristotle explains, both an irrational element and an element capable of reason. The former is subdivided into a purely vegetative element, which operates independently of reason, and an appetitive element (what the schoolmen called the ‘sensitive appetite’), which resists reason, but can be made amenable to it.22 Therefore Aristotle’s ethics must take account of the relations between the rational and the irrational elements, and it does: for he makes virtue to consist in a disposition involving a certain relationship to the passions (II.v.2–4 (1105b –1106a ) ). And, though he does not discuss the passions at length in the Nicomachean Ethics (he does so in Book II of the Rhetoric), we find that his early modern commentators often fix on them as a topic for discussion. Probably they are influenced by the moral-philosophical section of Aquinas’s Summa theologiae, where there is extensive discussion of the passions in general and in particular (IaIIae, qq. 22–48). An example is the important commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics by the Coimbra Jesuits (in particular, Manuel de Góis), where the discussion of Aristotle is enriched by references to more recent writers (the Stoics, Cicero, Augustine, Boethius). Of the nine ‘disputations’ it comprises, one is devoted to the nature of the passions in general, analysing the received definition of them as movements of the sensitive appetite, arising from an apprehension of good or evil, and accompanied by some non-natural bodily change.23 If we take a 22 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, ed. and trans. H. Rackham, 2nd edn., Loeb Classical Library (London: Heinemann, and Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1934), I.xiii.9–18 (1102a –1103a ). Since the Nicomachean Ethics alone is discussed here, I henceforth refer to it simply as Ethics in the notes. 23 In libros Ethicorum Aristotelis ad Nicomachum, aliquot conimbricensis cursus disputationes (Lisbon: Simon Lopes, 1593), reprinted as Manuel de Góis, Moral a` Nicomaco,

16

Introduction

textbook of ethics, rather than a commentary, such as the Ethica of the Cistercian Eustache de Saint-Paul (Eustachius a Sancto Paulo, d. 1640), we find that, like Aquinas, he treats of the passions in general and in detail.24 In other words, Aristotelian ethical discourse at this period has a definite ‘psychological’ content. This may be discerned also in the discussion of another stock Aristotelian topic: the distinction between voluntary and non-voluntary actions (Ethics, III.1). Aristotle denies that acts inspired by passions such as anger and desire are involuntary (III.i.21–7 (1111a – b )). The commentators tend to agree: but at least the topic requires them to consider the sense in which we can be held responsible for passions we may not have directly chosen to indulge.25 None the less, it might be said, this ethical tradition is not renowned, as Augustine or Montaigne is, for the subtle analysis of the play of individual feelings. But it is then surprising to come upon a passage in which Eustache de Saint-Paul deals with a conventional enough topic, the corruption of habits through the failure to exercise them. When we cease to exercise a virtue, he says, it is almost always the case that the opposite habit takes effect in acts of the will, even if only hidden and secret ones—often so secret that they escape the attention of the person in whom they take place.26 This notion of the inaccessibility of de Aristóteles, ed. and trans. António Alberto de Andrade, Curso conimbricense, 1 (Lisbon: Istituto de Alta Cultura, 1957), Disp. VI, q. 3, a. 1, 190–2. 24 Eustachius a Sancto Paulo (Eustache de Saint-Paul), Ethica, sive Summa Moralis disciplinae in tres partes divisa (Cambridge: William Morden, 1654). This is a separate edition (they are quite common) of the second part of the author’s Summa philosophiae quadripartita, dealing with logic, ethics, physics, and metaphysics, first published in 1609. On the importance of this textbook, see Ariew, Cottingham, and Sorell, Descartes’ ‘Meditations’, 68. 25 ´ The topic is discussed by, e.g. Dupleix, L’Ethique, III.7, 303–18; Eustachius a Sancto Paulo, Ethica, III.1, disp. 1, qq. 1–4, 55–63; Tarquinius Gallutius, SJ, Explanatio et quæstiones in Aristotelis Moralium Libros, 2 vols. paginated as one, In Aristotelis libros quinque priores moralium ad Nicomachum nova interpretatio, commentarii, quæstiones (Paris: Sebastien Cramoisy, 1632), In Aristotelis libros quinque posteriores moralium ad Nicomachum nova interpretatio, commentarii, quæstiones (Paris: Sebastien Cramoisy, 1645), III.1; I, 441–75. 26 ‘Vix fieri posse ut cessante alicujus virtutis actione oppositus illi habitus per occultos saltem & secretos ipsius voluntatis actus non producatur. [. . .] Quia tamen actus illi

Introduction

17

psychological states or processes is not in Aquinas’s examination of the topic (ST IaIIae, q. 53, a. 3), but it will be found, as will be seen, in many other texts of the seventeenth century, from different intellectual traditions. Perhaps this passage of Eustache could be seen as an example of how the Aristotelian tradition was not immune to the influence of such writers as Montaigne or Charron. So far, then, we have attempted to gauge the extent to which psychological discussion finds a place in ethical discourse. But we must now follow the opposite route, and attempt to show how ethical concerns subtend and shape psychological exploration. As has been noted, Aristotle divides the soul into an irrational and a rational part. This division serves to ground an ethics based on the subordination of animal appetites to the intellectual faculties that constitute the highest part of the soul. In obeying reason, we are acting in accordance with what is best in us.27 Aristotle appears to suggest that this theory is widely accepted, in schools beside his own.28 Indeed, it can be traced back to Plato. The famous simile of the charioteer in the Phaedrus whose task it is to manage two horses, one noble, the other base, is given in more abstract form in Book IV of the Republic. There Plato distinguishes between rational and appetitive parts of the soul, to which he adds the third element of thumos, sometimes translated as ‘high spirit’, whose natural function is to assist the mastery of reason over appetite.29 In the early modern period, Aristotle’s influence would still have been the stronger, but the specifically sæpenumero adeò occulti sunt & taciti, ut eos ipse etiam in quo sunt non advertat’ (Eustachius a Sancto Paulo, Ethica, II.1, disp. 2, q. 4, 45–6). 27

Aristotle, Ethics, IX.viii.5–7 (1168b –1169a ). Cf. Aquinas, Summa theologiae (hereafter ST), IIaIIae, q. 25, a. 4, ad 3. 28 Ethics, I.xiii.9 (1102a): see H. Rackham’s note, p. 62 n. 2. 29 Plato, Phaedrus, 246–8, 253–6, in Phaedrus and the Seventh and Eighth Letters, trans. and intr. Walter Hamilton (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973); Republic, IV.14–15 (439d–441c). The translation ‘high spirit’ is that of Paul Shorey (Plato, The Republic, 2 vols., Loeb Classical Library (London: Heinemann, and Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1946) ).

18

Introduction

Platonic teaching would have found its way into the culture through non-Platonic texts, such as Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations. Cicero restates the distinction between rational and appetitive parts of the soul with specific reference to Plato.30 There his aim is to refute the Stoic denial of the soul’s immortality (I.xxxii.78–9). Elsewhere, though, he cites the Platonic distinction to reinforce Stoic teaching. For when arguing that Stoicism offers more effective strategies for dealing with pain than Epicureanism (II.xix.44–5), he alludes to the division between the rational and irrational elements in the soul as an indication that we must learn to govern ourselves in accordance with reason, for instance, when we are trying to cope with suffering (II.xxi.47–50). Nature, he says, has given the mind (mens) dominion over the soul as a whole (totus animus) (III.v.11). We find a professed Stoic like Seneca repeating this doctrine. We acquire external goods for the sake of the body; we nurture the body for the sake of the soul (animus); the ancillary parts of the soul, through which we move and nourish ourselves, were given us for the sake of the principal part. The principal part itself is divided into rational and irrational elements: the latter is subordinated to the former. Just as the divine reason has authority over all things and is subordinate to none, so our reason is supreme within us, being derived from the divine reason itself. And, if this is so, it follows that happiness consists in this alone: the perfection of reason within us.31 Here then we have a particularly clear attempt to ground ethics in a hierarchy of faculties itself derived from a divine order outside the self. The most powerful philosophical traditions from antiquity (leaving Epicureanism aside)—namely, Platonism, Aristotelianism, Stoicism, and the eclecticism of Cicero—thus bequeathed to the early modern period a conception of the soul as a hierarchical structure of faculties, 30 Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, ed. and trans. J. E. King, Loeb Classical Library (London: Heinemann and Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971 (1st pub. 1927) ), I.xxxiii.80. 31 Seneca, Epistles (Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales, ed. and trans. Richard M. Gummere, 3 vols., Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1917–25)), XCII, 1–2.

Introduction

19

so that the good life consisted in embodying that hierarchy in our own behaviour: that is to say, in ensuring that the best and noblest part of ourselves, the reason, gave the law to the rest. In other words, to divide, as we nowadays tend to, ‘psychology’, understood as the study of the nature and workings of the mind, from ethics, a vision of the good life for man, is to put asunder what early modern thinkers arguably thought of as intrinsically, indeed, divinely, joined together. A historical purist might therefore eschew the very word ‘psychology’. In what follows, however, I shall occasionally use the term to denote an interest in the qualities and workings of the mind (passion, motive, character) apparently for its own sake, without any necessary connection with moral evaluation. I need to do this in order to make the very point that in early modern moral discourse they tend to be seen as necessarily connected, but at the same time to leave open the possibility of a certain disconnection emerging.

Psychology Without Ethics? (i) Montaigne It has indeed been contended that such a disconnection takes place in the early modern period. This could be argued with respect both to literary texts, especially but not only those of the moralistes, and to the new philosophies of mechanistic inspiration. The term moraliste is conventionally used to refer to a body of French writers (the list varies but it usually runs from Montaigne to the eighteenth-century writer Vauvenargues) considered remarkable for their insights into human behaviour, feeling, and motivation. But both its definition and its application are problematic. For some critics, what marks a writer as a moraliste is that his or her scrutiny of human nature eschews a normative perspective. Odette de Mourgues puts the matter succinctly: ‘The French moralist studies man within the world of nature and reason in a non-metaphysical non-religious way. Moreover, he is not a moralisateur and has no system of ethics to propound.’32 How we define moraliste depends 32 Odette de Mourgues, Two French Moralists: La Rochefoucauld and La Bruyère (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 4. See also Hugo Friedrich, Montaigne,

20

Introduction

a good deal on the range of writers to whom we apply it. Thus Odette de Mourgues see the moraliste perspective, defined in the sense just quoted, as characteristic of French classical literature in general: she cites La Fontaine, Racine, and Madame de Lafayette, as well as La Rochefoucauld, in illustration (Two French Moralists, 98). That is to say, the label is indifferent to genre: it denotes a structure of feeling, to use Raymond Williams’s term, ascribed to a number of roughly contemporary, mostly literary, writers. On the other hand, if we use the word moraliste, as does Louis van Delft, to denote an identifiable genre of writing, defined by formal characteristics (generally in prose, non-fictional, fragmentary) as well as subject matter and attitude, then we shall have to recognize that its content admits normative as well as descriptive elements (van Delft, Le Moraliste classique, 87–108). In any case, the following study does not confine itself to writers recognized as moralistes, but admits theologians and philosophers, whose discourse is often explicitly didactic. None the less, it is worth discussing the specific case of Montaigne, since it has been so emphatically asserted that he separates his analyses of human behaviour from normative ethics (Friedrich, Montaigne, 13, 77–8, 189–95). (La Rochefoucauld is treated in later chapters; as for La Bruyère, it is plain that he does deal in prescriptive or normative utterances, whether or not this is seen as a departure from the moraliste perspective (de Mourgues, Two French Moralists, 98, 104).) It is true that Montaigne seems to affirm his independence of ancient ethical discourses, installing himself as a principle or point of departure of his own search for knowledge.33 ‘J’aymerois mieux m’entendre bien en moy qu’en Cicéron. De l’experience que j’ay de moy, je trouve assez dequoy me faire sage, si j’estoy bon escholier’ rev. edn. 1967, trans. from the German by Robert Rovini (Paris: Gallimard, 1968), 13, 77–8, 189–95. The fullest discussion of the terminological issue here is Louis van Delft’s: he reaffirms the normative content of much moraliste discourse (Le Moraliste classique: Essai de définition et de typologie (Geneva: Droz, 1982) ). 33 See Ian Maclean, Montaigne philosophe (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1996), 69–85.

Introduction

21

(I had rather understand myself well in myself than in Cicero. In my own experience of myself, I find the wherewithal to become wise, provided I were a good student).34 We might, likewise, find a manifestation of modernity in the expressed anxiety of influence (III.5, ‘Sur des vers de Virgile’, VS 874), the insistence on the personal testimony: the work would have been better if he had carried it out where there were educated people to help and correct him, but it would have been less his: ‘et sa fin principale et perfection, c’est d’estre exactement mien’ (and its main goal and perfection is to be mine through and through) (VS 875). But this would be to overlook the layers of irony in the text: having affirmed his aim to produce a work that is fully his, Montaigne goes on to speak of his ‘condition singeresse et imitatrice’ (apish and imitative character) (VS 875). If you are naturally a borrower, you can represent yourself fully only in a text full of borrowings.35 In fact, the Montaignian self is permeated by a pre-existing language, and written language functions alongside the self as a principle of his activity (Maclean, Montaigne philosophe, 82, 86–8). If Montaigne’s discourse is so interpenetrated with the discourse of others, or the Other, we should be chary of seeing him as breaking absolutely with traditional ethical frameworks. It is true that, if we think of ethics first and foremost in terms of law and obligation, this seems to concern Montaigne relatively little. In ‘Sur des vers de Virgile’ (III.5) the handling of the topic is remarkably non-judgemental: sex is instead treated as a domain particularly rich in opportunities to encounter oneself, to assay, or essay, oneself. 34

Montaigne, ‘De l’experience’, Les Essais, ed. Pierre Villey and V.-L. Saulnier, 3 vols. (paginated as one) (Paris: Quadrige/Presses Universitaires de France, 1992), III.13, 1073. All references will be to this edition, abbreviated to VS, followed by the page number. Each volume corresponds to one of the three books of Essais. 35 On quotations in Montaigne, see Terence Cave, ‘Problems of Reading in the Essais’, in I. D. McFarlane and Ian Maclean (eds.), Montaigne: Essays in Memory of Richard Sayce (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), 133–66 (pp. 144–53). Cave lists other discussions of the topic on p. 164 n. 9. See also his Pré-Histoires: Textes troublés au seuil de la modernité (Geneva: Droz, 1999), 123–7, for an analysis of the relationship between expressions of ‘subjectivity’ and the procedure of imitatio: the writer claims ownership of his thoughts and discourse, though they overlap with those of a predecessor.

22

Introduction

Christian morality is not there endorsed: it is not even implicitly brought into view by denunciation or challenge. It seems simply absent, as if it applied to Martians rather than to ourselves. The Stoic distinction between the honourable (honestum) and the base or shameful (turpe) is similarly bracketed out.36 Montaigne cites an anecdote of the Stoic philosopher Panaetius: when asked if falling in love was appropriate to the wise man, he replied that, leaving the wise man out of it, none of us should commit ourselves to something that enslaves us to others and renders us contemptible in our own eyes. Montaigne, in response, draws a typical distinction: yes, love can have that effect, and then Panaetius is right, but love is not so destructive to all minds: he claims that, when himself in love, he held on to some sense and discretion, and that a measure of debauchery and dissolution did not involve him in the worse vices of ingratitude, treachery, malignity, and cruelty. In itself love is a futile occupation, indecent, shameful, and unlawful (‘messeante, honteuse et illegitime’) (III.5, VS 891); but, properly managed, it can be, at least for some characters, conducive to the health of both mind and body (VS 891–2). But to equate the ethical with the passing of absolute judgements of good or bad, right or wrong, honourable or shameful, is to narrow its scope. Much more pertinent to Montaigne is the Aristotelian conception of ethics in terms of virtue rather than law, even if he reworks the conception of virtue in important ways.37 A comment of Alasdair Macintyre’s on Aristotle is illuminating here: ‘Aristotle takes the telos of human life to be a certain kind of life; the telos is not something to be achieved at some future point, but in the way our whole life is constructed’ (After Virtue, 175). This possibility of 36 On the Stoic identification of moral worth (honestum) as the sole good, and baseness (turpe) as the sole evil, see Cicero, De finibus bonorum et malorum, ed. and trans. H. Rackham, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, and London: Heinemann, 1983), III.iii.11. 37 I. D. McFarlane. ‘The Concept of Virtue in Montaigne’, in McFarlane and Maclean (eds.), Montaigne, 77–100. On the tension between an ethical system founded on virtue and one founded on law, see Alasdair Macintyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 2nd edn. (London: Duckworth, 1985), 168–70, 278.

Introduction

23

constructing one’s life as an ordered and integrated whole is central to Montaigne’s ethics, as a famous passage shows: Avez vous sceu mediter et manier votre vie? vous avez fait la plus grande besoigne de toutes. [. . .] Composer nos meurs est nostre office, non pas composer des livres, et gaigner, non pas des batailles et provinces, mais l’ordre et tranquillité a` nostre conduite. (III.13, ‘De l’expérience’, VS 1108) Have you succeeded in thinking out and managing your life? Then you have carried out the greatest work of all. [. . .] To compose our behaviour is our task, not composing books; gaining not battles and provinces, but order and tranquillity in our conduct.

Thus, to revert to the passage just discussed from his essay on Virgil, Montaigne is not rejecting on principle the application of moral judgements to sexual behaviour, but suggesting that passions and relationships can be managed in such a way as to set aside what might seem to be shameful or wrong in them, and release their potential benefits. The same sensibility is at work when he opines that he finds love most attractive, as a spectacle, in adolescence: its very blunders and setbacks impart a kind of grace absent from love in maturity (III.5, VS 895–6). But the psychological is not apprehended separately from the ethical: passions and desires are seen as colouring and shaping the whole of our lives, and as requiring to be judged in that perspective: they are not studied as discrete mental processes. Montaigne’s ethics display a fundamental affinity with the Aristotelian approach, of the happy life as one that fulfils human potential on all levels (intellectual, physical, moral, and social). More particularly, he endorses the Aristotelian notion that the reason that should regulate our behaviour is relative and proportional to different persons or circumstances.38 Terence Cave throws further light on the status of the ethical in Montaigne, when he observes that ‘in his own reading of texts, 38 Maclean, Montaigne philosophe, 53. On the proportionality of moral reason to different agents, see Ethics, II.vi.4–15 (1106a –1107a ): virtue consists in the observance of a mean, but a mean relative to us, not an intrinsic mean such as an arithmetical average.

24

Introduction

Montaigne’s frame of reference is predominantly ethical’, and goes on to gloss this as follows: ‘The vast collection of anecdotes, examples and sayings which he culls from other texts has the function above all of illustrating the infinite variety of forms of human behaviour. It is the training-ground of the judgement, seen here as a faculty of moral discrimination.’ (‘Problems of Reading’, p. 137) ‘Discrimination’ here involves the exploration of the relationship between an author’s writing and his life, and the discernment of ‘the underlying mechanisms or patterns of human behaviour’ (p. 139). The emphasis here is on the kind of psychological analysis that some have seen as independent of norms: but in fact, Cave argues, the quality of the literary text ‘is judged on the one hand by its consonance with its author’s life, on the other by the extent to which it is functional in suggesting norms of moral behaviour to the reader’ (p. 139). It would thus appear that, even if Montaigne is chary of laying down the moral law, he does not constitute the concrete study of passions and desires as an object of value-free exploration. Montaigne’s Essais occupy an ambiguous generic position. ‘His writing appears to a modern reader to lie awkwardly across the divide between imaginative literature and intellectual reflection’—not surprisingly, since he was producing a new genre, rather than locating himself in an existing generic space.39 He borrows concepts from philosophy, and lards his discourse with allusions to philosophers; he sometimes follows philosophical procedures of argument. Yet he scorns systematic thinking or doctrinal alignment, and produces a fragmentary, endlessly proliferating text, instead of a methodical treatise aiming at definite conclusions.40 Moreover, in his affirmation of himself, or his self, he invites the reader to encounter and interrogate his or her own affects, character, selfhood: an experience more commonly associated with the reading of literature than with that of philosophy. It is natural then to prolong the question of 39 Terence Cave, ‘The Early Modern Period: 1470–1789’, in Kay, Cave, and Bowie, Short History, 135. 40 On Montaigne’s problematic relation to philosophy, see Maclean, Montaigne philosophe.

Introduction

25

the relationship of psychology to ethics into the consideration of literary texts. At the same time, Montaigne’s work had an undoubted philosophical impact, in damaging the prestige of established scholastic philosophy. In this way, it was a negative preparation for the development of the new mechanistic philosophies, which will be considered after further discussion of literature.

Psychology Without Ethics? (ii) Literature, Again The label ‘literature’ itself is open to question as anachronistic. Though littérature is used in French in the seventeenth century, it tends to mean a personal attribute, the fact of being well read (‘a man of great literature’). Only in the eighteenth century is it widely applied to denote a body or bodies of writing. Belles-lettres is the preferred seventeenth-century term to denote a canon of texts particularly valued not as sources of truth or moral improvement but as models of good writing for the reader to assimilate. 41 But the vogue of this term itself bears witness to Alain Viala’s analysis of the emergence over the seventeenth century of a relatively autonomous literary field.42 There is good reason to think that contemporaries tended to distinguish works, however ‘serious’, aimed primarily at the pleasure of the reader or spectator from those aimed primarily at disclosure of the truth or persuasions to good conduct. I use the word ‘literature’ descriptively, as a convenient designation for the former category (which is not to say that the works of philosophy or moral reflection studied here do not also contain some remarkably beautiful writing).43 41 See Philippe Caron, Des ‘belles-lettres’ a` la littérature: Une archéologie des signes du savoir profane en langue française (1680–1760) (Paris: Société pour l’Information Grammaticale and Louvain: Peeters, 1992), esp. 160–2, 186–90, 255–72. 42 Alain Viala, Naissance de l’écrivain: Sociologie de la littérature a` l’âge classique (Paris: Minuit, 1985). He discusses terminology (‘gens de lettres’, ‘poète’, ‘auteur’, ‘écrivain’, ‘belles-lettres’, ‘littérature’) and the values attached to each term (pp. 270–90). 43 It might be anachronistic to use the term literature not descriptively, but hermeneutically, to disclose something about the text of which it is itself unaware—as if one were putting forward a concept of literature that yielded the result, say, that Malebranche’s works are really literature and La Bruyère’s not.

26

Introduction

To return now to the question of the relation of psychology and ethics in the literary text: we have to be mistrustful here of sweeping generalizations. In Corneille, the analysis of passion and motive is almost always attached to evaluation, and this in itself affects the reader’s sympathies. Take a character like Maxime in Cinna.44 When his confidant Euphorbe proposes that he should betray the conspiracy against Auguste in which he and Cinna are both involved, ´ in the hope that Auguste will reward him with the hand of Emilie (whom he and Cinna both love, but who loves Cinna), Maxime shows considerable understanding both of his own emotional needs ´ and of Emilie’s likely reaction to this treachery. It is not enough to marry her; he wants her love, and she could never love a man who betrayed her lover and his own republican principles by turning informer.45 At the same time, the reader (and even the spectator, if the actor is doing his job) is aware that his objections are not properly ethical. True, he is revolted by the idea of jeopardizing the other conspirators, but seems to be reassured by Euphorbe’s suggestion that Auguste will probably spare them anyway (ll. 757–68). So he allows practical considerations as to the outcome to determine a decision that seems to require strictly ethical evaluation. The same ´ is true of his interpretation of Emilie’s likely attitude: the point is not that it would be wrong on his part to pursue a woman whose lover he had given up to certain death; the obstacle is that she would not forgive him. He continues to raise practical objections: what ´ if Cinna were to denounce Emilie? Auguste would condemn her, rather than giving her to him (ll. 785–8). Moreover, we are made aware that resentment (at being manipulated, as he sees it, by Cinna) is an important factor in Maxime’s reactions (ll. 717–29). Thus the scene stages partial psychological insight on the part of Maxime, inasmuch as we see him evaluating possible courses of behaviour and 44 Cinna was first performed in 1642, and the text published in 1643. Future references to dates of plays refer to first publication rather than first performance. 45 Pierre Corneille, Cinna, III.i.769–80, in Œuvres complètes, ed. Georges Couton, 3 vols., Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1980–7). All references to Corneille’s works are to this edition. Future references to this scene are by line numbers only.

Introduction

27

emotional reactions; and it encourages psychological insight in the spectator, in that it suggests that Maxime is really attracted to the course of action Euphorbe recommends, since practical obstacles and possible solutions are his main apparent concern. He is motivated by passion (resentment) rather than the sense of public duty he would no doubt invoke to justify his betrayal. (Were Auguste a clearly legitimate authority, there might be a duty to reveal the conspiracy against him: but at this point in the play there is a genuine doubt as to whether Auguste should be regarded as a legitimate monarch or a tyrannical usurper. Only his clemency at the end validates the former alternative.) But this insight into Maxime’s motives is surely intended to solicit an ethical evaluation, and an emotional movement of repugnance on the spectator’s part: this is not the way an honourable man should think, such disloyalty is detestable, Maxime will surely be punished for it . . . Tout comprendre here is not at all tout pardonner: on the contrary, comprehension assists evaluation, the application of a pre-given ethical code according to which betraying a friend is as such contemptible. Again, with the heroic characters in Corneille (Rodrigue or Polyeucte), their selfanalysis is designed to show them thinking their way through to a higher moral level. Here too the ‘psychological’ material is designed to illustrate the ethical realm, to display ethical values in action. The view that Corneille’s heroic ethic is morally indifferent seems to me doubtful.46 It is true that Corneille’s discussion of Aristotle’s requirement that characters should be ‘good’ can be read as implying this.47 Corneille argues here that ‘good’ cannot mean ‘virtuous’, 46

Lucien Goldmann takes this view, holding that in the individualist world of Corneille’s theatre vice and virtue are strictly equivalent, and that the only structurally grounded value is power of personality, an ‘eminently amoral category’ (‘Le Problème du mal: A` propos de Rodogune et de l’Annonce faite a` Marie’, in Structures mentales et creation culturelle, 10/18 (Paris: Anthropos, 1970), 131–44). 47 Corneille, Discours de l’utilité et des parties du poème dramatique, OC III, 129; Aristotle, Poetics, XV.1–3 (1454a ), in Aristotle, The Poetics, ‘Longinus’, On the Sublime, ed. and trans. W. Hamilton Fyfe, Demetrius, On Style, ed. and trans. W. Rhys Roberts, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, and London: Heinemann, 1982 (1st pub. 1927, rev. edn. 1932) ).

28

Introduction

since so many ancient and modern plays depend on wicked or weak characters. It must refer, he suggests, to ‘le caractère brillant et e´levé d’une habitude vertueuse, ou criminelle’ (the splendour and intensity of a virtuous or wicked habit), inasmuch as it befits the character. Thus a wicked character, like his own Cléopâtre in Rodogune (1647), can be good in this sense: we admire the greatness of soul behind her actions, even though we detest them (OC III, 129). But the point, it seems to me, is not that Corneille’s aesthetic is amoral, or that it solicits an amoral response: rather, it solicits a complex ethical response. The ‘grandeur d’âme’ Corneille attributes to Cléopâtre is not an amoral intensity of being: it is the literal French translation of magnanimitas (Aristotle’s megalopsychia): that is to say, it is in itself a virtue, which ought to have been linked with the other virtues to achieve its full perfection, and the fascination of Cléopâtre is that she can display this virtue in combination with such extreme vice.48 There is no simplistic conflation of moral virtue and appeal to the spectator in Corneille: the plays require a nuanced and critical evaluation of the behaviour and the passions they exhibit. But the ethical aspect of that evaluation is irreducible. True, Corneille is adamant that the purpose of poetry is first and foremost to please and that its moral utility is subordinate to that; but he admits that 48 Aristotle’s discussion of megalopsychia (greatness of soul) is in Ethics, IV.iii.1–34 (1123b –1125a ). To be sure, Cléopâtre falls short of this ideal in many respects, both general and particular. Aristotle insists that the great-souled man possesses all the virtues (IV.iii.14–16, 1123b –1124a ). She does not. She practises dissimulation and she bears grudges, both of which he thinks unworthy of the great-souled man (IV.iii.28, 1124b ; IV.iii.30, 1125a ). But she is not without virtue: she has courage, for instance. Moreover, she conforms to his dictum that ‘power and wealth are desirable only for the honour they bring’ (IV.iii.18, 1124a ), in that, although passionately devoted to royal authority, she can envisage its loss with equanimity as long as she can go out in a blaze of glory (Rodogune, II.i.411–14). What she wants above all is autonomy, not to be at another person’s mercy (ll. 415–22): in this too, she resembles the great-souled man, ‘incapable of living at the will of another’ (Ethics, IV.iii.29, 1125a ). In truth, the point is not to locate her on a graduated scale of magnanimity, but to suggest that she displays, intensely, a kind of perverted magnanimity that, shorn of its link with the other virtues, inspires her, as Corneille says, to crime. For a study of the concept of magnanimity in Corneille, especially Nicomède, see Marc Fumaroli, Héros et orateurs: Rhétorique et dramaturgie cornéliennes (Geneva: Droz, 1990), 323–49.

Introduction

29

utility is a by-product of pleasure produced in the proper fashion and that a certain moral content is indeed part of the pleasure the art procures (OC III, 117, 119–22). One could argue that the link between psychological and ethical is broken in a later play by Corneille, Othon (1665), with its harsh scrutiny of how, in a dysfunctional system, the interwoven calculations of political and emotional interests suffocate not just ethical ideals but even genuine feeling. No doubt, the play’s sombre atmosphere testifies to the Tacitist trend in seventeenth-century culture to which it has been linked by Peter Burke: Tacitus was often praised, though sometimes condemned, for his penetrating analyses of causes and motives.49 (Even in Rodogune, the theme of dissimulation (II.i.395–406), could be seen as Tacitean.) Rightly, again, Burke stresses the Tacitean affinities of Racine’s Britannicus (p. 160) (indeed, Racine proclaims his debt to Tacitus in the preface50 ). What Burke identifies as especially interesting to seventeenth-century intellectuals in Tacitus was ‘not so much a particular doctrine as a style; a taste for discussing men as they really are, not as they ought to be’; a ‘taste for realism in analysis, which can coexist with both approval and disapproval of the actions analysed’, and which was gratified by Machiavelli as well as Tacitus (p. 166). On this showing, Tacitus would be another contributor to the realist or naturalistic strand of thinking (along with Machiavelli, Gracián, and Hobbes) to which La Rochefoucauld has been held to be tributary.51 In general, though, it would surely be accepted that, for Corneille, to render human behaviour intelligible, to depict characters engaging with their passions, is to exhibit failure or success in attaining moral excellence, in fulfilling the specifically human potential to think 49

Peter Burke, ‘Tacitism’, in T. A. Dorey (ed.), Tacitus (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969), 149–71 (Corneille is mentioned on p. 158). 50 Racine, Britannicus, Préface, in Œuvres complètes: I. Théaˆ tre-Poésie, ed. Georges Forestier, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1999), 372–6; the debt is accentuated in the later version of the preface (pp. 443–5). 51 Louis van Delft, Littérature et anthropologie: Nature humaine et caractère a` l’âge classique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1993), 124. Burke also detects a Tacitean flavour in the Maximes (‘Tacitism’, 157).

30

Introduction

through and direct our actions by a rule of reason—not an abstract moral imperative but a practical sense of the opportunities and obligations that arise for an agent of a certain category in certain situations. But most readers of seventeenth-century literature would accept that many canonical texts from the last third of the century display a dislocation of the psychological from the ethical.52 It is a familiar enough point, but it still needs rehearsing here: whether we think of the characters of Racine’s theatre or of those of Madame de Lafayette’s novels, we find them characteristically unable to regulate their passions by reason. (The Princesse de Clèves both exemplifies and eludes this generalization.) This no doubt has something to do with the emergence noted above of a relatively autonomous literary field. For part of what this autonomy means is that the pleasure of the reader or spectator emerges as the paramount value, and this in itself tends to validate an interest in ‘psychology’ for its own sake, or rather for the sake of its impact on the reader, independent not only of particular ethical theories, but of a general teleological ethical framework in which human nature as it is assessed against a picture of what it should be. As a result it becomes possible to identify a distinctive literary perspective of the kind discussed by Odette de Mourgues in her characterization of the French moraliste. Of course, one can trace a historical fault-line separating Corneille from the writers of a later generation such as Racine and Lafayette; one may stress the psychological impact on the French dominant class of the Fronde and its failures, of the curbing of nobiliary autonomy by the absolutist state. It might also be tempting, given the preoccupations of much of this book, to argue for the influence of Augustinian pessimism, of a view of human nature where weakness and subjugation by passion are the dominant features, and free will highly circumscribed. But this is not the particular path I wish to follow at present. For it is not precisely or only because they are 52

See Terence Cave’s succinct and lucid discussion in Kay, Cave, and Bowie, Short History, 154–7. The themes of self-deception and unconscious motive, foregrounded by Cave, are touched on in later chapters of this book.

Introduction

31

unable to govern their passions by their reason and will power that one finds a divorce between the ethical and the psychological in the characters of Racine and Madame de Lafayette. There is no such divorce in the Augustinian schema itself: on the contrary, weakness and error are there interpreted as sins alienating us from a divine moral order, proofs of a Fall and of the need for redemption. What is striking about, say, Andromaque (1668) or La Princesse de Clèves (1678) is not that the characters fail to subdue their passions by reason, but that it is not even clear from the texts themselves what ethical norms should be brought to bear on their plight, with what values they should identify. The texts may be saying that passion as such is doomed to illusion and frustration, which would be the lesson of Stoic philosophy. But they may also be inviting us to contemplate with fear and pity the situation of those whose doom is rather that fate deprived them of the chance to gratify their passions. This is why one can speak of a divorce between the psychological and the ethical here. No such divorce exists in most of the texts studied in this book. The matter of ‘psychological’ analysis is viewed through ethical and usually theological optical instruments. But the above discussion of texts where this is arguably not the case is justified because the point has to be made that neither the separation of the ‘psychological’ from the ‘ethical’, nor the subordination of the former to the latter, can be claimed to typify French writing of the later seventeenth century. We cannot, I think, use works where subordination prevails (say, works of Augustinian theology or moral reflection) as a key to the interpretation of those (like Andromaque or La Princesse de Clèves) where separation appears to take place, especially when we are dealing with literary texts, that, qua literary, could operate at a distance from an ethical framework. With these, we can use the Augustinian anthropology (or some other) to trace possible significations, but not to validate these as correct. It is time now to turn to the philosophers’ more systematic and abstract investigations of the relation between ethics and the workings of the human mind.

32

Introduction

Psychology Without Ethics? (iii) The New Philosophies Alongside the survival of traditional, mainly Aristotelian teaching, seventeenth-century moral philosophy sees the emergence of a conception of moral philosophy as ‘a systematic science, grounded on logically rigorous deductions from self-evident principles’ rather than on classical or Christian authority.53 In particular, the mechanistic revolution in thought tended to privilege efficient over final causality in the study of nature. This move could be repeated in the human sphere. This is strikingly true of Hobbes. He espouses a mechanistic account of psychological processes, volition as well as sensation: ‘As in Sense, that which is really within us is [. . .] only Motion, caused by the action of externall objects [. . .] so, when the action of the same object is continued from the Eyes, Eares, and other organs to the Heart; the reall effect there is nothing but Motion, or Endeavour; which consisteth in Appetite, or Aversion, to, or from the object moving.’54 This he links with an abandonment of the whole ancient and Christian teleological ethical framework, according to which our moral life had to be conceived in relation to the pursuit of a supreme or sovereign good, transcending individual preferences: Whatsoever is the object of any mans Appetite or Desire; that is it, which he for his part calleth Good : and the object of his Hate, and Aversion, Evill; And of his Contempt, Vile and Inconsiderable. For these words of Good, Evill, and Contemptible, are ever used with relation to the person that useth them: There being nothing simply and absolutely so, nor any common Rule of Good and Evill, to be taken from the nature of the objects themselves. (I.6, 39) For there is no such Finis ultimus, (utmost ayme,) nor Summum Bonum, (greatest Good,) as is spoken of in the Books of the old Morall Philosophers. (I.11, 70) 53

Kraye, ‘Conceptions of moral philosophy’, 1279. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1st pub. 1651), ed. Richard Tuck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), I.6, 40. 54

Introduction

33

Moreover, it is arguable that Hobbes’s thought had some effect on seventeenth-century French writers such as La Fontaine or La Rochefoucauld.55 Like Hobbes, Spinoza challenges any attempt to preserve an ethical doctrine founded on a supposed specificity of human nature, in virtue of which we are exempted from the laws of the material universe. On the contrary, he argues, what applies to nature applies to human kind. He criticizes discussions of the emotions based on a false conception of human nature as an empire within the empire of nature as a whole: human acts and appetites obey the same laws as the rest of nature and can thus be discussed by the same methods as we would apply to lines, planes, and bodies.56 He reduces finality, the end for which we supposedly act, to appetite (Ethics, IV, def. 7). But this is emphatically not to isolate the psychological as a separate sphere: the analysis presupposes his metaphysical system established in the first two parts of the Ethics, and it will issue in the formulation of precise ethical imperatives in the last part. What is, arguably, new is the order in which he works: no more than Hobbes does he begin by identifying an ultimate good for mankind, and then working back to specific imperatives. Good and evil are relative notions, formed by comparison, not absolute values (IV, Preface); what is good is what we know for certain will be useful to us (IV, def. 1). But, unlike Hobbes, he therefore does not reduce the good to whatever an individual happens to think of as good: for, when I know for certain what is good for me, I do not just ‘happen to think’ of it as good. The mind acting according to reason understands that nothing is useful 55 Quentin Skinner, ‘Hobbes and his Disciples in France and England’, in Visions of Politics, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), III, Hobbes and Civil Science, 308–23, shows the extent of Hobbes’s immediate influence in France, as borne out by his correspondence with members of scientific circles. Connections with writers outside those circles are more difficult to establish. La Fontaine’s line ‘Ne vous eˆtes-vous pas l’un a` l’autre des loups’ (‘Les Compagnons d’Ulysse’, Fables, ed. Marc Fumaroli, 2 vols. (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1985), XII.1, l. 94) is usually taken to be an allusion to Hobbes’s ‘Homo homini lupus’ (De cive, Preface), but this of course does not necessarily prove any more significant connection. 56 ´ Benedict Spinoza, Ethics (1st pub. 1677), Part III, Preface; see Ethics (Ethique, Latin text with a French translation by Bernard Pautrat (Paris: Seuil, 1988) ).

34

Introduction

to it, or in other words good, but what conduces to understanding (IV.26–7), and thus in the end we can go so far as to say that the knowledge of God is the supreme good (IV.28). The famous remark quoted above in which he speaks of studying acts and appetites as if he were dealing with lines, planes, and bodies does not imply that the analysis treats them as ethically neutral. On the contrary, the passions are confused ideas, in which the mind is passive (III, General Definition of the Affects: Explanation), whereas the mind is active in so far as it possesses adequate ideas and is led by reason (IV.24, and cf. III.3). In other words, the ‘psychological’ is analysed not within a positivist or objectivist perspective, but within an ambitious metaphysico-ethical scheme of values. Indeed, Spinoza has been convincingly argued to be deeply indebted to the Stoic tradition.57 The investigation of human passion and motivation in two ‘modern’ thinkers of the seventeenth century has thus been divorced from a teleological ethical perspective. It has not yet become an autonomous science of ‘psychology’, in that it is subordinated to politics (Hobbes) or to a metaphysical but non-teleological scheme of ethics (Spinoza). The bonds between the ‘psychological’ and the ethical, however, have been loosened, even if, as in Spinoza, the purpose is rather to knit them up again more tightly.

Descartes’s Ethics: (i) Humanity and the Divine Order In Descartes, on the other hand, we might expect to find a mechanistic approach to the physical aspect at least of psychological processes, capable of being studied independently of an overarching ethical schema. True, Descartes still accepts much of the scheme of values of traditional ethics: understanding how passions work will help us regulate them. The exposition of psycho-physical mechanisms is always conjoined with the discussion of how we ought to be behave, 57

Susan James, ‘Spinoza the Stoic’, in Tom Sorell (ed.), The Rise of Modern Philosophy: The Tension between the New and Traditional Philosophies from Machiavelli to Leibniz (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 289–316.

Introduction

35

how we can best operate the mechanism. Each of the three parts of Les Passions de l’âme (1649) ends with ethical considerations: at the close of Part One, Descartes considers how the soul can obtain control of its passions (§§45–50); Part Two ends with an examination of how desire in particular can be regulated, by the cultivation in particular of ‘inner emotions of the soul’, especially the self-satisfaction that comes from virtue, as a preservative against the passions stimulated by outside objects (§§144–8); Part Three, which of course also contains the crucial disquisition on générosité (§§152–6, 161), concludes with a ‘general remedy for the passions’ (§§211–12). On the other hand, the mechanistic approach apparently precludes a teleological perspective: in Les Passions de l’âme Descartes does not ask what kind of fulfilment is postulated by the kind of creature we are, towards what end we, as a species, are inclined by our basic qualities and dispositions. Indeed it has been argued that he puts ethics altogether on a new basis, stripping the universe, so to speak, of its capacity to embody the values to which we should aspire, and ‘[situating] the moral sources within us’.58 The expression is Charles Taylor’s, and here we must take account of the powerful analysis of the development of Western ethics he puts forward in Sources of the Self, for in it Descartes plays a pivotal role. But to grasp what is at stake in Taylor’s analysis of Descartes, we need to glance at his overarching set of categories. Taylor distinguishes ‘procedural’ from ‘substantive’ conceptions of ethics: ‘I call a notion of reason substantive where we judge the rationality of an agent or their thoughts and feelings in substantive terms. This means that the criterion for rationality is that one get it right.’ (p. 85) Thus, to take Taylor’s example, someone who believes that the best life is one in which one fulfils the most sensual desires is simply wrong—or, in other words, not fully rational. A procedural notion of reason breaks the link between being rational and being right. ‘The rationality of an agent or his thoughts is defined by 58 Taylor, Sources of the Self, 143. I ought to say that, despite my disagreement with aspects of Taylor’s analysis, I have found it immensely illuminating.

36

Introduction

how he thinks, not in the first instance by whether the outcome is substantively correct’ (p. 86). And Taylor takes the Cartesian notion of clear and distinct ideas as an instance of this view. What matters first and foremost is that we have a procedure for attaining truth, and the truth so attained is validated by the conformity of its means of attainment to the procedure. This distinction is then brought to bear along historical lines. The ancients thought of practical reason in substantive terms: it required a ‘sense or vision of the good’, the perception of ‘an order which in some sense is in nature’ (p. 86).59 The moderns, be they Kantians or utilitarians, have taken the procedural route. They no longer recognize an order ‘which in some sense is in nature’ and which ‘determines what ought to be done’. Primacy is given instead to the agent’s own desires or will, and how far these can be rationally justified depends not on the content of that attempted justification but on the procedure by which it is arrived at (p. 86). The psychological life, the life of passions, thoughts, and decisions, is not subordinated to an ethical structure built into the personality itself in the form of a hierarchy of powers. It is a mechanism that we have to regulate as effectively as possible. Taylor pursues this idea in a searching analysis: Descartes’s ethic, just as much as his epistemology, calls for disengagement from world and body and the assumption of an instrumental stance towards them. (p. 155) Rationality is no longer defined substantively, in terms of the order of being, but rather procedurally, in terms of the standards by which we construct orders in science and life. [. . .] The judgement now turns on properties of the activity of thinking rather than on the substantive beliefs that emerge from it. (p. 156)

The result is ‘an internalization of moral sources’, since the ‘sources of moral strength can no longer be seen as outside us in the traditional mode’ (p. 151). 59

Taylor’s chapter on Plato (pp. 115–26) expands on this idea.

Introduction

37

When the hegemony of reason becomes rational control, it is no longer understood as our being attuned to the order of things we find in the cosmos, but rather as our life being shaped by the orders which we construct according to the demands of reason’s dominance, i.e. the ‘jugements fermes et déterminés touchant la connaissance du bien et du mal’ [Passions, §48] which we have resolved to live by. (p. 155)

Instead, the virtuous man, in the Cartesian schema, acts in order to maintain ‘the agent’s sense of his own dignity as a rational being’ (p. 152), which is what Descartes means by ‘genérosité’ (p. 155). Thus Descartes emerges as a key figure in the development of the antithesis Taylor aims to put in question, between human beings, with their projects and values, and an intrinsically meaningless reality. The term ‘instrumental’ is important, as is ‘disengaged’, because it enables Taylor to connect Descartes to a whole more recent controversy, since Romanticism, about ‘the disengaged instrumental view of life’ (pp. 499–513). But this controversy is beyond my scope: the question is purely with Descartes’s ethics. To connect back with the terms of my discussion, if Descartes is indeed to be placed on the ‘procedural’ side of the fence, it would follow that his ‘psychology’ was not subordinated to an ‘ethics’ in the sense of a vision of the good for human nature. I am not quite convinced, however, that Descartes evacuates the substantive content of rationality to the extent suggested by Taylor. True, the famous definition of ‘générosité’ stresses the procedure by which moral truth is attained, and the efficacy with which we act on our perceptions of it: La vraie générosité, qui fait qu’un homme s’estime au plus haut point qu’il se peut légitimement estimer, consiste seulement partie en ce qu’il connaˆıt qu’il n’y a rien qui véritablement lui appartienne que cette libre disposition de ses volontés, ni pourquoi il doive eˆtre loué ou blâmé sinon pour ce qu’il en use bien ou mal, et partie en ce qu’il sent en soi-même une ferme et constante résolution d’en bien user, c’est-à-dire de ne manquer jamais de volonté pour entreprendre et exécuter toutes les choses qu’il jugera eˆtre les

38

Introduction

meilleures. Ce qui est suivre parfaitement la vertu. (Les Passions de l’âme, §153, AT XI 445–6: OP III, 1067)60 True magnanimity, which makes a man esteem himself as highly as he may legitimately do so, consists only in this: partly, in his knowing that there is nothing that truly belongs to him barring this free disposition of his volitions, and no reason why he should be praised or blamed except in so far as he makes good or bad use of these, and partly, in his feeling inside himself a firm and steady resolution to make good use of them, that is, never to lack the willpower to undertake and carry through whatever things he shall judge to be the best. This is what is meant by following virtue perfectly.

The will is not simply an appetite, as it was for Aquinas, nor is it a form of love, as for Augustine: stress is laid instead on its productive power, its enabling us to undertake and execute.61 One can see why this might be characterized as an ‘instrumentalist’ conception, as equally why Descartes’s ethics might be seen as procedural rather than substantive in content. But Descartes’s ethics cannot quite be reduced to the instrumental or procedural approach. It has some kind of content, even if it is not ‘substantive’ in the sense of a vision of the good as realized in the intelligible structure of the universe as a whole. For in these passages Descartes is not defining virtue as such, but the pursuit of virtue (‘suivre la vertu’). Naturally, he defines the pursuit, a process, in procedural terms. But that does not imply that he thought of virtue in itself as the product of a procedure. What he is saying is rather that one who (sometimes) performs virtuous actions, moral duties, may not necessarily be pursuing virtue. He 60 Cf. Descartes to Elisabeth, 18 Aug. 1645, AT IV, 277: OP III, 598; Les Passions de l’âme, §§48, 148, AT XI, 367, 442: OP III, 992, 1064. Rohou situates Descartes in a narrative of the evolution of the term générosité (Le XVIIe Siècle, 302–3; cf. pp. 141–8, 177–82, 230–46). 61 For St Thomas, the will is the intellectual appetite (as distinct from the sensitive or animal appetite), by which we pursue what we conceive to be good for us: ST Ia, q. 82, a. 5. For Augustine, ‘will’ is synonymous with ‘love’ in the sense that a good, or evil, will is a good, or bad love (De civitate Dei (The City of God against the Pagans, ed. and trans. George E. McCracken et al., 7 vols., Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press and London: Heinemann, 1957–72)), XIV.7).

Introduction

39

may not really know why he is acting in that way, or he may lack the will-power always so to act. To that extent, he would not be entitled to the legitimate self-esteem Descartes terms ‘générosité’. This line of argument is borne out in the dedicatory letter to Elisabeth that precedes the Principles. Here Descartes distinguishes true and apparent virtue, and then again between two kinds of true virtue. Apparent virtues, first of all, are in fact vices, that, being rarer than their contrary vices, are falsely esteemed more highly than the mean in which virtue consists.62 To fear danger too little is rarer than to fear it overmuch, and so rashness is mistaken for a virtue, and often makes more of an impact on people’s minds than true courage. As for true virtues, there is a difference between those derived from an exact knowledge of the truth, and those accompanied by ignorance and error, as when piety is inspired by fear, or courage by despair. Such virtues are always accompanied by some imperfection, whereas those founded on the pure knowledge of the good are pure and perfect, and can indeed be subsumed under the single name of wisdom (AT IX-2, 21–2: OP III, 87–8).63 The imperfect virtues, though, are still genuine, even if the agent’s relationship to them is faulty. It seems plain that virtue exists outside ourselves, and is not created by us. Consider also a possible objection to Cartesian ethics. It would apparently legitimize the world view of a systematic libertine: the kind of character one might find in de Sade. For he or she acts 62 It might seem strange to hear Descartes speaking in such Aristotelian accents: but he had a much higher respect for the ancients’ moral philosophy than for their metaphysics. They built their moral philosophy on mud and sand, but it still took the form of magnificent palaces (Discours de la méthode, I (AT VI, 7–8: OP I, 575) ). The praise is tinged with irony, but it is not all irony. In the letter to Elisabeth of 18 Aug. 1645, discussed presently, he attempts to reconcile the pagan philosophers’ different conceptions of the sovereign good (AT IV, 275–7: OP III, 596–7). He never discusses metaphysical problems in relation to other philosophers’ solutions. This attempt to synthesize and reconcile in the domain of moral philosophy is itself traditional. Thus, in De finibus, Cicero argues that the difference between Stoic ethical positions and those of the Old Academy and the Peripatetics are more verbal than substantial (III.iii.10, IV.xx.56–xxii.62). He was followed by Augustine (De civitate Dei, IX.4), who likewise attempts to minimize the Stoics’ and Peripatetics’ divergence in regard to the passions. 63 Descartes is here holding to the traditional thesis of the interdependence of the virtues. See e.g. ST IaIIae, q. 65, a. 1.

40

Introduction

systematically and consistently in accordance with a firm judgement of good and bad. True, this is a flagrant inversion of the ordinary judgement of good and bad: none the less, it is a judgement the agent has made, and on which he or she acts with an exemplary resolution that permits the greatest self-satisfaction. But it is hard to imagine that Descartes would recognize this as an application of his ethical code. The fact is that the hypothetical Cartesian libertine has taken formulations like these just quoted in which Descartes explains what he means by ‘suivre la vertu’ as if they were offering a complete definition of virtue. They are not: they are simply glosses explaining how the Cartesian concept of virtue differs from the ordinary kind, by being more stringent. That is to say, it requires there to be an element of personal judgement on which to base our actions, as well as a determination to pursue the chosen kind of action through thick and thin. Thus, someone who does not think for himself or herself is not really virtuous, nor is someone whose performance of moral duties is half-hearted or contingent on favourable circumstances. But that does not mean that Descartes dispenses with the notion of acting in conformity to a moral law. ‘Thinking for oneself ’ is a necessary condition of forming the correct ethical judgements, but it is not necessarily offered as a sufficient condition. Take, for comparison’s sake, the case of established beliefs in the sphere of non-moral truth. The difference between the Cartesian meditator and the ordinary person is not that the latter thinks 2 + 3 = 6, when the former knows 2 + 3 = 5. The difference is that the meditator knows why he can say with certainty that 2 + 3 = 5, whereas the ordinary person just takes it for granted. Of course, in certain areas, the meditator’s views differ from the ordinary person’s, as regards the nature of the relationship of mind and body, for instance. But, from Descartes’s point of view, if the ordinary person were capable of meditating, he or she would come to the same conclusion: it is true, at a certain level, that good sense is the most widely shared thing in the world (Discours de la méthode, I, AT VI, 1–2: OP I, 568); whereas the libertine’s is essentially an anti-morality: it depends on everyone else being enslaved to their false values. So there is no

Introduction

41

reason to think that Descartes upheld an ethical conception that could be adapted to authorize individuals to form judgements in flagrant contradiction to those commonly accepted and incapable of being universally adopted. Rather, it looks as if he accepted that there must be some substantial content to virtue, over and above the procedural requirements that we form our judgements ourselves and execute them with resolution. It would seem, in the absence of any indication to the contrary, that this content does not differ from that of the virtues as traditionally conceived, though there is one aspect of virtue—concern for the public good—that Descartes particularly stresses, as will presently be shown. But in any case, to return to the terms of our argument, if the above is correct, he is not sponsoring an approach to psychology indifferent to ethical considerations of a traditional kind. Then again, we need to pay attention both to Descartes’s metaphysico-theological framing of his ethics and to the relative autonomy of ethics within his system. Descartes lays more stress on providence than Taylor’s account leaves room for when he contrasts Descartes’s conception of reason from that of the Stoics (Sources of the Self, 147). The letter to Elisabeth of 18 August 1645, in which Descartes severely criticizes Seneca’s De vita beata, seems to bear out Taylor’s position. Descartes seems not to see the link in Stoic thought between living according to nature and living according to reason, between our own nature as rational creatures and the order of the world established by God, which reason helps us to grasp. He therefore does not think that Seneca has shown how beatitude derives from submission to the order of things, or, in more Christian terms, the will of God.64 But the point is, perhaps, not that there is no connection between the two but that Seneca has failed to show it. In his next letter but one to Elisabeth, Descartes discusses the first part of his twofold definition of virtue: the need to ‘discerner ce qui est le meilleur en toutes les actions de la vie’ (to discern what is best in all the actions 64

To Elisabeth, 18 Aug. 1645, AT IV, 271–4: OP III, 593–4, and see 593 n. 2.

42

Introduction

of life) (to Elisabeth, 15 Sept. 1645, AT IV, 291: OP III, 605). The word ‘discerner’ seems to imply that the good is not determined or constructed by us. The first requirement is ‘la connaissance de la vérité’ (the knowledge of truth), and we must note here that this relationship to truth is substantive, in Taylor’s terms, not procedural. If we do not know that there is a God, it will not matter how well we have endeavoured to reason by the method: we must have got it wrong (just as a would-be Cartesian who failed to grasp the proofs of the existence of God, but tried otherwise to follow the method could not claim any certain knowledge).65 But this knowledge of God is more than a guarantee of further metaphysical and scientific deductions: it has its own benefit, in inclining us to love God and submit to his will. Cela nous apprend a` recevoir en bonne part toutes les choses qui nous arrivent, comme nous e´tant expressément envoyées de Dieu; et parce que le vrai objet de l’amour est la perfection, lorsque nous e´levons notre esprit a` le considérer tel qu’il est, nous nous trouvons naturellement si enclins a` l’aimer, que nous tirons même de la joie de nos afflictions, en pensant que sa volonté s’exécute en ce que nous les recevons. (AT IV, 291–2: OP III, 605–6) This teaches us to take in good part everything that befalls us, as being expressly sent us by God; and because the true object of love is perfection, whenever we lift up our mind so as to consider him as he is [that is, perfect], we find ourselves naturally so inclined to love him that we even find joy in our afflictions, when we think that his will is being carried out in the fact of our receiving them. 65

Taylor (Sources of the Self, 86) acknowledges the importance in Descartes’s system of the ‘substantive truth’ that God exists: I want to emphasize it rather more. In the Second Replies, when arguing (as he had in Part IV of the Discours de la méthode, AT VI, 37–9: OP I, 610–11) that an atheist can have no certain knowledge, Descartes asserts that it is entirely irrelevant whether he may imagine that he has a demonstrative proof of the non-existence of God, since these so-called demonstrations are false (AT VII, 141/IX, 111: OP II, 565). Since these demonstrations are hypothetical, apart from the one put forward for the sake of argument by the objectors (Second Objections, AT VII, 125/IX, 99: OP II, 545) and briefly refuted by Descartes (Second Replies, AT VII, 141–2/IX, 111: OP II, 565–6), it is clear that Descartes sets much more store by the substantive falsity of their conclusion than by the procedures by which it has been reached.

Introduction

43

Descartes’s wisdom, then, begins no less than Stoicism in acquiescence in the providential order; what is more, though the physical universe is not the embodiment of a scheme of value that can be ethically assimilated, God himself exists as the Good who is, for the sake of what he is, the object of love. The Good has not disappeared from Descartes’s moral universe, though from the physical universe it may seem to have done. Even from there it has not in fact disappeared entirely: at least, the physical universe of Cartesian science is not to be taken purely as a value-neutral entity. Properly considered, it can provide some spiritual benefit. The limited universe of the medieval world view fosters an anthropocentric image of it, as created purely for our benefit, and this inclines us to seek a this-worldly fulfilment. The grandeur of the universe revealed by Cartesian science helps us overcome this parochialism. But, even more importantly, the real distinction between soul and body itself has moral implications. For if our soul is capable of existing without the body, if it is a ‘nobler’ kind of being, its contentments are not confined to this life, and this helps us to detach ourselves from the world and to overcome the fear of death (to Elisabeth, 15 Sept. 1645, AT IV, 292: OP III, 606). Here, then, there is, despite the break in cosmology, some affinity with the Stoic and Aristotelian–Thomist anthropologies: we possess a faculty higher than mere sensation, and to search for contentment through sensation would be amputating ourselves of what is best in us (the word ‘nobler’ is a revealing indication of the persistence of this hierarchical view of being). There is no longer a hierarchy of value within the soul; but the soul retains its primacy of value over the body. If this is so, then, we cannot altogether follow Taylor in identifying Descartes’s ethics as procedural in nature. The mechanistic philosophy requires Descartes to adapt some traditional ethical themes, such as the mastery of the passions, because it gives him a new theory of how the passions work. But, unlike Hobbes, he does not attempt to rethink ethics altogether in terms of the mechanistic philosophy. The mechanistic perspective is alone valid within physics, but it cannot be generalized beyond that context. Thus Descartes explains, in the same letter to Elisabeth, that

44

Introduction

an injury, say, should be scientifically understood in mechanistic terms, as the result of bodies moving in blind acquiescence to the laws of motion (that is how Spinoza would have us view it). But Descartes acknowledges that in another perspective we should consider it as expressly visited on us by God. The two perspectives are not reconcilable to our finite minds, but each is valid in its sphere. To be sure, the image of the tree of knowledge depicts ethics as a branch issuing from the trunk of physics, itself rooted in the truths of metaphysics.66 But this does not mean that ethical perspectives are wholly subordinated to those of physics: on the contrary. When Descartes discusses whether we should seek for final causes in nature, he tends to link it to the question whether the world has been created for our sake. Scientifically speaking, the answer to both questions is no.67 But, when he discusses these questions, Descartes tends to draw a distinction between the scientific and the moral perspective, and, within the latter, the answer is different. It is a good and pious thought, from a moral point of view (‘in Ethicis’), to think that God has made all for our sake (Principles, III.3, AT VIII, 81/IX-2, 104: OP III, 222). This encourages us to love God and feel grateful to him; what is more, it is true in so far as there is nothing we cannot make use of, since to consider it affords exercise for the mind and gives us a reason to praise God. Likewise, in the letter to Hyperaspistes he admits that we can say that all things were created for God’s glory: this is true in ethics, and in relation to the human species, since we are all bound to praise God for all his works.68 There is, besides, an exception to Descartes’s dismissal of the search for final causes in nature—namely, the human being as a compound of soul and body. From a mechanical point of view, we can understand the process of sensation in its physical aspects, in terms of 66

Principles, letter-preface to the French edition, AT IX-2, 14: OP III, 779–80. Principles, III.2–3, AT VIII, 80–1/IX-2, 104: OP III, 222–3; to Hyperaspistes, Aug. 1641, §10, AT III, 431–2 (translation in OP II, 370); Fifth Replies, IV.1, AT VII, 374–5: OP II, 821. 68 To Hyperaspistes, §10, AT III, 431: OP II, 370. Cf. also to Chanut, 6 June 1647, AT V, 53–5: OP III, 738–9. 67

Introduction

45

the stimulation of nerve filaments connecting the sense organs to the brain. But we shall not understand it fully, if we do not go further and conclude that the cerebral motions that deliver particular sensations to the mind do so in order to preserve us in being. The senses have been implanted in us by nature for this purpose, and thus assure us of God’s power and goodness (Meditation VI, AT VII, 87–8/IX, 69–70: OP II, 233–4/501). But this imparts an ethical dimension to the philosophical distinction between the error of seeking in the senses the principles of our knowledge and the truth that they function to conserve the union of mind and body. Empiricism, then, is a kind of ingratitude: a perversion of the God-given function of our various capacities. The instrumental judgement that we should use our abilities each for its proper function is enriched by the appeal to a divine purpose in nature, even if our grasp of such purpose is strictly limited and partial. In this acknowledgement of different perspectives, both valid, but incapable of being entertained simultaneously, there is an affinity with Descartes’s assertion, in the letter to Elisabeth of 28 June 1643, that we cannot simultaneously entertain the conception of the distinction between soul and body, and that of their union, although we have, in different contexts, to think both (AT III, 691–5: OP III, 44–8). This suggests that we cannot hope to derive Descartes’s ethical system in its entirety from his philosophy of nature and dualistic metaphysics. It still has recourse to traditional moral sources, the doctrine of a beneficent creator who has, from a certain point of view, made the universe for us and for his glory.

Descartes’s Ethics: (ii) Virtue and Happiness On the other hand, one might argue that by accepting an Epicurean account of the supreme good Descartes selects the ancient tradition that most radically divorces ethics from an order of value embodied in the universe. He writes to Elisabeth that: ´ Epicure n’a pas eu tort, considérant en quoi consiste la béatitude, et quel est le motif, ou la fin a` laquelle tendent toutes nos actions, de dire que c’est la

46

Introduction

volupté en général, c’est-à-dire le contentement de l’esprit. (18 Aug. 1645, AT IV, 276: OP III, 597) Epicurus was not mistaken, when considering what beatitude consists in, and what the motive or goal is towards which all our actions tend, to say that it is pleasure in general, that is, the contentment of the mind.

Descartes notes that Epicurus’ pleasure should not be interpreted as meaning sensual gratification, and this pleasure that is the supreme good is unattainable without virtue (as indeed some Epicureans taught) (AT IV, 276–7: OP III, 597).69 But, in point of fact, he is not exclusively committed to Epicureanism: on the contrary, he is attempting to synthesize the three main ancient schools, Aristotelian, Stoic, and Epicurean. Aristotle was right to see the sovereign good as composed of all the perfections of which human nature is capable, those of the body as well as the soul, and Zeno the Stoic was right to see that virtue has a special place among goods in that it alone depends wholly on our own free will (AT IV, 275–6: OP III, 596–7). The trouble is that, although the knowledge of duty is capable of inducing us to carry out good actions, right action cannot be an end in itself, for the ultimate end of all our actions is beatitude, and this can be defined only in terms of pleasure (‘cela ne nous feroit toutefois jouir d’aucune béatitude, s’il ne nous en revenait aucun plaisir’) (AT IV, 276: OP III, 597). If we combine the Stoic and Epicurean approaches, while bearing in mind the Aristotelian doctrine that happiness must include the body as well as the soul (which rules out a hardline Stoic view), we have the solution: the supreme good is happiness—that is, pleasure; but we cannot attain pleasure except through virtue, since only over virtue do we have full control. We need to know the true path to true pleasure, as Descartes explains by means of an analogy. In an archery competition, unless the prize is displayed, the sight of the target is not a sufficient incentive to shoot; yet, if you fail to hit the target, no amount of 69

Torquatus takes this view in Cicero’s De finibus, I.xviii.57–61. Jill Kraye notes that this becomes a commonplace of seventeenth-century defences of Epicureanism (‘Conceptions of Moral Philosophy’, 1295–8).

Introduction

47

desire for the prize will do. So virtue, the target, needs a prize to make it desirable, and the prize is contentment; but, conversely, there is no contentment without virtue: La vertu, qui est le blanc, ne se fait pas fort désirer, lorsqu’on la voit toute seule; et le contentement, qui est le prix, ne peut eˆtre acquis, si ce n’est qu’on la [la vertu] suive. (AT IV, 277: OP III, 597). Virtue, which is the bull, is not especially attractive when seen on its own; and contentment, which is the prize, cannot be gained, if we do not pursue virtue.

But if contentment is the prize of virtue, who is the prize-giver? There are two ways of dealing with this question, to which, since he does not ask it, Descartes gives no answer. One is to argue that the question mistakenly separates the natural fruit of an activity from the activity itself. For the first-class archer the true prize is not the bag of gold, or whatever, offered by the local squire, but the satisfaction of seeing the arrow thud into its target, despite all the obstacles of distance, wind, pressure. The point would be that we are so constituted that the successful performance of an activity, the successful exercise of our powers, brings satisfaction, irrespective of any extrinsic gain. This might be how Descartes would answer the question: but it is a very Aristotelian answer (see Ethics, X.iv.5–11 (1174b –1175a ) ). The other answer would be to say that God is the prize-giver in that he has established the link between virtue and pleasure. Indeed, in a sense the answers merge, since Descartes would not accept any notion of nature as a power independent of God. Thus Descartes’s synthesis of the ancient ethical systems, his coupling of pleasure as the supreme good with virtue as the only means of attaining it, remains within a traditional perspective on happiness as depending, in virtue of a divine dispensation, on human beings’ fullest exercise of their natural powers. Nor is this happiness exclusively the reward of virtuous action: for we can experience the greatest happiness possible in this life more directly by the contemplation of the divine majesty, a foretaste of the happiness promised by faith (Meditation III, AT

48

Introduction

VII, 52/IX, 42: OP II, 205/454). In locating the supreme happiness in contemplation, Descartes, again, is at one with Aristotle (Ethics, X.vii.1–9 (1177a –1178a ) ). In many ways, then, Descartes’s ethical perspective is more traditional than it might seem. As I suggested earlier, the definition of the pursuit of virtue just quoted indicates the procedure to be followed in the quest for virtue, but is not intended to specify the ‘matter’ or content of virtue, still less to establish the procedure for its own sake as part of a generalized instrumental approach to ethics. As far as the matter of virtue goes, it seems to be specified in the first instance by the perspective in which Descartes presents issues of morality as distinct from physical philosophy: that is, our dependence on and obligations towards God. But there is another dimension: our relationship to other human beings, and here I think it is arguable that Descartes strikes a new note. One is so used to the perception of Descartes in terms of an isolated ego sceptical of the very reality of other people, reducing the passers-by to spectres or automata (Meditation II, AT VII, 32/IX, 25: OP II, 188–9/426–7), that it is almost disconcerting to observe how much his ethics depends on relationships with others. Thus in the sixth part of the Discours de la méthode he speaks of ‘la loi qui nous oblige a` procurer, autant qu’il est en nous, le bien général de tous les hommes’ (the law that obliges us to procure, as far as we are able, the general good of all human beings) (AT VI, 61: OP I, 634). Then again he goes on to speak of ‘tous ceux qui désirent en général le bien des hommes, c’est-à-dire tous ceux qui sont en effet vertueux, et non point par faux semblant, ni seulement par opinion’ (all who desire in general the good of human beings, that is, all those who are virtuous truly, rather than by a false appearance or merely in other people’s opinion) (AT VI, 65: OP I, 637–8). To be useful to no one is to be worthless (AT VI, 66: OP I, 638). This does not prove that a hermit, say, is worthless: for all we know, he may indeed be benefiting us by his prayers. But someone whose ‘virtue’ terminates in himself, as a mere set of good personal habits, and does not significantly benefit others, would not earn Descartes’s approbation.

Introduction

49

As is well known, Descartes held that the eternal truths were free creations of God: I see very clearly that all the lines of a circle drawn from the centre to the circumference are equal, but God could have created a world in which they are not so.70 Descartes would presumably hold the same of moral laws (as, in the fourteenth century, did Ockham): it is God’s decree, not an intrinsically necessary relationship, that makes murder wrong. What differentiates the moral from the metaphysical is that clear and distinct perceptions are less requisite in the former than the latter. A confused sense that the world needs a cause outside itself is entirely worthless metaphysically. A confused sense that I ought, say, to do good to other people may help me to be a decent person, if not to attain the heights of virtue as earlier defined. This is brought out in another passage that sets out the relationship between virtue and the benefit of other people. Après qu’on a ainsi reconnu la bonté de Dieu, l’immortalité de nos aˆmes et la grandeur de l’univers, il y a encore une vérité dont la connaissance me semble fort utile: qui est que, bien que chacun de nous soit une personne séparée des autres, et dont, par conséquent, les intérêts sont en quelque façon distincts de ceux du reste du monde, on doit toutefois penser qu’on ne saurait subsister seul, et qu’on est, en effet, l’une des parties de l’univers, et plus particulièrement encore l’une des parties de cette terre, l’une des ´ parties de cet Etat, de cette société, de cette famille, a` laquelle on est joint par sa demeure, par son serment, par sa naissance. (To Elisabeth, 15 Sept. 1645, AT IV, 292–3: OP III, 607) After we have thus recognized the goodness of God, the immortality of our souls and the greatness of the universe, there is a further truth the knowledge of which appears to me very profitable; to wit, that, although each of us is a person separated from all the rest, and whose interests are thus in some sense distinct from everybody else’s, we should none the less bear in mind that we cannot exist on our own, and that we are, in fact, one of the parts of the universe, and more particularly still one of the parts of 70 To Mersenne, 27 May 1630, AT I, 151–3: OP I, 268. Taylor notes that the new mechanical science was partly impelled by an anti-teleological morality: a voluntaristic conception of God’s power to define good and evil that Descartes revives in his doctrine of God’s creation of the eternal truths (Sources of the Self, 161).

50

Introduction

this earth, one of the parts of a particular state, of a particular society, of a particular family, to which one is joined by one’s dwelling place, by one’s oath of allegiance, and by one’s birth.

This basic identification of oneself as part of a larger whole yields a general moral law: ‘Et il faut toujours préférer les intérêts du tout, dont on est partie, a` ceux de sa personne en particulier’ (And we should always put the interests of the whole of which we are a part above those peculiar to ourselves) (AT IV, 293: OP III, 607). This law requires to be applied ‘avec mesure et discrétion’ in the light of a calculation of relative loss, or risk, and gain, which may sometimes take an apparently egoistic form: thus, if a man is worth more by himself alone than the rest of his townsfolk put together, he would not be right to wish to save the town at the cost of his own life (AT IV, 293: OP III, 607). There seems to be something horribly cold-blooded about the last sentence. But Descartes is not, I think, suggesting that this judgement about value is purely subjective, or that anyone would be entitled to make it about themselves. On the contrary, he goes on to speak with admiration of those who sacrifice their lives for the public good. The phrase ‘se vouloir perdre pour la sauver’ is ambiguous, but I take the dilemma to be not whether one should put one’s life at risk in order to save the city (like the legendary Roman general Decius, who rushed alone into the midst of the enemy because he knew it was fated that Rome would win the battle if he was killed) but whether one should sacrifice it in the hope of saving the city.71 Should a scientist carrying the unpublished formula for a new and powerful medicine who can escape from a city under siege none the less seize a rifle and join the last handful of defenders at the barricades? It is a real dilemma, but only an extreme form of a difficulty Descartes explicitly discusses elsewhere, in Part VI of the Discours de la méthode: our moral duties, he says, 71 The Decii (three generations of the family appear to have sacrificed themselves for victory) are mentioned in Les Passions de l’âme, § 173, AT XI, 461–2: OP III, 1081 (and see note). But Descartes’s analysis makes no mention of fate: they hoped to inspire the Romans to victory or were certain of future glory.

Introduction

51

extend further than the present time, so that it may be right to refrain from doing something that might help the living with the intention of doing something else that will bring a greater benefit to our descendants (AT VI, 66: OP I, 638). In any case, Descartes condemns the systematic commitment to one’s own exclusive advantage (answering by implication the question raised earlier as to whether the libertine could recognize himself or herself in Cartesian ethics), and praises self-sacrifice for the good of others. If we subordinated everything to our own interests, we would harm others whenever we could gain by doing so, and could never be said to be virtuous. But, if we consider ourselves as part of the public, we take pleasure in doing good to all, even risking our lives in a good cause. This consideration is the source of all genuine heroism. What is striking here is that no clear and distinct idea of one’s duty to the public is required for the action to be laudable: even a confused sense that we owe more to the public than to ourselves is sufficient (AT IV, 293–4: OP III, 607–8).72 In any case, religion tends to sharpen this awareness of our duties to others: Et on est naturellement porté a` l’avoir, lorsqu’on connaˆıt et qu’on aime Dieu comme il faut: car alors s’abandonnant du tout a` sa volonté, on se dépouille de ses propres intérêts, et on n’a point d’autre passion que de faire ce qu’on croit lui eˆtre agréable; en suite de quoi on a des satisfactions d’esprit et des contentements, qui valent incomparablement davantage que toutes les petites joies passagères qui dépendent des sens. (AT IV, 294: OP III, 608) And we are naturally inclined to have it, if we know and love God as we should: for then abandoning ourselves entirely to His will, we strip ourselves of our own interests, and have no other passion than that of doing what we think agreeable to him; as a result of which we have a mental satisfaction

72 Cf. Les Passions de l’âme, §95, AT XI, 400: OP III, 1026, where Descartes analyses courageous behaviour that seeks no gain or glory: the underlying sense that it is good to be brave or skilful enough to tackle the danger seems not to require explicit awareness. The passage is discussed in my Early Modern French Thought, 86–7.

52

Introduction

and contentment incomparably superior to all the fleeting little joys that depend on the senses.

The passage throws considerable light on Cartesian ethics. We can rise above our interests, and it is meritorious to do so (for the selfsatisfaction that results is surely represented here as the by-product or perhaps the reward rather than the goal of the action). We can do so for religion’s sake, but also for other people’s, for the good of the public, the community or commonwealth, to which we belong. (This assertion of our duty to the public is typically Stoic.) There is, then, after all, a law of human nature, and virtue consists largely in obedience to it: the law that commands us to envisage our actions in relation to the good of the whole to which we belong. The conception is somewhat utilitarian in that, between two actions both of which may benefit our fellow creatures, we should choose that which will bring the greater benefit (but Descartes nowhere implies that this might involve transgressing commonly accepted moral norms). The point of reference here is no longer a cosmic order transcending humanity—Taylor is right about that—but a human community, or, in the fullest perspective, the human race itself, which we may and should seek to benefit. On the other hand, the social order reflects a divine dispensation: for God has so contrived it that, even if everyone put their own interests first, and neglected charity, they would none the less benefit others more often than not (to Elisabeth, 6 Oct. 1645, AT IV, 316–17: OP III, 619). The reason for this is that those who are reputed helpful receive assistance from others, even from those they have not personally helped, and the advantages of this outweigh the trouble taken in pleasing other people (to Elisabeth, Jan. 1646, AT IV, 356: OP III, 636). Descartes thus takes his place in the lineage of those early modern thinkers who sought to reconcile individual and public interests via the conception of a divinely established order.73 But he is not putting forward an ‘invisible-hand’ argument to the effect that the system of 73 See Pierre Force, Self-Interest before Adam Smith: A Genealogy of Economic Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). Lucien Goldmann argues that

Introduction

53

social relationships ensures that in working for our own interests we happen to promote the good of the public, whether we realize it or not. His point is that a rational calculation of one’s own interests and pleasures would lead one to pursue them by doing good to others. Of course, thus interpreted, Descartes could be reinscribed within a Taylorian narrative of the refocusing of nature away from a cosmic onto a human order. Nor has my purpose been to reject Taylor’s interpretation of Descartes lock, stock, and barrel, though I think it underestimates the elements of continuity and tradition linking Descartes’s thought to that of earlier periods. In any case, we are now in a position, perhaps, to return to the problem out of which this excursus on Descartes has grown, which was, whether early modern thought, especially that most influenced by the new mechanical philosophy, involves a separation of the psychological from the ethical, especially if the latter is identified with an order of value embodied in the universe itself, to which man is required to conform. We saw that such a separation does take place, in different ways, in the thought of Hobbes and Spinoza. In Descartes also we saw that something of the kind occurs, since the mechanistic account of the passions tends to imply the equivalence of ethical conduct with self-management, rather than the bringing of oneself into conformity with any cosmic order or inbuilt tendency of human nature. He stresses the ethical value of acting for the benefit of the community more than that of conforming to a moral law of right and wrong: not that he rejects such a moral law, but he does not emphasize it. This stress on the public good, although no doubt influenced by Stoicism, is thoroughly compatible with a reorientation of the ethical vision towards concrete this-worldly benefits to be propagated among humanity: a vision characteristic of the Enlightenment. On the other hand, Descartes does, as we saw, assert that a true knowledge of God naturally inclines us to love him and to submit to his providence; and he interprets his Descartes’s ethic is radically incompatible with his fundamental individualism (‘Le Problème du mal’, 136–9), overlooking, I think, the role of God as a mediation between the individual and what exists outside him or her, which applies in the ethical realm as well as the metaphysical.

54

Introduction

dualism in terms of a metaphysical hierarchy of value (the mind is nobler than the body), which itself has moral implications (therefore we should seek the contentment of the mind as superior to that of the body). So there are some traces of the vision of a cosmic order and of the ethical perspective on anthropology that still operate in his thought. And this is especially clear if we compare him to Spinoza, who seeks to liquidate all residues of the conception of a personal providential deity and of an order of value embodied in the universe.

Conclusion It will be seen that relationships in early modern literature and thought between psychological analysis and ethical norms are complex and variable. Enough has been said to suggest that we cannot separate a kernel of ‘psychology’ from the husk of morality and proceed to discourse freely on seventeenth-century accounts of the passions, motives, and character, irrespective of any ethical (or for that matter religious) considerations: for this would be to condemn oneself to a fully-fledged anachronism, and obscure any possibility of historically and generically based discrimination between the position of different writers. Up to now, I have discussed literary texts (chiefly plays) as well as texts of philosophy (Montaigne, as was noted above, existing in a kind of space between the two). It is important to note how the two areas overlapped in early modern French culture. But obviously I cannot hope to consider the whole of French literature of the seventeenth century in terms of all the ethical and psychological perspectives current at the time. The literary texts selected are those that seem most relevant to the aim of this book: that is, to prolong into the ethical and psychological spheres the preoccupations of Early Modern French Thought: The Age of Suspicion—for the need to struggle with the deceits of experience was seen as no less acute in these areas than in that of metaphysics. In the metaphysical realm, the impulse to challenge the promptings of spontaneous experience came partly from the new science, and

Introduction

55

from the Cartesian response to the challenge of Pyrrhonism, but partly, I argued, from the revival of Augustinian theology. The general perspective in which we might consider that revival is discussed in Chapter 2 of the earlier book, to which the reader is therefore referred, and I do not wish to repeat myself here. On the other hand, I said comparatively little there of the content of Augustinian theology. I need to remedy that omission here, but also to put that theology in the context of more general questions about conceptions of human nature in seventeenth-century France. These conceptions are therefore the subject of Part One. But, since much seventeenth-century thinking about ‘human nature’ was conditioned by the theological doctrine of original sin, Part Two examines that doctrine more closely, as developed by St Augustine, reformulated by St Thomas Aquinas, and then re-presented by early modern Roman Catholic theologians, mostly of an Augustinian persuasion. Part Three explores two crucial elements in the Augustinian portrayal of original sin, the conceptions of concupiscence and of self-love, while Part Four deals with a particular effect of self-love: ignorance, confusion, and self-deception as to our dispositions and motivations. These general concerns condition, then, the choice of material. I have eschewed the option of invoking philosophical or theological concepts to make sense of literary texts that do not clearly invoke or allude to them. Thus, when discussing perspectives on human nature in the first chapter of Part One, I include La Bruyère, since Les Caractères explicitly mobilizes the concept of human nature. The focus is gradually narrowed to the Augustinian vision, which is further explored in the chapter on original sin. The doctrine of original sin no doubt had a role in shaping literary perspectives, but one seldom if ever finds secular writers explicitly invoking it (a few references in La Rochefoucauld are noticed elsewhere, but these were not kept in published versions of the Maximes). Hence this chapter contains no discussion of literature. Part Two deals with concupiscence and self-love. It contains a chapter on La Rochefoucauld, since he actually uses the term amour-propre (though emphasizing it less in later than in earlier versions of the Maximes) as well as the related term intérêt,

56

Introduction

but no other literary writers are considered: the emphasis is on theology and philosophy, on texts that discuss the concept of amourpropre rather than illustrating it in narrative or dramatic form.74 In Part Three, on self-knowledge, however, literature reappears, since we find playwrights and novelists explicitly engaging with the theme. This is evidenced by their use of the verb se tromper in the analysis of feelings and attitudes (it seems to bear the genuinely reflexive sense of ‘deceiving oneself ’, rather than the common intransitive sense of ‘being mistaken’). Again, the term ‘hypocrisy’ is foregrounded within Molière’s plays as a key to the understanding of character and behaviour, and the question whether hypocrisy may be unconscious is thus relevant. Therefore there is some discussion of literary texts’ explorations of the phenomenon of self-deception, before I turn to theological and philosophical attempts to analyse and explain it. I have already, for comparative purposes, paid some attention to writers from outside France (Hobbes and Spinoza). Likewise, I discuss some texts from before (and occasionally after) the early modern period (the theology, for instance, of St Augustine or St Thomas Aquinas) where these provide the essential frame of reference for other texts discussed. Most of the texts, however, are French and from the seventeenth century. Of course, it is possible to argue that ideas in early modern Europe should be studied on a transnational basis, since European thought was not confined within national boundaries. This is perfectly true, and therefore, when I discuss philosophy and theology, I take account of non-French authors (a Spaniard like Suárez or a Fleming like Jansenius). On the other hand (quite apart from the fact that I know the French domain best), the concern here is with the ideas as textually embodied, and it is certainly the case that national and vernacular bodies of writing were emerging in this period, which often behaved as self-sufficient. To be sure, it is possible to trace international influences in La 74

The concept of amour-propre has been used to illuminate the work of Molière by Pierre Force, Molière ou le prix des choses (Paris: Nathan, 1994), 101–29, and that of Racine and Madame de Lafayette by Rohou, Le XVIIe Siècle, 437–49.

Introduction

57

Rochefoucauld, as was noted above. But one of the privileges of the literary text is to cover its own tracks, and to explain itself in its own terms, whereas philosophical writing tends to define itself against existing positions, whether or not it refers to their upholders by name. We can read Corneille’s comedies without knowing their Spanish sources, and we could make a certain sense of the Maximes even if we had never heard of Hobbes, or Gracián, or Augustine’s critique of pagan virtue; whereas, although Locke tends not to mention Descartes’s name, he clearly expects his reader to recognize the existence of a body of thought affirming the notion of innate ideas. Again, international movements of ideas take different forms in particular cultures. Neo-Augustinianism was an international trend even within Roman Catholicism: its French followers read Jansenius, but also the Irish theologians Conrius (Conroy) and Sinnich.75 But the Jansenist controversy in France had its own dynamic, with one French-language polemic responding to another. So to follow the thread of the topics discussed here chiefly through French texts seems justifiable. But it is high time to move to the topics themselves. 75 ´ Pascal used the Trias of Sinnich (Paulus Erynachus) in his work for the Ecrits sur la grâce (Œuvres complètes, ed. Michel Le Guern, 2 vols., Bibliothèque de la Pléiade ´ (Paris: Gallimard, 1998–2000), II, 1213). In the text of the Ecrits, he cites Conrius with ´ approval (Ecrits sur la grâce, XV, OC II, 312 (and see the corresponding note, p. 1248 n. 3) ). Presumably he was introduced to them by Arnauld. The title of Conrius’s Peregrinus Jerichuntinus (‘The Jericho Pilgrim’) may have suggested the simile of the man set upon by robbers in the second Provinciale, although the ultimate source is the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10: 30–7). See OC I, 602–3 and 1149 (p. 602 n. 2).


PART ONE HUMAN NATURE


1 Approaches An interest in the definition and exploration of human nature has been very commonly accepted as characteristic of French literature. The following is a rather portentous statement of this view: ‘About the year 1548 [. . .] France decided to embark on a great work and to spend centuries on it. [. . .] What was this work that was undertaken by a whole people? What is this monument which French literature set out to build? The reply can be given at once. It is a portrait of Man.’1 Whatever one might say about this formulation (which might give the impression that English literature on the contrary deals mainly with elves, hobbits, and orcs), it is only fair to note that more recent critics have concurred in identifying an interest in human nature as especially characteristic of seventeenth-century French writing. This interest took different forms, was attached to a greater or lesser extent to different bodies of theory or doctrine (sometimes appealing instead to empirical observation or subjective reflection), and sustained optimistic or pessimistic attitudes. Critics have focused on all these aspects.2 Drawing on these approaches, 1 George Duhamel, Défense des lettres (Paris, 1936), quoted in Martin Turnell, The Classical Moment: Studies of Corneille, Molière and Racine, 2nd edn. (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1964), 13. 2 For various analyses, see Bernard Tocanne, L’Idée de nature en France dans la seconde moitié du XVIIe siècle: Contribution a` l’histoire de la pensée classique (Paris: Klincksieck, 1978), 139–40; Paul Bénichou, Morales du grand siècle, Folio/Essais (Paris: Gallimard, 1992 (1st pub. 1948)), 11–12; de Mourgues, Two French Moralists, 4, 173–4; van Delft, Littérature et anthropologie, 2. Ian Maclean, Logic, Signs and Nature in the Renaissance: The Case of Learned Medicine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 234–75)

62

Human Nature

in particular that of Louis van Delft (Littérature et anthropologie, 6–9), one might put forward a working distinction between what we might call ‘descriptive’ and ‘problematic’ conceptions of human nature: on the one hand, the attempt to describe human nature on the basis of observed characteristics, and, on the other, the stress on the fundamental incomprehensibility of human nature, the limitations of the descriptive approach. I shall expand upon the distinction between ‘descriptive’ and ‘problematic’ approaches, gradually narrowing down to one particular ‘problematic’ approach: the Augustinian perspective, in which the event of the Fall is held to be indispensable to our understanding of human nature.

Human Nature: The ‘Descriptive’ Approach The word ‘descriptive’ here is not intended to suggest a perspective restricted to empirical observation and giving rise to the neutral evaluation of a set of properties. As was argued in the Introduction, apropos of the relationship between the ethical and the psychological, the point of describing human nature was almost always seen, in the early modern period, as to evaluate: to identify the mode of life most appropriate to a being endowed with our qualities and faculties. This ‘descriptive’ approach is not peculiar to any historical period. 3 It harks back to Aristotle, and he exerts a certain influence on later manifestations of it: but these are not always a systematic application of his concepts and methods. It consists in identifying those properties in virtue of which we class an individual entity in a certain species and, by the same token, that species in relation to others (for what distinguishes John or Mary as a human is what distinguishes humans examines medical conceptions of human nature within the broader conception of nature as a whole. 3 Martha Nussbaum observes that ‘Ancient accounts of ‘‘nature’’, especially of ‘‘human nature’’, are value-laden accounts. They select some aspects of human beings and their lives as especially important or valuable, deciding only then that a certain element should be counted as part of our nature. Frequently, in so doing, they proceed by appealing to the actual sense of value of human beings’ (The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 30).

Approaches

63

from other animals). Among such properties, it is important to distinguish those that are essential (they make the entity in question what it is) from those that are accidental (the entity would be what it is even if they were different). For instance, one might hold that it is an essential feature of the human being that its perceptible outer surface is skin, inasmuch as we should have difficulty recognizing a creature covered with fur, or scales, or feathers as human. This skin must of necessity be a certain colour, but its particular colour is accidental, in the sense that a human being is not defined as such by any particular hue. (Of course, what counts as accidental and what as essential in a given case will depend on the term we are concerned to define: thus, certain skin colours would be incompatible with the definition of ‘Caucasian’. It might also be a matter of nakedly ideological debate, as the example chosen acknowledges: Voltaire, for instance, begins a treatise on metaphysics by arguing, on the basis of their appearance, that black people belong to a different race from Europeans.4 ) The concept of ‘nature’ largely overlaps with that of ‘essence’ but does not quite coincide. It is, one might suggest, a more empirical category. Ordinary language, both in English and in French, suggests as much. Thus, one might account for some petty resentment by saying ‘it’s only human nature’ without implying that it could or ought to be included in a definition of what it is to be human. ‘Nature’ covers properties that would strictly speaking count as ‘accidental’, but that experience observes in many or most cases. In many of the seventeenth-century statements about human nature that will be examined here, it would be problematic to substitute ‘essence’ (apart from the fact that ‘essence’ belongs to a technical scholastic vocabulary, whereas ‘nature’ had found its way into everyday discourse). ‘Nature’, indeed, can be considered on two levels. So far we have talked of individuals purely as members of some category, but the notion of an individual nature is also recognized. Thus Aquinas 4

François-Marie Arouet de Voltaire, Traité de métaphysique, I, in Mélanges, ed. Jacques Van den Heuvel, preface by Emmanuel Berl, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1976), 157–202 (pp. 159–61).

64

Human Nature

writes: ‘Something can be natural to something in two ways. First, according to the nature of the species: thus, it is natural to man to be capable of laughter, and natural to fire to travel upwards. Second, according to the nature of the individual: thus it is natural to Socrates or Plato to be sickly or healthy, depending on his particular constitution.’ (ST IaIIae, q. 51, a. 1). However much the individual’s constitution predisposed him to sickness or health, one would not seek to define him or her as sickly or healthy: definitions, being scientific utterances, pertain to general realities.5 One could, however, seek to define in what a sickly or healthy constitution consists. In any case, in all descriptive conceptions of nature there is the concern with distinguishing features: those that make a thing what it is—that is, that assign it to a certain category or distinguish it, as an individual, from other members of that category (thus one can say that X would not be what he is if he were not prone to gossip: but this is not the same kind of ‘what he is’ as his being a human being). In many of its versions, and certainly in Aristotle, this approach has a strongly normative dimension. To discover what something is, is to discover how it functions, and therefore what is good for it, in the sense of what enables it to be itself. Hence the fundamental question of ancient moral philosophy: given that the human essence is suchand-such, what is the Supreme or Sovereign Good for Man?6 This question is posed also in some early modern moral philosophy. A good example is provided by Montaigne’s junior Guillaume du Vair (1556–1621), a magistrate, politician, and diplomat, who finished 5 This would be true even of definitions (such as those an orator might use) that are not strictly scientific in that they aim not at formulating knowledge but at expressing a common opinion. On definitions in rhetoric, see Aristotle, Rhetoric, II.xxiii.8 (1398a ) (Aristotle, ‘Art’ of Rhetoric, ed. and trans. J. H. Freese, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, and London: Heinemann, 1926) ): he does not draw a sharp distinction here between opinion and knowledge, since he speaks both of what is generally admitted and of what is the case. 6 For examples of this approach to moral philosophy, see Aristotle, Ethics, I.vii.1–16 (1097a –1098a ); Cicero, De finibus, II.xiv.45–7, and De officiis, ed. and trans. Walter Miller, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 1990 (1st pub. 1913) ), I.iv.11–15.

Approaches

65

his career as a bishop. His De la philosophie morale des Sto¨ıques is faithful to his ancient sources in seeking to deduce norms of conduct directly from a general conception of human nature: Que fera donc l’homme a` qui la nature, outre l’inclination qu’ont les choses mortes, a donné les sens, outre les sens qu’ont les autres animaux, a donné le discours et la raison, pour connoˆıtre et choisir de ce qui se présente ce qui est plus excellent et plus propre a` son usage? Ne pouvons-nous pas conclure qu’il a sa fin, qui lui est proposée comme un dernier but, a` laquelle tendent toutes ses actions? 7 What then is man to do, who has been given by nature, as well as inclination, such as inanimate things have, senses; who, as well as senses, which the other animals have, has been given reason and judgement, to know, and to choose from whatever is presented to him, what is most excellent and most suitable for him to use? May we not conclude that he has his [distinctive] end, which has been assigned to him as an ultimate goal, to which all his actions tend?

This way of putting the question would have been regarded as correct by Aristotle as well as by the Stoics, to whom Du Vair is more immediately indebted. But the Stoics are more evident in his answer, with its echo of the Stoic consentire naturæ : ‘Pour définir proprement le bien, on peut dire que ce n’est autre chose sinon l’être et l’agir selon la nature’ (To define the good correctly, we may say that it is nothing other than existing and acting according to nature) (p. 64).8 Acting according to nature, for Du Vair as for the ancient Stoics, means not yielding to primitive impulse, but acting up to the implications of the distinctive human essence. And hence ‘le bien donc de l’homme consiste en l’usage de la droite raison—qui est a` dire en la vertu, laquelle n’est autre chose que la ferme disposition de notre volonté a` suivre ce qui est honnête et convenable’ (therefore 7 Guillaume du Vair, Philosophie morale des sto¨ıques (1st pub. 1585), in De la sainte philosophie: Philosophie morale des sto¨ıques, ed. G. Michaut (Paris: Vrin, 1945), 63. 8 Cf. Cicero, De finibus, II.xi.34, and Seneca, De vita beata, III–V, in Moral Essays, ed. and trans. John W. Basore, 3 vols., Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1928–35).

66

Human Nature

the good of man consists in the use of right reason—which is as much as to say, in virtue, which itself is nothing other than the firm disposition of our will to pursue what is honourable and suitable) (p. 64). This is tantamount to making use of things in accordance with reason (p. 72). We find the same teleological approach, the same equation of the human and the rational order, in Pierre Charron (1541–1603), a priest and notable preacher, a friend and imitator of Montaigne, who also acknowledges his debt to Du Vair. Like Montaigne, he uses the idea of nature to regulate our values, but in deducing obligations from nature it is with Du Vair that he has more in common.9 Probity, he argues, is an imperative of our human nature: Nature [. . .] oblige tout homme d’estre et se rendre tel qu’il doit, c’est a` dire se conformer et regler selon elle. Nature nous est ensemble et maitresse qui nous enjoint et commande la preud’homie, et loy ou instruction qui nous l’enseigne. [. . .] Il y a une obligation naturelle, interne et universelle a [sic] tout homme d’estre homme de bien, droit entier, selon l’intention de son autheur et facteur. (II.3, 420) Nature requires every man to be and to make himself as he should be, that is, to conform himself to her and regulate himself by her. Nature stands to us in the position both of the mistress who enjoins and commands us to be virtuous, and of the law or instruction that teaches us what this means. [. . .] There is a natural, internal, and universal obligation on every man to be a good man, upright and full of integrity, in keeping with the intention of his maker and creator.

Charron can thus equate the good life with living according to nature, understood, along Stoic lines, as the light within us of equity and universal reason (p. 424). To live according to Nature is thus 9 Charron admits his debt to Du Vair’s account of the passions (Pierre Charron, De la sagesse, 2nd edn. (Paris: David Douceur, 1604), ed. Barbara Negroni, Corpus des Œuvres de Philosophie en Langue Française (Paris: Fayard, 1986), Book I, [preface to chapter 18], ‘Passions et affections: Advertisement’, 153); but this is only one aspect of their common perspective. On the concept of nature in Montaigne, see Maclean, Montaigne philosophe, 62–9.

Approaches

67

to live in accordance with the specific laws of human nature, and in particular with the hierarchy of faculties within us: Le bien, le but et la fin de l’homme auquel git son repos, sa liberté et son contentement, et en un mot sa perfection en ce monde, est vivre et agir selon nature, quand ce qui est en luy le plus excellent commande, c’est a` dire la raison. (p. 429) The good, the end, and the goal of man, in which his rest, his freedom, and his contentment all reside, and in a word his perfection in this world, is to live and act according to nature, under the command of the highest part of himself, that is, reason.

Charron’s approach is not purely descriptive: as we shall see, he is concerned to emphasize problematic aspects of human nature, in particular the difficulty of gaining access to the depths of our inner world, to our secret thoughts and desires. But in any case, the descriptive approach does not always involve a normative content (just as, it was suggested in the Introduction, we encounter in some texts an interest in psychology divorced from ethical judgements). This is particularly so when, instead of distinguishing mankind from the rest of nature, the descriptive approach emphasizes common features. There are powerful literary expressions of this perspective: this is Molière’s Philinte: Oui, je vois ces défauts dont votre aˆme murmure Comme vices unis a` l’humaine nature; Et mon esprit enfin n’est pas plus offensé De voir un homme fourbe, injuste, intéressé, Que de voir des vautours affamés de carnage, Des singes malfaisants, et des loups pleins de rage.10 Yes, I see these faults of which your soul complains As vices that are part of human nature; My mind, to sum up, is no more offended To see a man villainous, unjust, self-interested, 10 Molière, Le Misanthrope (1666), I.i.173–8, in Œuvres complètes, ed. Georges Couton, 2 vols., Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1971), vol. II.

68

Human Nature Than to see vultures hungry for their prey, Mischievous monkeys, and ferocious wolves.

The sentiments are echoed by La Bruyère, like Molière a bourgeois involved by his work with the aristocracy (he had been a tutor in the household of the prince de Condé, to which he remained attached when his functions as tutor ceased). This position afforded him a detached insight into different social worlds: Ne nous emportons point contre les hommes en voyant leur dureté, leur ingratitude, leur injustice, leur fierté, l’amour d’eux-mêmes, et l’oubli des autres; ils sont ainsi faits, c’est leur nature, c’est ne pouvoir supporter que la pierre tombe, ou que le feu s’élève.11 Let us not rail against men when we see their harshness, their ingratitude, their injustice, their pride, the love of self and the forgetting of others: this is the way they are made, it is their nature, [to complain about it would be like] finding it unbearable that stones should fall, or fire rise upwards.

This apparent rejection of evaluation is of course a deeply negative evaluation; acceptance here is criticism. The natural analogies here are revealing. They show that La Bruyère is still working with the ancient and medieval conception that all entities display a natural tendency or inclination (what Augustine terms pondus) towards their resting place: stone, as a form of earth, tends downwards to the centre of the earth, whereas fire’s nature is to rise.12 The view is challenged by the philosophical innovators of the early modern period, not simply because they can provide more economical mechanical explanations, but because they think the old ones absurd, since they credit inanimate objects with attributes 11 Jean de La Bruyère, Les Caractères (1688–96), ed. Emmanuel Bury, Le Livre de Poche Classique (Paris: Librairie Générale Française, 2004), ‘De l’homme’, 1. Page numbers (given only when necessary) refer to this edition, but I have also used that of Robert Garapon (Les Caractères ou les mœurs de ce siècle, ed. Robert Garapon, Classiques Garnier (Paris: Garnier, 1962) ). 12 See Augustine, Confessions, XIII.9, and the quotation from Aquinas above (n. 5); also C. S. Lewis, The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964), 92–4. The term pondus is important in Augustine’s thought, as is later shown.

Approaches

69

of intelligent or at least living things.13 But La Bruyère’s fragment shows that the old cosmology still had imaginative potential in the late seventeenth century, even when philosophers and scientists had already done much to discredit it; and that his pessimism has nothing to do with philosophical or scientific modernism. Its roots are ancient, watered, as it may have seemed, by a rainfall of bad experience, constant across the centuries. However, the thesis of a continuity of human nature may clash with a sense of the particularity of one’s historical moment. La Rochefoucauld observes that ‘les vices sont de tous les temps, les hommes sont nés avec de l’intérêt, de la cruauté et de la débauche’ (the vices belong to every period, human beings are born with self-interest, cruelty, and debauchery); yet he then puzzles over the fact that his own age goes beyond all others in wickedness, even in France, where everything—the national temperament, the established religion, and the character of the ruling monarch—ought to militate against such enormities (he may, it is suggested, have been thinking of the notorious Brinvilliers poisoning case of 1676).14 This is mere impressionism, perhaps, a typical distortion of perspective: after all, nothing is more common than to see the atrocities of our own time as somehow unprecedented. In La Bruyère, though, we find a more nuanced attitude to continuity and discontinuity: En effet les hommes n’ont point changé selon le cœur et selon les passions: ils sont encore tels qu’ils e´taient alors, et qu’ils sont marqués dans Théophraste, vains, dissimulés, flatteurs, intéressés, effrontés, importuns, défiants, médisants, querelleux, superstitieux.15 13 Descartes, Sixth Replies, AT VII, 442/IX, 240–1: OP II, 885–6; Pascal, Pensées, L 958/S 795/LG 744. 14 La Rochefoucauld, Réflexions diverses, XIX, ‘Des e´vénements de ce siècle’, in Maximes, Mémoires, Œuvres diverses, [Maximes, Reflexions diverses, ed. Jacques Truchet, ´ rev. Marc Escola; Portraits, Mémoires, Grand Ecrivains de la France edition, rev. Alain Brunn], La Pochothèque: Le Livre de Poche/Classiques Garnier (Paris: Garnier, 2001), 756 and n. 2. This edition is subsequently referred to by the abbreviation MMOD. 15 La Bruyère, ‘Discours sur Théophraste’, Les Caractères, 69.

70

Human Nature

In truth men have not changed in respect of their heart and passions; they are still now as they were then, and as Theophrastus describes them—vain, dissembling, given to flattery, self-interested, shameless, troublesome, mistrustful, backbiting, quarrelsome, superstitious.

However, the postulate of an unchanging human nature, which might once have been chalked up against La Bruyère, as a sign of his unshakable conservatism, is in fact essential to his social critique. It is because we recognize ourselves and our contemporaries (‘Discours sur Théophraste’, 69) in these human beings of another century that we can be led to take a serious interest in what separates them from us: their ‘mœurs’ (customs, behaviour-patterns, practical values). In so doing, we are opening ourselves up to the possibility that our own way of life, our own patterns of social relationships, may be far from the highest realization of human potential—even that there is a case for saying that they are worse than those of other historically documented societies. For in encouraging people to engage with an ancient Athenian text, because the character-types it contains are like ourselves, La Bruyère is clearly suggesting that Athenian society was not like ours—was arguably, in some respects, superior (pp. 67–9). Les Caractères is a direct assault on the complacent narcissism of its age’s self-image.

Talking about ‘Character’ In the Introduction I mentioned Barthes’s critique of La Bruyère’s notion of caractère, and suggested that it derived part of its force from an existentialist antithesis between ‘character’ and ‘situation’. In so far as La Bruyère’s work deals with the former without the latter, he might appear exposed to the charge of essentialism. But in fact the concept of ‘character’ in La Bruyère is part and parcel of his critical stance towards the social reality of his own day. For it does not designate a type into which the atomized individual is locked: on the contrary, it incorporates relationships and situations. Barthes goes a long way to registering this when he observes that man, as described by La Bruyère, is far more social than psychological (OC

Approaches

71

I, 1336). To this extent, La Bruyère is exculpated from the charge of diffusing the pernicious gas of ‘psychology’ from the apparatus of ‘character’. But we need to go further into the matter. The Greek equivalent to caractère, as used by La Bruyère, is êthos. Aristotle defines it as follows: Let us now describe the nature of the characters of men according to their emotions, habits, ages, and fortunes. By the emotions I mean anger, desire, and the like [. . .]; by habits virtues and vices [. . .], as well as the kind of things men individually and deliberately choose and practise. The ages are youth, the prime of life, and old age. By fortune I mean noble birth, wealth, power, and their contraries, and in general, good or bad fortune.16

‘Character’ may thus be a relatively durable individual phenomenon: a disposition to certain emotions, or behaviour patterns (the vices and virtues), a chosen lifestyle. But it can also denote a category, the individual’s membership of which is inevitably contingent and maybe temporary. Theophrastus is chiefly concerned to assign individuals to categories on the basis of their behaviour: his types include the dissembler, the flatterer, the prattler, the vulgar rustic, and so forth. When he discusses the passions, such as avarice, ostentation, pride, and fear, these are analysed not as psychological states or processes, but by the presentation of the corresponding behaviour patterns. There is also a social and ideological category, that of the aristocrat, whose whole demeanour and behaviour are a conscious negation of democratic equality.17 The aim is to help us recognize the kind of man we are dealing with from his outward behaviour. (‘Man’ and ‘his’ because Theophrastus’ concern is with the public sphere, from which women were excluded. Strikingly, one of the few mentions of a woman in his Characters is precisely concerned with the transgression of the law of women’s visibility and 16 Aristotle, Rhetoric, II.xii.1–2 (1388b –1389a ). The discussion runs to the end of II.xvii.6 (1391b ). Aristotle has already spoken of the emotions and of habits, and thus concentrates on the effects of age and wealth. 17 Les Caractères de Théophraste, traduits du grec (by La Bruyère), in La Bruyère, Caractères; see esp. pp. 20–5, 47–53.

72

Human Nature

invisibility, a man’s failure to adhere to the code of seeing and not seeing: the shameless man sees a lady coming and instead of showing implicitly that he has seen her by behaving properly in her field of vision, he pretends to have been caught short, so as to embarrass her by behaving in her presence as if he hasn’t seen her, in such a way that she knows he has (Les Caractères de Théophraste, 35).) Theophrastus, then, wants to show us how to locate an individual in his proper category on the basis of his behaviour, so that we know how to behave towards him; he is not interested in the individual as such. Take a display of bad manners or indecency: we need to know whether the offender is simply a boor, an ill-bred rustic, who knows no better; or a shameless man, who is coarse because he thinks it funny; or an out-and-out scoundrel, whose rudeness reflects a fundamental hostility to others, borne out also in his cheating and quarrelling.18 We are not interested in why he behaves like that, only in how to conduct ourselves towards him. We need to know that when, before a battle, another man busies himself tenderly with a wounded comrade, it is not because he is fond of him, but because he is scared to death, and will do anything to get out of fighting (pp. 51–2). Otherwise, we might take his courage for granted, with fatal results to ourselves. ‘Character’, then, in this conception is not to be understood as a particular kind of property (moral, psychological, social, biological, or what have you). It is rather a mark that makes a category (any type of category to which human beings can belong) recognizable as such and that identifies individuals as members of the category.19 It is difficult, then, to locate the concept of ‘character’ in terms of our familiar antithesis between the individual and the social. It is an individual phenomenon, in that it marks an individual, but general, in that it assigns him or her to a category. We might try to 18 Compare the three sections ‘De la rusticité’, ‘De l’image d’un coquin’, and ‘De l’impudent ou de celui qui ne rougit de rien’ (Les Caractères de Théophraste, 24–5, 27–9, 35–6). 19 This is particularly well brought out by van Delft, Littérature et anthropologie, 19–40; see esp. pp. 26–32.

Approaches

73

distinguish between social categories and natural ones: La Bruyère would have understood the difference between men and women as given by nature. But that is difficult too, since one can argue that the recognition of a category is itself social and historically conditioned. ‘The old’ and ‘women’ do not mean the same to us as they did to La Bruyère and his readers. What matters is not an objective biological datum (age or sex), but how the society in question interprets such biological data in terms of gender or age groups. The historicity of such classifications is clear in the case of sexuality. There is no category of ‘homosexual’ for La Bruyère. He mentions the practice of ‘amours ridicules’, to be sure, and this clearly means same-sex relations between men: but he presents this as a behaviour pattern subordinated to age and social status: it is indulged in by young courtiers, their appetites jaded by precocious activity with women, just as they have killed their taste for wine and have to drink brandy. Older courtiers, the word ‘galants’ suggests, seem to revert to women (‘De la cour’, 74).20 Iphis (‘De la mode’, 14) is certainly presented as effeminate: he is a narcissistic fashion victim, with a mincing gait (‘démarche molle’), and he wears make-up now and again: he would have been included in the chapter on women, except that he wears breeches and a hat, and does not wear earrings or a string of pearls: but that is not to say that he is ‘homosexual’—there is no reference, even implicit, to his choice of sexual partner. But is it, rather, that La Bruyère does not need to spell things out for the reader, to name explicitly the sexual orientation that the description makes all too obvious? I do not think so. Iphis is not a real three-dimensional person, who has to have a ‘sexual orientation’ just as he has to have somewhere to live; he is not even a realist portrait, like a character in a nineteenth-century novel. He occurs in the chapter ‘De la mode’, and La Bruyère is using him to show yet another of the evil effects of fashion: it makes some men conduct themselves unsuitably, in 20 The word galant is virtually impossible to translate: it can denote a refinement and sophistication of manners, a style that goes beyond politeness, but it is often associated with sexuality. One might say that it is a manner of social intercourse that hints at, or aspires to, the sexual kind.

74

Human Nature

ways supposedly typical of women. If he thought that it also made them pursue coachmen or army officers, he could have said so, with whatever degree of discretion was necessary; after all, he is explicit enough about fine ladies’ disgraceful appetites for actors, dancers, musicians, and even the torturer, who, to crown it all, is black (‘Des femmes’, 33). So, whatever else fashion does to Iphis, there is no suggestion that it affects his sexual behaviour. But, if we were supposed to think of him as ‘a homosexual’ (as if there were no ‘effeminate’ heterosexuals), then the moral lesson about the influence of fashion would be completely thwarted, and La Bruyère should, after all, have put him in another chapter. It seems more plausible, then, to assume that La Bruyère does not see any necessary connection between so-called effeminacy and the choice of sexual partners. The choice is not the revelation of an essence. The same applies to the portrait of women devoted to ambition or gambling—they have lost their femininity, but there is no implication that this behaviour goes with same-sex relationships (‘Des femmes’, 52). So far as it goes, this bears out Foucault’s well-known argument that the category of ‘homosexuality’ is a nineteenth-century construction. On the other hand, it is fair to say that in the seventeenth century practitioners of same-sex relationships could be recognized and labelled as a group (‘bougres’, ‘bardaches’, or, in the case of women, ‘tribades’). Various male poets affirm their preference for their own sex, and justify same-sex love as natural, and even superior to the common kind.21 Poetic utterances, of course, may not be strictly referential, but they may involve significant assumptions of identity. 21 ´ See Claude de Chouvigny, baron de Blot-l’Eglise (c.1605–55), ‘Chanson’, in Libertins du XVIIe siècle, ed. Jacques Prévot, Laure Jestaz, and Hélène Ostrowiecki-Bah, 2 vols., Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1998–2004), II, 1352; ‘Couplet’, II, ´ 1355; Denis Sanguin de Saint-Pavin (1595–1670), ‘Epigramme’, Libertins, II, 1366–7; ‘Sonnet’, II, 1360; ‘Sonnet’, II, 1360–1. But some of these poems imply that the author’s preference for his own sex does not exclude sexual relations with women. Foucault’s view is set out in Histoire de la sexualité, vol. I, La Volonté de savoir (Paris: Gallimard, 1976), 5. Michel Jeanneret has recently studied the relationship between writing and ´ rebelle: Littérature et dissidence a` sexual transgression in seventeenth-century France (Eros

Approaches

75

So there is some evidence from writing of the period to suggest the affirmation of an identity based on or involving same-sex preference, even if this were not generally accepted within the culture, as the example of La Bruyère might be felt to show. But it is time now to return to La Bruyère. In the end, ‘character’ is what makes someone likely to behave towards others in specific ways. In this perspective, the question whether its origins are purely personal or social loses its pertinence: the pressing issue is whether we are reading an individual’s character correctly, placing him or her in the category that will most help us to understand and to react correctly to his or her behaviour. That is a life skill, as much as knowing how to find one’s way around a city or through a wood, and the goal of La Bruyère’s text is partly to help the reader develop it. The term caractère, therefore, has no necessary psychological content. Few, in fact, of La Bruyère’s categories are psychological, or based on temperament: avarice, for instance, is interpreted through the more fundamental category of age; it is one of the few outlets for passion still open to the old (‘De l’homme’, 113). There are, to be sure, a few remarks on different categories of women: the distinction between the ‘femme galante’, who wants to be loved, and the coquette, who wants to be thought attractive; the weak woman, who yields against her better judgement; the women who in various ways (inconstancy, fickleness, flightiness, indifference) refuse commitment; and the one who is false through and through (‘Des femmes’, 22–5). These (in particular sections 22 and 23) contain some psychological analysis, but the writer’s aim seems to be to teach his reader (male or female) to discriminate correctly between the different types on the basis of observable behaviour, not to examine the individual feelings of the women themselves. A concern with women’s feelings is not, to be sure, l’âge classique (Paris: Seuil, 2003)). I am greatly indebted to Nicholas Hammond for his advice on this subject.

76

Human Nature

characteristic of prose moralist writing of the period, however much attention they receive in drama and fiction. But I shall return to this point.

Interiority in La Bruyère One might argue that, although the characterological approach does not in itself equate to a focus on individual psychology, La Bruyère orientates it in that direction. He explicitly distinguishes himself from his predecessor Theophrastus by a greater concern with interiority: L’on s’est plus appliqué aux vices de l’esprit, aux replis du cœur et a` tout l’intérieur de l’homme que n’a fait Théophraste; et l’on peut dire que, comme ses Caractères [Theophrastus’], par mille choses extérieures qu’ils font remarquer dans l’homme, par ses actions, ses paroles et ses démarches, apprennent quelle est son fond, et font remonter jusques a` la source de son dérèglement; tout au contraire, les nouveaux Caractères, déployant d’abord les pensées, les sentiments et les mouvements des hommes découvrent le principe de leur malice et de leurs faiblesses, font que l’on prévoit aisément tout ce qu’ils sont capables de dire ou de faire, et que l’on ne s’étonne plus de mille actions vicieuses ou frivoles dont leur vie est toute remplie. (‘Discours sur Théophraste’, 72) The author has paid more attention than Theophrastus to the faults of the mind, to the secret depths of the heart, and to the whole interior part of man; and one might say that, just as [Theophrastus’] Characters draw our attention to hundreds of visible aspects of man, his actions, his speech, the ways he goes about things, so as to disclose his basic nature and take us back all the way to the fount of his disorder; so, on the contrary, the new Characters, by displaying from the start men’s thoughts, feelings, and impulses, reveal the source of their malice and their weaknesses, thus making it possible to predict with ease whatever they are capable of saying or doing, so that we are no longer astonished by the myriad vicious or frivolous actions by which their lives are filled.

What exactly is at stake in this commitment to interiority? First, it is not primarily a Montaignian concern with reflexivity, with the unique awareness of our own internal world. Whatever selfexamination may have gone into the Caractères, it tends always

Approaches

77

to the general. The first-person element is indeed crucial to the text.22 But this does not imply that its method is introspective: on the contrary, the speaker usually discovers and discloses himself through his reactions to others. La Bruyère is here claiming to see through to the interior of other people. He seems to suggest here that he begins with his characters’ inner qualities, and from these deduces their actions. How far does this square with the experience of reading his texts? Sometimes it does: for instance, the opening fragments of the chapter ‘De l’homme’ (frs. 1–6) focus on human beings’ intrinsically selfish and evil nature, their inability to detach themselves from circumstances, as the Stoics preached, and their various forms of inconsistency. If any external behaviour is depicted (hysterical rage at trivial misfortunes (‘De l’homme’, 3) or cutting someone dead the day after showering him with expressions of good will (fr. 5) ), it is presented as following from those basic dispositions. But at other times La Bruyère works more as he says Theophrastus does, presenting us with a behaviour pattern, without comment, and inviting us to infer the disposition or intentions behind it. Why should someone who was talking non-stop about his intimacy with Plancus and then hears Plancus has dropped dead start denouncing him (‘De la cour’, 59)? We have to supply the motive: resentment, because his expectations of Plancus have been dashed. Sometimes the end of the fragment resolves an enigma or confirms conjecture: everything Nicandre has said to Elmire is meant to lead up to a proposal of marriage (‘De la société et de la conversation’, 82). Sometimes there appears to be nothing behind the behaviour pattern: the secret is that there is no secret: see, for instance, the portrayal of Narcisse and his social routines (‘De la ville’, 12). (There perhaps we cannot be sure: perhaps the name is the clue—he is so wrapped up in himself that nothing can impinge on his habits.) La Bruyère’s method does not, therefore, consistently work a priori, from cause to effect, and from inside to outside. 22 On this, see the excellent discussion in de Mourgues, Two French Moralists, 107–13.

78

Human Nature

In any case, La Bruyère does not imply that his characters’ behaviour can be purely explained by their inner workings: his is not an atomized world of individuals primarily obedient to the laws of their own temperament. His individuals are positioned in their category: to belong to a category is to be related, in a certain way, to other people, and that relationship largely determines the behaviour of the category’s members. It is not that having a given set of individual psychological traits predisposes one to enter a certain social category, as if you could characterize self-made men by a personal drive for ‘success’. (Such a vision would be more appropriate to a full-blown capitalist society, where inherited social status has become less influential a determinant of individual destiny, though it would be misleading even in that context.) Rather, in La Bruyère, membership of the category generates, through the relationships it involves, ways of thinking and feeling (or not thinking and not feeling) that then inform behaviour. The ‘character’, then, pertains to a social psychology.23 Thus the chapter ‘Des biens de fortune’ is largely about people who have wealth disproportionate to their social status, especially the partisans, or tax-farmers, whom La Bruyère particularly despises.24 The point here is not, in general, that, if you have the right psychological make-up, you can become fantastically rich, despite being low born: rather, the attraction of wealth to the low born generates, in a significant number of individuals, the behaviour necessary to acquire and conserve it. One might cite, in objection, ‘Des biens de fortune’ (fr. 38), where La Bruyère does discuss the psychology of the self-made man, whose success he attributes to thinking about nothing but success. But he attributes this behaviour pattern to a ‘petit génie’, a lack of real talent, rather than to any 23

See Michael S. Koppisch, The Dissolution of Character: Changing Perspectives in La Bruyère’s ‘Caractères’ (Lexington, Ky: French Forum, 1981), esp. pp. 63–79, for the argument that La Bruyère’s text exhibits a shift from ‘self-referential’ to ‘other-oriented’ characters, void of any intrinsic properties and determined by their relationships to others. 24 On La Bruyère’s vision of social categories as being disrupted by social mobility, see Erica Harth, ‘Classical Disproportion: La Bruyère’s Caractères’, in L’Esprit Créateur, 15 (1975), 189–210. On the partisans (‘P.T.S.’ La Bruyère calls them, with affected discretion), see especially ‘Des biens de fortune’, 14, 25, 32.

Approaches

79

positive qualities. It is precisely because he has no ‘character’ in the psychological sense, no talents, ideas, virtues, or personal qualities of his own (other than a certain dogged determination) that this individual can make his way along the paths to financial success laid down by society. The desires that drive people, moreover, are never unmediated. The attraction of riches, mentioned above, is not simply a charm that certain individuals are more prone to feel than others: we desire riches because others show their desire for them. La Bruyère’s reaction to human nature is double-edged, like that of Molière’s Alceste: Je hais tous les hommes. Les uns parce qu’ils sont méchants et malfaisants, Et les autres pour eˆtre aux méchants complaisants. (Le Misanthrope, I.i.118–22) I hate all mankind, One half because they are wicked and do evil, The other because they let the wicked get away with it.

La Bruyère excoriates the futility of the fop Philémon: people can see through his gorgeous clothes, his numerous retinue, his magnificent coach and six, to his fundamental nothingness. But they never let him see them seeing through; on the contrary: Ce n’est pas qu’il faut quelquefois pardonner a` celui qui, avec un grand cortège, un habit riche, et un magnifique e´quipage, s’en croit plus de naissance et plus d’esprit: il lit cela dans la contenance et dans les yeux de ceux qui lui parlent. (‘Du mérite personnel’, 27) For all this, we must sometimes excuse a man who, because he has a great retinue, fine clothes, and a splendid carriage, thinks himself better-born and cleverer than he is: that is what he reads in the faces and the eyes of those who speak to him.

It is not surprising that people try to make money from running gambling dens: the extraordinary thing is that there is an endless supply of people queueing up to be swindled (‘Des biens de fortune’, 74). Théodecte is a loud-mouthed boor: he is intolerable, but he behaves as he does because others let him get away with it: ‘Je cède

80

Human Nature

enfin, et je disparais, incapable de souffrir plus longtemps Théodecte, et ceux qui le souffrent’ (I give up, and I slip away: I can no longer endure Théodecte, and those who endure him) (‘De la société et de la conversation’, 12). This odious subjection to fake superiorities is clearest of all where money is involved. The nouveau riche is in a sense justified, La Bruyère suggests ironically, in his ambition, because people discover in him the qualities he imagines in himself: they validate his sense that his success is the proper reward for being what he is (‘Des biens de fortune’, 3). Arfure was a regular church-attender, ignored by the clergy. Then her husband obtained a position in a lucrative tax farm, and now they are fighting to be her confessor (‘Des biens de fortune’, 16). Oronte, a 50-year-old who has built up his wealth without birth, intelligence, or any kind of merit, receives overtures from a family looking to marry off their beautiful and intelligent young daughter (‘Des biens de fortune’, 60). Périandre was born a bourgeois, but he has bought a title. He used to say ‘un homme de ma sorte’; now he says, what a high-ranking nobleman would say, ‘un homme de ma qualité’. Instead of slapping him down for his pretensions, other people connive at them: ‘Il n’y a personne de ceux a` qui il prête de l’argent, ou qu’il reçoit a` sa table, qui est délicate, qui veuille s’y opposer’ (There is no one, of all those to whom he lends money or whom he invites to his—excellent—table, who is prepared to challenge him) (‘Des biens de fortune’, 21). This is the key to the matter: although everybody hates him, they stand to gain from him, and self-interest prevails over respect for the social hierarchy as it ought to be. It is not quite certain whether self-interest actually distorts people’s reactions or merely forces them to affect the behaviour that will please. Thus, La Bruyère says that it is futile to seek to ridicule a fool who is extremely rich: the laughers will always be on his side (‘Des biens de fortune’, 10). But is their laughter real or genuine (if based on self-deception)? It does not, in the end, matter: the rich fool remains invulnerable. The actors in La Bruyère’s social drama are not, then, for the most part autonomous individuals, determined by the inner laws of their being: it is social relationships, networks of interest and

Approaches

81

dependence, that shape their behaviour and destiny. If their actions, as La Bruyère avers, are predictable from their thoughts, feelings, and impulses, this must be because these in turn are largely determined by social position. Individual temperaments exist, of course, but they coexist, or may be overridden by, temperaments acquired in social interaction: ‘Il y a une dureté de complexion; il y en a une autre de condition et d’état’, (There is a harshness that comes from one’s temperament; there is another that goes with one’s social position and occupation)(‘Des biens de fortune’, 34). The social world of relationships, then, seems at least as powerful as and perhaps more powerful than the given of individual temperament. So powerful is it that it has been argued that the notion of character as such dissolves: that what La Bruyère’s text tends more and more to show is that there is nothing, no interior, beneath the surface.25 This is, I think, to misread the notion of character, by equating it with individual psychology, and then noting, rightly, that individual psychology is an inadequate key to the behaviour depicted. Louis van Delft, arguing against the supposed ‘dissolution of character’, rightly insists that La Bruyère never dispenses with the notion of caractère: he remains an essentialist but admits the power of actual life (‘existence’) to modify the given or the innate (Littérature et anthropologie, 144). But in any case ‘character’ has no privileged association with givenness, or innateness; an acquired character is no less a character. Nor is it to be understood in terms of interiority: mechanical imitation of others’ behaviour is also a character. If character, as argued above, is what makes people likely to behave towards others in specific ways, there is plainly no dissolution of character in La Bruyère’s text, even though there is a marked awareness on the dependence of character on relationships with others. On the other hand, there is truth in the claim that La Bruyère seems troubled by a depletion, even an absence, of his characters’ interior world. This is apparent in his handling of certain Cartesian themes. 25 This case has been argued most vigorously by Koppisch (Dissolution of Character). Van Delft disagrees (Littérature et anthropologie, 137–48).

82

Human Nature

On the one hand, he frequently invokes Cartesian positions.26 He invokes the criterion of clear and distinct ideas with approval (‘Des jugements’, 42). In the chapter on religion, he conflates a number of Cartesian arguments (animals are machines; I think and I am certain that I think; the concept of matter and the attribute of thought are incompatible) (‘Des esprits forts’, 38), and he speaks of God implanting in us the idea of his infinite being (‘Des esprits forts’, 42). But, on the other hand, it is almost as if he has become too involved with the Cartesian vision; as if he is taking seriously Descartes’s apparent suggestion that the ‘people’ I see from my window might be automata in coats and hats.27 Other people appear mechanical and (he says so himself) predictable. Jules Brody remarks that La Bruyère’s style filters out consciousness, and lets only physical and concrete elements through.28 The characters seem to fail the Cartesian test of what it is to be human: they function mechanically, and even their speech lacks the spontaneity that Descartes identified as characteristic of human language.29 The space of ‘interiority’ seems to be eaten away by an encroaching tide of superficiality. The problem of ‘interiority’ in La Bruyère might be resolved along the lines of his own distinction between ‘le cœur et les passions’, on the one hand, and ‘les mœurs’, on the other (‘Discours sur Théophraste’, 69–70).30 The moralist observes ‘les mœurs’—behaviour patterns and external attitudes that constitute ‘characters’: these reflect a dangerous erosion of his society’s moral substance, both due to and 26

On La Bruyère’s relation to Descartes, see Louis van Delft, La Bruyère moraliste: Quatre études sur les ‘Caractères’ (Geneva: Droz, 1971), 55–63. 27 Descartes is not, of course, seriously putting in doubt the humanity of the passersby, but rather arguing that it is by the intellect not the eye that I know they are human, since all I see is the hats and coats moving up and down (Meditation II, AT VII, 32/IX, 25: OP II, 188–9/426–7). 28 Jules Brody, Du style a` la pensée: Trois études sur les ‘Caractères’ de La Bruyère (Lexington, Ky: French Forum, 1980), 21. 29 Brody, Du style a` la pensée, 35–41: see Discours de la méthode, V, AT VI, 56–9: OP I, 628–31. For examples of mechanical imagery, see ‘De la cour’, 65, ‘De l’homme’, 142. 30 Compare ‘De l’homme’, 2, for another distinction between the ephemeral and the unchanging in man, though here ‘mœurs’ is used in the sense of underlying moral disposition, and thus belongs to the category of the unchanging.

Approaches

83

reflected in the increasing power of money and the abdication by the nobility of their true responsibilities, in favour of an endless and vain pursuit of success at court.31 At the same time, however historically and socially situated these behaviour patterns may be, they may in particular cases reflect a given individual temperament. More generally, they ultimately derive from deep-seated species characteristics (passions taking control of a heart oriented to evil) of which the agents themselves have lost sight, being aware only of the immediate objects of their interest (in both senses of that word) and not of the causes underlying them. It is the moralist’s business to remind us of these causes, these basic inner characteristics. ‘Interiority’ then is a fact, inasmuch as there is a world of desires and passions, a set of moral dispositions, underlying our actions. But it is not given to experience, inasmuch as individuals may not be aware of it: devoid of such awareness, they tend to act in apparently mechanical fashion, in reaction to the appeal of immediate objects. In the next example, however, we experience an individual’s painful encounter with an interiority previously lost sight of. The general theme, the effacement of natural character by social experience, has been presented elsewhere (‘Des biens de fortune’, 34), but in more impersonal fashion than here: Il y a des vices que nous ne devons a` personne, que nous apportons en naissant, et que nous fortifions par l’habitude; il y en a d’autres que l’on contracte, et qui nous sont e´trangers; l’on est né quelquefois avec des mœurs faciles, de la complaisance, et tout le désir de plaire; mais par les traitements que l’on reçoit de ceux avec qui l’on vit, ou de qui l’on dépend, l’on est bientôt jeté hors de ses mesures, et même de son naturel: l’on a des chagrins, et une bile que l’on ne se connaissait point, l’on se voit une autre complexion, l’on est enfin e´tonné de se trouver dur et e´pineux. (‘De l’homme’, 15). There are vices we owe to nobody, that we bring into the world with us at birth, and that we strengthen by habit; there are others we contract from others, and that are alien to us; you may be born, as some people are, 31

On aristocratic irresponsibility, see ‘Des grands’, 4, 24.

84

Human Nature

easy-going, obliging, always ready to please; but the treatment you receive from those you live among, or on whom you depend, may throw all your expectations out, and estrange you from your natural character; you feel griefs and resentments you never thought yourself capable of feeling, you see a different character in yourself, in the end you are amazed to find you have become ill-tempered and harsh.

What makes this last passage so haunting (rather like a poem by Philip Larkin) is the interplay between objective and subjective perspectives: formerly in harmony (you were the decent easy-going person you thought you were), they have become dislocated, one’s grasp of one’s identity lagging behind the reality, observable by others, of one’s feelings, until the ugly moment of self-discovery. The inner truth behind our behaviour, the new underlying ‘complexion’, has been painfully encountered through the experience of unfamiliar emotional states, themselves the effect of social relationships. By restoring to his readers the sense of their own interiority, of the deepseated passions and desires, the fundamental moral dispositions, behind their everyday behaviour, the moralist hopes to awaken them to fundamental religious truths he restates in the final section.32 La Bruyère’s moral discourse, then, depends on this combination of the ‘intérieur’, the moral core that we know exists but that is not always discernible in the individual, and the visible ‘caractère’. Both are forms of essentialism, if one wishes to use the term. But this essentialism is not a naturalization of the social status quo, but rather the vehicle of a severe critique of the patterns of interaction typical of his society. To this critique, both elements are necessary, since, without the postulation of a moral ‘intérieur’, the notations of ‘caractère’ would merely register individual or social peculiarities. Human beings would indeed be reduced to machines, and the existing social order would acquire a mechanical inevitability. All criticism would then be vain.

32 See La Bruyère, ‘Discours de réception a` l’Académie française’, Préface, Les Caractères, 613.

Approaches

85

Women and Children Last I touched on the issue of gender in connection with La Bruyère’s portraits of women. The question arises naturally, whether his in general unflattering attitude to women is typical or untypical of writers of the moralist type. Certainly, the Aristotelian tradition that underpins the ‘descriptive’ approach to human nature is hardly egalitarian. The Ethics are concerned with the good life as it is to be lived by a free male Athenian of a certain rank. Martha Nussbaum notes that ‘Aristotle’s is the only major philosophical school [of antiquity] for which we have no evidence of female pupils. His philosophical views, according to which women are incapable of practical wisdom, appear to support this practice’ (The Therapy of Desire, 54; cf. 117 n. 32, 322–4). But it was the Aristotelian inheritance, of course, that prevailed in the Middle Ages: Aquinas insists on women’s intellectual inferiority and their necessary subordination to men.33 They are not fit to be treated as independent moral agents. The question of women’s inferiority (or superiority) to men was vigorously debated in the early modern period. The seriousness of the debate, and its impact on day-to-day attitudes and behaviour, is not always easy to gauge: to argue for women’s superiority could be merely a rhetorical exercise in paradox.34 Cartesianism, cutting free 33 See e.g. ST IIaIIae, q. 70, a. 3 (women’s testimony is always open to doubt, ‘ex defectu rationis’, which puts them on a level with children and the mad). On Aquinas’s pronouncements on women’s inferiority, and their Aristotelian background, see Uta Ranke-Heinemann, Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven: Women, Sexuality and the Catholic Church, trans. Peter Heinegg (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991), 186–90. For a general account of gender bias in philosophy, see Genevieve Lloyd, The Man of Reason: ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ in Western Philosophy, 2nd edn. (London: Routledge, 1993). 34 For accounts and analyses of this ‘querelle des femmes’, see Natalie Zemon Davis, Society and Culture in Early Modern France: Eight Essays (London, Duckworth, 1975); Carolyn C. Lougee, Le Paradis des femmes: Women, Salons and Social Stratification in Seventeenth-Century France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976); Ian Maclean, Woman Triumphant: Feminism in French Literature, 1610–1652 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977); Marc Angenot, Les Champions des femmes: Examen du discours sur la supériorité des femmes, 1400–1800 (Montreal: Presses de l’Université de Québec, 1977).

86

Human Nature

the intellect from dependence on the body, could be seen as implying the intellectual equality of all human beings.35 Moraliste writers, let alone theologians, did not see it as their business to reconsider the traditional inheritance. Take La Bruyère. He explicitly formulates his reflection on the subject (‘Des femmes’, 49) as a contribution to an ongoing debate: why blame men for women’s lack of learning? There are no laws that forbid them to read, and to talk or even write about what they have read. Women themselves are responsible for their condition, whether the reason is a lack of aptitude or a lack of inclination. In what one nowadays recognizes as a classic anti-feminist move (‘you don’t want or need equality, when you have superiority’), he then argues that women have so many other advantages over men that men are lucky they do not have this one as well. (This, of course, might be felt to give the game away: men have an interest in women’s continuing ignorance.) There are learned women, and La Bruyère finds a slightly more elegant (if somewhat more disturbing) image for them than Dr Johnson’s comparison of the female preacher to a dog walking on its hind legs: they are like a beautiful weapon, which looks splendid in a display case, but is useless when it comes to hunting or fighting. The conclusion is somewhat more ambiguous, because La Bruyère, as it were, swings his own weapon round on a new target: the enemy of female education who says that a woman cannot be both virtuous (‘sage’) and learned (‘savante’). On the contrary, since it is women’s faults that stand in the way of their learning, then a woman who is without those faults (and therefore ‘sage’) is capable of becoming learned; and a woman who has disciplined herself so as to become learned must have acquired a certain moral fibre as well. So he does envisage the possibility of a woman who is both learned and virtuous. In fact, admiration for such a woman effaces the perception of her gender (‘Des femmes’, 49). But what this means is that the learned and virtuous woman ceases to be a 35 François Poulain de la Barre, De l’égalité des deux sexes, Corpus des Œuvres de Philosophie en Langue Française (Paris: Fayard, 1984 (1st pub. 1673) ), is Cartesian in inspiration. See also Erica Harth, Cartesian Women: Versions and Subversions of Rational Discourse in the Old Regime (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992).

Approaches

87

woman, and consequently does not affect the general estimate of her sex. What is striking about this fragment is that it shows La Bruyère falling back on intrinsic characteristics as explanations of behaviour, whereas in other contexts, as we have seen, he situates behaviour in relationships. But women’s relationships with men are simply ignored when it comes to explaining their ignorance (except in one of the possible explanations, the distraction of running a household). La Rochefoucauld’s Maximes frequently strikes a dismissive attitude to women, as is well known.36 More problematic is the question whether women are actually treated as a subsection of the general category of human beings or as a race apart, so that general comments refer only to men.37 I suspect, with Odette de Mourgues, that the latter alternative is true, and that La Rochefoucauld aligns himself with the masculine frame of reference of the dominant tradition in moral philosophy. Of course, in his actual life, he had close intellectual relationships with women, not only Madame de Lafayette but Madame de Sablé.38 We have a collection of maxims by the latter as well.39 They do not, however, contain any particular discussion of women, nor are they written from the ‘position’ of a woman. If one makes such points as these, there will always be those who complain of projecting our standards onto the past, and judging seventeenth-century Frenchmen as if they were twenty-first-century right-wing shock jocks. But of course the issue is not one of awarding 36

See maxims 204, 205, 241, 362, 367, 368. ‘As far as women are concerned, there is no discovery, no probing beyond the traditional motivation given for their attitudes. They are implicitly considered as a group of beings belonging to another species, and I very much doubt whether they are included in the anonymous ‘‘on’’, ‘‘nous’’, ‘‘les hommes’’ of the maxims which do not refer specifically to them’ (de Mourgues, Two French Moralists), 43. 38 Madame de Rohan, abbess of Malnoue, took issue with La Rochefoucauld’s negative portrayal of women, and suggested that, had he taken account of Madame de Lafayette and herself, he would have formed a better opinion of the sex in general (Letter 45, MMOD 658). There is a good discussion in Susan Read Baker, ‘The Reception of La Rochefoucauld’s Maximes (1659–1665): A Question of Gender?’, PFSCL 24 (1986), 65–81. 39 It can be found in Jean Lafond (ed.), Moralistes du XVIIe siècle: De Pibrac a` Dufresny, Collection Bouquins (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1992), 243–55. On the author herself, see Nicolas Ivanoff, La Marquise de Sablé et son salon (Paris: Les Presses Modernes, 1927). 37

88

Human Nature

or deducting points for ideological correctness: the point is to note how discourses proffered as universal about human kind may in fact be circumscribed by a tacit limitation of reference to only one branch of humanity, or inflected by valuations of one branch over others. (The same point would apply to questions of race and culture, which, again, are issues not on the whole addressed by seventeenth-century moralists.) Moralist writers frequently draw their readers’ attention to children, taken as embodying more visibly than adults certain basic traits of human nature. Take Pascal’s meditation on property: Mien, tien. ‘Ce chien est a` moi,’ disaient ces pauvres enfants. ‘C’est là ma place au soleil.’ Voilà le commencement et l’image de l’usurpation de toute la terre. (L 64/S 98/LG 60)40 Mine, yours. ‘That’s my dog,’ the poor children were saying. ‘That’s my place in the sun.’ And there is the beginning, and the image, of the usurpation of the whole earth.

The tense of the verb and the demonstrative ‘ces’ anchors the argument to a concrete observation. But the observation unfolds into a complicated thesis about human nature: that adult behaviour and impulses can be understood by reference to those of children. It seems that there is a basic appropriative tendency in human nature—a libido dominandi, to use the Augustinian term. But we see more than this: as well as basic dispositions, the children’s behaviour and discourse allow us to read a history. Property owning is not quite intrinsic to human nature: it involves the appropriation, for the use of one, of what once belonged to no one and therefore to all. It has a beginning. This conception of human nature combines essentialism with a historical perspective, in keeping with the whole 40

It has been noted by commentators that ‘usurpation’ in seventeenth-century juridical parlance means not the seizure of what is rightfully another’s, but the appropriation of what belongs to no one (see OC II, 1337 (p. 562 n. 6) ).

Approaches

89

Augustinian doctrine of the Fall: what is characteristic of human nature is characteristic of human nature as it has become. Or, to be more precise, we inhabit a double human nature: for the original nature survives in our residual rationality, our capacity to love God, although so much overlaid by the acquired nature, the blindness and concupiscence that dominate our lives. (Just as we live not in a single history, but in two: the original catastrophe of the Fall is still working out its effects on us, so that history is a monotonous repetition of sin and error; but, at the same time, we are caught up in an ongoing salvific history, marked out by the prophecies and the coming of Christ, whose redemptive activity is moving towards its consummation. But more of the Fall shortly.) Again, Pascal certainly admits a fundamental impulse of self-love (amour-propre), part of our essence. But he also stresses how far it is directed by human interaction. The urge for glory is so deeply rooted in human nature that it is a fundamental differentiation between us and animals (L 685/S 564/LG 579). Yet it is sharpened by the admiration bestowed on children, which can only spoil them. The attempt by the teachers at Port-Royal to eschew the stimulus of praise leads, Pascal goes on to say, to the children’s losing their keenness (L 63/S 97/LG 59).41 The whole social order rests in fact on this kind of largely unintentional conditioning. Children internalize schemes of value from the discourse they hear in their earliest years, and this leads to their choice of occupation. La coutume fait les maçons, soldats, couvreurs, etc. C’est un excellent couvreur, dit-on, et en parlant des soldats: Ils sont bien fous, dit-on. Et les autres au contraire: Il n’y a rien de grand que la guerre, le reste des hommes sont des coquins. A force d’ou¨ır louer en enfance ces métiers et mépriser tous les autres, on choisit. Car naturellement on aime la vertu et on hait la folie; ces mots viennent en décider; on ne pèche qu’en l’application. 41

On education at Port-Royal (and more besides), see Nicholas Hammond, Fragmentary Voices: Memory and Education and Port-Royal, Biblio 17, 152 (Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 2004).

90

Human Nature

Tant est grande la force de la coutume que, de ceux que la nature n’a fait qu’hommes, on fait toutes les conditions des hommes. Car des pays sont tout de maçons, d’autres tout de soldats, etc. Sans doute que la nature n’est pas si uniforme; c’est la coutume qui fait donc cela, car elle contraint la nature. (L 634/S 527/LG 541) It is custom that makes masons, soldiers, roofers, and so on. ‘He’s a fine roofer,’ the people say [in one part of the world], and when they speak of soldiers, they say, ‘They are a mad lot.’ Elsewhere, it is the other way round: ‘There’s nothing worth it but war, and all civilians are scum.’ People hear one occupation talked up, and all the others run down, from their childhood on, and they choose accordingly. Because naturally we love virtue and hate madness; those words settle the issue; we go wrong only in applying them. So great is the force of custom that, from those whom nature made human beings pure and simple, it forms all sorts and conditions of men. For in some parts of the world, every man is a mason, elsewhere they are all soldiers. Certainly, nature is not so uniform, so this is the effect of custom, since it constrains nature.

There is a human nature, then, with its intrinsic drive to do what is approved, and avoid what is condemned, but it is shaped by custom. Thus some kind of social order (however inefficient, with a glut of masons in one region and a shortage in another) is produced from an infinity of micro-relationships. But even this causal hierarchy, custom directing and perhaps overriding nature, is not secure: for nature (whether universal or particular is not clear) and instinct can sometimes prove resistant to custom (L 634/S 527/LG 541). Both in their intrinsic tendencies and in their malleability, children, then, provide Pascal with a miniature model of the human condition in general: a basic set of ‘natural’ dispositions, a kind of second-order nature engendered by a historical event, the Fall, and themselves modified, within limits, by relationships with others. But these relationships are never purely natural. If fathers fear that their children’s ‘natural’ affection will fade, it cannot be natural in the full sense (L 126/S 159/LG 117).42 42

On the interaction between nature and custom, see also L 125/S 158/LG 116.

Approaches

91

One other context in which children are discussed is relevant here.43 In a staged conflict of opinions between those who deny and those who accept the idea of a vacuum, Pascal cites the Cartesian thesis that false scientific belief in what is supposedly the evidence of our senses is a prejudice surviving from childhood (L 44/S 78/LG 41).44 Malebranche adopts this Cartesian theory of childhood prejudice.45 As will be seen, he grafts it onto an Augustinian anthropology, based on the doctrine of the Fall, so as to provide a scientific explanation of our alienation from truth, our subjection to the senses and the imagination. La Bruyère’s ‘anthropology’ is not structured by the notion of the Fall as a catastrophic event: but it shares the Augustinian pessimism of Pascal. Children display all the vices and passions of adulthood (‘De l’homme’, 50): yes, but it is only, apparently, when reason develops (and they can therefore formulate their desires more clearly and seek to gratify them more systematically) that a particular set of vices and passions hardens into an individual character: the character that both differentiates us from others and sets us at odds with ourselves. There is a sense emerging here, running counter to the assimilation of child and adult, of childhood as not quite adulthood in miniature: it has its own distinctive character, prior to any individuality (fr.52). Thus, La Bruyère will on occasion contrast the child with the adult instead of likening them. Unlike us, children have no sense of the past 43 The image of the child is essential also to Pascal’s theological thought, or rather to the Pauline tradition on which he draws. The Christian’s vocation is to be free of slavery to sin, and to become a free child (L 838/S 424/LG 683). (Cf. Galatians 4: 1–7, 24–31; Romans 6.) But ‘free’ here does not mean autonomous: it means, rather, liberated, albeit painfully, by the loving violence of grace from subjection to the world by the violence of our desires: grace is like the mother wrenching her child from the arms of robbers (L 924/S 753/LG 514). 44 Descartes, Principles, I.47, 71–2, AT VIII, 22, 35–7/IX-2, 44, 58–60: OP III, 118, 139–42. 45 Malebranche, De la recherche de la vérité, Préface and I.14.i, in Œuvres, ed. Geneviève Rodis-Lewis and Germain Malbreil, 2 vols., Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1979–92), I, 18, 116. All references to Malebranche’s works are ´ to this edition. Vol. I contains De la recherche de la vérité and the Eclaircissements (elucidations) to it, and also the Conversations chrétiennes; the rest of the selected works are in vol. II.

92

Human Nature

and the future, and are thus able to enjoy the present (fr.51). The child’s imitative and imaginative capacities enable it to achieve what no adult can: to be in control of its fortune and master of its own happiness (fr.53). Spontaneously, then, the child enjoys what moral philosophy, especially Stoicism, promises in vain: the Stoic sage, like the child’s persona in play, is a creature of the imagination, but, unlike the child’s, the would-be philosopher’s persona is at the mercy of events: a lost dog or a shattered vase reduces him to a quivering shrieking hysteric (a process uncannily imitated by the style of the passage) (fr.3). There is a complicated interplay between likeness and unlikeness: thus children have an uncannily precise awareness of external shortcomings and bodily peculiarities, which fades as they reach adulthood and display the very shortcomings they used to ridicule. Behind this distinctive attribute of childhood, though, lies a fundamental motivation, to gain power over those above one (fr.54), which is arguably continued into adult life. Sometimes the impulse to assimilate, and to moralize, distorts the moralist’s sharp insight: he notes the extreme attention to detail and precision, the ritualistic concern with accuracy that characterizes children’s games (and not the rest of their lives), but glosses this merely as foreshadowing adult neglect of duty and attention to pleasure (fr.55).46 Like Pascal, La Bruyère uses children to interpret the existing political order: they begin as democratic egalitarians in an ‘état populaire’, but quickly go over to absolute monarchy when one among them begins to demonstrate unique personal qualities to which the others defer (fr.57): what is quite unlike Pascal is the attempt to naturalize the political order as a direct reflection of personal superiority.47 (It may be, however, that La Bruyère is subtly undermining the spectacle 46

I suspect that La Bruyère’s text is pressured here by St Augustine’s account of his schooldays, with their culpable absorption in play, at the expense of learning (Confessions, I.9). 47 Pascal’s discussion of the origin of the political order (L 828/S 668/LG 677) involves a crucial mediation: the winning side in the originary conflict imposes an order (monarchical, aristocratic, democratic) that will ensure its own continuance in power. Besides, he does not suggest that the winners have triumphed on account of some personal superiority: the analysis would work if they were simply more numerous, for instance.

Approaches

93

of absolutism by this in the end unflattering comparison. If this were so, his apparent conservative essentialism, with its appeal to nature, would again emerge as unsuspectedly critical of existing social reality.) Apart from these passages from the chapter ‘De l’homme’, where the ‘anthropological’ impulse is explicit, there are many other references to children in Les Caractères. But the stress in these is not on the ‘character’ of childhood as a set of psychological traits, but on the parent–child relationship, especially as mediated not through affection, but through social and economic structures. The two orders indeed contradict one another: ‘Les enfants peut-être seraient plus chers a` leurs pères; et réciproquement les pères a` leurs enfants, sans le titre d’héritiers’ (It may be that children would be dearer to their fathers, and by the same token fathers to their children, if there were no such thing as an heir) (‘Des biens de fortune’, 67).48 Here and there in La Bruyère’s discussion of childhood, we have noted a kind of counter-current to the Augustinian image of childhood as helpless yet already tainted by evil will: a stress on the child’s capacity for enjoyment, its creativity, its self-sufficiency. These are held up to shame the adult, conscious of his or her dependence on others, of the deferral of real gratification to some imagined future opportunity. But this is, I take it, in intention, a rhetorical manœuvre rather than the expression of a self-standing vision of childhood, conceived in opposition to the Augustinian view. The close observation of children is subordinated to a moralistic agenda; yet perhaps something escapes, an imaginative, if not an ideological, openness to the reality of childhood experience in itself. Something of the same perhaps applies to a passage where La Rochefoucauld, 48 Cf. also ‘Des grands’, 21, ‘De l’homme’, 113, for discussions of the social aspect of the father–son relationship. There is a striking exploration of the topic in Dufresny’s Amusements sérieux et comiques, XI (in Lafond (ed.), Moralistes du XVIIe siècle, 1032–4), where he argues for and against the Aristotelian proposition that fathers love their children more than they are loved by them (Ethics, VIII.xii.2–3 (1161b )), explored by Montaigne in ‘De l’affection des pères aux enfans’ (Essais, II.8).

94

Human Nature

also, uses children to point up the faults of adults by contrast rather than similarity: Ce qui fait que la plupart des petits enfants plaisent, c’est qu’ils sont encore renfermés dans cet air et dans ces manières que la nature leur a donnés, et qu’ils n’en connaissent point d’autres. Ils les changent et les corrompent lorsqu’ils sortent de l’enfance: ils croient qu’il faut imiter ce qu’ils voient faire aux autres, et ils ne le peuvent parfaitement imiter; il y a toujours quelque chose de faux et d’incertain dans cette imitation.49 The reason most little children are charming is that they are still confined to the air and manners nature gave them, and they know no others. They change and corrupt these when they emerge from childhood: they think that they have to imitate what they see others do, and they cannot imitate it perfectly; there is always something false and uncertain in such imitation.

He is staying well away from issues of religious doctrine here, appealing to the simple facts of experience (children please, most adults do not), although this is more than disinterested observation: it feeds into a whole discussion of appropriate behaviour that tends to enforce the validity of existing social divisions and codes.50 Elsewhere, in an addition to a piece by Madame de Sablé on the upbringing of children, he warns against always seeking to entertain them: there is a curiously impassioned and personal, if discreet, note to the discussion when he argues that, if children never learn to occupy themselves, and never develop tastes and a will of their own, they will finally become entangled in ‘ces dépendances aveugles qui nous ont causé tant de malheurs’ (those blind dependencies that have brought such misfortune on us) (MMOD 758). He goes on to generalize about the deadly dangers of boredom, for adults as well as for children, and how essential it is to learn to escape or endure it. Children suggest general reflections valid for adults 49

La Rochefoucauld, ‘Réflexions diverses’, III, ‘De l’air et des manières’, MMOD 707. So I argue in my Taste and Ideology, 136–40, though without reference to this particular ‘Réflexion’. 50

Approaches

95

as well, but, as in Pascal, there is more: a concern with causality and conditioning. Adults are like children, not simply because both are categories within a single species, but because they are still living out the consequences of their childhood upbringing. The descriptive approach to human nature is beginning to incorporate a concern with the explanation of observed characteristics more characteristic of the Augustinian strand of the problematic approach.

The Problematic Approach The ‘problematic’ approach does not present the same historical continuity as the ‘descriptive’ one. Yet, although it is less prevalent than the other in early modern writing (van Delft, Littérature et anthropologie, 6, 8), it paradoxically appears more characteristic of the period, so that, if one wanted to define early modernity by the forms of anthropological thought it fosters, one might turn first to the ‘problematic’ writers. For these, human nature is a problematic concept because it is not easy to identify its essential properties. This is partly because, for some of these writers, to investigate human nature involves self-discovery, and the ‘self ’ is hard to discover. Montaigne inevitably has pride of place here: Non seulement le vent des accidens me remue selon son inclination, mais en outre je me remue et trouble moy mesme par l’instabilité de ma posture; et qui y regarde primement, ne se trouve guere deux fois en mesme estat. Je donne a` mon ame tantost un visage, tantost un autre, selon le costé où je la couche. Si je parle diversement de moy, c’est que je me regarde diversement. (Essais, II.1, ‘De l’inconstance de notre jugement’, VS 335). Not only does the wind of accident disturb me according to its own inclination, but furthermore I disturb and trouble myself by the instability of my attitude; and anyone who looks properly will hardly ever find himself more than once in the same state. I give my soul now one face, now another, according as I turn it in one direction or the other. If I do not always say the same of myself, this is because I do not always see myself the same.

96

Human Nature

He denies that identity can be grasped as a principle of differentiation (or difference as a criterion of non-identity): ‘Et se trouve autant de difference de nous a` nous mesmes, que de nous a` autruy’ (And there is as much difference between ourselves and ourselves as between ourselves and others) (II.1, VS 337). ‘Moy a` cette heure et moy tantost sommes bien deux’ (Myself at the moment and myself in a little while are two very different people) (III.9, ‘De la vanité’, VS 964). Of course, as van Delft stresses, Montaigne does not reject all notion of an individual nature: careful self-study will disclose our ‘forme maistresse’ (mistress form), and on the basis of our own experience we can accede to some truths about humanity (III.2, ‘Du repentir’, VS 811, 805). But outside observation will not reveal what we are: ‘Il n’y a que vous qui sçache si vous estes lâche et cruel, ou loyal et devotieux; les autres ne vous voyent poinct, ils vous devinent par conjectures incertaines’ (Only you know if you are a coward and cruel or loyal and devoted; other people do not see you, they guess tentatively at what you are) (VS 807–8). Space precludes following Montaigne further onto the terrain of self-knowledge. I turn instead to another familiar figure, who is, however, not commonly considered in relation to the conception of human nature.51 Descartes has just determined with certainty that he exists: the problem is, what is it exactly that exists here? There is a risk of falsely identifying something else with himself, and thus squandering the certainty of the Cogito. In order, therefore, to discover what he is, Descartes reviews what he believed himself to be before undertaking the radical critique of his knowledge. The answer is, of course, a man (or human being: homo in the Latin). But what is a man? ‘A rational animal’ comes the reply. But then I would have to discover what an animal is and what ‘rational’ means, and so one question triggers an infinity of others, each more difficult than the last (AT VII, 25/IX, 19–20: OP II, 183/416). 51

But see Geneviève Rodis-Lewis, L’Anthropologie cartésienne (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1990), and John Cottingham, A Descartes Dictionary (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), 74–6 (article ‘Human Being’).

Approaches

97

Descartes is here rejecting the whole descriptive procedure, with its underlying presuppositions that: 1. the terms of everyday language correspond to definite things and functions; in particular, they can denote real categories of objects; 2. an individual thing becomes an object of knowledge when it is assigned to its category or species; 3. this assignment is grounded in the essential identity between the individual and the species (‘René Descartes is a human being’); 4. fully to know an individual/a species is to determine its essential properties, typically enshrined in a definition (‘a human being is a rational animal’). The whole procedure serves basically to answer the question ‘What is this thing we call an X ?’ For Descartes, however, to identify himself first and foremost as a human being is to slide into an infinite linguistic regress, definitions upon definitions, and to forfeit the primordial certainty of the Cogito for the confusions of discourse. Of course, he is not at all rejecting the notion of essence as such. He is trying to discover in what his essence really consists, and he will come up with an answer: ‘je ne suis donc, précisément parlant, qu’une chose qui pense’ (I am therefore, precisely speaking, nothing other than a thinking thing) (AT IX, 21: OP II, 419).52 But the expressions ‘une chose qui pense’/‘res cogitans’ are, precisely, not units of a language like homme or homo, which have simply been incorporated into the discourse of philosophy, as if they designated unquestionable realities. They are constructs formed along the syntagmatic axis to denote a new philosophical concept of what it is to be (what in ordinary speech we call) a human being. (For all Descartes knows at the moment, he 52

Cf. the Latin: ‘sum igitur præcise tantùm res cogitans’ (AT VII, 27: OP II, 184). The French text seems more to emphasize the linguistic dimension of this clarification and correction of former beliefs.

98

Human Nature

might in fact be what we call an angel, since he is not yet certain that his spontaneous conviction of having and being bound up with a body is trustworthy.) Pascal too seeks to cast doubt on the value of approaching human nature via definitions. We know perfectly well what the word man means, or, to put it more precisely, as Pascal puts it, we know what is being referred to when it is uttered. We have this idea spontaneously (‘naturellement’). Not that Pascal is intervening in the debate about innate ideas: he is saying, simply, that ‘man’ is not an idea we have to have explained to us (like the idea ‘scalene triangle’) in order to grasp it. We cannot express the idea, but it suffices that we know what we are talking about when we use the word.53 On the other hand, we cannot use that primitive grasp of the idea ‘man’ to establish significant truths about human nature. We can discover the wretchedness and greatness of human nature by analysing our experience and that of other people. We cannot discover our true nature by introspection, however, as Descartes thought we could: if we go down that road, we certainly encounter a self (‘le moi’), but we cannot locate it in the body or the soul, or identify it with the body or the soul (Pensées, L 688/S 567/LG 582).54 In all these ‘problematic’ explorers of human nature so far mentioned, there is what Charles Taylor calls a ‘radical reflexivity’.55 Of course, this can be combined with the descriptive approach: Charron’s De la sagesse is a good example of this, discussed in Chapter 6 53 Pascal, ‘De l’esprit géométrique: Réflexions sur la géométrie en général’, OC II, 158; also in Les Provinciales, Pensées, et Opuscules diverses, ed. Philippe Sellier and Gérard Ferreyrolles, Classiques Modernes, La Pochothèque: Le Livre de Poche/Classiques Garnier (Paris: Garnier and Librairie Générale Française, 2004), 115. Since this volume, though less complete, is more accessible than the Pléiade Œuvres complètes, I will give references to both where possible using the abbreviations PPOD and OC. But the Pensées are referred to by number only. 54 There is a much more lengthy discussion of Pascal in my Early Modern French Thought, 100–50, to which the reader is referred, in order to avoid repetition here. 55 ‘We can [. . .] becomes aware of our awareness, try to experience our experiencing, focus on the way the world is for us. This is what I call taking a stance of radical reflexivity or adopting the first-person standpoint’ (Taylor, Sources of the Self, 130); see also pp. 163, 176.

Approaches

99

because of its specific concern with self-knowledge. What I want now to argue is that the ‘problematic’ view is not confined to practitioners of radical reflexivity. It is implicit in the neo-Augustinian theology of the seventeenth century, in the claim that human nature has been changed or distorted by the Fall (Adam and Eve’s infringement of God’s commandment (Genesis 3) and the resultant impact on the human condition).

The Fall For Augustine, the Fall involved a change in human nature. Adam and Eve’s disobedience affected their whole progeny: mortality, their individual penalty, became a natural inheritance.56 Moreover, the Fall disturbed the relationship between soul and body, arousing what Augustine calls ‘disobedience of desire struggling in our members’ (‘repugnantem . . . in membris inoboedientiam concupiscendi’).57 This perturbation of desire, or ‘concupiscence’, is an essential element in Augustine’s account of original sin, and I shall briefly summarise his account of it. First, the term ‘concupiscence’ can in principle cover all forms of desire, be they good or bad: Augustine sometimes employs ‘concupiscentia’, and the related term ‘cupiditas’, in a morally neutral sense.58 More often, though, they are pejorative: 56 De civitate Dei, XIII.3. The notion of a change in human nature through original sin is also asserted in De civitate Dei, XIV.12, XXI.8, and Opus imperfectum contra ´ Julianum, IV.104, PL 45, 1401. See Etienne Gilson, Introduction a` l’étude de saint Augustin, 2nd edn. (Paris: Vrin, 1987), 192–8, for a magisterial analysis of the concept of human nature in Augustine (the reference to the Opus imperfectum is on p. 196 n. 3). The contrast between Augustine’s focus on man as he actually is—that is, a fallen creature—and the Thomist distinction between natural and supernatural planes is well brought out by Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, 9 vols. (Tunbridge Wells: Burns & Oates, 1999 (1st pub. 1946–75)), II, 47–9. 57 De civitate Dei, XIII.3, with an allusion to Romans 7: 23: ‘I see another law in my members.’ 58 See, e.g., De civitate Dei, XIV.7, for the neutral use of ‘cupiditas’, and XV.5, for that of ‘concupiscentia’. Cf. also De spiritu et littera, IV.6, PL 44, 204. Augustine is much given to citing Galatians 5: 17 (‘caro enim concupiscit adversus spiritum, spiritus autem adversus carnem’ (the desires of self-indulgence are always in opposition to the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are in opposition to self-indulgence) ), as in the latter

100

Human Nature

in De civitate Dei, XIV.7, he explains that whenever the object of the desire is not specified the terms are to be taken in a pejorative sense. Secondly, concupiscence is normally to be taken not just as a desire for created goods, but a desire of such goods for their own sake: a desire to enjoy them rather than to use them.59 Thirdly, it follows that all our desires for created goods are concupiscences, unless they are subordinated to the ultimate end of union with God. (For instance, God has made us such that we need to eat and drink to stay alive: so the desire to appease one’s hunger or thirst as such may not be concupiscent, but it will become so if we treat eating and drinking not as a necessity of our nature but as a source of pleasure worth pursuing for its own sake.) For this reason, fourthly, ‘concupiscence’, thus understood, cannot be taken as an ethically neutral appetite: otherwise, how could it be true that ‘the flesh desires against the spirit’ (Galatians 5: 17)?60 Fifthly, concupiscence cannot be controlled, let alone eradicated, by the force of reason alone. For though we might be able to pit one concupiscence against another, preferring people’s approval for our self-restraint to the pleasures of indulgence, we have not the power to subordinate our desires in general to God, as our ultimate end and source of happiness. We are thus condemned to experience and to act on desires that estrange us from God, that install creatures in the place he alone should occupy: that are, in short, sinful. We cannot, therefore, escape sin, or the punishment of sin, unless the redeeming merits of Christ’s death are channelled to us in the form of divine grace, considered as an actual influence on the soul, a delight in obedience to God sufficiently passage. There is a very good discussion of both terms in Gilson, Introduction, 154 n. 3, 175 n. 4, 194 n. 4. 59 To enjoy an object (frui) is to ‘cling to it for its own sake’ (‘alicui rei inhaerere propter seipsam’): that is, to be durably united to it. (This, for Augustine, is tantamount to loving it, since to love something is to seek it for its own sake (De diversis quaestionibus 83, § 35, PL 40, 23)). To use (uti) it is to integrate it into one’s aim of obtaining some other object that one loves (De doctrina christiana, I.iv.4, PL 34, 20–1). Augustine’s tendency to think of seeking and possession as intimately related is well noted by John Burnaby (Amor Dei: A Study in the Religion of St Augustine (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 1991 (1st pub. 1938) ), 96). 60 Augustine, Contra Julianum, III.xiii.26, PL 44, 715.

Approaches

101

strong to overcome concupiscence.61 All these themes are taken up by Augustine’s early modern followers. Concupiscence, then, is not a normal or natural desire, but a perversion of desire. It illustrates a general truth about Augustine’s conception of human nature. We cannot speak of an intrinsic human ´ nature, with indefeasible fundamental properties: as Etienne Gilson observes, Augustine’s perspective on human nature is always historical and contingent.62 We cannot attempt to define human nature while bracketing out humanity’s historical and changing relationship with God. Theological difficulties arose when the medieval scholastics started to practise philosophy as a quasi-autonomous discipline, and thus to develop conceptions of human nature, derived from Aristotle, that distinguished clearly between ‘natural’ and ‘supernatural’ spheres. Of course the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis was not the sole scriptural source of Augustine’s doctrine of original sin. His reading of St Paul was crucial. ‘It was through one man that sin came into the world, and through sin death, and thus death has spread throughout the whole human race because everyone has sinned’ (Romans 5: 12).63 On the other hand, the force of the Pauline message is surely, in part, in its appeal to experience. Sometimes, the apostle himself speaks as the subject of that experience: ‘I do not understand my own behaviour; I do not act as I mean to, but I do things that I hate. [. . .] The good thing I want to do, I never do; the evil thing which I do not want—that is what I do’ (Romans 7: 15, 19). However we interpret this passage, whether as a description of Paul’s own current state, or of the state of humanity still in the grip of sin, the first-person idiom invites us to recognize the experience it describes as our own.64 61

Augustine, De spiritu et littera, XXIX.51, PL 44, 233. Gilson, Introduction, 192–3. 63 The translation quoted here is that of the New Jerusalem Bible (the edition used is The New Jerusalem Bible: Study Edition (London: Darton, Longman, & Todd, 1994)). This is one of the most controversial texts in St Paul (see the note to the passage in the cited edition, p. 1875, n. h.), and I cannot explore its complexities here. 64 See the Jerusalem Bible note on the passage (p. 1877, n. g). There are theological implications affecting our view of the nature of justification. 62

102

Human Nature

Certainly, Augustine found confirmation of the Pauline teaching in his own experience, as in this reference to Galatians 5: 17: ‘Thus came I to understand (myself affording me the experiment [me ipso experimento]) what I had sometimes read: how the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh’ (Confessions, VIII.5).65 Once he had renounced Manichaean dualism, only original sin could make sense to Augustine of his bitter experience of acrasia, the inability, on account of his uncontrolled desires, to live up to the ethical standards he recognized. The witness of Scripture confirms, illuminates, and explains the facts of experience (that the same is true, more broadly, of Pascal’s vision of human nature shows how profoundly Augustinian Pascal is).66 It is not simply personal experience that Augustine brings to bear in support of the doctrine. He appeals to observation. Thus he notes that children are less capable of moving and using their limbs than the frailest offspring of other species, and that their instinctual appetites and aversions (on which their survival depends far more than the adult’s) are likewise weaker. There is a paradox, he seems to be implying, to be explained: why are the offspring of creation’s most powerful species in fact the weakest? Revelation, the story of the Fall, supplies the mystery’s solution. The parents’ sin reduced the human species to the level of animals. The paradoxical weakness of human offspring is the sign of this reduction (De civitate Dei, XIII.3). If human babies were simply as frail as the young of other species, then this might imply that humans are just animals: it is the fact that they are more frail, when we would expect them, like

65 The translation quoted is from St Augustine, Confessions, ed. W. H. D. Rouse, trans. William Watts, 2 vols., Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, and London: Heinemann, 1912). 66 ‘Augustinian experience reinforces or reconfirms the lessons of an authoritative text’ (Nicholas D. Paige, Being Interior: Autobiography and the Contradictions of Modernity in Seventeenth-Century France (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 2001), 179). Paige cites the passage from Confessions, VIII.5. However, he goes on to suggest that early modern spiritual writing begins to exhibit a dissociation between experience and textual authority (pp. 179–81).

Approaches

103

their parents, to be stronger, that constitutes the enigma requiring historical explanation. The helplessness of childhood is the perpetual trace of a perversion of the history of the human race: of the painful birth of humanity as we know it now. In the Confessions (I.7), Augustine had already sought to exhibit traces of sin in the newborn. No one, he admits, is without sin in the sight of God, not even the baby (‘infans’). The gap in his own memory of infancy can be filled by observing any baby (‘tantillus nunc parvulus’). Did he perhaps desire the breast too fiercely? Could it have been good to weep and rage at one’s parents for not giving one what it would have been harmful to give? The baby’s physical weakness (‘imbecillitas membrorum’) is innocent: its soul is not. This is what Augustine read in the behaviour of one child he observed: ‘Vidi ego et expertus sum zelantem parvulum: nondum loquebatur et intuebatur pallidus amaro aspectu conlactaneum suum’ (I myself have seen and observed a little baby to be already jealous; and before it could speak, what an angry and bitter look it would cast at another child that sucked away its milk from it). The observation (the personal dimension is stressed) mightily impressed Lacan, who specifically calls it an anticipation of psychoanalysis.67 The observation of childhood is frequently drawn on by seventeenth-century Augustinian writers in support of the doctrine of original sin. A passage from the Port-Royal Logique bears this out in rather roundabout fashion. Its explicit concern is formal—arguments comprising more than the three propositions of the classic syllogism, in particular the form known as epichereme, which includes the proof of one or both of the syllogism’s premises.68 Arnauld and Nicole point out that Cicero’s Pro Milone, a defence of Milo’s part in the killing of Clodius based on the assertion that Clodius was out to kill Milo, can be reduced to this form. But they invest far more 67 ´ Jacques Lacan, ‘L’Aggressivité en psychanalyse’, in Ecrits (Paris: Seuil, 1966), 101–24 (p. 114). 68 Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole, La Logique ou l’art de penser, ed. Pierre Clair and François Girbal, 2nd edn., Bibliothèque des Textes Philosophiques (Paris: Vrin, 1993), III.15, 227–9.

104

Human Nature

in their other chosen example. They offer a proof in epicherematic form of original sin, based on the unhappiness of children. The basic syllogism would run as follows: Children’s suffering could only be a punishment for some sin deriving from their birth. But children suffer. Therefore they are guilty of original sin. The proof of the major premise would be by a disjunctive argument, of the type to which Sherlock Holmes is fond of appealing (‘When you have eliminated the impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth’). Granting the existence of God, which Arnauld and Nicole would have thought a demonstrable truth, then, apart from original sin, there can be only three explanations for children’s suffering: sins committed in a previous life; God’s helplessness to prevent it; God’s injustice. Since all three are impious, original sin remains as the only explanation. The minor premises, the fact of children’s suffering, is proved empirically, ‘by enumerating their miseries’ (p. 229). However, Arnauld and Nicole’s main contention is that the rigid syllogistic format they themselves have constructed is less effective than St Augustine’s method. He begins with what is formally the minor premises: the wretchedness of children, proved by experience: ‘Les premieres années de la vie sont remplies de vanité, de souffrances, d’illusions, de frayeurs’ (The early years of life are filled with futility, suffering, illusions, fears).69 He goes on to list the sufferings of the adult, and then points out why all this misery suggested to pagan philosophers the idea of punishment for the sins of a previous life. But Scripture excludes this view, so we are left with a trilemma, in which God’s injustice, God’s helplessness, or punishment for Adam’s sin are the surviving alternatives. The first two being rejected, Augustine contends that his interlocutor, Julian, has no alternative but to accept, however reluctantly, the fact 69 Augustine, Contra Julianum, V.16, PL 44, 782, as quoted in Arnauld and Nicole, La Logique, 229.

Approaches

105

of original sin (Arnauld and Nicole, La Logique, p. 229). Augustine’s method, as Arnauld and Nicole point out, is to prove the premises as he goes along, instead of leaving the proof until the argument has been set out in full: this is especially effective when the premises are controversial or rebarbative, because it means that the reader’s misgivings or resistances are overcome as soon as possible. It would have been difficult to pick a more loaded example in the context of the time. The text of Augustine’s chosen is one of his most uncompromising defences of his late view of original sin and grace: it is addressed to the most able and indefatigable of the Pelagians, Julian of Eclanum.70 It was this anti-Pelagian crusade that Jansenius and his French followers such as Arnauld and Nicole (and Pascal) claimed to be reviving. For our immediate purpose, what is most striking about Arnauld and Nicole’s discussion is the foregrounding of childhood in their syllogistic reformulation of Augustine’s argument: for Augustine himself equally emphasizes the misery of adults. It is as if Arnauld and Nicole felt that there was something primary and irrefutable about the insistence on childhood suffering, whereas an objector might try to explain adult unhappiness by all sorts of other factors, including our own misuse of our faculties of reason and choice. That would complicate the argument most undesirably. Of course, there is another side to childhood (the happiness, the playfulness, the affection) that the argument overlooks. Logically, however, this is not a weakness, since all children are sometimes unhappy through no fault of their own, and this requires explanation if God is not to be accused of cruelty. Historically, though, it is noteworthy that Arnauld and Nicole do not seem to fear that anyone will seriously challenge the pessimistic depiction of childhood. The point is that the doctrine of original sin is not a pure construction of theological 70 Pelagianism (named after Pelagius (c. 350–c. 425) ) made human beings responsible for their own salvation, emphasizing their freedom to choose between good and evil. God has provided assistance with this (the Scriptures for example), but no gift of grace, in the sense of a divine influence on the soul, is required. Augustine, on the contrary, held that grace was absolutely necessary for us to fulfil the commandments, and, moreover, that it was an absolutely free gift from God, which we could never merit by our actions or qualities.

106

Human Nature

ratiocination about authoritative texts, Scripture and the Fathers. It commended itself to seventeenth-century men and women because it seemed to be grounded in certain unpalatable but undeniable facts of human life.71 Of course, it has become possible to explain these facts of experience in other ways. Even in antiquity, Lucretius had stressed the helplessness of the newborn human, in the context of his Epicurean world view (De rerum natura, V.222). Freud’s aetiology of anxiety includes the biological consideration that the human young remain helpless and dependent longer than other animals, having been sent into the world, after a relatively short intrauterine existence, and ‘in a less finished state’.72 Lacan also cites this species characteristic of premature birth (we are born, as it were, before we are ready, before the organism is sufficiently developed to cope with its environment) to explain the basic lack of fit between human beings and their environment to which he appeals in his theory of the mirror-stage.73 There is, however, apparently another dimension to this prematurity of birth: it is because we are born so ‘unfinished’ that we need a longer developmental stage outside the womb, during which the brain’s singular capacity to learn from experience—our main evolutionary advantage—comes into play.74 It is then curious to look again at Augustine’s account of the hapless neonate. Human infants are even weaker, he remarks, than the young of other species, ‘as if the power of mankind raises itself all the further over other creatures, because its impetus has been more kept in check, as an arrow is driven further the more the bow is bent back’ (XIII.3: my translation). Perhaps this 71 No doubt, however, this perception was itself historically situated, as is suggested by Jean Delumeau’s study of early modern pessimism in Le Péché et la peur: La Culpabilisation en Occident XIIIe–XVIIIe siècles (Paris: Fayard, 1983). See esp. pp. 273–314, where he discusses the doctrine of original sin. 72 Sigmund Freud, Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety, in On Psychopathology, ed. Angela Richards, trans. under the general editorship of James Strachey, Pelican Freud Library, 10 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979), 313. 73 ´ Lacan, ‘Le Stade du miroir’, in Ecrits, 93–100 (p. 96). For other references to the ´ prematurity of human birth, see Ecrits, 113, 186, 552. 74 Stephen Jay Gould, Ever since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1980 (1st pub. 1978) ), 63–75 (esp. p. 68).

Approaches

107

is just a rhetorical tour de force: none the less, the sense that one never knows when he will deliver some uncannily perceptive insight is probably what keeps many people reading Augustine who have no religious or professional reason for doing so. The above merely sketches some of the experiential roots of the doctrine of original sin. A much fuller account of its content will be necessary. For the moment, it will suffice to stress the implications of the thesis of a change of human nature due to the Fall. The human being has become a paradoxical entity: we are something much more than brute animals, but we live and die like the brutes. In other words, the Augustinian doctrine of original sin gives rise to what, in the terminology used above, is a problematic conception of human nature, even before the nature of human subjectivity, of the moi, is factored in. This will become clearer in what follows. But this conception is also historical. That is to say, the discrepancy between the mean reality of human life and our noble aspirations is not to be rationalized in terms of a hierarchy, within human nature, or within the human race, as it is today. It is not that the mass of people prefer their lower nature, and only the wise few the higher, so that the hierarchy of powers within human nature is mapped onto a hierarchy of value in which individuals are placed. Human nature can be understood only in relation to an event that cuts the whole human race off from our origins, and diverts it from its original goal.75 The renewal of this perspective on early modern neo-Augustinian thought had the effect of partially effacing the teleological conceptions of human nature that medieval and Renaissance writers had borrowed from the ancients. To be sure, all human beings still desire happiness, and so we can still speak of a supreme or sovereign good. But, when such stress is laid on the forces within human nature that not only hold them back from achieving that good but actively 75 The historicity of Augustine’s conception, and its difference from later conceptions of a hierarchy between the natural and the supernatural domains, is very well brought out by Jan Miel, Pascal and Theology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1969), 31, 35, 40.

108

Human Nature

alienate them from it, the underlying good they pursue tends to fade from view. It gives place to the various idols, substitute goods, that command the devotion of individuals. In other words, the ground has been prepared for the reception of a new mechanical approach to questions of psychology and ethics, in which final causes disappear as they disappear from the philosophy of nature.

2 Original Sin Original sin re-enters the foreground of moral and psychological thought with the neo-Augustinian revival of the early modern period. Space precludes any attempt to discuss Augustine’s version of the doctrine in detail.1 The essential points were made in the previous chapter: original sin has produced a change in human nature, subjecting us to mortality and, from our point of view most importantly, transforming our relationship to created goods. Henceforth, our desire for these necessarily takes the form of concupiscence: that is to say, a desire that cannot be overcome by the force of reason alone. This book is chiefly concerned with seventeenth-century Roman Catholic Augustinianism, but of course some of the themes discussed had also been developed by the sixteenth-century Reformers. Calvin attacks the false self-knowledge proffered by philosophers who, in the spirit of Renaissance humanism, encourage man to focus on his own excellence, and the self-love that induces us to believe ourselves self-sufficiently capable of leading a good and happy life: we cannot 1 For general studies of Augustine’s life and works, see Brown, Augustine of Hippo, and Serge Lancel, Saint Augustin (Paris: Fayard, 1999). For a superb overall presentation ´ Portalié, ‘Saint Augustin’, in of his thought, see Gilson, Introduction. On his theology, E. DTC I, 2268–2472, is indispensable. The theory of original sin is most fully developed in Augustine’s polemics against Pelagius and Julian of Eclanum. See Brown, Augustine of Hippo, 340–75, Lancel, Saint Augustin, 457–86, 577–612; also Burnaby, Amor Dei, 58–60, 220–2; Portalié, ‘Saint Augustin’, 2380–3. For a more recent discussion of Augustine’s conception of sin, including original sin, attuned to contemporary preoccupations, see also Alister McFadyen’s lucid and incisive Bound to Sin: Abuse, Holocaust and the Christian Doctrine of Sin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

110

Human Nature

know ourselves unless we bear in mind both the happy state in which we were created, and the wretched state into which we have fallen thanks to Adam’s sin.2 The most influential restatement in the Catholic world of the Augustinian conception of original sin is that of Cornelius Jansenius (1585–1638), Bishop of Ypres in Flanders, whose treatise Augustinus was posthumously published in 1640. The theological issues raised by Jansenius became enmeshed in conflicts within the clergy, including disputes over pastoral issues affecting the faithful, such as frequency of Holy Communion. The attempt to censure Arnauld, a partisan of Jansenius, was dragged out of the theology faculty into the public sphere when Pascal attacked it in the Provinciales. The Jansenists refused to abide by the tacit convention that theological issues were for professional theologians to handle according to established protocols. Thus theology found its way into a broader culture, and the technical issues became entwined with more general visions of human nature.3 Jansenius and his followers were neither simply restating an established orthodoxy, nor clearly developing something new and distinctive, still less a palpable heresy (though his doctrines were eventually condemned as such). Jansenius had attempted to return to the pure thought of St Augustine, stripping away the scholastic accretions that obscured it. But most early modern Roman Catholic theologians would have accessed the doctrine through St Thomas Aquinas’s reformulation: the so-called accretions were, to them, indispensable aspects. So something must be said of St Thomas’s handling of the doctrine of original sin.4 2 Jean Calvin, Institution de la religion chrétienne, ed. Jean-Daniel Benoˆıt, 5 vols. (Paris: Vrin, 1957–63), II.1, 7–9. 3 This is discussed in more detail in my Early Modern French Thought, 18–49. 4 Aquinas’s views on original sin are discussed by Brian Davies, The Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 254–7; for an introduction to his ethics in general, see pp. 220–49; also Ralph McInerney, ‘Ethics’, in Norman Kretzmann and Eleonore Stump (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 196–216; F. C. Copleston, Aquinas (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1955), 184–236.

Original Sin

111

Aquinas on Original Sin Aquinas, certainly, upholds the core of the doctrine of original sin: if all human beings did not contract original sin from Adam, then they would not all need redemption by Christ (ST, IaIIae, q. 81, a. 3). He sees the effects of original sin as a loss of due subordination: of reason to God, of the other faculties to reason, and of the body to the soul (ST Ia, q. 95, a. 1; cf. IaIIae, q. 81, a. 5, ad 2). Once the will turned away from God, it lost its authority over the other powers of the soul, so that, in particular, they became oriented towards changeable goods, which orientation is what is meant by concupiscence (ST IaIIae, q. 82, a. 3). So it is not a purely extraneous misfortune: as in Augustine, original sin has destructured the personality. Yet Aquinas seems to stress the residual element of our original nature slightly more than Augustine. The natural inclination to virtue is diminished by sin (ST IaIIae, q. 85, a. 1): it is, however, not totally suppressed, because it pertains to us as rational creatures, and to act virtuously is to act according to reason (ST IaIIae, q. 85, a. 2: cf. IaIIae, q. 63, a. 1).5 This is a difference of emphasis rather than of doctrine: Augustine acknowledged that human beings retain some traces of the image of God in which they were created—that is to say, a residual rationality by which they can know something of the divine law (De spiritu et littera, XXVIII.48, PL 44, 230). No one, he says, is so utterly vicious that every trace of nature is wiped out in them (De civitate Dei, XIX.12). But it is a significant difference for all that. More important still is Aquinas’s integration into the theory of original sin of the distinction between natural and supernatural, formulated to make sense of his encounter with Aristotle. He argues that the only true fulfilment we can achieve is in the enjoyment of the vision of God, which our natural capacities cannot attain: 5 ‘Sin’ here is not restricted to original sin, but must certainly at least include it, as is indicated by the reference to Adam and Eve’s original justice in ST IaIIae, q. 85, a. 1.

112

Human Nature

it must be a supernatural gift.6 Yet a certain happiness is possible in this life, first, through the exercise of the speculative intellect in contemplation (even though that cannot afford us the vision of God’s essence), and, secondly, through that of the practical intellect, which directs our actions and passions (ST IaIIae, q. 3, a. 5). (This latter activity is the domain of the virtues.7 ) Now this distinction between natural and supernatural goods is not easy to map onto Augustine’s thought. Of course, Augustine distinguishes between good acts performed for the benefit of the earthly city and those aimed at realizing the heavenly city. But it is misleading to read this in terms of the natural/supernatural distinction, since he tends to read even ‘natural’ acts of virtue as a divine gift.8 What emerges, on the other hand, in Aquinas is the conception of human life as possessing its own natural norms (for instance, the preservation of societies), even though these are to be transcended in the service of a supernatural goal.9 All natural human powers and qualities are gifts of God, and are most fulfilled (on earth) in the service of God-given faith. Yet they have a certain, strictly limited, fruition within the human world, on this side, so to speak, of the domain of faith. An example of this difference in approach concerns the question whether those without the Christian faith can be virtuous. In controversy with the Pelagian Julian of Eclanum, Augustine had vigorously denied that they can.10 Aquinas’s view is more nuanced: he admits that unbelievers may to a certain extent perform good deeds 6 For Aquinas’s theory of happiness, see ST IaIIae, qq. 1–5. Why no finite intellect, the human intellect in particular, can achieve knowledge of the divine essence is explained in ST Ia, q. 12, aa. 4, 11, 12. 7 ‘The virtues have to do with actions and passions’ (Aristotle, Ethics, II.iii.3 (1104b )). For the sources of this conception of happiness, see Ethics, I.vii.15 (1098a ); X.vii–viii (1177a –1179a ). 8 See Portalié, ‘Saint Augustin’, 2386–7. Henri de Lubac says of Augustine that the ´ whole atmosphere of his thinking is supernatural (Surnaturel: Etudes historiques, 2nd edn. (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1991), 79). 9 ‘Finis autem humanae vitae et societatis est Deus’ (the goal of human life and society is God) (ST IaIIae, q. 100, a. 6). 10 Augustine, Contra Julianum, IV.iii.16–33, PL 44, 744–56. The same view is taken by Jansenius, Augustinus, vol. II, De statu naturæ lapsæ, IV.1–16, 221–56.

Original Sin

113

for which natural qualities (‘bonum naturae’) are sufficient.11 The distinction between the natural and the supernatural thus prepares the way, as H. de Lubac argues, for a new conception (which Aquinas never held himself ) of a reality that is moral but not supernatural (Surnaturel, 254). This is, then, a significantly different conception of the Fall. Instead of a radical transformation or perversion of human nature, it registers an injury: the severance of a capacity more precious than all the rest, the lack of which does not, however, destroy all the rest. It jeopardizes them in their operation, but leaves them some capacity for attaining their objects. Augustine’s themes have been transposed, as it were, into a different musical system, and they end up sounding very different. The difference between the two perspectives opened up a space for ideological conflict in the early modern period, when the hegemony of the Church was under threat from the growth of a secular public sphere.

The State of Pure Nature The possibility of a tension emerging between the natural and the supernatural realms was accentuated by later theologians’ conception of a ‘state of pure nature’.12 It is mentioned here because Jansenius specifically attacks it in his attempt to restate the pure Augustinian doctrine of original sin. The prime author of the theory of pure nature was the Dominican Thomas Cajetan (1469–1534): but, according to H. de Lubac, no one played a greater role in its spread than the Jesuit philosopher and theologian Francisco Suárez (1548–1617), and so the following discussion singles him out. Suárez used the 11

ST IIaIIae, q. 10, a. 4; cf. IIaIIae, q. 23, a. 7, ad 1. The theory is mentioned by Tocanne, L’Idée de nature en France, 251–2. For a detailed account, see Lubac, Surnaturel 101–55: on Suárez, see pp. 116–17. Suárez himself cites Cajetan as a precursor (Tractatus de gratia Dei, seu de Deo salvatore, justificatore, et liberi arbitrii adjutore per gratiam suam, Prolegomenon IV, ‘De statibus humanæ naturæ’, I.1, in Opera omnia, ed. M. André and C. Berton, 28 vols. (Paris: Louis Vivès, 1856–78), VII, 179). 12

114

Human Nature

theory against the Louvain theologian Michael Baius (1513–89), in many ways a precursor of Jansenius, and his use of it was in turn targeted by Jansenius himself. The state of pure nature never existed. It was a theoretical construct, in which human beings were imagined as created with their current natural capacities but without supernatural aid of any kind. The rationale was that, if such a state were intrinsically possible, it would throw light on the two states that, faith teaches us, really did exist in fact (Adam and Eve’s original state, in which they did receive divine assistance, and the fallen state inherited by us). In the course of expounding his version of the theory, Suárez contends that there is no natural appetite in man (as he is, and a fortiori man in a state of pure nature) for the beatific vision, no heavenwards ‘pondus naturæ’ (I.21, 185). The use of ‘pondus’, so evocative a term in Augustine, points up the utter gap between this vision of man’s relationship to God and that of the author whose most famous utterance is ‘Thou has made us for thyself: and our heart is restless till it finds rest in thee’ (Confessions, I.1).13 We are invited then to consider the possibility of a world in which man is a purely natural creature, using his powers as best he may, and without help from on high, to secure a natural kind of fulfilment. Suárez’s discussion of concupiscence reinforces this point. He argues that the difficulty and reluctance we experience in doing good are not signs that our nature has been corrupted: they arise from the constitution of human nature itself. The will (the intellectual appetite) and the sensitive appetite necessarily exist 13 For a subject (animate or inanimate) to have a ‘pondus’ towards an object or state means (as was noted above, Ch. 1 n. 12) that it tends to move towards that object or state as its natural goal, in which it will find rest. See Augustine, Confessions, XIII.9, where he equates this inclination to love (‘pondus meus amor meus’), and also De civitate Dei, XI.28, XIX.12. When he uses the term, Augustine is often referring to the downward inclination of concupiscence and depravity (see Confessions, XIII.7; De civitate Dei, XXII.22). I am not, of course, suggesting that Augustine would have asserted (as if against Suárez) that we have a purely natural inclination towards God, because the notion of the ‘purely natural’ is alien to him. He and Suárez are operating with different conceptual frameworks. That is why I referred to different ‘visions’ of man’s relationship to God rather than different doctrines about it, since differences of doctrine about an object presuppose some common idea of it.

Original Sin

115

within us as beings composed of body and soul (‘spiritu et carne’: the context does not allow us to read ‘carne’ in the pejorative sense of ‘flesh’) (‘De statibus’, II.10, 189). Each appetite necessarily moves towards its appropriate object, and this creates inevitable conflict where the objects are different. There is no natural factor to ensure the victory of the higher appetite. So the kind of struggles described by St Paul in Romans 7 are really intrinsic to human nature as such. They are as natural as bodily corruptibility or as the weight of the body, which impedes our movements. They do not indicate that our nature has been damaged. Of course, we would have been spared them if we had continued to receive the divine gift of original integrity (perfect subjection of the sensitive appetite to the rational appetite). In that sense the concupiscence and the sensual inclinations we experience are a punishment for sin (that is, original sin). But they are not something monstrous in human nature (II.10, 189). In other words, we are to take our unruly inclinations partly for granted. We feel them because of a subtraction of divine aid. But they derive from the basic structure of the human psyche. We are a fallen race: but our moral-psychological state is not so very different from what it would have been if we had never been given the original integrity that God chose to give us, but to which we were certainly not entitled. Theologically speaking, Suárez probably wants to avoid the extreme pessimism about our fallen state that nourishes Baianism, but also Lutheranism and Calvinism. His conception of man before the Fall is traditional, in so far as it is Thomist in inspiration, even if developing Thomas’s thought beyond what, perhaps, the saint would have approved. From the point of view of ‘anthropology’ it is, perhaps, significant in another way. This emerges from the style rather than the theological substance: ‘Ergo concupiscentia hæc, et fomes quem patimur, licet sit pœna peccati, non est aliquid monstruosum in humana natura’ (Therefore this concupiscence, and the sensual inclination we experience, although it is the penalty for sin, is not something monstrous in human nature) (II.10, 189). First of all, there is an appeal to shared experience: the formulation is not abstract (he could have written ‘quem homo

116

Human Nature

patitur’). Then, this experience is implied, by the use of the figure of litotes (‘not something monstrous’), to be fairly normal. The tone is relaxed: the reader is invited to consider the issue coolly, without indignation or self-loathing. Suárez is responding to, and challenging, a preconception that there is something unnatural, monstrous even, in the refusal of appetite to respect the sway of reason. To be sure, it is a punishment for sin, but this important theological point is relegated to a concession in parentheses. It is as if, by asserting the need for grace, he is paradoxically making us feel more at home in our present natural condition, providing a sophisticated theological rationale that accounts for the spontaneous ‘natural’ attitude of an embodied humanity: the sense that this mortal coupling of body and soul, with its noble aspirations, but also its inbuilt striving to be united with physical objects and other creatures like itself, is at a fundamental level what we are. I am not, of course, suggesting that he is encouraging us to persist in that attitude. We need to realize that we are in fact under the penalty of sin, that only divine grace can redeem us, and that God has offered us a far higher than natural fulfilment. We must go beyond that attitude: but it is a natural one. It is not presented as something to be ashamed of. For Pascal it is: it becomes crucial to him, precisely, to restore this sense of man as a monster, otherwise we shall simply fail to recognize our need for God and his grace. ‘Monstre’ is therefore one of the labels he bestows on man, along with ‘chimère’, ‘chaos’, ‘sujet de contradictions’, ‘prodige’ (L 131/S 164/LG 122). Suárez, on the other hand, diminishes the sense of the human condition as a supernatural riddle that only a supernatural intervention can resolve. When, to be sure, he discusses what a natural beatitude would consist in, it is not in some Montaignian espousal of the corporeality of our condition. It would be in the most perfect possible conjunction with God through the intellect and the will, to the extent that he can be known by the natural light of the creature’s intellect. This would satisfy the highest appetite of our nature (‘satiat perfectissimum quemdam appetitum’).14 But 14

Suárez, De ultimo finis hominis, disp. XV, 1.3–4, in Opera omnia, IV, 143.

Original Sin

117

here again, although he is entirely traditional in holding that we can know something of God by pure reason, he is giving house room to a notion of relative fulfilment achievable, in theory, by knowledge of the God of the philosophers (I say ‘in theory’, because in fact, as Suárez would insist, we are offered a supernatural beatitude). To that extent, he is diminishing, again quite unintentionally, the claims of Christianity to be uniquely able both to interpret and to remedy the human condition. He does not seem to perceive philosophy as a practical existential alternative to Christian faith, nor would it have been in Counter-Reformation Spain. Writing in a different ideological climate and half a century later, Pascal was much more troubled by this possibility. Retrospectively, Henri de Lubac seems to validate his perception. He holds that the theory of pure nature introduced a disastrous separation between the natural and the supernatural. The relative autonomy it granted to nature could be read as a temptation towards independence.15 It encouraged the movement towards secularization started by the Renaissance (Lubac, Surnaturel, 153–4). The issues were thus not purely theological. Jansenius devotes three books of the Augustinus (vol. II, De statu puræ naturæ, I–III) to refuting the theory of the state of pure nature as intrinsically flawed. Human nature, with its constitutive aspirations, posssibilities, and experiences, is incomprehensible without a supernatural illumination and unlivable without a supernatural intervention. The rejection of the hypothesis of pure nature is thus intended to enforce the point that human nature cannot be understood in terms derived simply from human nature, as if it were an autonomous reality. In this sense, the Jansenist conception of human nature is, in our terms, a problematic one. Jansenius and his followers insist on the Augustinian position that original sin radically transformed human nature.16 Over and above the technical theological controversy, we can detect a clash of two visions of human nature, in one of which ‘nature’ 15 16

‘Relative autonomy’ is Lubac’s own term, not an injection of Althusser on my part. See Miel, Pascal and Theology, 57–8, 66–9, 134–5, 163.

118

Human Nature

is natural—we can make genuine, if limited, sense of human desires and behaviour by considering the capacities and inclinations we possess as rational animals—while in the other this ‘nature’ is profoundly unnatural, perverse, contradictory, requiring to be contrasted with a genuine lost nature, and to be understood in terms of a historical catastrophe for our species. The latter tendency survives (not without modification, admittedly) in certain nineteenth- and twentieth-century visions of mankind—intentionally divorced from any religious framework—which refuse to understand human nature in terms of the empirically observable behaviour patterns of individuals: psychoanalysis and Marxism especially. I shall discuss Jansenius’s account of the Fall, with detailed references to the themes of concupiscence and self-love, in the next chapter. But not only Jansenius’s devotees stressed the effects of the Fall. There were many other theologians committed to one form or another of Augustinianism, but not to the defence of Jansenius’s book. In at least one of these writers, Jean-François Senault, particular attention is paid to Augustine’s assertion that not only mankind, but the whole of nature, has been perverted by man’s sin.

Senault: The Corruption of Nature by Sin Jean-François Senault (1601–72) joined the Oratorians in 1618, becoming their Superior-General in 1662. The congregation maintained the Augustinian spirit of its founder, Cardinal Bérulle, while not committing itself on Jansenius’ side in the controversies provoked by the Augustinus. It was a training ground for priests, not a theology faculty, and respect for the decisions of the civil and religious authorities was part of its ethos. Senault himself was an anti-Jansenist, in the sense that he was opposed to Jansenism as a movement; but doctrinally he was the opposite of a Molinist. During his generalship, he required the theological professors of the congregation to teach St Augustine’s doctrine on grace, but in the light

Original Sin

119

of St Thomas’s presentation of it: this Thomistic Augustinianism seems to have been widespread in the Oratorians.17 Senault was much admired as a preacher; as a writer, he is generally remembered for De l’usage des passions (1641), which is discussed in a later chapter. But his Augustinian, non-Jansenist, view of human nature is very fully set out in L’Homme criminel ou la corruption de la nature par le péché of 1644. Certainly, the fallen soul has been corrupted by self-love and concupiscence. But the body too, and the whole of nature besides, have also felt, and continue to feel, the effects of original sin. Contrary to the view that the ancients knew nothing of original sin, and maintained a false confidence in nature, he opines that they had some suspicion that nature was intrinsically disordered. Only the Stoics, Pelagians before Pelagius, believed that all human troubles were our own fault (L’Homme criminel, pp. iii–vi, 11–16). Senault emphasizes the effect of original sin on the union between soul and body. How close that union is, is attested by the possibility of physiognomical readings of a person’s ‘humeur’ (either ‘temperament’ or ‘mood’) and intention, even though the claims of physiognomy may be exaggerated (pp. 410–11). So, if the body has been corrupted by original sin, the soul must needs be affected. Lies and vanity enter the mind through the senses, and sins, though consummated by the will, begin in the imagination (p. 428).18 The senses have been corrupted by the Devil, and are complicit in his designs (p. 435). The passions, which derive from the union of soul and body, have a certain utility, and may be cultivated so as to assist virtue, but they are enslaved to sin, rebellious subjects, wild beasts untameable without grace (pp. 445–51). ‘Depuis que la Nature est deuenuë notre supplice elles sont deuenuës nos bourreaux’ (Since nature has become our punishment, they have become our torturers) (p. 452). They seem to pursue ends of their own: ‘Ces volages sujets n’ont point d’autre mouvement que celuy de leur plaisir ou de 17 On the intellectual climate of the Oratory, and on Senault himself, see Henri Gouhier, La Vocation de Malebranche (Paris: Vrin, 1926), 17–35. 18 Both Thomists and Cartesians would accept that the will pertains to the immaterial soul, and makes use of no corporeal organ, unlike the imagination.

120

Human Nature

leur profit’ (These fickle subjects have no other impulse than their own pleasure or profit) (p. 457). The human subject is decentred: it is merely the locus of autonomous tendencies, subjects in their own right. Health is one of the body’s perfections, but it is constantly jeopardized by disease (pp. 458–72). More worrying is the fact that bodily and spiritual well-being are at odds: anticipating Rousseau, Senault observes that meditation is bad for one’s health (p. 465). As for the perfection of beauty, it is now not only perishable but pernicious (p. 473), the plague of a court (p. 492); it is an idol, an infection, a general conflagration, a monster (p. 493). Human life is short and miserable (pp. 498–512), and death is the punishment of sin (pp. 512–25). The multitude of reasons given by philosophers for despising death shows only how terrible it is (pp. 529–30). Original sin has also perverted our relationship to external goods. The importance of that relation was constantly debated in ancient ethics. For Aristotle, although man’s good consists essentially in the active exercise of the faculties of the soul (Ethics, I.vii.15 (1098a ) ), it cannot be fully achieved in the absence of certain external goods: friends, wealth, political power, good birth, satisfactory children, and even personal beauty (I.viii.15–17 (1099a –1099b ) ). The Stoics, on the other hand, were insistent that, if you make happiness depend in the slightest degree on anything but virtue, you are forced to concede the unthinkable: that virtue does not suffice for happiness.19 For a Christian, the problem does not pose itself in quite these terms, since the focus has shifted to other-worldly happiness. But Senault reviews the category of external goods to persuade us of the impossibility of happiness in this world. In general, he warns, we should be suspicious of objects of desire, because we should be suspicious of desire. It arises not from genuine lack but from a weakness of the soul, and its aspirations towards satisfaction are delusive: ‘il blesse l’homme en le voulant guerir, [. . .] il ouvre les playes au lieu de les refermer, [. . .] il accroist 19 The Stoic Cato takes this view in Cicero’s De finibus, III.iii.10–12. See also Seneca, Epistles, 71, §§ 16–36.

Original Sin

121

les besoins sous ombre de les soulager’ (it wounds man in attempting to cure him, [. . .] it opens wounds instead of closing them, [. . .] it increases our needs under the pretence of relieving them) (p. 552). Senault proceeds to review the main objects of desire: honour, power, and wealth. Honour is no longer the reward of virtue: instead the name of virtue is bestowed on great and successful crimes. Morally, Caesar was no better than Catiline (pp. 568–70). He and Alexander the Great are damned (pp. 575, 578). Greatness goes with dependence and futility (pp. 580–600). So far from being honourable, war is murder, and the desire for it is a powerful proof of the corruption of human nature (pp. 603–5).20 As for duels, they put the voice of the world before those of God and the King (p. 613). Wealth renders its possessors poor and guilty (pp. 616–28). How could happiness indeed be possible in a physical environment corrupted by our sin? According to Senault, not only the earth, the whole cosmos, is affected. Senault’s depiction of nature retains elements of the traditional (‘pre-scientific’) natural philosophy. The heavenly bodies exert influences (now harmful as well as beneficial) on earthly creatures (pp. 726, 747). The sun’s light has been diminished on account of sin, and it is distressed to find itself the object of men’s worship (pp. 747–51).21 But it is the earth’s corruption that touches us most nearly. It has lost its natural fertility, and now brings forth harmful substances (pp. 725–7). The sea is hostile, and so is the air, with its destructive winds and the contagions it spreads. Fire rages destructively (pp. 728–30). The elements are in discord, and the temperate climate of paradise blighted by the extremes of summer and winter (pp. 643–6). The animals have rebelled against us, and are now hostile (pp. 643, 727). Natural disasters like floods, earthquakes, storms, and plagues are not natural at all, but effects of 20 For a similar demystificatory attitude to war, see Pascal, Pensées, L 51, 60/S 84, 94/LG 47, 56. 21 I am not at all sure that this is merely a figure of speech (personification): it may be that Senault retains the medieval belief that the Sun, like the other planets, with which it was customarily classed, is guided by a kind of soul or ‘Intelligence’ (see C. S. Lewis, The Discarded Image, 115–16; on the influences of the heavenly bodies, see pp. 103–10).

122

Human Nature

sin (pp. 797–834). Senault puts all this in an extraordinarily violent image: ‘La Nature est vn ećhafaut où chaque creature fait l’office de bourreau, & se vangent [sic] des outrages qu’elles ont receus de luy [sc. man]’ (Nature is a scaffold on which all creatures perform the role of executioners, revenging themselves for the outrages inflicted on them by man) (p. 730). What is striking is Senault’s conclusion from this, which lifts his discussion of luxury far above conventional moralizing. He sees human beings’ response to their predicament in terms of Augustine’s distinction between the two cities and the two loves on which they are founded. The earthly city, the kingdom of amour-propre, protects itself against the miseries of life by luxurious clothes and magnificent buildings, while charity endures hardships patiently and in a spirit of penitence (pp. 628–9). We had to weave clothes and build dwelling places in order to survive in a hostile environment (pp. 650, 669).22 But in going beyond what is necessary for physical survival, we are affirming our amour-propre. We wear fine clothes to beautify ourselves or from the desire to dominate over others (pp. 650–2). The very crudeness of the first houses had a salutary spiritual effect: their discomfort caused us to regret our disobedience. We developed the art of architecture because we were no longer prepared to accept our punishment. Deprived of the earthly paradise, we insisted on trying to regain it, in defiance of the judgement of God, by our own ingenuity (pp. 669–70). What is more, we are not far short of having succeeded. We have overcome the earth’s infertility; we build palaces; lighthouses diminish the dangers of sea, weather, and 22 Like many Augustinian writers of the century (Pascal and Malebranche, but also Jacques Esprit), Senault is hostile to Montaigne. At least it is surely Montaigne he means when, discussing the moral significance of clothing, he cites a modern writer who says that procreation should not be regarded as shameful because it is natural. The reference is presumably to the Apologie de Raymond Sebon (Essais, II.12, VS 584–5). He refers to the writer as one who has no guide but nature, no religion but ‘libertinage’, no faith but experience, and no happiness but sensual pleasure (Senault, L’Homme criminel, 660–1). Augustinian critiques of Montaigne are insightfully analysed by Richard Scholar, ‘La Force de l’imagination de Montaigne: Camus, Malebranche, Pascal’, Littératures classiques, 45 (2002), 127–38.

Original Sin

123

darkness (in so doing, one might add, they promote trade). We have populated previously empty territory (pp. 813–15). This is amour-propre on a far larger scale, of a more pernicious variety. It is pernicious because, the more it facilitates our union with created things, the more it promotes our enslavement to them (pp. 785–7), and obscures the fact that they cannot satisfy our deepest urges: Nous ne sommes nez que pour le servir & pour l’aymer [sc. Dieu]. Tout autre object n’est pas capable de nous satisfaire, & nostre cœur est trop grand pour estre remply d’vn bien qui n’est pas infiny. (p. 783)23 We were born only to serve him and to love him [God]. No other object is capable of satisfying us, and our heart is too great to be filled with a good that is not infinite.

This last quotation is reminiscent both of the opening of the Confessions and (proleptically) of Pascal. The whole discussion is probably inspired by Augustine’s celebration of human inventive powers and the resultant benefits in De civitate Dei, XXII.24. St Augustine there shows a strong awareness of the discrepancy between the excellence of the powers themselves and the evil uses to which we often put them. Indeed, Senault is surely rehearsing the Augustinian (and ultimately Pauline) antithesis between the pride and would-be wisdom of the world and the folly and abjection to which it is reduced.24 But there is a strange intensity in his portrait of human invention that seems almost to work against his moralizing purpose. It is as if the successes of the earthly city have challenged the effectiveness of the old denunciations; as if, driven away from God by himself and given over to their amour-propre as a punishment for 23

Part of what Senault says about the love of created things as a form of enslavement to them (for instance, the reference to idolatry on p. 789) suggests that he is thinking principally of sexual love. But the improvement of our material condition can easily be seen as fostering sexual love (it offers more pleasures to be associated with it, and it helps us beautify ourselves). In any case, the Augustinian doctrine about the attraction to and enjoyment of creatures applies to all created things, whether animate or inanimate: all can arouse idolatry and distract us from our true good. 24 Cf. De civitate Dei, XIV.28 and 1 Corinthians 17–30.

124

Human Nature

the Fall, human beings have accepted their plight, and, instead of bemoaning it, have worked to change it for the better. In Senault’s contemplation of human achievements, there is something of the horrified fascination, perhaps even the guilty admiration, that we find in Milton’s depiction of the splendours of diabolical architecture.25 Rather than tax him with obscurantism, one should rather take note of the astuteness of his perception that technological progress, reconstructing nature, in despite of apparently preordained limits, is indissolubly linked with the self-affirmation and (at least apparent) self-emancipation of humanity. Sharing an Augustinian moral and psychological vision, Senault and Pascal none the less combine it with very discrepant perspectives on the world. Senault’s is traditional, pre-scientific, while Pascal is rightly viewed both as registering and as realizing the passage to a certain modernity. The difference of course is largely generational: Senault was some twenty years older than Pascal. Yet, younger by a few years than Descartes, he was of an age to respond to the shift of scientific paradigms. At least in L’Homme criminel, he seems indifferent to it. At any rate, this shows the difficulty of making neat parallelisms between Augustinianism in theology and avantgarde views in philosophy (including the natural variety).26 But those Augustinians like Pascal or Malebranche who had espoused the new philosophy were obliged to reassess its implications for the Augustinian tenet that original sin has affected nature as a whole. Pascal, it would seem, silently discards this aspect of the master’s teaching. Bodies have no intrinsic tendencies, aspirations, inclinations, no sympathies or antipathies (L 199/S 230/LG 185). If that is so, it is hard to see how they could respond to a moral disorder 25

Milton, Paradise Lost, I, ll. 692–730. On the complex relationships between Augustinian and Cartesian thought, see Henri Gouhier, Cartésianisme et augustinisme au XVIIe siècle (Paris: Vrin, 1978); Geneviève Rodis-Lewis, ‘Augustinisme et cartésianisme’, in L’Anthropologie cartésienne, 101–25; Nicholas Jolley, ‘The Reception of Descartes’s Philosophy’, in John Cottingham (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Descartes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 393–423 (pp. 400–2); Tad M. Schmaltz, ‘What has Cartesianism to do with Jansenism?’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 60 (1999), 37–56. 26

Original Sin

125

on the part of humanity, becoming hostile when previously benign. The eternal silence of the infinite spaces is frightening (L 201/S 233/LG 187). Yet Augustine, quoted by Pascal, had spoken of ‘les psaumes chantés par toute la terre’ (the psalms chanted by the whole earth) (L 1/S 37/LG 1).27 They are audible, however, only to the ear of faith. The silence of space is frightening not because the music of the spheres has been switched off but because in the silence we can no longer hear the voice of the Creator. What has changed is our relation to God, not the physical world in itself.

Pascal Pascal’s apologetic method carefully distinguishes what we can know by reason and what by revelation alone. He undertakes to show: Que la nature est corrompue, par la nature même. [. . .] ´ Qu’il y a un Réparateur, par l’Ecriture. (L 6/S 40/LG 4)28 That nature is corrupted, by [referring to] nature itself. [. . .] That there is a Redeemer, by [referring to] Scripture.

Only Scripture, then, can reveal that there is a Redeemer, Jesus Christ, but it would seem that purely natural arguments, prescinding from revelation, could establish the fact of corruption, providing a rational ground for belief in original sin, and thus validating the authority of the Judaeo-Christian tradition that proclaims that belief. The notion of the corruption of nature is central to Pascal’s apology: but its place in the argument is uncertain. The table of contents dating from 1658 includes a chapter title ‘La nature 27

Augustine, Confessions, IV.iv.8, as noted by Le Guern, in Pascal, OC II, 1314 (p. 543

n. 2). 28 Pascal’s debt to Senault in this formulation has been suggested by Gérard Ferreyrolles: Michel Le Guern agrees (OC II, 1315 (p. 544 n. 10) ).

126

Human Nature

est corrompue’.29 Its place is between the liasse ‘Transition de la connaissance de l’homme a` Dieu’ and the one devoted to the ‘Fausseté des autres religions’. But there is no corresponding collection of fragments. Philippe Sellier suggests that in fact Pascal simply ran together ‘La nature est corrompue’ and ‘Fausseté des autres religions’.30 Jean Mesnard’s view is rather different: he points out that fragment L 416/S 35/LG 395 is entitled ‘La nature est corrompue’, and that it shows an obvious continuity with L 417/S 36/LG 396. These two fragments belong together in the first untitled liasse (Série I in Lafuma’s and Le Guern’s editions, though Mesnard finds fault with the term série), comprising fragments L 383–417/S 2–36/LG 363–96. This, then, he suggests, is the lost chapter ‘La nature est corrompue’.31 Both hypotheses open up a wide range of intertextual connections around the theme of the corruption of human nature. For instance, Sellier draws attention to fragment L 208/S 240/LG 194, belonging to the section ‘Fausseté des autres religions’, as a crucial exposition of the theme of human corruption. The fact of corruption is inferred from the weakness or infirmity of our nature. Its effect is our subjection to error, unhappiness, death, and sin. All this is amply demonstrated in the early liasses. But why should weakness imply corruption, which implies a fall from some 29 The table of contents is fragment 1 in Sellier’s numbering. Le Guern prints it before the numbered fragments (OC II, 543). What follows presupposes a minimal knowledge of the textual history of the Pensées, which I therefore briefly sketch here for those readers unfamiliar with the matter. The materials left by Pascal towards an apology for the Christian religion were carefully copied by members of his family working with members of the community of Port-Royal. The copies of the manuscripts scrupulously followed Pascal’s arrangement of his papers, in a set of bundles (liasses) with the different pages threaded together as was common at the time. Some of these liasses are titled, and the titles correspond to a table of contents seemingly copied from a lost original by Pascal. This section of the material, then, corresponds to Pascal’s own arrangement of his fragments. Other groups of fragments are untitled, and it is unclear how far they had undergone a process of classification or arrangement, and by whom. 30 Pensées, ed. Philippe Sellier, Classiques Garnier (Paris: Bordas, 1991), p. 154 n. 2. This note is reproduced in Les Provinciales, Pensées, et Opuscules diverses, ed. Philippe Sellier and Gérard Ferreyrolles, Classiques Modernes, La Pochothèque: Le Livre de Poche/Classiques Garnier (Paris: Garnier and Librairie Générale Française, 2004) (hereafter PPOD), p. 831 n. 2. 31 Jean Mesnard, Les ‘Pensées’ de Pascal, 2nd edn. (Paris: SEDES, 1993), 30–46.

Original Sin

127

previous state? Could we not just have been created weak (and error prone, mortal and so forth)? The hypothesis of a state of pure nature becomes relevant again. Pascal’s implicit reply to that question is based on integrating the reality of our weakness with that of our greatness (grandeur). We are discontented with a condition apparently indistinguishable from that of the animals, which suggests we cannot be mere animals; our lives and our thinking cannot be explained in purely material terms; we can understand the universe, even if we are crushed by it; we can form noble moral ideals, even if we cannot live up to them; out of brutal competitive individual desire (concupiscence) we have created a social order. We suffer because the universe is not other than it is: how could we, if we did not have some sense of a higher reality, and how could we have such a sense if we had not once encountered that reality, with which we have now lost contact?32 This dialectical argument enables Pascal to integrate two coexisting aspects of our current experience into a historical narrative of a fall. But that narrative is still no more than a postulate of human reason: it prepares us, however, to listen sympathetically to the discourse of revelation, in which the narrative of the Fall is affirmed as historical truth (L 131/S 164/LG 122). The connection with the theme of the falsity of other religions is plain enough: they are being challenged to display an equal awareness of human corruption, and of human greatness, and to put forward an equally powerful explanation of the contradiction: Après avoir entendu toute la nature de l’homme, il faut, pour faire qu’une religion soit vraie, qu’elle ait connu notre nature. Elle doit avoir connu la grandeur et la petitesse, et la raison de l’une et de l’autre. Qui l’a connue, que la chrétienne? (L 215/S 248/LG 201) After we have understood the whole nature of man, [we know that] for any religion to be true, it must have understood our nature. It must have understood both its greatness and its littleness, and the reason for each. But what religion has understood all this, apart from Christianity? 32 I am drastically compressing the arguments of the liasse ‘Grandeur’ (L 105–18/S 137–50/LG 96–109). See also L 400/S 19/LG 379.

128

Human Nature

If Mesnard, on the other hand, is right in identifying the untitled liasse I with ‘La nature est corrompue’, the collection of fragments in question gives us a very rich idea of Pascal’s conception of the corruption of nature. It seems to resume many of the key themes of the earlier titled sections, but with a stress on contrariety and contradiction. Futility (‘vanité’) is proved by the extraordinary disproportion between the causes of love (a je-ne-sais-quoi, the length of Cleopatra’s nose) and its effects (world conflict) (L 413/S 32/LG 392).33 But, however powerful, love for a finite and mortal human being cannot provide fulfilment (L 396/S 15/LG 375): like divertissement it is the more dangerous in that it provides an illusory remedy for our unhappiness, distracting us from facing up to the reality of the human condition, whereas unhappiness can prompt the search for a more effective remedy (L 414/S 33/LG 393). Trying to lose oneself in a purely animal pursuit of passion is no way out, since reason remains to remind one of passion’s injustice and baseness; besides, happiness through self-indulgence is self-destructive (that way diseases lie). But that remedy cannot consist in the Stoic purgation of passions, since the passions simply refuse to die, or in the quest for a happiness inside oneself (L 407, 410/S 26, 29/LG 386, 389). These two fragments take the form of an antinomy, setting Stoic and (in a loose sense) Epicurean responses to the human condition against one another to reveal the inadequacy of each. So does L 406/S 25/LG 385, asserting the impossibility of proof against the dogmatists, and the impossibility of renouncing the idea of truth against the Pyrrhonists. L 401/S 20/LG 380, in similar vein, juxtaposes the pursuit of happiness and that of truth, both unattainable, yet both impossible not to seek. The first-stage conclusion bears out perfectly the problematic nature of Pascal’s 33 Pascal backs up the idea of love as the effect of a je-ne-sais-quoi by reference to Corneille (Le Guern gives the sources as Médée, II.v. 635–6; Rodogune, I.v.359–62 (OC II, 1148–9 (p. 674 n. 5) )). Elsewhere (L 894/S 448/LG 705) Pascal cites Corneille’s Horace, II.iii.502 (‘Albe vous a nommé, je ne vous connais plus’ (You have been chosen by Alba: I know you no more)), as a perfect expression of inhumanity. This resort to modern literary texts to back up moral insights is a striking confirmation of Alain Viala’s thesis of the emergence of a literary field in the seventeenth century.

Original Sin

129

‘anthropology’. We cannot define what man is, since we cannot locate man on a scale of value or in a cosmic hierarchy: besides, his essence consists, not in being, but in seeking—for what, in nature, he can never find: L’homme ne sait a` quel rang se mettre. Il est visiblement e´garé et tombé de son vrai lieu sans le pouvoir retrouver. Il le cherche partout avec inquiétude et sans succès dans des ténèbres impénétrables. (L 400/S 19/LG 379) Man does not know where to position himself. He has clearly lost his way and fallen from his true place, which he cannot find again. He seeks it everywhere restlessly and in vain, surrounded by impenetrable darkness.

Again, the notion of a Fall seems to offer a key: that we look for what we cannot find suggests we must know, or have known, what we are looking for. L 401/S 20/LG 380 moves nearer to the terrain of revelation: our desire for happiness and truth has been left us as a punishment, but also as an indication of both how far and whence we have fallen (‘ce désir nous est laissé, tant pour nous punir que pour nous faire sentir d’où nous sommes tombés’). Philosophy, as we have indeed seen, cannot diagnose or remedy our condition (L 408–9/S 27–8/LG 387–8). But religion in general seems to provide no satisfying answer either: Si l’homme n’est fait pour Dieu, pourquoi n’est-il heureux qu’en Dieu? Si l’homme est fait pour Dieu, pourquoi est-il si contraire a` Dieu? (L 399/S 18/LG 378) If man is not made for God, why is he happy only in God? If man is made for God, why is he so contrary to God?

But Pascal is asking us to take an interest not in religion in general, but in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, which answers the questions just posed. Generation after generation of Jews bore witness to the hope of a Redeemer and prophesied his coming (L 390, 385/S 9, 4/LG 369, 364); the different generations all experienced some revelation of God (through Noah, Abraham, Moses (L 392/S 11/LG 371) ). The prophesied Messiah, Jesus Christ, is affirmed as the illumination of all the dark areas of our knowledge, the resolution of

130

Human Nature

all the contradictions we register intellectually and experience in our daily feelings and behaviour: La nature est corrompue. Sans Jésus-Christ, il faut que l’homme soit dans le vice et dans la misère. Avec Jésus-Christ l’homme est exempt de vice et de misère. En lui est toute notre vertu et toute notre félicité. Hors de lui, il n’y a que vice, misère, erreurs, ténèbres, mort, désespoir. (L 416/S 35/LG 395) Nature is corrupted. Without Jesus Christ, man can only exist in vice and wretchedness. With Jesus Christ man is exempt from vice and wretchedness. In him is all our virtue and all our happiness. Away from him, there is nothing but vice, wretchedness, error, darkness, death, despair. Non seulement nous ne connaissons Dieu que par Jésus-Christ mais nous ne nous connaissons nous-mêmes que par Jésus-Christ. Nous ne connaissons la vie, la mort, que par Jésus-Christ. Hors de Jésus-Christ, nous ne savons ce que c’est ni que notre vie ni que notre mort, ni que Dieu, ni que nous-mêmes. ´ Ainsi, sans l’Ecriture qui n’a que Jésus-Christ pour objet, nous ne connaissons rien, et ne voyons qu’obscurité et confusion dans la nature de Dieu et dans la propre nature. (L 417/S 36/LG 396) Not only do we know God only by Jesus Christ but we know ourselves only by Jesus Christ. We know life and death only through Jesus Christ. Away from Jesus Christ, we do not know what our life is, or our death, or God, or ourselves. Thus, without Scripture which has only Jesus Christ as its object, we know nothing, and see only obscurity and confusion in God’s nature and in our own.

It would be harder to find a better expression of what is meant by talking of Pascal’s conception of human nature as ‘problematic’. This vision of human nature as a cluster of contradictions illuminated by the Judaeo-Christian revelation is not expected by Pascal to carry instant conviction with the unbeliever. But

Original Sin

131

he does think it has ruled out certain alternative responses to the human condition: an optimism that may be equated with Stoicism; a pessimism that leads nowhere, except perhaps to the attempt at animal hedonism denounced in L 410/S 29/LG 389; and the pursuit of distraction (divertissement). The only justifiable position for unbelievers is that of those who ‘cherchent en gémissant’ (lament and seek) (L 405/S 24/LG 384). To ‘seek’ here means to investigate the claims of Christianity sketched out above. Remaining still within this series of fragments, we find some addressing the situation of the seeker. L 385/S 5/LG 365 deals with ‘fascinatio nugacitatis’, the obsession with or absorption in trivialities, which might distract us from serious effort.34 It recommends as a remedy that we act (that is, seek for the truth) as if we had only a week to live. (L 159/S 191/LG 148 extends the logic: if it is rational to give up a week to the search for truth, it is rational to give up one’s whole life, even if one lived to be a hundred.) It is more dangerous, Pascal suggests, to be mistaken in thinking the Christian religion false than in thinking it true (L 387/S 6/LG 366). Here there is an implicit appeal to the logic developed in the Wager fragment (L 418/S 680/LG 397) of calculating the consequences of acting according to alternative beliefs. Both Sellier and Mesnard point to the continuation of the theme of corruption in other fragments from the untitled sections of the Pensées. Sellier links it to what he calls the ‘discours de la corruption’, the long fragment S 690.35 In other editions, this is printed as a series of fragments: L 438–50/LG 409–20. Mesnard also picks out several of these, as well as a number of others relevant to the theme.36 Perhaps the most important for our purpose is L 449/S 34

The expression is from Wisdom 4: 12 (the book is canonical for Catholics, but not for Jews and Protestants): there is a helpful extract from Jansenius in Le Guern’s note on the fragment (OC II, 1445 (p. 668n. 2) ). 35 Pascal, Pensées, ed. Sellier, 154n. 2. 36 Mesnard, Les ‘Pensées’ de Pascal, 45.

132

Human Nature

690/LG 419 (one of the richest fragments of the Pensées, which I can present only very partially here). It establishes a kind of blueprint for a true religion, supposing there were one. First, the workings of nature and history (‘toute la conduite des choses’) must be directed towards establishing and glorifying it; secondly, its teaching must accord with what human beings actually feel; thirdly, its principles should provide an explanation both of man’s nature and of the course of human history (‘toute la conduite du monde en général’). Now, deism does not meet these requirements, because the world as a whole does not manifest the existence of a powerful and eternal being. But this has no bearing on the truth of Christianity, which is not at all the same as deism. It teaches that there is a God, of whose possession we are capable, but that a corruption in our nature renders us unworthy of him. (This is why the world does not manifest his existence, as unbelievers correctly but irrelevantly point out.) It preaches a Redeemer who will rescue us from corruption, and reconcile us with God. In this sense, the corruption of human nature is revealed to us, by Christianity. Once we have access to this revelation, the whole world (in this context, Pascal seems to mean the spectacle of humanity across the earth and through history, rather than the purely physical world) bears it out: ‘tout l’univers apprend a` l’homme ou qu’il est corrompu, ou qu’il est racheté’ (the whole world teaches man either that he is corrupted, or that he is redeemed) (L 442/S 690/LG 412). But the revelation is convincing because it chimes with feelings and perceptions already within human nature (L 449/S 690/LG 419). Our awareness of the gap between our ideals and the reality of our behaviour and condition requires no revelation: introspection and observation suffice. We might guess, perhaps, unaided at some kind of corruption (that is why Pascal can undertake to show that nature is corrupted, by nature itself (L 6/S 40/LG 4) ): but it is revelation that confirms that guess, and that makes us, finally, intelligible to ourselves, through the mediation of Christ.

Original Sin

133

Malebranche: Old Theology, New Philosophy Malebranche’s thought is no less Christocentric than Pascal’s. His account of original sin is inspired no less by Augustine. But in certain respects there are discrepancies between them. First, though both subscribe to the mechanistic approach to the physical world, they interpret its significance for us rather differently. Pascal gives powerful expression to the distinction between an indifferent, quality-free, physical universe governed by mechanical laws, involving dimensions incommensurate with our experience (the unimaginably large and small), and the human realm in which we need to ascribe meaning and value to our actions; for which reason he might appear as typically ‘modern’.37 In this perspective, it is hard to see how a moral transgression by humans could affect the physical world: when Pascal speaks of ‘une corruption dans la nature’ (L 449/S 690/LG 419), he seems to mean human nature only. But this is not true of Malebranche. It is not that he is still in thrall to a ‘pre-modern’, ‘pre-scientific’ outlook. Rather, he seems more alert than Pascal to the idea that the vision of a physical world apparently indifferent to human values is a positive stimulus to unbelief. In Lucretius’ unforgettable words: Nequaquam nobis divinitus esse creatam Naturam mundi: tanta stat praedita culpa.38

‘The nature of the universe has by no means been made for us through divine power: so great are the faults it stands endowed with’. That is to say, Pascal’s theory that reason can neither prove nor disprove the existence of God might be felt to take insufficient 37 This vision of modernity is powerfully articulated by Taylor, Sources of the Self. The key Pascal texts here are: L 199/S 230/LG 185 (the two infinites); L 68/S 102/LG 102 (the radical contingency of our existence in the context of endless time and space); L 201/S 233/LG 187) (the eternal silence of infinite space). 38 Lucretius, De rerum natura, ed. and trans. W. H. D. Rouse, rev. Martin Ferguson Smith, rev. 2nd edn., Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 1992), II.180–1; cf. V.199–200.

134

Human Nature

account of the prima facie argument against design and providence.39 Malebranche, on the other hand, directly tackles this objection.40 The doctrine of original sin is part of his answer. True, once God’s existence is proved, reason unassisted by revelation can provide an initial justification of the apparent disorder of the world: the existence of monsters, the infectious air, the sheer wastefulness and futility of its processes (the earth yields fruits, which are then blighted by frost or sun), the indifference of fortune to moral considerations (the wicked thrive, the virtuous are oppressed).41 Now traditional philosophy cannot answer this objection. If we explain the movements of a body in Aristotelian-scholastic fashion by its presumed individual nature, if we credit it with ‘forces’, ‘virtues’, ‘qualities’, ‘natural faculties’, then the existence of disorder becomes inexplicable without compromising God’s wisdom and power: because, on this supposition, he has endowed creatures with individual properties that conduce to disorder (p. 864). On the other hand, if, in accordance with mechanistic philosophy, we see the behaviour of bodies as determined by certain very general laws of the communication of movements, we have an effective answer to the unbeliever’s doubts. Malebranche argues that it befits an infinite wisdom to produce the infinite variety of the world by means of 39 Pascal could, perhaps, in principle, without modifying his overall position, have taken that into account, juxtaposing it with the causal argument for the existence of God sketched in L 135/S 167/LG 125, to produce an antinomy that reason cannot transcend, and that only revelation can illuminate. Or he could say that the Lucretian unbeliever is the one who fails to think through the conception of a physical universe from which we are radically estranged, because his inference from the faulty universe to the non-existence of a divine architect bespeaks a residual expectation that the universe ought to be such that we feel it was created for us. Why should we feel at odds with it if, as the unbeliever holds, we are just part of it? 40 Malebranche, Méditations chrétiennes et métaphysiques, VII.13, Œuvres, II, 257. 41 ´ De la recherche de la vérité, Eclaircissement VIII, § 1, obj. 2, Œuvres, I, 861. This objection is not put in the mouth of an atheist, but is urged in support of the view that God’s power is wholly arbitrary. The objector would accept original sin as an explanation of human suffering, but assumes that this is irrelevant to nature as a whole. ´ The objections and replies to this Eclaircissement are printed at the end of the main text. References are given in accordance with the following example: Malebranche’s reply to the second objection to the first article of the text appears as ‘§ 1, reply obj. 2’.

Original Sin

135

the fewest possible and simplest laws. In certain circumstances, the operations of these laws will produce ‘monsters’, just as, in certain other circumstances, they will cause an animal to be killed or maimed by a fall. Monsters and accidents are therefore by-products of the laws of movement. They were not directly willed by God, but they are not unintended consequences. God preferred to create a whole world in a manner befitting his wisdom, rather than one in which, for instance, he would constantly intervene to prevent anything ´ bad happening to anything (Eclaircissement VIII, §1, reply obj. 2, 42 Œuvres, I, 863–4). But this explanation is meant to complement, not to replace, the doctrine of original sin.43 That Malebranche believes reason capable of proving the existence of God is the second difference from Pascal. This belief affects his approach to the doctrine of original sin. He thinks that the doctrine can actually be deduced by reason, even if (he might concede) we would never be stimulated to make the deduction if revelation had not disclosed the doctrine itself. His position differs slightly from Pascal’s. Pascal suggests that reason cannot conceive of any explanation for the contradictions of our present human nature but a fall of some kind (L 117, 400/S 149, 19/LG 108, 379). But it cannot prove the doctrine of original sin as such, which involves not only the fact of a fall, but an explanation of it, human disobedience. For that we require revelation: we must ‘listen to God’ (L 131/S 164/LG 122). Malebranche, on the other hand, thinks we can deduce original sin from our experience: but the deduction (as set forth in the Conversations chrétiennes (first published 1677) ) is a lengthy discursive process, and the starting-point is apparently very remote from the conclusion.44 42 Geneviève Rodis-Lewis well brings out the importance of the concept of ‘world’ in Malebranche’s handling of the problem of ‘monsters’ (Œuvres, I, 1663 (p. 864n. 1)). 43 The principle of the ‘simplicité des voies’ (that God acts by the fewest, simplest, and most general means) applies to the operations of divine grace as well as the workings of nature. It is expounded by Malebranche in various places, for instance in the Traité de la nature et de la grace, first Discourse, Œuvres, II, 9–58. 44 There is an excellent presentation by Geneviève Rodis-Lewis of the Conversations chrétiennes, in Malebranche, Œuvres, I, 1725–30.

136

Human Nature

The argument begins in the rather Cartesian setting of a room warmed by a fire, but, instead of a solitary meditator, there are three people in conversation. The form of the dialogue is important here. It involves Malebranche’s spokesman (who is called Théodore, as is the equivalent character in the Entretiens sur la métaphysique et sur la religion), a young man called Aristarque, a traveller and a soldier, who has read deeply in the works of certain sceptical authors, and another ´ young man, Eraste, with little or no experience of the world, whom Théodore nominates as arbiter.45 In terms of the ethos of honnêteté, the advantage would be with Aristarque, the man of experience; in ´ Malebranche, the contrary. Lack of worldly experience has left Eraste with an uncorrupted intelligence, so that he can speak in keeping with nature, or, as Malebranche prefers to say, in keeping with pure reason. Aristarque’s experience of travel and war links him, of course, with Descartes (Discours de la méthode, I, AT VI, 9–11: OP I, 577–8): but for Malebranche it is a poor preparation for philosophy, precisely because it takes one out of oneself. The very breadth of one’s experience functions to screen out whatever that experience has failed to prepare us for, including the attentive pursuit of truth. It certainly does nothing to remove the general obstacles to that pursuit: the putting of questions we do not understand, impatience with abstract thought, the pressure of passion to find the answers that suit it, and the existing contents of our mind: prejudices, false ideas, and confused imaginative traces that represent things not as they are, but purely in relation to us (Conversations, I, 1132–4). None the less, like Pascal, Malebranche–Théodore has to take account of the actual disposition of his interlocutor’s mind, and tailor his discourse accordingly. Thus, instead of proving the existence of 45 Théodore is not, however, supposed to be in personal possession of the truth. We learn nothing, strictly speaking, from one another, only from the inner Teacher, God. Malebranche quotes St Augustine to this effect in a footnote (Conversations, I, 1131). On the relationship between the dialogue form and Malebranche’s theory of knowledge, see my Early Modern French Thought, 218–24, and, for a thorough all-round study of the ´ role of formal, stylistic, and rhetorical effects in Malebranche, Véronique Wiel, Ecriture et philosophie chez Malebranche (Paris: Champion, 2004).

Original Sin

137

God in the most ‘simple and natural way’, by arguing from the idea or essence of the infinite to its existence (the so-called ontological proof ), he offers an argument centred on individual embodied experience.46 This will not only work better for Aristarque, still uncomfortable with abstract thought, but enable Malebranche to make a smoother transition to the theme of original sin. The argument chosen (and summarized here only briefly) begins with an empirical illustration: we feel pleasure in the sensation of warmth from a fire, and, since happiness is nothing other than a current sensation of pleasure, we might say that the fire makes us happy by making us warm. But the warmth is not in the fire: it is a sensation quite distinct from the physical impact of the fire on the fibres of the hand. The cause of the sensation (the warmth and the accompanying happiness) is not, then, the fire itself. Is it then the soul, responding to a physical process that is beneficial to it? But the soul’s awareness of the sensation is quite independent of any understanding of the impact of the fire on our fibres or the circulation of our blood: we do not need to know that the heat is doing us good, or why moderate heat is good for us, in order to feel warm. Moreover, if we were ourselves the cause of our happiness or unhappiness (pleasure or pain), we would always produce the former and never the latter. There is thus some external, non-physical cause—a mind, in short—continually acting on us—on all minds—to produce sensations of pleasure or pain, in accordance with the corresponding bodily movements. But it must therefore have an independent knowledge of the movements of all bodies. But it could not have such a knowledge if these movements, and the very existence of the moving bodies, were not the result of its own will. All our sensations, therefore, demonstrate the workings of a a creator God. God therefore is the only true source of our happiness or unhappiness (pp. 1135–50). Given the existence of a creator, we are obliged to ask what his purpose was in creation. If God is wise and perfect, he will most 46 Conversations, I, 1135; see Entretiens sur la métaphysique et sur la religion, II.5; Œuvres, II, 691, for a statement of the other (‘ontological’) argument.

138

Human Nature

love what is most lovable. But nothing can deserve love more than himself. God thus loves himself more than anything, and he himself is the end or goal of his own actions, including our creation. If we have been created with the faculties of knowledge and love, their end or goal must therefore be God. We have been made, in other words, to know and love him (Conversations, III, 1177). He thus impels us constantly towards himself—that is to say, towards the good in general (p. 1193).47 In as much as he encompasses all particular goods, he can also be said to impel us towards them. But he is not responsible for our lingering over some particular good (say, the beauty of the physical world) so as to become attached to it for its own sake. We do so, because we falsely judge it good in itself—that is, capable of bringing us happiness—which cannot be, since only God can bring happiness (pp. 1193–4). At a certain level, we know that our attachment to creatures is free, because, when we so attach ourselves, we always hear ‘les reproches secrets de la raison’ (the secret reproaches of reason): the voice that tells us that nothing finite can ever satisfy us, or has any right to distract from the movement towards the impulsion towards God himself (p. 1195).48 This reproach is, moreover, a sign that our attachment for creatures is an offence to God (pp. 1197–8). It is an offence because, by attaching ourselves to some particular good, we are thwarting the God-given movement towards him as the universal good, and our love is a violation of Order, of the hierarchy of perfection in which God necessarily outranks his creatures. He would be violating his own nature if he permitted us to love better than himself what is necessarily inferior to himself (pp. 1196–7). 47 I have passed over a section of the argument that is extremely important for Malebranche’s philosophy in general—namely, his doctrine that we see all created things (except ourselves) through ‘ideas’ in God. It is discussed in my Early Modern French Thought, 211–18. 48 Of course this is an echo of the famous passage from Augustine already quoted: ‘Thou hast made us for thyself, and our heart is restless till it find rest in thee’ (Confessions, I.1). The concept of ‘secret reproaches of reason’ has a more general significance in Malebranche: it is involved in his account of the criterion of truth (De la recherche de la vérité, I.2.iv, 34–5).

Original Sin

139

We have so far a theological metaphysics with a profoundly ethical dimension. Our knowledge and love are necessarily directed towards, on the one hand, the divine mind that contains the ideas of all created things, and, on the other, the good in general, the infinite good that is God. But we can choose to violate this order: we can endow created goods with a false autonomy, crediting them with certain intrinsic properties capable of doing us good and making us happy; we can, in other words, linger over particular goods, as if they were good for us in themselves. There is thus a permanent possibility of voluntary estrangement from God. A metaphysical possibility, that is: but an experiential fact. To love God for himself and creatures only for his sake goes against the grain; virtue is arduous and rebarbative, vice easy. So Théodore suggests, and Aristarque concurs: like St Paul (Romans 7: 23), he feels another law in his members fighting against the law in his mind. He cannot help feeling pleasure in the enjoyment of sensible goods, and his body rebels when he wishes to apply himself to what is abstract and remote from bodily concerns (Conversations, IV, 1202). Like Augustine, Malebranche goes back to the classic Pauline experience of the inability to do what one knows to be good, of the obstinacy and cunning of the desire for the forbidden. But he develops it in accordance with his own system. If only God is the giver of pleasure and pain, the pain we experience in our struggle to do good must come from him. But how can he make us suffer for trying to do good? Or give us pleasure when we attach ourselves to particular goods? It is as if he is driving us away from him. But we were, as was shown, created in order to love him. The only explanation for the contradiction can be that we are no longer as we were created: we must be unworthy now to approach him (pp. 1203–5). Malebranche speaks of God being angry with us, of a state of enmity between him and us (p. 1204): one should not try to bowdlerize the unpalatable, and such language is scriptural, anyway, but the insight could be conveyed in less anthropomorphic language if one were to say that we have been alienated from God. In other words, we have a proof, logically independent of revelation,

140

Human Nature

of original sin. By a combination of pure reason, on the one hand, inferring from the nature of God to the nature of his operations, and experience, on the other, suggesting that God is not operating in us as apparently befits his nature, we can discern a contradiction that, as in Pascal, can be resolved only by being translated into temporal terms. We were in a certain state, we are now in another that is displeasing to God: we must therefore be guilty, as a species, of sin.49 Aristarque objects to this. We still feel a certain joy in the exercise of virtue, for all its difficulty, and we experience bitter reproaches of conscience when we give ourselves over to the enjoyment of sensible goods. How then can it be said that God does not want our love? As for the body’s resistance to spiritual exercises, this is simply a reminder of the body’s needs, without spiritual significance (p. 1205). For Théodore all this shows is that the alienation is not complete: something remains of the previous order. But the alienation still cannot be gainsaid. I spoke of the proof of original sin being logically independent of the teaching of revelation. Of course this logical independence is purely abstract: I am not even sure that Malebranche would think that a pagan completely ignorant of the Judaeo-Christian religion and soaked in a polytheistic culture could have deduced in practice the fact of original sin (any more than Aristarque could have been convinced at the outset by the ontological proof of God). The arrangement of the text bears this out. The proof of original sin comes in the fourth conversation. But in the second, in which Aristarque challenges the notion that God alone can act in us, Théodore discusses the state of Adam before and after the Fall (Conversations, II, 1158–60) and then justifies the ways of God to man, his plan in the creation and redemption of humanity, with a wealth of Scripture 49 ´ There is an extremely succinct version of this argument in the eighth Eclaircissement of De la recherche de la vérité, §3. God cannot will us to love what is unworthy of love. But we have a natural inclination to love bodies, which are not worthy of love, since they can do nothing for us, even more than to love God himself. Nature is therefore in disorder: the law we experience in ourselves is contrary to the law of God (Œuvres, I, 848).

Original Sin

141

quotations (pp. 1164–6). The process of reasoning has thus been prepared for by Scripture. All this is in keeping with the Augustinian attitude to the relationship between faith and reason: faith takes precedence over reason, yet reason prepares for faith, and, after the act of faith, provides an understanding of faith’s content.50 This is an important theological point. Otherwise one might suppose that, as one can deduce original sin by natural reason, reason suffices to remedy it. But Malebranche is clear that it does not. The reminders God sends when we sin are not sufficient to reconcile us to him: they will never be as powerful as the attraction of the senses, unless they are reinforced by the grace of Jesus Christ (Conversations, IV, 1206). Nor can the sense of God’s presence fostered by philosophy suffice to keep us attached to him continually (p. 1207). So, although Malebranche dissents from Pascal in holding that a purely philosophical proof of God is possible, he agrees with him that it would be quite inadequate from the psychological and religious point of view (Pensées, L 190/S 222/LG 179). Theological and philosophical perspectives are thus combined in Malebranche’s theodicy.51 The disorders and irregularities of the world begin to make sense both in symbolic and in causal terms. Thus, in the Méditations chrétiennes et métaphysiques (first published 1683), Malebranche, or rather Jesus, who is speaking here, points out both that the imperfection of this world teaches us that it is to the world to come that we should look for a manifestation of God (VII.11, Œuvres, II, 256), and that its disorder is in keeping with the sinfulness of its population. The logic here is symbolic, but also causal, in that the sin of our first parents brought about this deterioration in the fabric of the world: L’homme n’est point tel que Dieu l’a fait: il fallait donc qu’il habitât des ruines, et que la terre qu’il cultive ne fût que le débris d’un monde plus 50 The complexity of Augustine’s account is admirably conveyed by Gilson, Introduction, 31–47. 51 See Donald Rutherford, ‘Malebranche’s Theodicy’, in Steven Nadler (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Malebranche (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 165–89.

142

Human Nature

parfait. [. . .] Il a fallu que l’irrégularité des saisons abrégeât la vie de ceux qui ne pensaient plus qu’au mal; et que la terre ruinée et submergée par les eaux portât jusqu’à la fin des siècles des marques sensibles de la vengeance divine. (VII.12, 257) Man is no longer as God made him: it was therefore necessary that he should live in ruins, and that the earth he tills should be no more than the wreckage of a more perfect world. [. . .] It was necessary that the irregularity of the seasons should cut short the life of those whose thoughts were now only of evil; and that the earth, ruined and submerged by the waters, should bear, until the end of time, visible traces of God’s vengeance.

This moral and theological explanation might appear to be a pure regression to pre-scientific habits of thought. But the theological and the scientific frames of references are in fact synthesized. Jesus goes on to invoke the principle of the simplicity of God’s laws, of which human suffering is an inevitable consequence. But those laws also govern God’s spiritual design, the construction of the spiritual temple (the Church), of which Christ is the high priest (VII.13, 257). Human suffering as the punishment of original sin is part of that design, as is the becoming-human of Christ in order to redeem human kind. But the objection arises that, if human suffering is the necessary result of the laws of creation, how can it also be the punishment of sin? Surely humans would have suffered anyway. Malebranche deals with this objection in the Entretiens sur la métaphysique et sur la religion (first published 1688). In the eleventh dialogue, Ariste wonders why God should have created so many plants that are of no use to us, and so many insects that are a positive nuisance. It is all very well to say (as has been earlier argued) that insects are the creation of infinite wisdom, but why do they have to eat the fruit off our trees? The answer is not (as Spinoza would claim) that we should not judge of creation by reference to man’s convenience or pleasure.52 Malebranche (or his spokesman Théodore) might be thought to be saying this when he replies ‘Si vous jugez, Ariste, des ouvrages de Dieu 52

Spinoza, Ethics, I, Appendix.

Original Sin

143

uniquement par rapport a` vous, vous blasphémerez bientôt contre la providence; vous porterez bientôt d’étranges judgements de la sagesse du Créateur’ (If, Ariste, you judge of God’s handiwork purely in relation to yourself, you will soon be blaspheming against providence; you will soon be forming strange judgements as to the Creator’s wisdom) (Entretiens sur la métaphysique, XI.10, Œuvres, II, 886). But in fact Malebranche’s view of creation is resolutely anthropocentric, in two related senses. God has in fact made everything for humanity, but not to suit humanity in the mass. The insects that plague us are not simply by-products of a cosmic order—they were created, precisely, to plague us, to punish us for original sin. This is one sense in which everything was created for humanity, although there are restrictions to this, so that Théodore says, to be precise, ‘Si Dieu n’a pas fait toutes choses pour l’homme, il ne s’en faut pas beaucoup’ (XI.10, 887) (If God has not made all things for man, he has come very close to doing so).53 God foresaw that human kind would sin, and the union of mind and body, as instituted by him, ensured that the guilt has been transmitted down the generations.54 The harm that plants and animals can do us is a kind of revolt on their part against human kind, corresponding to our revolt against God. But sin and its punishment are not the be-all and end-all of God’s designs, since they serve the ultimate end of creation: the advent of Christ. This is the still more fundamental and unqualified sense in which all has been created for the sake of humanity: all God’s action, incorporating the sin of human kind, has been for the sake of the man Christ (XI.10, 886–7).55 53

Some insects that seem to have no effect on us, good or bad, have been created to adorn the universe with works worthy of God’s wisdom and other attributes (Entretiens sur la métaphysique, XI.12, 890). 54 On the mechanism of the transmission of original sin, see De la recherche de la ´ vérité, II.i.7.v–vi, 185–92, and the eighth Eclaircissement (pp. 847–91); see also below, pp. 150–4. 55 Malebranche is careful to argue that, though God foresaw man’s sin, he did not will it directly, but permit it (Entretiens sur la métaphysique, XI.11, 888). The distinction between what God wills and what he permits was traditional: see Aquinas, ST Ia, q. 22, a. 2, ad 2. It had been importantly challenged by Calvin (Institution, I.17,

144

Human Nature

Malebranche on the Two States of Humanity Having set out the reasons Malebranche advances for the belief in original sin, we have now to examine its content, and in particular his version of the distinctions, both physical and psychological, between the original and the current states of humanity. The physical level first. Conceiving ‘nature’ for Malebranche does not mean attempting to determine the ‘natures’ of particular kinds of being: that is an Aristotelian way of proceeding repugnant to his mechanistic philosophy. He always connects the idea of ‘nature’ with that of a sphere of certain laws. To investigate human nature before or after the Fall is thus to ask what laws human beings were and are subject to. Our sufferings at nature’s hands are a punishment for sin, but they also, seemingly, result from the basic laws governing the behaviour of matter. So what happened to Adam and Eve before they sinned? Clearly, God must have protected them by a particular providence or by means of a guardian angel against any ill effects of the laws of nature (Entretiens sur la métaphysique, XI.11, 888). This is more or less Augustine’s position regarding human mortality before the Fall: God had suspended the ordinary law of mortality as long as human beings remained obedient, and ceased to suspend it when they ceased to obey. But our nature as psycho-physiological creatures has also changed since the Fall.56 Of course, there are continuities. Like us, Adam had an instinctive urge towards or aversion from what could benefit or harm his body. These were and are ‘prevenient’ feelings, anticipating any deliberation on his or on our part. He did not have a purely intellectual faculty of determining whether they were beneficial or not, by a kind of chemical analysis, and rightly so, because his mind 254–63; II.4, 77), and Roman Catholic theologians had to be careful to distinguish their position from his. See Conversations, II, 1161–71, for a brief exposition of Malebranche’s theology of salvation. 56

Malebranche explains these changes in De la recherche de la vérité, I.5.i, 46–52. ´ The account given here is based on the more detailed expositions of the Eclaircissements to the Recherche and the Conversations.

Original Sin

145

was supposed to be occupied by the true good, God, who deserves not an unthinking attachment but a love that is free and reasonable, based on clear knowledge. A purely intellectual grasp of bodies would hardly help us, since all the time we would be aware that they are not really the true good for us, and would thus be deterred from making use of them, as our own body requires. Such instinctive appetites and aversions were given to Adam, then, to allow him to preserve ´ his body, but with an uncluttered mind (Eclaircissement VIII, § 4, 848–9; Conversations, II, 1156–7). But Adam had a power over these reactions that we have lost. We still have some power over physical movements. I am channelling the operations of the laws of movement in a direction I have chosen when I move the keys on my keyboard with my fingers, in accordance with my will.57 But we cannot control our sensations by willpower. With Adam, things were different. Consider the laws of psycho-physical interaction. Our soul can be affected by external bodies only when these produce movements in our own body (for example, by affecting the optic nerve), and when the movements are communicated to ´ the ‘principal part’ of the brain (Eclaircissement VIII, § 6, 849–50). Or, in other words, whenever certain movements occur in our body, and are communicated to the principal part of the brain, the soul experiences certain sensations (‘sentiments’) (Conversations, II, 1158). Now Adam could voluntarily intervene to cut short the 57 From the point of view of Malebranche’s occasionalist theory of causality, this way of talking is inexact. My fingers are not moving the keys, nor is my will moving my fingers. Rather, when I decide to write, my fingers move, and when they move, the keys move, and the characters I wanted to write appear on the screen. But none of these events makes its successor occur, since neither I nor my body nor any other created thing has any intrinsic causal power. Each event is simply the ‘occasion’ for the laws of nature, ordained by God’s will, to take a certain effect. However, when not specifically discussing causation, Malebranche generally uses the conventional way of talking and I follow his example. Miran Bozoviˇc, ‘Malebranche’s Occasionalism, or, Philosophy in ˇ zek (ed.), Cogito and the Unconscious (Durham, NC, the Garden of Eden’, in Slavoj Ziˇ and London: Duke University Press, 1998), 149–74, makes the connection, as his title suggests, between the occasionalist theory and the theology of original sin. This acute and witty article draws attention to genuine problems in Malebranche’s theory, but tends to exaggerate the paradoxes and to apply the concept of occasionalism where the context does not require it.

146

Human Nature

physical process: he could prevent the movements that normally ´ result in sensation from reaching the brain (Eclaircissement VIII, § 6, 850); he could do so, for instance, if he wished to concentrate on some intellectual object, irrespective of his bodily needs. Our capacity to absorb ourselves in thought to the point where the impression of sensible objects is minimal is a kind of residue of this power. Adam, then, could use his sense of taste to identify what was good to eat, that is, conducive to the preservation of his body, but if he wanted, he could go on eating without any pleasure, so as not to be distracted (Conversations, II, 1158). In our present state, however, Malebranche contends, we retain the power to interfere with the law of the communication of movements only for natural ´ goals: the preservation of life and of civil society (Eclaircissement VIII, § 7, 850). Aristarque in the Conversations picks up Théodore’s contention that the prevenient pleasure in sensible goods experienced both by Adam in his original righteousness and by us in our present state must have been instituted by God, and argues that this is to make God responsible for concupiscence: for what is concupiscence but pleasure considered as striving against reason (Conversations, II, 1157)? In reply, Théodore expounds the theory of Adam’s power over his sensations. Pleasure in sensible goods was irrespective of reason (Adam did not enjoy his first taste of pineapple because he had previously judged it life-sustaining), but it did not strive against reason, since reason could master or suspend it. Once he had sinned, he had rendered himself unworthy to retain the power to suspend the laws of movement. Now objects that affected his body necessarily made an impact on his brain, and carved traces within it; now, as a result of the laws of soul–body union, he could not but experience the corresponding sensations and impulsions (‘movements’). The soul was thus drawn willy-nilly to sensible objects; and this is what is meant by calling it subject to concupiscence (pp. 1157–9).58 Adam was a rebel (p. 1159), and now he experiences the rebellion 58

´ Cf. Eclaircissement I, 814–15.

Original Sin

147

of his own impulsions, ‘des mouvements involontaires et rebelles’ (involuntary and rebellious impulses).59 Concupiscence was not part of Adam’s nature; it is very much part of ours. It is, however, not a positive reality, which is why God cannot be held to account for it: it is in itself a nothing, a lack of power over our body.60 This notion of Adam’s power over his reactions to sensible objects helps to emphasize the difference between concupiscence and natural desire (against the tendency we noted in Suárez to soften the distinction) and hence between, on the one hand, our current fallen state and, on the other, first, the state of original righteousness in which, in fact, Adam and Eve initially lived, and, second, the hypothetical state of pure nature. No doubt this conception of Adam’s power over his reactions is inspired by Augustine’s notion that Adam and Eve could control their genital movements by will (De civitate Dei, XIV. 21–4): Malebranche has reformulated it in more abstract fashion and in keeping with the latest Cartesian science. But it renders the notion of ‘nature’ extremely problematic. Was the state of things in which Adam and Eve could control their sensations a state of nature, distinct from the current state of fallen nature? This seems to be what the Conversations imply when Théodore expounds ‘l’institution de la Nature’—that is, the original state of things before the Fall (Conversations, II, 1158). But, when Malebranche then speaks of God as suspending the laws of the communication of movement (p. 1159), is he talking of a series of miracles, interferences with nature? In Entretiens sur la métaphysique, Théodore begins by speaking of exceptions to the laws of soul–body union, but then puts forward as preferable the idea of a law subsuming the supposed exceptions: according to this, man’s will could produce (or rather occasion) a disposition of the brain in which the soul ceased to be affected by the impression of objects. This power was then abolished by sin (Entretiens sur la métaphysique, IV.18, 735–6). This supposition is more economical: 59 60

´ ´ Eclaircissement I, 815; cf. Eclaircissement VIII, 850. ´ Eclaircissement I, 815–16; Conversations, IV, 1214–15.

148

Human Nature

but can God revoke a law once established without his immutability being jeopardized?61 Be that as it may, the theory throws light on certain aspects of the Augustinian doctrine of the Fall. First, to say that we have fallen, for Augustine, implies that we cannot rescue ourselves. We need divine aid or grace, and the principal form it takes is ‘delectation’, a delight in obedience to God that overpowers the pull of concupiscence.62 Malebranche adopts this view, though he does not always use the term ‘delectation’. In Conversations, II, Théodore states that in our current state we need a countervailing pleasure to overcome the blindness of sin and the strivings of concupiscence against reason ´ (p. 1157). In the fifth Eclaircissement, Malebranche identifies the grace of Jesus Christ—that is, the grace made available to us through Christ’s sacrifice, with a prevenient delectation, though he distances his position from the Jansenist version of Augustinianism ´ (Eclaircissement V, 827–9).63 Augustine did not, think, however, that such a grace was originally necessary to Adam. Here too Malebranche agrees. He excludes from the prelapsarian state any kind of prevenient influence by God to draw the human will towards himself, any kind of spontaneous pleasure in obedience to him. That would rob our love for God of its free and rational nature, and would deprive us of the merit of our free actions.64 However, Augustine is far from holding that grace of any kind was absent from Adam’s original state. Adam, he says, received a kind of assistance that enabled him, if he chose to make use of it, to persevere in righteousness (the difference between this 61 See Geneviève Rodis-Lewis’s illuminating notes, referring to various analyses of the problem (Malebranche, Œuvres, I, 1743 (p. 1158n. 2); II, 1299 (p. 736n. 1) ). Bozoviˇc also draws attention to the issue (‘Malebranche’s Occasionalism’, 159–61). 62 Augustine, De spiritu et littera, XXIX.51, PL 44, 233. 63 ‘Prevenient’ signifies that the influence of grace forestalls any deliberation on our part: Rodis-Lewis defines it as exerting an impulsion towards its object (Malebranche, Œuvres, I, 1645 (p. 827n. 4)). Malebranche explains his use of the term in the fourteenth ´ Eclaircissement (p. 965). 64 ´ Conversations, II, 1157; Eclaircissement IV, 823–6. See Rodis-Lewis’s notes, referring to Ginette Dreyfus, La Volonté selon Malebranche (Paris: Vrin, 1958) (Œuvres, I, 1642–3 (p. 824 nn. 1, 5)).

Original Sin

149

and the ‘grace of Jesus Christ’ is that the latter’s operation is not dependent on our will). When Adam rejected this grace he fell into sin.65 Malebranche defines more closely in what he thinks such grace consisted when he says that Adam originally received a ‘grâce de ´ lumière’ (grace of light) (Eclaircissement V, 827; Traité de la nature et de la grâce, III.ii.21, Œuvres, II, 124). The effect of this ‘lumière’, he explains, is to enlighten our mind, and impart a knowledge of ´ the good, without actually impelling us to love it (Eclaircissement IV, 823). But one might suggest that the notion of Adam’s power over his sensations helps to show how this prelapsarian grace worked: by enlightening his understanding, it showed him why he ought to keep control of his sensations, and thus remain focused on God the supreme good, but it did not ensure that he would do so. In any case, the theory of Adam’s power over his reactions enables Malebranche both to discern the possibility of the Fall, even in the state of original righteousness, and to insist on human responsibility for it. He does so as follows. It is natural to love pleasure, even in the use of sensible goods, and to feel joy in the awareness of one’s natural perfections, and in man’s original state what is natural cannot be wrong in itself. Adam could see through, so to speak, this pleasure, to the true good: he could understand that, however wonderful his own qualities, God’s perfections were infinitely superior. He could suspend the sensible pleasure and no doubt the joy as well, if he wished instead to contemplate and to pursue the true good. But, especially since there was no powerful pleasure in obedience to God, he could always allow his finite intelligence to be absorbed by sensible 65 See Augustine, De correptione et gratia, XI. 29–32, PL 44, 933–6. This theory of the two graces was taken up by Jansenist writers, such as Antoine Arnauld (Seconde ´ eque d’Ypres, Œuvres, XVII, 167–80) and Pascal (Ecrits ´ apologie pour M. Jansenius, Evˆ sur la grâce, XI, OC II, 287–8). The relation of Malebranche’s position to that of the Jansenists is discussed by G. Rodis-Lewis in Œuvres, II, 1365 (p. 47n. 1). It may seem odd, by the way, to speak of ‘Adam’ only here, when Eve also was in the same condition. But this way of talking, inspired by Romans 5, is habitual with Augustine and his followers, ‘man’ being taken to stand for ‘woman’ as well. I frequently follow their usage, problematic as it is (and I say more on this problem below), rather than attempting to efface the patriarchal elements in the story of Adam and Eve as it has been retold in the sources studied here.

150

Human Nature

pleasure and by self-centred joy. And this may well be why, in the end, through a failure to use his freedom in accordance with his ´ reason, he fell (Eclaircissement VIII, § 8, 850–1).66

Malebranche: Mothers, Children, and the Transmission of Sin The theory of Adam’s control over his sensations is a particular application of a general conception of mind–body interaction. But there is another problem with the doctrine of the Fall that Malebranche believes that the general conception can help him address: that of the transmission of original sin. Granting, for argument’s sake, that we are all physical heirs of Adam and Eve, how could our souls be affected by their transgression? The problem puzzled Augustine. It is worth touching on Malebranche’s attempt to solve it for two reasons.67 First, it provides a particularly sophisticated application of the new philosophy, in the form of a dualistic theory of Cartesian inspiration, to a traditional theological problem; secondly, it connects with the earlier discussion of women and children. Malebranche’s solution depends on his theory of the correspondence between physical and mental processes (see De la recherche de la vérité, II.i.5, 159–60), and on the further hypothesis that communication takes place between the brain of the mother and that of the foetus, so that the processes of the one (its movements and traces) are reproduced in the other.68 This communication has natural 66

Cf. Conversations, II, 1158–9, for another version of this account. There is a fuller discussion in my ‘The Transmission of Original Sin’, in Bradley Stephens and Isabelle McNeill (eds.), Transmission: Essays in French Literature, Thought, and Culture (Bern: Peter Lang, forthcoming). 68 ´ De la recherche de la vérité, Eclaircissement VIII, §10, 852. A more detailed picture of the relationship between the mother’s brain and the child’s is to be found in the main text of De la recherche de la vérité, II.i.7, 173–92. ‘Movements’ here essentially means the flows of the animal spirits through the brain associated with different passions. ‘Traces’ are formed by external objects (usually) or by our own thought processes, especially imagination. They are thus the physical correlates of the mother’s emotions and ideas. 67

Original Sin

151

functions: it helps the proper formation of the foetus, it establishes a relationship between the child and the mother, it provides the ´ child with information about the world outside (Eclaircissement 69 VIII, § 12, 853). But the mother also communicates the corrupt orientation we all share, towards bodily as distinct from spiritual goods. These inclinations of the soul go with traces and processes in the brain; these are transmitted to the child, and then, in virtue of the laws of soul–body union, the corresponding thoughts, inclinations in this case, are also reproduced in him or her (§§10–11, 852–3). Had the Fall never taken place, the situation would have been different. Communication between mother and foetus would still have taken place, because of its physical benefits; but, since in the prelapsarian state human beings could suspend the law of communication of movements, both mother and child could have arrested and modified cerebral processes. In the state of sin, however, the child is unable to switch off, so to speak, the message its mother is ´ sending (Eclaircissement VIII, §12, obj. 2 and reply, 886–9). It is thus subject, like her, to concupiscence, the involuntary appeal of external objects. Malebranche discusses various objections to this theory, both theological and philosophical, and this is where general attitudes to women and children come into play. The scriptural discussion is perhaps of less interest in itself than for the attitudes to gender it conveys. Malebranche answers the objection that his theory makes The theory of communication between the mother and the foetus is expounded in ´ Malebranche’s replies to the objections to article 12 of the eighth Eclaircissement (pp. 883–9). See also Conversations, IV, 1211–19. Malebranche’s conception of the relations between thoughts and brain traces, and between the mother and the unborn child, are discussed in connection with the concept of imagination in Early Modern French Thought, 170–83. See also Alain Grosrichard, ‘The Case of Polyphemus, or, A Monster ˇ zek (ed.), Cogito and the Unconscious, 117–48. Grosrichard offers a and its Mother’, in Ziˇ detailed and probing account of Malebranche’s conception of the maternal imagination informed by psychoanalytic theory and making the connection with the theology of original sin. 69 ´ Malebranche’s reply to the first objection to article 12 of the eighth Eclaircissement (pp. 883–6) is a very interesting discussion of the biological reasons why such communication is necessary in the case of human beings and not that of other species.

152

Human Nature

women solely responsible for original sin, contrary to Romans 5: 12 (‘it was through one man that sin came into the world’). He cites counter-texts that make woman responsible, and concludes that in fact both sexes are responsible in different ways.70 Woman, for the reason he has explained (communication with the foetus); man because he makes the woman fertile, and is thus the ultimate cause of the communication between her and her child. As regards the original act of disobedience, Malebranche holds Adam the more responsible for its consequences. But his reason for doing so is that Adam’s sin brought about the loss not only of his power over his body, but of his wife’s over hers. Although Eve was the first to sin, she did not lose her power over her body, since it belonged to her yet ´ innocent husband, until he too fell into sin (Eclaircissement VIII, §§11–12, reply obj. 2, 880–3). The woman does not even have the dignity of being responsible for her own ruin. All this shows, perhaps unsurprisingly but rather depressingly, that, while Malebranche could on occasion be a rigorous critic of social prejudice, the theology of original sin helped to circumscribe him within patriarchal attitudes. It is rather ironic, then, that in the replies to the next three objections he asserts the legitimacy of challenging prejudice (§12, reply obj. 1, 884; reply obj. 2, 888; §17 ff., reply obj., 889). The second reply is the one we have already discussed, in which Malebranche attempts to conceive what mother–foetus communication could have been prior to sin. It is a vision of an intrauterine paradise—perfect union, transparent presence of one to the other—as if Malebranche’s imagination has here escaped the patriarchal frame of reference beneath which he shelters when it is a matter of allocating moral responsibility (Malebranche would deny, of course, that his imagination is in play here: he is trying to think through the combined logic of body–soul 70 ‘I was born guilty, a sinner from the moment of conception’ (Psalm 51: 5 (50: 7 in the Vulgate numbering)). The Jerusalem Bible translation here quoted effaces the issue of gender: but the Vulgate, quoted by Malebranche, has ‘in peccatis concepit me mater’ (in sin did my mother conceive me); ‘Sin began with a woman, and thanks to her we must all die’ (Ecclesiasticus 25: 24).

Original Sin

153

union, conceived on Cartesian lines, and of Augustinian theology). ´ He concedes (Eclaircissement VIII, §12, reply obj. 2, 888) that this idea will seem strange to most people. It is. But it suggests a more productive effect of the doctrine of original sin than the mere reinforcement of gender categories. The attempt to imagine a prelapsarian humanity reveals a deep-seated aspiration to transcend the mental and physical solitude to which we are condemned. To see this as an imaginative response to the individualistic vision thought by some to be typical of modernity is tempting, but in the nature of the case speculative. We can say more confidently, though, that Malebranche’s exploration of mother–child interaction takes us beyond the purely descriptive approach to human nature. For it does not appeal to supposedly innate capacities and propensities of different categories of human beings: it regards these capacities and propensities as resulting from interaction, albeit involuntary, between human beings. In this respect, as in the tendency to use a constructed vision of a past never experienced as a heuristic device for the explanation and evaluation of the present, Malebranche’s true successor is Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Like Rousseau, Malebranche prefers to be a man of paradox rather than a man of prejudice.71 His defiance of prejudice is explicit also in the discussion of the effects of baptism, where he suggests that children are capable of love of God, challenging the view that their age and physical weakness condemn them to intellectual weakness. As with concupiscence, we take to ´ be natural what is really the effect of sin (Eclaircissement VIII, §§ 17–20, 855–8; §17 ff., reply obj., 889–90). Particularly striking here is his sense of the historical moment to which he belongs: in previous ages, there was not the same attempt to liberate one´ self from prejudice as there is now (p. 890). This Eclaircissement 71 ´ Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, II, in Œuvres complètes, 5 vols., ed. Bernard Gagnebin and Marcel Raymond, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1959–95), IV, 323. The topic is discussed in my ‘Malebranche: Le Combat contre le préjugé’, in Qu’est-ce que les Lumières?, ed. Guillaume Pigeard de Gurbert, Jean Salem and Kate Tunstall, SVEC (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, forthcoming), 71–83.

154

Human Nature

originally dates from 1678: but this sense of a historical climate of opposition to prejudice will become a constant refrain of the Enlightenment writers.

By Way of Conclusion In his rethinking of the doctrine of original sin, Malebranche displays his typical resourcefulness in combining theological and philosophical agendas. He does not follow Pascal in shifting the terrain of apologetics away from nature into history. Nature as a sphere governed by the fewest and simplest laws testifies to the wisdom of the creator. But its disorders, its indifference or hostility to our values and aspirations, enforce the lesson of our self-induced alienation from God, or, in theological terms, the doctrine of original sin. This ragged, imperfect, and apparently futile world acquires meaning in the context of a broader plan for humanity’s salvation, also regulated by the principle of simplicity of means. Scripture and theology are in harmony with philosophy. Their harmony is likewise apparent in the psychological and ethical realm. Malebranche’s conception of sensation, distinguishing the physical impact of objects on our sense organs from the accompanying sensation in the soul, helps to make sense of the notion of concupiscence as, so to speak, a weakness for bodies, an involuntary attachment to them. It thus throws light on a key element in Augustine’s account of original sin. The conception of the correspondence between cerebral processes and thoughts enables Malebranche to suggest how original sin is transmitted across the generations. Instead of insisting on the mystery and incomprehensibility of the doctrine, like Pascal (Pensées, L 131/S 164/LG 122), Malebranche helps to make it comprehensible for a public attuned to the new philosophy, which thus emerges as the ally of religion rather than a threat. More generally, the doctrine of original sin, when reasserted in Augustinian terms, without the mediation of scholastic categories

Original Sin

155

(the distinction between the natural and the supernatural), seems to have exercised a powerful critical function. No less than the new philosophies, with their sharp distinction between the world as it is and the world as it appears to our senses, it induces suspicion of the apparent teaching of experience. We observe human beings behaving in certain determinate ways, attached to certain categories of goods. We cannot infer their nature from these behaviour patterns or attachments, which in fact we can understand only as unnatural, as a perversion of our natural faculties of reason and free will. Nor can these natural faculties enable alternative and superior behaviour patterns and attachments. There is no easy transition from human qualities and values to the realm of the divine: the more absorbed we are in those qualities and values, the more estranged we are from God. What G. K. Chesterton called Aristotle’s ‘colossal common sense’ seems unsuited to plumbing the abysses and contradictions of human nature;72 and the elaborate taxonomies of scholastic theology only obscure the vital antithesis between concupiscence, the delectation in material objects pulling us downward, to earth and to hell, and the victorious delectation of grace, which alone could draw us upward to God. In other words, by discrediting the scholasticAristotelian anthropology, the neo-Augustinian doctrine of original sin tended, ideologically speaking, to open up the space for new networks of knowledge. Port-Royal itself, as an organ not only of the spiritual life but of intellectual innovation, was one of these. But not all new networks would be Augustinian in spirit; and in some ways the Augustinian critique of scholastic thought, especially when reinforced by Cartesianism, may have cleared the ground for new heterodoxies. So far the emphasis has been on general visions of human nature. But seventeenth-century Augustinian thought was also committed to 72 G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1947 (1st pub. 1925)), 144. Chesterton’s words carry no implicit criticism; he goes on to call Aristotle ‘perhaps the greatest of all philosophers; certainly the most practical of all philosophers’.

156

Human Nature

exploring human beings as individuals—individuals, what is more, profoundly devoted to themselves. In the remaining chapters, the focus will accordingly switch to this individual dimension; first of all to the basic attachment to oneself that, in different guises, takes the names of self-interest and self-love.73 73 The present-day theology of original sin falls outside the subject matter of this book, but I cannot refrain from mentioning James Alison’s remarkable The Joy of Being Wrong: Original Sin through Easter Eyes (New York: Crossroad, 1998), an attempt to rethink, the doctrine through the anthropology of René Girard, as well as McFadyen, Bound to Sin.

PART T WO SELF-LOVE AND CONCUPISCENCE


3 Early Modern Religious Perspectives Concupiscence, the love of created things, was, as we saw, a central theme of Augustine’s portrayal of the Fall. It was no less emphasized by his seventeenth-century partisans. From Augustine, they also took the notion of self-love, on which they laid even more stress than their master. The following chapter deals with explorations of the two notions by seventeenth-century religious authors, mostly of a broadly Augustinian persuasion. It begins, however, with a brief discussion of Aquinas on concupiscence (enough having already been said for our purposes on Augustine’s view), and of the pre-history of the notion of self-love, which has not been encountered up to now. It is followed by two chapters on strongly individual thinkers—La Rochefoucauld and Malebranche—and dealing mostly with self-love (Malebranche on concupiscence has already been discussed). For Augustine concupiscence equals desire in so far as it is intrinsically rebellious; it is not a natural impulse, but belongs to perverted nature. For Aquinas, its relation to the category of the ‘natural’ is more complex. He defines concupiscence, following Aristotle, as the ‘appetite for what is a source of delight’ (‘appetitus delectabilis’), in particular an appetite pertaining to both soul and body (ST IaIIae, q. 30, a. 1). Then he distinguishes natural from non-natural concupiscences. Natural concupiscences, we might say, are blind: they are directed at satisfying needs of our animal nature like food or drink. Non-natural concupiscences go beyond what nature absolutely requires: they depend on our apprehending the object as good or suitable to our nature. Because they involve an element of thought, they are distinctively human (IaIIae, q. 30, a. 3).

160

Self-Love and Concupiscence

Desire for money or for wine would be non-natural, since we can physically survive without either. The distinction is not immediately projected onto a value judgement of good or bad. But, with respect to human nature in particular, there is another sense in which concupiscence may be considered as natural or not. Concupiscence, St Thomas says, is natural to man, in so far as it is regulated by reason: it becomes unnatural when it ceases to be regulated, and this is the kind of concupiscence that follows upon original sin (IaIIae, q. 82, a. 3, ad 1). That is, though, a perverted natural impulse, rather than a naturally perverse impulse, as in Augustine. Concupiscence, as we experience it now—that is, as disorderly—is a post-lapsarian phenomenon. But in itself it is part of human nature. It is not that the constituents of human nature have changed, with the natural power of reason being jeopardised by a new evil force intrinsically opposed to it. What has changed is the relationship between elements of a system, the balance of which has altered for the worse. What was suggested apropos of Aquinas’s conception of the Fall in general, that he lays greater stress than Augustine on the continuity between the states of human nature before and after the Fall, seems to apply with respect to concupiscence in particular. Analyses of human desire from the early modern period frequently also mobilize the term ‘cupidity’. In practice, we can treat this as synonymous with ‘concupiscence’. Augustine defines cupidity as ‘the love of transitory things’, things inferior to the soul itself, as distinct from charity, the love of eternal goods (De diversis quaestionibus 83, XXXV–XXXVI, PL 40, 23–5). (We note that the criterion of the distinction is objective, not subjective.) Since, as we have seen, to love something is to love it for its own sake, to enjoy rather than to use it, cupidity is faulty because it attaches us to what we should use purely as a means to some greater good. The same is true of concupiscence, but this has the further implication of desire that asserts itself in defiance of reason and the will. Aquinas suggests circumscribing the term cupiditas to non-natural desires (non-animal desires) (IaIIae, q. 30, a. 3), and some early modern writers follow

Early Modern Religious Perspectives

161

this, in so doing testifying to the vitality of the Thomistic tradition in the period.1 Jansenius, however, enumerates concupiscentia and cupiditas in a list of synonyms.2 Given that the important point for us is to understand Augustine and his followers’ account of desire, we can draw on passages where either term occurs. As was noted, early modern writers on concupiscence frequently link it with the notion of self-love. Their approach to this latter concept is, arguably, governed by two principal strands of thought deriving from antiquity. The first of these connects self-love with self-preservation, the second with friendship, and I will look at them in turn.

Self-Preservation: The Stoics and Others To insist on the universal urge to self-preservation as the starting point of ethical reflexion was a standard refrain of Stoicism, but of other schools as well. Both Cato, the Stoic spokesman in Cicero’s De finibus, and Cicero himself, speaking for the Peripatetic–Old Academic school, assert its centrality to their systems.3 The primacy of self-preservation is affirmed as a specific corrective to the Epicurean view of the primacy of pleasure as both motive for action and Supreme Good (De finibus, II.x–xi.31–4). Later Roman Stoics reaffirmed the universal urge to self-preservation, using the term amor sui to designate it.4 It is important to note that this does not mean that all our actions are carried out for the sake of self-preservation. Progress in understanding consists in a kind of sublimation of this impulse, so that one comes to identify 1 See e.g. Montaigne, ‘Apologie de Raymond Sebon’, II.12, VS 472; Charron, De la sagesse, I.23, 177; I.34, 217. 2 Cornelius Jansenius, Bishop of Ypres, Augustinus, 3 vols. (Rouen: Jean Berthelin, 1643 (1st pub. 1640) ), vol. II, De statu naturæ lapsæ, II.7, 130. 3 Cicero, De finibus, III.v.16–17, III.xviii.59 (the Stoic view); IV.vii.16, IV.x.25, IV.xiii.32, V.ix.24 (the Academic–Peripatetic view). Cf. also De officiis, I.iv.11. 4 See, for instance, Seneca, Epistles, XXXVI.8, LXXXII.15. But Seneca does on occasion speak of excessive self-love (‘amor nostri nimius’)—that is, an exaggerated sense of one’s importance (De ira, II.xxxi.3, Moral Essays, vol. I).

162


the preservation of one’s own nature as a rational being with the performance of actions that are worthy of a rational being and reflect one’s relationship with nature, or the order of the universe, at large.

Friendship and the Self Aristotle, on the other hand, links the concept of self-love with that of friendship (Ethics, books VIII and IX). (These traditions are not contradictory or mutually exclusive: thus Seneca speaks of becoming a friend to oneself as part of progress in wisdom (Epistles, VI.7).) Aristotle mentions, as generally accepted, the belief that we ought to wish our friend well for his own sake (Ethics, VIII.ii.3 (1155b ) ), and points out that, on the other hand, in friendships based on utility or pleasure, we do not love the other person for what he is, but for something he gives us (VIII.iii.1–2 (1156a ) ). In friendships between the virtuous, however, each wishes the other well for his own sake (VIII.iii.6 (1156b ) ), because each loves the other for being what he is—that is, for being good (VIII.iv.6 (1157b ) ). But this is not a ‘disinterested’ affection, a kind of objective appreciation akin to that which some (following Kant) have thought characteristic of the aesthetic response, in which we, as ourselves, are not involved. A friend is regarded as ‘another self’ (‘heteros autos’) (IX.ix.10 (1170b ) ), an expression significantly used also of children (VIII.xii.3 (1161b ) ).5 And feelings of friendship are modelled on the feelings of a good man towards himself: he wishes himself well, and for his own sake (that is, he wishes well to his rational part, which is the essential 5 The possibility of treating ‘self’ or moi as nouns rather than pronouns, discernible in the late sixteenth century and early seventeenth centuries in both English and French, seems to confirm the idea that a modern notion of personal identity emerges at this period. However, Terence Cave’s close and subtle analysis of the functioning of the term moi (both as pronoun and as noun) in early modern French draws attention to Aristotle’s heteros autos and Latin equivalents, so as to caution against too rapid an inference from linguistic to conceptual evolution. Moreover, he shows that the substantivization of moi is initially a feature of the discourse of friendship, well before it is mobilized in Descartes’s introspective metaphysics (Pré-Histoires: Textes troublés au seuil de la modernité (Geneva: Droz, 1999), 111–27).


163

self) (IX.iv.1–5 (1166a ) ). The same point recurs in the discussion of self-love. ‘Self-loving’ (philautos) is clearly used as a pejorative term in ordinary speech. And Aristotle approves of this, inasmuch as it involves criticizing those who look for money, honour, or bodily pleasure, thus gratifying the irrational, lower part of their souls. On the other hand, he insists that the good man is a lover of self in another sense: he wishes what is best and noblest for himself, and he is thus gratifying the dominant part of himself, the essential self—that is, the intellectual soul (IX.viii.4–6 (1168b –1169a ) ). This idea involves an objective hierarchy of goods: to wish oneself well ought to mean wishing for oneself what is really good—what conforms to the highest capacities of human nature. This is also a feature of Augustine’s analysis. He too acknowledges the natural urge to self-preservation, common to us and the animals (De doctrina christiana, I.xxv.26–xxvi.27, PL 34, 28–9). In De Trinitate he finds a trinitarian structure in the relationship between the mind, its knowledge of itself, and its love of itself (IX.iv.4, PL 42, 963). On the other hand, and here is the great legacy to Jansenius and to seventeenth-century moral reflection in general, he stresses the existence of a bad self-love. This consists in love of self for one’s own sake, or in other words ‘enjoying’ rather than ‘using’ oneself, when we should subordinate our love of self to that of God, the eternal and unchangeable good (De doctrina christiana, I.xxii.20–1, PL 34, 26). To treat ourselves as our own ultimate authority engenders the desire to dominate over our fellow-humans. But this evil self-love (‘prava sui dilectio’) is in fact a kind of self-hatred (I.xxiii.22–3, PL 34, 27). This is not the subjective state that the term ‘self-hatred’ designates to us. It is an objective self-hatred, so to speak, because we are willing that which is objectively bad for us, deluding ourselves into thinking that we can function as an absolute point of reference for ourselves, independently of God. This leads into the also crucial opposition between the two loves. The earthly and the heavenly cities were produced by two rival loves, a love of self (‘amor sui’) extending to contempt of God, and a love of God extending to contempt of oneself (De civitate Dei, XIV.28).

164


‘Amor sui’ here has three aspects: lust for glory, lust for power, and delight in one’s own qualities or strength (‘virtus’) (XIV.28). In so far as it is a builder of cities, it a collective, and often vicarious self-love. Seventeenth-century writers tend rather to consider it as an evil individual self-centredness, and, though their inspiration is undoubtedly Augustinian, they are, arguably, developing and synthesizing his insights rather than simply reproducing them. As we should expect, Aquinas’s handling of the problem of selflove blends Aristotelian and Augustinian elements. In common with all substances, human beings have an appetite for the preservation of their own being in their own nature (ST IaIIae, q. 94, a. 2). There is also a natural inclination in all creatures towards whatever is suitable to them, which he terms ‘amor naturalis’ (natural love), and a natural aversion to whatever is contrary or harmful to them (IaIIae, q. 29, a. 1) ). But, as regards human beings, he follows Aristotle both in conceiving self-love on the pattern of friendship, and in asserting, none the less, the priority of self-love over friendship. To take the second point first. We love ourselves more than our friends. This seems to follow from the basic metaphysical point that we are one with ourselves as a substance, whereas we are one with others simply inasmuch as we share a similar form (IaIIae, q. 27, a. 3; q. 29, a. 3, ad 2). And, as regards the highest form of love, charity, it is right that we should love ourselves out of charity more than our neighbour (IIaIIae, q. 26, a. 4). Moreover, self-love is the form and root of friendship, for we are friends to others in so far as we behave towards them as towards ourselves (IIaIIae, q. 25, a. 4; cf. Aristotle, Ethics, IX.iv.1 (1166a ) ). On the other hand, if we are to understand what self-love means, we need to think it in terms of the love we bear other people. To love, says Aquinas, is to wish someone well (IaIIae, q. 26, a. 4, quoting Aristotle, Rhetoric, II.iv.2 (1380b ) ). If love is wishing someone well, then self-love is the same as wishing oneself well: ‘idem est se amare quod sibi velle bonum’ (IaIIae, q. 84, a. 2, ad 3). We necessarily love ourselves in this way: we can desire nothing except as a good. Since


165

then, in all our desires, we are wishing good to ourselves, it follows that we necessarily love ourselves (IaIIae, q. 29, a. 4). Now genuine friendship must be modelled on self-love understood in this way: to love our neighbour as ourselves means to love him or her in the same way as we love ourselves—that is, wishing him or her well (IIaIIae, q. 44, a. 7). But fully to grasp the difference between genuine and imperfect friendship we need to re-examine the definition of love as wishing well. It involves two elements: the good we wish someone, and the someone to whom we wish that good. These constitute two forms of love. Love of concupiscence is directed towards the good we wish to someone; love of friendship towards the person to whom we wish the good. Love of friendship, then, consists in loving someone, or something, for and in himself, herself, or itself (‘simpliciter et per se’).6 What is loved with the love of concupiscence is loved not for itself, but for someone else’s sake. This is love only in a relative sense (‘secundum quid’) (IaIIae, q. 26, a. 4). Now friendship is sometimes based on (one’s own) pleasure and advantage. It is still friendship, because one wishes good to the other person. But because one wishes them that good for the sake of one’s own pleasure or advantage, one is loving them not for their own sake (as in the love of friendship properly so-called) but for someone else’s (namely, one’s own). Such friendship is therefore inflected in the direction of love of concupiscence: it is not friendship in the full sense (IaIIae, q. 26, a. 4, ad 3). It is in fact a form of self-love, rather than love of one’s neighbour (IIaIIae, q. 44, a. 7). Self-love is here clearly understood in a pejorative sense: it is not willing good to oneself, but is closely allied to concupiscence. Thus the analysis of friendship throws light on the nature of legitimate self-love: it consists in true friendship to oneself, willing (what is truly) good to oneself, rather than in the self-centred pursuit of pleasure or advantage. What willing good to oneself ought to mean is clarified in Aquinas’s discussion of self-hatred. He holds that we cannot hate 6 ‘Of concupiscence’ and ‘of friendship’ are not objective genitives, denoting the object of one’s love: they indicate rather its nature or source.

166


ourselves directly. We can indirectly in this way (here there is a very close debt to Aristotle). A human being, like any other complex hierarchical entity, is identified most with what is most authoritative in it. Hence a person is most to be identified with their mind (‘homo maxime est mens hominis’). Thus to identify oneself with one’s bodily nature is to misrecognize what one really is: it is to love oneself in a sense, but, since it is the love of one’s lower self, it is in another sense a kind of self-hatred (IaIIae, q. 29, a. 4). (So again the ultimate reality of a person’s attitude to himself or herself is not measured subjectively but objectively.) It follows that a proper self-love is a virtue; in fact it comes under the theological virtue of charity, in the sense of friendship with God, and with what belongs to God. But this latter category includes ourselves. Therefore friendship to ourselves is part of friendship with God (IIaIIae, q. 25, a. 4). Self-love is culpable only in so far as it implies subjection to our sensual nature; true self-love is to love oneself according to one’s rational nature, and to desire the goods that pertain to that (IIaIIae, q. 25, a. 4, ad 3). The divine gift of charity restores the possibility and the obligation of loving God, as the universal good of all beings, more than ourselves (IIaIIae, q. 26, a. 3). Moreover, and here Aquinas shows his assimilation of Augustine, the unhealthy kind of self-love is the source of all sin. All sinful acts arise from a disordered appetite for some temporal good, but the disorder of the appetite is itself due to an inordinate love of self, such as leads to contempt of God. Self-love as such, then, is not the cause of sin: a well-ordered self-love, which desires an appropriate good for itself, is right and natural. Self-love is the cause of sin only in so far as it is inordinate (IaIIae, q. 77, a. 4). He explains elsewhere that this inordinate self-love is tantamount to pride, and here as a synonym of pride (‘superbia’) he uses the term ‘amor proprius’ (self-love), which has not featured in the analysis up to now. Pride involves the refusal to be subject to God, the result of which is an inordinate desire for one’s own excellence in temporal things (IaIIae, q. 84, a. 2). Now anyone who sins is to that extent refusing to obey God’s commandments (since excusable


167

ignorance precludes sin). But one might wonder whether someone who did not wish not to be subject to God could none the less, against his or her will, be guilty of bad self-love, or ‘amor proprius’. This is not a problem investigated by Aquinas: but it bulks large in seventeenth-century analyses of the Augustinian school. The distinction upheld by Aquinas between love of concupiscence and love of friendship, and the modelling of self-love on friendship, leaves room for a legitimate self-love, not intrinsically poisoned with concupiscence. This approach survives in seventeenth-century writing in the scholastic tradition.7 But it is striking how little it seems to affect writing outside the scholastic tradition, which resorts more readily to the view that self-love per se is bad. Again, we must also bear in mind that, for Aquinas as for Augustine, the opposition is between a bad self-love, which in fact goes against one’s real interests, and a good self-love, the orientation of which is towards real and durable happiness. The opposition is objectively grounded: self-love geared towards the enjoyment of the beatific vision of God is healthy; geared towards sensual pleasure, it is not. The contrast is not between concern for self, on the one hand, and complete absence of such concern, complete disinterestedness, on the other. But it is in this latter way that seventeenth-century authors very commonly approach the problem of self-love. That is to say, the conception of self-love has become more negative, and also more centred on the individual and the nature of his or her own relation to his or her own goals and desires. The focus has shifted from the object of desire to the subject. 7 For an outstanding example of the scholastic approach to the question, see Tarquinius Gallutius, SJ (Tarquinio Galluzzi), Explanatio et quæstiones in Aristotelis Moralium Libros, 2 vols., In Aristotelis libros quinque priores moralium ad Nicomachum nova interpretatio, commentarii, quæstiones (Paris: Sebastien Cramoisy, 1632), In Aristotelis libros quinque posteriores moralium ad Nicomachum nova interpretatio, commentarii, quæstiones (Paris: Sebastien Cramoisy, 1645). Arguing along much the same lines as Aquinas, he defends the Aristotelian claim that we should love ourselves best of all things, in the sense that we should love our real self, what is best in us—that is to say, our rational self. This is good self-love, bad self-love involving the love of our inferior sensual part, operating outside the control of reason. He stresses that, in keeping with the methodological requirements of ethical discourse, he excludes all reference to divinely inspired charity (vol. II, IX.8, 672–86).

168


What follows has no pretensions to being an exhaustive account of seventeenth-century conceptions of self-love.8 It excludes writing in the scholastic tradition, inspired by Aquinas and Aristotle, and concentrates more on writers in the neo-Augustinian tradition; not only Jansenius and the ‘Jansenists’ in the sense of supporters of Port-Royal, but other writers (such as Senault and Jacques Esprit), the tendency of whose thought is not dissimilar. But, for purposes of contrast, I also bring in writers such as St François de Sales and Fénelon, whose vision of man and his relation to God is very different from that of the neo-Augustinians, yet who would also claim to be in some sense followers of St Augustine. Since Jansenius’s analysis of human nature corrupted by original sin lays heavy stress on concupiscence and self-love, both of these topics are discussed here. But since (it is fair to say) other writers have more of interest to say about self-love than about concupiscence, my account of them will concentrate on the former. Again, the first part of the chapter will deal with concupiscence and self-love as effects of the Fall, while in the second I discuss analyses of self-love in more detail. I begin with St François de Sales’s Introduction a` la vie dévote (1608–9, rev. 1619), precisely because its less systematic treatment (it is a work, immensely influential, of practical rather than theoretical or controversial divinity) gives one a better sense of the variety of ways in which the terms amour-propre or amour de soi-même could be used in religious and moral discourse in the early seventeenth century. The frame of reference is sometimes purely moral (rather than spiritual or mystical). Amour-propre is sometimes a matter of the (excessive 8 There is an excellent outline in Michel Bouvier, ‘Considérations sur la manière de parler de l’amour-propre afin d’en bien juger’, PFSCL 36 (1992), 37–54. Bouvier’s article draws on an impressive range of sources to demonstrate that seventeenth-century writers were by no means united in condemning self-love. He refers back to the teachings of Augustine and Aquinas, and makes a valuable distinction between two distinct currents within the analysis of amour-propre, one theological and moral, the other mystical and ascetic, though he accepts a degree of interaction between them. He also emphasizes the rhetorical aspect of discourses against amour-propre. Jean Rohou provides an early modern history of the term, tracking changes in the senses in which it is used, which he links suggestively to historical context (Le XVIIe Siècle).


169

or illicit) pursuit of one’s self-interest, as when it is said to affect our dealings with others by fostering many kinds of injustice.9 Perhaps the same is true of its tendency to inflate our sense of the wrongs we have suffered (III.3, 135), though this might also suggest its kinship with pride (in this case, hurt). Certainly, the connection with pride is explicit in the chapter on gentleness towards ourselves, where St François points out that fury at one’s own failings (so far from indicating authentic repentance) derives from amour-propre, from our displeasure at seeing ourselves imperfect (III.9, 156). Here then it has less to do with interest than with delight (or its opposite) in an idea or image of ourselves: a kind of narcissism (the word is not being employed in a technical Freudian sense). Elsewhere, amour-propre is discussed in relation to spiritual as well as moral concerns: it may take the form of a resistance to God, as when we persuade ourselves out of ‘humility’ that we should not aim at a higher spiritual or moral life (III.5, 142–3). Here amour-propre, linked to ‘opinion’ (presumably our comfortable familiar beliefs), temperament (‘humeur’), and sloth, is a kind of glorified and perverted instinct of self-preservation: a desire to continue to exist as we are, a fear of commitment to anything that might threaten the life and the self we know. The love of self is here implicitly contrasted with the love of God. Sometimes the contrast is explicit. Thus worldly people strive for the sake of material possessions: they are driven by ‘l’amour d’euxmêmes’, whereas we should strive ‘pour l’amour de Dieu’ (III.15, 173). ‘Amour de soi-même’ here denotes a violent and excessive attachment to one’s good. St François is not condemning all concern for material goods. If we have been born to great possessions (unless, presumably, we have received the call to sell all we have and give it to the poor), it is not God’s will that we should fritter them away. We are entitled to preserve and even increase them, when a lawful opportunity arises and inasmuch as our social position requires us to do so, for God wills that we should do so for his sake (‘pour son 9 St François de Sales, Introduction a` la vie dévote, III.36, in Œuvres, ed. André Ravier and Roger Devos, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1969), 228.

170


amour’). There is then a legitimate pursuit of one’s material goods, as long as they have not become an end in themselves. If they do, our desire for them is therefore a form of ‘amour de soi-même’. Unfortunately, self-love (‘amour-propre’) can impersonate the love of God successfully, so that when we think we are legitimately concerned about our temporal goods, we are in fact driven by avarice (p. 173). The shift of terminology from ‘amour de soi-même’ to ‘amour-propre’ suggests a distinction, though we should not press it too hard, between two functions or aspects of self-love. There is the primary pursuit of one’s own interests (here ‘amour de soimême’) and the secondary process (here ‘amour-propre’) by which we persuade ourselves either that we are not advancing our interests, or (as here) that whatever we are doing for our interests is legitimate (the belief thus helps us to advance our interests without inhibition). Many seventeenth-century writers incorporate both processes into their account of self-love, as we shall see, but they do not tend to formulate an explicit distinction between them, still less to fix it terminologically.10 We can say, though, that in seventeenth-century moral and spiritual writings (at least those considered here) amourpropre almost always has a pejorative implication, whereas amour de soi is sometimes used in a positive or neutral sense. In fact, St François makes a clear distinction between good and bad amour de soi. The former is orderly, the latter disorderly, and only the latter is to be condemned. Good, or orderly, self-love involves a hierarchy: we love the soul more than the body, virtue more than anything else, heavenly honour more than earthly, the judgement of the angels more than that of human beings (V.6, 303). In more explicitly religious terms, he is restating the distinction between a good and a bad self-love that we find in Aristotle, and above all in St Thomas. In the Introduction a` la vie dévote, then, self-love is discussed primarily in moral terms: it may take the bad form of the pursuit of one’s interests (possessions or reputation), for their own sake, 10 The main exception here is the Protestant theologian Jacques Abbadie, writing at the end of the century; Malebranche is a partial exception. Both are discussed below.


171

irrespective of God’s; it may involve self-deception as to one’s motives; it is commonly bound up with pride and narcissism. But, if regulated (by the love of God), it is legitimate. Spiritually, it may involve a desire to retain one’s familiar identity, a kind of resistance to God. But enough has been said to mark out the general field of application of the term amour-propre, and we may now move on, to follow Jansenius in his systematic exploration of its territory.

Jansenius on Concupiscence and Self-Love Ignorance and concupiscence are the chief of all the penalties of original sin, according to Jansenius.11 Because ignorance of one’s moral duties is not a natural limitation, but part of the punishment for sin, it does not count as an excuse for sin (II.4, 122–4). In particular, transgression of the natural law is never excusable: for it is engraved on our hearts, even though obscured initially by original sin and later by the habit of sin (II.5, 124).12 But the actual pressure to sin derives from concupiscence, which Jansenius uses as one of a range of synonyms: ‘libido’, ‘cupiditas’, ‘voluptas’ (pleasure), ‘delectatio’. He defines it as ‘a certain habitual tendency, whereby the soul is inclined to the enjoyment of creatures’ (‘pondus quoddam habituale, quo anima inclinatur ad fruendum creaturis’) (II.7, 130). It is important to note that by ‘concupiscence’ Jansenius means an involuntary impulse, although he notes that it is less accurately employed to denote a disorderly motion of the will towards an object (II.24, 171). We are punished by concupiscence in the sense that we cannot help being attracted to created things, as if they were good in themselves, even if we know they are not and wish to abstain from enjoying them. This ingrained attraction is reinforced by custom, to the point where it becomes almost invincible (‘inuictam’). Hence Augustine even tends to assimilate concupiscence to custom (II.7, 130). The motions, or emotions, to which concupiscence inclines us 11 12

Jansenius, De statu naturæ lapsæ, II.1, 113–17. There is a very clear echo here of Romans 2: 14–15.

172


are directed at whatever is not God (II.7, 131). Following 1 John 2: 16, Jansenius divides concupiscence into three: lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and lust for power.13 From these all sins flow (II.8, 132–4). In fallen man concupiscence, for Jansenius as for Augustine, is thus intrinsically a rebellious appetite. It not only draws us away from God towards creatures, against the proper order of things, it resists the attempts of our reason to subordinate it to the proper order. It is thus an obstacle to freedom. And the remaining two books of De statu naturæ lapsæ are thus concerned with the impact of original sin on our free will. Meanwhile, I shall try to place Jansenius’s theory of concupiscence in the context of his conception of love, which is one of the most striking aspects of his moral psychology.14 Concupiscence itself is not, for Jansenius, a sin. The sin is only in consent to it (II.24, 167–71). But the consent is always sinful. We cannot understand concupiscence in the framework of Aristotelian ethics, as if the point were to feel the right degree of concupiscence in the right situation (II.9–11, 134–42). The reason for this follows from the definition of concupiscence quoted above. It is not simply an attraction to created things: without such an attraction, neither the individual nor the species could survive. It is an inclination to enjoy created things, in the Augustinian sense—that is, to treat them as ends in themselves. Jansenius’s point, then, is that our relationship with created things is fundamentally distorted. We cannot spontaneously perceive them as what they are, objects capable of being rightly used in the progress towards God. They demand to be enjoyed, to hold our attention. The soul adheres to them, is ensnared by them with a kind of glue (‘glutino quodam’) 13 Augustine frequently refers to the three concupiscences: see, e.g., De vera religione, XXXVIII.69–70, PL 34, 153, where the passage from St John is quoted, and also Confessions, III.8, X.30. The ‘lust of the eyes’ is sometimes glossed as curiosity (as in Jansenius, De statu naturæ lapsæ, II.25, 174). This is an important term in a wide range of early modern discourses, as is shown by Neil Kenny, The Uses of Curiosity in Early Modern France and Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 14 An excellent analysis of Jansenius’s psychology, tracing it to its Neoplatonist intellectual sources, is to be found in Anthony Levi, SJ, French Moralists: The Theory of the Passions, 1585 to 1649 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964), 202–13.


173

(II.20, 160). They are all, we might say, fetish objects, the focus of an interest that their intrinsic qualities seem unable to explain. In so far as they demand to be enjoyed, in this Augustinian sense, they are putting themselves forwards as objects of love. Or one could put it another way: concupiscence is termed a ‘pondus’ (inner inclination) and this in Augustinian thought is always a synonym of love, as has been noted already. Now love for Jansenius, as for Augustine, is the fundamental human drive, from which all the others derive and take their colour. Jansenius terms it the hinge (‘cardo’) of all other affects: he makes it the source of all psychic dynamism, although we are not aware of it directly. For it is, in itself, a quasi-immobile state of feeling (‘est enim affectus quasiimmobilis’), and thus escapes awareness. It is psychical motion that engages our attention. But the source of motion is none the less the other affects that derive from love. These affects, or passions, are allotropes of love, whose appearance is determined by the state of our relationship to the beloved object: desire in its absence, joy in its presence, fear for its danger, anger when we are separated from it by some obstacle, sadness for its loss. And thus all the passions can be said to be dominated by love (II.12, 142). Sometimes love gives itself away directly by its own violence, bursting out in flame and smoke; most often, though, it lies hidden in the depths of the soul, as if to conceal itself from the most attentive introspection (‘vt oculos hominis semetipsum curiosissimè explorantis subterfugiat’). We can detect it only through other passions, which are more readily perceptible, less crafty, more honest and straightforward, and which will lead us back to love as if we were tracing a river back to its source (II.18, 156). It is, moreover, the orientation of the underlying love that determines the passions’ ethical quality (II.18, 155).15 15 These positions are not peculiar to Jansenius. Senault also stresses the hiddenness of love: ‘Il est aussi secret que public, & [. . .] il n’y a rien dans la nature de plus evident ni de plus caché’ (It is no less secret than public, and [. . .] there is nothing in nature more manifest or more hidden) (De l’usage des passions (Paris: Veuve Jean Camusat, 1641), II.i.1, 214); ‘Il est retiré dans le fonds de notre cœur, & toutes les marques qu’il donne de sa presence, sont autant de nuages qui le desrobent a` nos esprits’ (It lurks in the

174


An inclination to created things can, then, be characterized as a form of love. It is therefore flawed for two reasons: what we love, we wish to rest in (as the Augustinian use of pondus implies), and thus created things distract us from the search for God. More particularly, Jansenius invokes the equally Augustinian notion of a hierarchy of being, with rational creatures coming between bodies and the deity. A rational creature’s love should therefore correspond to this order. But could we not measure our love accordingly, valuing bodies but less than our rational fellow creatures, and the latter less than God? The difficulty of this lies in the psychology of love. Love intrinsically dominates and subjects, and thus, if we love created things, we shall become their slaves (II.19, 156) The threat to liberty is a point particularly to be noted (see also II.20, 158). So is the fact that, although Jansenius recognizes that our fellow humans rank above bodies in the hierarchy of being, the two categories are lumped together in the all-encompassing category of creatures.16 More striking still is the account of the psychological impact of concupiscence. It affects not simply the will, but the mind, or intellect. All earthly love seeks to absorb its object: it cannot do so physically, and so assimilates it via images, the resultant flux, the crowd of images (‘phantasmatum turbam’) blinding the mind’s eye to the truth of the beloved object (II.20, 161). (The disturbing role of the image in psychical life was to be noted also by Malebranche.17 ) bottom of our heart, and every sign it gives of its presence is also a cloud that screens us from our mind) (II.i.1, 215). He also holds that the passions are all forms of love (I.i.3, 27–31; II.i.1, 216–17). Anthony Levi points to textual parallels that suggest that Senault had read Jansenius (French Moralists, 215n. 5). On the passions as forms of love, and as ethically qualified by the quality of the love, see Augustine, De civitate Dei, XIV.7. St François de Sales also maintains this position (Traité de l’amour de Dieu, I. 4, VI. 13 (Œuvres, 361–3, 647–8)). 16 It is arguable that this analysis simplifies that of Augustine. Love for a fellow creature that is directed beyond him or her to God is valid: it ceases to be cupidity and becomes charity. See De Trinitate, IX.viii.13, PL 42, 967–8, and Burnaby, Amor Dei, 106–8. 17 But the impact of mental images of physical objects, real or imagined, had been already analysed by Augustine (De vera religione, III.3, X.18, XXXIV.64–5, PL 34, 124, 130, 150–1; De Trinitate, X.v.7, PL 42, 977).


175

Consent, then, to concupiscence is a sin. But Jansenius now argues that all sin consists in consent to concupiscence (II.24, 167, 169).18 That consent is not simply an indifferent exercise of free choice, as if we could take concupiscence or leave it. If that were so, then whether we sin or not would be entirely in our power (as Pelagius would have argued). But in fact our choices are always anticipated, and biased in favour of concupiscence, by another force: self-love. The point of departure of Jansenius’s analysis of self-love is the universal urge to self-preservation asserted by the ancient philosophers. All creatures fear and avoid death, and they seek whatever will preserve their being: Omnibus animalibus naturâ insitum est, vt seipsa diligant: quae inconcussa lex etiam in bestias, adeòque plantas ac stirpes, & res inanimatas peruulgata est. Nam & illa mortem quo possunt modo, velocitate, latebris, resistendo, repugnandoque fugiunt; & ista corticibus radicibus, omniùmque partium se valida compactione custodiunt. Cujus veritatis a` summis vsque ad ima penetrantis consideratione Philosophi de homine dixerunt, hanc esse naturæ quidem quodammodo & maximam vocem, vt homo concilietur sibi, & propterea mortem naturaliter fugiat. (II.25, 172)19 In all living things, there is a naturally-implanted tendency to love themselves: an unshakable law promulgated even to the brute beasts, yes, and to plants and roots and even inanimate things. For the former shun death by whatever means they can, by speed, by hiding, by resistance, by fighting back, and the latter protect themselves by their bark, their roots, and by the firm knitting-together of all their parts. It was the consideration of this truth, which holds good from the highest creatures to the lowest, that led the philosophers to pronounce as regards mankind that nature in some sense dictates, more than anything else, that human beings should look after themselves, and that hence they should naturally flee death.

The passage in itself suggests that the complexities of seventeenthcentury discourse of amour-propre cannot be explained by conceptual 18 To be precise, this applies to our present fallen state. Adam was not subject to concupiscence, so sin in his case was simply due to an act of free choice. 19 Cf. De statu puræ naturæ, II.7, 336, where Jansenius cites Cicero, De finibus, V, as his source for the universal impulse to self-preservation.

176


or terminological poverty, as if writers lacked the equipment to distinguish between a natural instinct of self-preservation and a perverted impulse of self-gratification.20 I shall discuss this in more detail in connection with La Rochefoucauld. It is not just that they could have found the instinct of self-preservation in a far from recondite text of ancient moral philosophy (Cicero’s De finibus), but that Jansenius himself was quite able to distinguish between the natural instinct and the perverted self-love. Love of self, then, for Jansenius, is rooted in the universal appetite for that which will preserve our existence. Self-preservation, however, is complicated when we reach the human level. Man, endowed with a rational soul, was created with the commensurate twofold end of understanding God as the truth, and enjoying him as the supreme good. He was to direct his whole life to that end, subordinating (‘referendum’) to it all he has in common with the animals (II.25, 172). He was God’s creature: he was to live as such, for God’s sake, that is, not for his own advantage. This is what is meant by loving God with all one’s heart, and soul, and strength (Matthew 22: 37, quoting Deuteronomy 6: 5). But this is also the only truly beneficial form of self-love (‘verus & solus amor, quo homo seipsum vtiliter diligit’) (De statu naturæ lapsæ, II.25, 172).21 In the absence of the love of God, to which all things had previously been referred as their ultimate end, man becomes his own point of reference: he is now the overall end for the sake of which he pursues specific ends. By deserting God, man constituted himself as the starting point and end of all his activity. The starting point because he had refused to accept that what he had was God’s gift, and that this gift carried implications. The end because his goal was now himself. Before the Fall, the self’s structure was that of a pyramid. All the loves implanted by nature (related to the body, to the soul, and to the union between them) were held together by the rational 20 The simplistic idea that seventeenth-century writers confused love of self and amour-propre, and regarded both as wicked has been plausibly traced to Littré’s dictionary (Bouvier, ‘Considérations’, 37). 21 The Augustinian source is De doctrina christiana, I.22, PL 34, 21.


177

soul, or mind (‘mens’), so that no part of man could be moved to desire or aversion against the mind’s wishes. But this subordination was effected only because the mind, and the rest of the personality, were held in a chain of divine love. Sin broke that chain, and the various loves in turn broke away to follow their natural downwards tendency (‘naturaliter quasi suâ grauitate deorsum lapsa’), pulling the will along with them (II.25, 173).22 It is as if the rational soul were a subordinate military officer, and the lower powers the troops. If the officer ceases to obey his superior, he has no backing for his authority, and the troops subside into anarchy. Or, for a more prosaic comparison, one could think of a shopping bag in which the fragile items have been placed at the top, while the hard ones—tins and jars—are at the bottom. As long as it is being carried, this arrangement will be maintained; if the bag is put down or dropped, the hard and heavy items force their way up, the arrangement is destroyed, and the fragile items are damaged. Jansenius, then, distinguishes a natural concern for self-preservation from a faulty self-love. But he does not want to suggest that the natural instinct could, here and now, be taken as the basis for a conception of good self-love. It has become embroiled with our corrupt self-love, in which we pursue not only our good, but our good as the supreme good, and can no longer be accessed in its original ethically neutral form. But it is not just that man is pursuing his own good, as he now, mistakenly, perceives it, independently of his relation to God. This self-orientation has an affective dimension of narcissism: ‘Nihil est enim aliud placere sibi [. . .] quàm seipsum amare, & velut excellens aliquod bonum admirari, & exosculari, & hoc ipsum est seipso in seipso frui, & fruendo beatum velle fieri’ (To please oneself is nothing other than to love oneself, and to marvel at oneself as if at some excellent good, and to kiss oneself fondly; and this in turn is enjoying oneself in oneself and by one’s enjoyment wishing 22 The image of the chain of love holding the personality together in the state of original righteousness is in Aquinas, ST IaIIae, q. 82, a. 4, ad 1.

178


to be happy) (p. 173). The use of ‘amare’, with its overtones of passionate attachment, is striking, since ancient writers tend to use ‘diligere’ when talking of a creature’s love in the sense of concern for itself, and Jansenius, in his account of the natural instinct of self-preservation, had followed their example.23 And the sexual term ‘exosculari’ makes clear that Jansenius does not intend us to confuse this kind of erotic attachment to self, or narcissism, with the instinct of self-preservation or the broader category of self-love as concern for one’s well-being. Again, when he argues that, in the absence of the love of God, to which all things had previously been referred as their ultimate end, man became his own point of reference, Jansenius’ description of man’s attitude to himself again has marked erotic overtones: ‘se diligendo arctissimè complectitur’ (in his self-love he embraces himself closely) (p. 173). Narcissism is indeed a recurrent motif in the Jansenist analysis of self-love: but it was not part of St Thomas’s analysis, and this divergence is highly revealing.24 The natural and ethically neutral urge to self-preservation, then, has become the host inhabited by a new parasitic growth, a morbid attachment to self as the object of one’s desire. Yet this narcissism has nothing to do with self-contentment. To fall into self-love is to find oneself in a boundless and incomprehensible void, a realm of unlimited lack (‘sibi ipsi incomprehensibilem vacuitatem & egestatem [homo] expertus est’) (p. 174). We have lost our dignity, our knowledge, our pleasure. These gaps are now very precisely (yet in another sense, vainly) filled by the three concupiscences encountered earlier: ‘libido dominandi’, curiosity, and the inclination to pleasure (p. 174). 23 See De statu naturæ lapsæ, II.25, 172, where ‘diligere’ is used twice; and cf. Cicero, De finibus, V.ix.24, where it is used of all animals, and V.xi.30–1, where it is used particularly of human beings. In the latter passage, though, Cicero also uses ‘amare’, and Aquinas seems to use ‘se amare’ and ‘se diligere’ interchangeably. 24 It is not, however, confined to Jansenius or his followers: it can be found, again, in Senault: ‘L’amour propre ne produit point de plus violent desir en l’homme que de s’aymer soy-mesme & d’obliger tous les autres a` devenir ses amans’ (Self-love produces no more violent desire in man than to love himself and to force everyone else to become his lover) (L’Homme criminel, 63–4). See also the discussion of Bossuet below (p. 187).


179

The next development in the argument is very complex. Jansenius is working with the traditional pre-Cartesian picture of the soul as a hierarchy, the rational soul or mind (mens) at the top, and the sensitive or animal part below. Self-love, we saw, is initially a perversion of the rational soul, which Jansenius terms the ‘apex’ of the personality (‘mens hominis tamquam summus apex hominis’ (p. 173). But, if the rational soul were alone corrupt, and the sensitive appetite still healthy, then it would seem to follow that we have only to correct the rational mind in order to correct our desires: a quasi-Stoic position repugnant to Augustinian theology. Jansenius needs, then, to find a mediation between the self-love of the highest part of the soul and the desires of the lower part of the soul: Quibus si addas, quod amor ille sui [. . .] vestigium sibi simillimum, sicut ipsa natura humanorum actuum postulat, instar consuetudinis pertinacissimæ in inferiorem anime ([sic]) partem impresserit (quæ omnium motuum vitiosorum quantumcumque spiritualium & subtilium, quibus perturbamur, susceptiua est) eaque in prolem propagata transierit [. . .]; nihil omninò quisquam mirabitur, si istud amoris proprij vestigium, naturali illi dilectioni sui superadditum, tantaque rerum omnium egestate, in quam cecidimus, appetitum prouocante adjutum, incessanter creatarum rerum desideria concitet, & omnibus actibus liberæ voluntatis præuolet. (p. 174) Bear in mind as well that this love of self has impressed an image extremely like itself, as the very nature of human actions requires, resembling a deeply entrenched custom, on the lower part of the soul (which is capable of receiving all the wicked movements, however spiritual and subtle they may be, by which we are troubled), and that this has been reproduced in his [Adam’s] offspring [. . .]; no one will be at all surprised, if this trace of self-love, added to the natural concern for oneself, and reinforced by the utter lack into which we have fallen, which has stirred up our appetite, incessantly stimulates the longing for created things, and intervenes in advance of every act of our free will.

Love of self (‘amor sui’) must here denote the vicious post-lapsarian attachment to self, to be distinguished from the natural concern for oneself or urge of self-preservation (‘naturali illi dilectioni sui’). What happens then is this. Self-love generates an image or imprint of itself

180


(‘vestigium sibi simillimum’) and transfers this to the lower part of the soul. By this Jansenius clearly means the sensitive or animal appetite, especially since he speaks of it in relation to ‘movements by which we troubled [ perturbamur]’, since the passions ( perturbationes) were conventionally defined as movements of the sensitive or animal appetite.25 This imprint of self-love is analogous to that of an inveterate custom, and we have already seen that Augustine has established a very close relation between custom and concupiscence. Self-love, then, has copied itself like a computer virus into our sensitive appetite. Like a repeated drill enforcing a certain behaviour pattern, the image of self-love ensures that our appetites shall retain this basic orientation to self, exclusive of any higher end. This whole new psychic apparatus has been inherited by Adam and Eve’s offspring. Hence the present plight of the human being: the imprint of self-love is super-added to the natural instinct of self-preservation, and to the passions; it is reinforced by the state of universal lack into which we have fallen and which acts as a goad to the appetite (p. 174). Hence it (the imprint of self-love) is ceaselessly stirring up the desire for created things, and anticipating the act of free will. Consequently, we never choose, whether for good or ill, from cold, so to speak, by a pure exercise of the faculty of free will. There is always already some prompting in one direction, in this case from self-love interwoven with concupiscence. (Consequently, Jansenius will have to analyse the antidote to self-love or concupiscence as another ‘prevenient’ stimulus: hence the theory of grace as delectation, on which more presently.) Behind all the passions and all the acts of fallen humanity, then, we can trace the presence of self-love. The natural instinct has become hopelessly entangled with the unnatural corrupt self-attachment, 25 See Aquinas, ST IaIIae, q. 22, a. 3, quoting St John Damascene. He is followed by many early modern writers (with the important exception of Descartes): see, e.g., Du Vair, Philosophie morale des Sto¨ıques, 69; In libros Ethicorum Aristotelis ad Nicomachum, aliquot conimbricensis cursus disputationes [Manuel de Góis, Moral a` Nicomaco, de Aristóteles], disp. VI, q. 3, 190–2; Charron, De la sagesse, I.18, 155; Senault, De l’usage des passions, I.i.2, 18; Eustache de Saint-Paul, Ethica, III.ii.1, 80. On the passions in French thought at this period, Levi, French Moralists, remains indispensable.


181

now indeed a deeply rooted second nature. For instance, if someone reacts violently to an offence to their pride, this is not simply, on Jansenius’s analysis, an acquired artificial reaction, a false opinion, as in the Stoic conception of passion, from which they could free themselves by meditation and self-discipline. After all, the offender has damaged them in some way, even if only in their own and other people’s eyes, and their passions, schooled by self-love, have learned to assimilate these imaginary wounds to real physical injury. Their affective reaction thus has the kind of intensity one would expect to be reserved to a confrontation with physical danger. One might well be doubtful, as Jansenius would be, that a person could undo this process by their own efforts. All kinds of perceptions and thoughts to do with created things come under the purview of (corrupt) self-love, stimulated as it is by the lack that characterizes our present condition (p. 174). This attention of self-love to what is to be sought or avoided is parallel to what we find in brute beasts. But Jansenius makes the parallel in order, precisely, to stress the distance between self-love and the natural instinct that keeps an animal away from danger and draws it towards what it needs. Self-love behaves like, even mimics, the natural instinct, but its objects are not natural, but of a kind to appeal to or jeopardise its corrupted appetites. Thus, for instance, it smells out a possibility of gratifying, or avoiding hurt to, vanity, no less alertly than a small bird tracks down worms and keeps a weather eye open for the cat. But this incessant activity of self-love turns the whole of life into temptation (p. 174).26 These temptations are the more dangerous for being insidious: Nam quamuis illa notissima vitiorum fornicationis, homicidij, & similium desideria non semper nos irrequieta perturbent, sunt aliæ tamen innoxiarum rerum cogitationes & appetitiones, quibus anima sine cessatione velut aër aurâ sensibus humanis imperceptibili commouetur. Qui aër quamuis serenissimus quiescere videatur, moueri tamen ratio vera judicat. (p. 174) 26 To confirm this view of life as temptation, Jansenius cites Augustine, De civitate Dei, XXII.21.

182


For although those most blatant desires for vice (fornication, murder, and such like) are not always restlessly harassing us, there are, however, other thoughts of and longings for harmless things by which the soul is constantly being stirred, as the air is stirred by a breeze imperceptible to the human senses. For however serene and unmoving the air appears to be, right reason judges that it is being moved.

Why even harmless desires are a problem will appear presently. What is especially striking is the implication that these promptings are imperceptible to our ordinary awareness (but must be postulated by reason). Jansenius goes on to argue that all our actions require a prior impulse of love (he must mean deliberate actions, human actions as defined by St Thomas (ST IaIIae, q. 1, a. 1), rather than purely mechanical actions): Nam ad omnes omnino actiones nostras, huiusmodi quamuis leuissimi motus voluntati præuolant, quibus consentiendo non solùm peccata venialia vulgò nota committimus, sed etiam actiones illas, quibus corpori vel animæ juxta naturæ instituta consulimus, exequamur. Hinc ergo fit, vt impossibile sit vllum liberum voluntatis actum exeri, nisi illius amoris siue naturalis siue superadditi desiderio quodam inuoluntarii præunte prouocetur. (p. 174) For in relation to every one of our actions, without exception, such impulses, however slight, step in before the will, and it is by consenting to them that we not only commit venial sins of the most obvious kind but perform those actions by which we attend to the needs of our body and soul in accordance with the laws of nature. So it is that it is impossible to exercise a single free act of will, unless it has been prompted by some preceding desire on the part of this involuntary love, whether the love is of the natural or of the secondary kind.

Superadditus in some theologians’ writings can sometimes mean ‘supernatural’.27 But I do not think that the amor superadditus, which I have translated as ‘secondary [love]’, here means the supernatural love of charity, since Jansenius goes on to say that the the pure 27

See, e.g., Suárez, Tractatus de gratia Dei, seu de Deo salvatore, justificatore, et liberi arbitrii adjutore per gratiam suam, Prolegomenon quartum, De statibus humanæ naturæ, I.2, Opera omnia, VII, 179.


183

love of God kills off this type of love that otherwise comes before all our actions (p. 174). Since Jansenius has earlier referred to the ‘amoris proprij vestigium, naturali illi dilectioni sui superadditum’ (the imprint of self-love, added to this natural attachment to the self), it seems reasonable to conclude that the ‘superadded’ kind of love is self-love of the unnatural kind. This helps to explain why even the desire for intrinsically harmless things is problematic, as he has just suggested. Suppose I find myself wanting a glass of beer. Nothing intrinsically wrong with beer as such. But, since the prior movement of love that called forth this desire is imperceptible, I cannot tell whether it is a natural appetite of thirst, the effect of a hot day and hard work in the garden, or a (supposedly) corrupt desire for alcoholic stimulation.28 That is to say, the natural love, or instinct for self-preservation, has become entangled with the corrupt self-love so as to produce the desires we actually experience and which Jansenius groups under the heading of concupiscence. This theory of motivation by an indwelling love of created things (a love guided by a corrupt love of self), imperceptible but prompting us in advance of all our actions, secures Jansenius’s point, which is to show that the wellspring of all action is concupiscence, even if sin occurs only when we consent to its solicitations. Our actions are not the result of an unimpeded choice, following an impartial review of alternatives from which we select the one that seems best. If it were, then it might well seem that we were capable of directing our actions according to the dictates of reason alone, and the result would be the vindication of Pelagius.29 The theory has the further advantage of paving the way for Jansenius to establish the notion of grace as a heavenly delectation, overcoming the delectation of concupiscence. Over and above the theological agenda, it is fascinating to register this conception of the mind as driven by 28 Something of what is at stake here is indicated by Augustine’s analysis of his temptations in Confessions, X.30–40, to which Jansenius’s own discourse De interiore hominis reformatione oratio is much indebted. 29 I do not of course mean to suggest that there is, in fact, no other anti-Pelagian solution besides Jansenius’s to the problem of choice.

184


promptings of which it is never aware, because its awareness consists in realizing them as conscious desires. Even Jansenius’s language, with the image of the mind as air in imperceptible movement, is reminiscent of Montaigne’s exploration of the vagaries of our mind, when he stresses the difficulty of clearly identifying ‘tant de menus airs de ses agitations’ (all the subtle vibrations by which it is agitated) and of penetrating its ‘replis internes’ (inner folds).30 I am not suggesting a direct connection, though it is possible ( Jansenius could have been influenced by Montaigne while, like some of his followers, deeply distrusting him); besides, one might find closer, and demonstrable, links involving other texts. What does seem fair to claim is that, in different ways, and with their very different agendas, the Gascon ex-magistrate and the Flemish theologian both show a marked awareness of the hinterland of the mind behind our everyday sense of self-awareness. This subject will be taken up in another chapter. Meanwhile, the point is that Jansenius bequeathed to his followers a powerful theory of action as rooted in a corrupt self-love, no less tenacious than a natural instinct, ever-vigilant but escaping our vigilance, as a result of which we find ourselves constantly drawn, by the illicit appetite branded concupiscence, towards a host of created things and away from the one genuine good. I have already touched on Jansenius’s notion of grace, developed in the third volume of the Augustinus, as a delectation inspired by God that overpowers the delights of concupiscence.31 The conception is certainly found in Augustine, though many able commentators seek to differentiate between his use of it and that of Jansenius. 30 Montaigne, Essais, II.6, ‘De l’exercitation’, VS 378. Earlier, Jansenius has spoken of love as hiding ‘in [. . .] nescio quibus anfractibus’ (De statu naturæ lapsæ, II.18, 156). ‘Anfractus’ (plural), in the sense of the windings of a road, would be a fair equivalent for ‘replis’. 31 Jansenius, Augustinus, vol. III, De gratia Christi Salvatoris, IV.1–2, 167–71. Gilson (Introduction, 210 n. 4) and Burnaby (Amor Dei, 223–6) analyse the distinction between Augustine’s theory of delectation and that of Jansenius: they argue that Jansenius makes delectation a force acting from outside on the will, instead of an orientation of the will itself.


185

Augustine speaks of the soul being filled by the Spirit with delight and love in God, the unchangeable good; this force is strong enough to overcome the delight in wrongdoing, and enables us to act from a love of righteousness rather than from fear of punishment. Nor is this an abstract love of righteousness: it takes the form of charity, the love of God (De spiritu et littera, III.5, XXIX.51, PL 44, 203, 233). Without grace, I may have striven vainly to observe the commandments, though knowing that my true delight is in earthly pleasures: but if granted grace, I will feel a delight beside which earthly pleasures lose all their savour. This conception of grace, and its attendant psychology, will reappear in later writers, not all followers of Jansenius.

Self-Love and the Fall: Pascal, Senault What marks an analysis of self-love as Augustinian, in the seventeenth-century context, is that it does not simply distinguish between good and bad forms of self-love, as Aquinas had done. It maps the distinction onto that between the state of human kind before and after the Fall. This is particularly clear in the superb exposition of the concept in Pascal’s letter to his sister Gilberte and her husband Florin Périer on the death of his and Gilberte’s father. Man was created with two loves, a love of God for his own sake, an absolute value limited by no other, and a love of self, limited by subordination to God; self-love was therefore a duty, part of obedience to the laws of his creation. The Fall extinguished the love of God, and self-love expanded to fill the resultant infinite void (an image we found in Jansenius). Henceforth man loved himself, and all other things, for his own sake, absolutely and thus infinitely (without limit), and his self-love, formerly natural and righteous, became wicked (‘criminel’) and immoderate. The crucial point here is the origin of self-love (as we experience it) in a loss, a lack, an overflow into an empty space: it is the very opposite of a natural function.32 In no sense 32

Pascal, letter to Florin and Gilberte Périer, 17 Oct. 1651, OC II, 20.

186


does it involve an atomized self present to and in possession of itself. Its very excess is a sign of an ongoing, if repressed, relationship to an Other, without which it could not have existed in the first place. This forgotten dependence is no doubt the explanation of a fundamental paradox of self-love as explored by the writers studied here: it tends towards the form of libido dominandi, the desire to subordinate all things and persons to itself, but in so doing it merely engraves all the deeper the message of its own contingency and dependence.33 Ten years before Pascal’s letter to the Périers, Jean-François Senault was writing along similar lines: Car elle [‘la plus saincte passion de nostre ame’, i.e. love] ne cherche que le Souverain Bien, & c’est avec quelque sorte de violence qu’on l’oblige a` aymer ces biens particuliers, qui ne sont que les ombres de celuy qu’elle desire; Aussi pour la tromper il a fallu que le peché ait desreglé notre Nature, & qu’il ait conuerty l’Amour naturel en amour propre, faisant de la source de tous nos biens, l’origine de tous nos maux. Car pendant l’estat d’Innocence, l’Homme ne s’aymoit que pour Dieu, & la Nature estoit si bien temperée avec la Grace, que toutes ses inclinations estoient sainctes; en cette heureuse condition, la Charité estoit confonduë auec l’Amour propre, et l’homme ne craignoit point qu’en s’aymant soy-mesme, il fist tort a` son prochain: Mais depuis sa desobe¨ıssance, son Amour changea de nature, celuy qui regardoit d’vn mesme oeil, les aduantages des autres & les siens, commença de les separer, & oubliant ce qu’il deuoit a` Dieu il fist vn Dieu de luy-mesme. (De l’usage des passions, II.i.2, 235–6) For [love] seeks only the sovereign good, and only a kind of violence can force it to love those particular goods that are nothing but the shadows of the good it desires; and so, in order to deceive it, sin had to throw our very nature out of joint, converting natural love into self-love, and turning the source of all our goods into the fount of all our evils. For during the state of innocence man loved himself only for God’s sake, and nature was so blended with grace that all his inclinations were holy; in 33 I have been helped to see this more clearly by Alison, The Joy of Being Wrong, 16–17, 27–33.


187

this blessed condition, charity and self-love were fused, and man had no fear that in loving himself he would be wronging his neighbour: but since his disobedience his love changed its nature, and he who had once looked on other people’s advantage and his own with the same impartial eye now began to separate them, and forgetting what he owed to God, he made a god of himself.

‘Violence’ here is to be understood in the traditional Aristotelian sense of ‘against nature’: our present condition is natural to us in a sense, but unnatural in another. Bossuet too, writing half a century later than Senault, defines original righteousness as consisting in man’s loving God for God’s own sake, and himself only in and for God. But the soul, delighting in its own relative beauty (the narcissistic theme again), came to forget its dependence on God, and in seeking to liberate itself became enslaved to sin. Self-love is thus at the origin of all sin.34 But in tracing the affinity between different Augustinian writers’ treatment of amour-propre, we might risk losing sight of an important shift. Because of Nicole and Pascal, because we are aware of the Augustinian input into La Rochefoucauld’s Maximes, we tend to assume that the opposition between amour-propre and charity is the dominant category of the Augustinian ethical tradition. In point of fact, although these writers are developing a genuine aspect of Augustine’s thought, it is arguable that they give it much more prominence than Augustine himself. And, although Jansenius has plenty to say about amour-propre, the dominant tendency of his thought is to contrast not charity and amour-propre, but charity and concupiscence. Thus, in the state of fallen nature, all sin involves consent to concupiscence (De statu naturæ lapsæ, II.24, 167). Again, in discussing the extent to which free will has survived the Fall, he argues that, as regards the origin and end of our actions, there is no medium between charity and culpable cupidity (III.19, 211). 34 Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, Traité de la concupiscence, ed. Stéphan Huynh-Tan and Andrea de Lauris (Paris: La Bibliothèque, 2000), XI, 56–7; cf. XXV, 113. Bossuet diagnoses pride as a kind of self-idolatry (XVI, 75–6); this applies to those who delight in the spectacle of their own virtue (XXI, 94).

188


(‘Culpable’ is there to make the point that he is not talking about indeliberate movements of concupiscence.) The pagans and the Pelagians both failed to realize that, when they thought they were performing a moral duty for its own sake, they were in fact being impelled by a more subtle desire or cupidity for earthly objects: they were slaves to concupiscence, the love of created things (IV.24, 269). It is concupiscence that takes away the love of righteousness necessary to a morally good act (Vol. III, De gratia Christi salvatoris, I.4, 7). The workings of grace are considered as a delectation that strengthens the soul against the blandishments of concupiscence (IV.11, 188). In all these cases, we might have found Jansenius invoking self-love instead of concupiscence, the love of created things. Again, when Arnauld, defending Jansenius, advances the view that all human actions originate in love, and that the orientation of the love determines their ethical quality, the two terms he opposes are the love of God and the love of the creature, which is, of course, synonymous with concupiscence.35 Obviously, the two terms can be related in analysis. Jansenius’s theory of self-love functions to explain our propensity to sinful concupiscence, as we have seen. Senault equates the two terms: ‘L’Amour propre n’est autre chose que la Concupiscence’ (L’Homme criminel, 63). We have seen the importance attached by Pascal to self-love, but this does not mean that he overlooks concupiscence. On the contrary, he sees it as governing all voluntary action (in fallen man) (L 97/S 131/LG 90). Elsewhere he writes that ‘il y a deux principes qui partagent les volontés des hommes, la cupidité et la charité. [. . .] La cupidité use de Dieu et jouit du monde, et la charité au contraire’ (there are two principles by which the wills of men are divided, cupidity and charity. [. . .] Cupidity uses God and enjoys the world; with charity it is the other way around’ (L 502/S 738/LG 456). Concupiscence has become natural in us: it is our second, evil nature (L 616/S 509/LG 523). Pierre Nicole (1625–95), one of the leading intellectuals of the Port-Royal group, whose Essais de 35

Antoine Arnauld, Seconde apologie pour M. Jansenius, Œuvres, XVII, 306.


189

morale (1671–8) are among the most important productions to have emerged from this milieu, sees self-love as the source of the three concupiscences identified in 1 John 2: 16: L’amour de nous-mêmes, qui est le centre et la source de toutes nos maladies, nous donne une inclination violente pour les plaisirs, pour l’élevation, et pour tout ce qui nourrit notre curiosité, afin de remplir par là le vuide effroyable que la perte de notre bonheur veritable a causé dans notre cœur.36 The love of ourselves, which is the centre and source of all our diseases, gives us a violent inclination for pleasures, for worldly position, and for everything that feeds our curiosity, so as to fill thereby the terrible void in our heart produced by the loss of our true happiness.

In terms of their theory of human nature, all these writers concur in seeing both self-love and concupiscence as decisively impacting on our moral conduct, and, theologically, they all explain this by the Fall. None the less, there is a difference of emphasis, depending on which of the terms an analysis favours. If you present the moral life as a struggle between charity and concupiscence, you focus on the rival objects of choice, God or created things. The perspective is metaphysical, in that an inferior, finite, changeable good is contrasted with a good that is infinite, eternal, unchanging. If your opposing terms are charity and self-love, the perspective is psychological: the viciousness of a sinful act or desire resides in its relation to the subject. To assess the quality of one’s own actions, one no longer compares their objects with the ideal object, God; one is forced to introspect, 36

Pierre Nicole, ‘De la connoissance de soi-même’, in Essais de morale [hereafter EM ], 14 vols. (Paris: Desprez, 1755–1782), III, 70. On Nicole, and on the history of the text of the Essais, see the introduction to the excellent selected edition by Laurent Thirouin (Pierre Nicole, Essais de morale: Choix d’essais (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1999), 1–26). As Thirouin notes (pp. 4–7), the original four volumes entitled Essais de morale by Nicole were afterwards supplemented by a host of other works by him, including his reflections on the Epistles and Gospels used in the Mass at different points in the liturgical year. These reflections are discussed here as well as the original Essais, and are referred to by the part of the Mass (Epistle or Gospel) and the day to which they pertain, as well as the volume and page number, thus: Epistle, fifth Sunday after Easter, EM XII, 7–8. The first three books are available electronically at http://gallica.bnf.fr/.

190


to query and to sift one’s own motives. One might suggest then that a comparison of Jansenius, say, and Nicole, writing a generation later, shows a shift of emphasis from concupiscence as the enemy to self-love; and further, that this is part and parcel of a process of subjectivization and interiorization to which many cultural historians have drawn attention.37 None the less, the theme of concupiscence remains as one of the great leitmotifs of Augustinian religion. Bossuet’s treatise is ample testimony to this, though the title Traité de la concupiscence is not his own.38 His depiction of concupiscence is particularly bleak, but what is striking is his interpretation of it in terms that seem to indicate Cartesian influence. He points to the inveterate tendency to identify ourselves with the body, and the effort it takes to realize the distinction between body and soul, and he traces this to intrauterine experience, where the child’s thought processes are completely bound up with movements of the blood (Traité, VII, 35–6). There seems to be an echo here of Descartes’s account of the infant’s soul being absorbed (‘immersa’) in the body (Principles, I.47, cf. I.71, AT VIII, 22, 35/IX-2, 44, 58: OP III, 118, 139). But Bossuet proceeds to identify the body thus depicted with the spiritual concept of the ‘flesh’ (Traité, VII, 35)—that is, the force that impels us away from God to all kinds of self-gratification—and thus seems to come close, if only on a rhetorical rather than a conceptual level, to a quasi-Manichaean identification of the body as intrinsically evil.39

37 See, e.g. Taylor, Sources of the Self, 143–58; Lewis, The Discarded Image, 42, 214–15; Susan R. Bordo, The Flight to Objectivity: Essays on Cartesianism and Culture (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1987), 45–58; Rohou, Le XVIIe Siècle, 111–17, 209–13, 293–5, 378–82. 38 Bossuet, Traité, 5–6, 149. 39 In the Cartesian form of the real distinction, the soul is a unified whole, and there are no distinct sensitive and intellectual appetites within it; so that whatever struggles against reason must be attributed to the body (Les Passions de l’âme, §47, AT XI, 364–5: OP III, 990–1). Concupiscence, then, which is rebellious to reason, cannot be a disorder of the sensitive appetite—that is, a disorder within the soul; it must come from the body itself. This might explain Bossuet’s virtual identification of concupiscence with the body. On the other hand, he elsewhere says that unfallen man had no concupiscence in the mind (Traité, XXV, 113), so perhaps we should see his language as governed by rhetorical urgency rather than conceptual rigour.


191

Self-Love, Pleasure, and Interest The effects of amour-propre may be divided into two (that is, in the abstract, for in practice they tend to converge). It is a motivating force, directing the will and hence our actions, towards our own pleasure or advantage. But it is also an attachment to oneself, of a quasi-erotic nature, shot through with illusion, and deceiving us as to the reality of our nature and motives. In the remainder of this chapter I shall focus on the first aspect. The second will be dealt with in Chapters 9 and 10 on self-knowledge. Senault’s conception of self-love, though inspired by Augustine, is eclectic. It borrows elements from both the Stoic and the Aristotelian–Thomist traditions. Thus he draws a distinction between ‘amour d’amitié’ (love of friendship) and ‘amour d’interest’ (love of interest) that recalls the Thomist distinction between amor amicitiae and amor concupiscentiae, though he intensifies the antithesis (there is also a marginal reference to Seneca’s ninth epistle).40 Love of friendship is concerned only with the good of the friend, and would sacrifice itself for his sake; love of interest is based on advantage or pleasure, and has more of self-love about it than friendship.41 It is this notion of interest that now compels our attention.42 Senault’s account of the Fall (quoted above, pp. 186–7) stresses its impact on interpersonal relationships. Seeing ourselves no longer as subordinated to God, but as gods ourselves, we come to perceive ourselves as in competition with others. Whereas once man perceived the good of others and his own in the same light (‘d’un mesme œil’) and on the same footing, he now comes to perceive his good and that of others as separate, and resolves to regulate his affections by 40

Seneca, Epistles, IX, esp. §§8–9. Senault, De l’usage des passions, II.i.1, 219–20; cf. Aquinas, ST IaIIae, q. 26, a. 4, and above, pp. 165–7. 42 I generally use the term ‘interest’ as a translation of intérêt. ‘Self-interest’ is the more usual English term, but it presupposes that the interests being pursued are those of the individual self. This is not to be taken for granted. Fénelon, though, uses the term ‘intérêt propre’, and this I have translated as ‘self-interest’. I also use ‘self-interest’ when the term is used in close proximity to amour-propre, since this is, precisely, a love of self. 41

192


his own particular interests. These fall into two categories: the useful and the agreeable (II.i.2, 236). Once our relationship to others ceases to be mediated through a shared relationship to God, it becomes fundamentally conflictual. And we come to perceive our fulfilment no longer in fellowship with others (‘la société’), but in exclusive terms. The fallen world is a world of social fragmentation and atomization. I shall return to this point. Moral writers had the option of treating pleasure and interest as separate or antithetical forces, or of seeking to subordinate or reduce one to the other. In this second perspective, interest can be seen as the general category, including actions prompted by pleasure as well as those resulting from cold calculation; or, on the other hand, pleasure may be seen as the supreme motivation for all actions, including those that advance or are intended to advance our objective interests, as well as those of pure sensual gratification, which might seem to be indifferent to interest. Senault’s diagnosis of the effects of the Fall seems to hover between these different analyses. First, he says that the effect of the Fall was that people came to regulate their affections by their interests, and that they therefore loved only what was useful or agreeable. (They were thus behaving exactly like second-rate friends in Aristotle’s analysis, both towards one another, and, arguably, towards themselves as well, in that they do not desire what is really best for themselves.) The categories of the useful and the agreeable are brought together under the overarching label of concern for interest (II.ii.2, 236). Senault, therefore, does not define interest purely in terms of concrete benefits. But a few pages later he says that pleasure and glory are the goals of human activity, in so far as it is directed by amour-propre: ‘L’amour propre ne fait travailler vn homme, que pour son plaisir ou pour sa gloire’ (Self-love makes a man exert himself only for his pleasure or glory) (II.i.2, 240–1). Interest here seems to have dropped out of the account, unless we are to equate it with self-love. Moreover, glory here seems to have taken over from utility as a prime motivator, though Senault goes on to say that we further the public good, if at all, only for our own utility (p. 240). But this lack of conceptual clarity


193

as to the relationship of pleasure, interest, and glory is ideologically significant. Instead of opposing glory to utility, in keeping with aristocratic ideology, he is effectively equalizing them: there is no sharp distinction between working for one and for the other, since amour-propre is always at work. In so far as pleasure and glory are identified as dominant motives, Senault is envisaging mankind, or the dominant part of it, as in thrall to aristocratic values: but by assimilating them, he is striking at that scheme of values at the root: pleasure, glory, and indeed utility are all on a level. The same assimilation of glory and interest takes place in a slightly later work of Senault’s, L’Homme criminel of 1644. He refines on the Augustinian distinction between the action in itself and the end for which it is carried out by distinguishing between the end, ‘la fin’, and the motive, ‘le motif’. When fallen man performs an action praiseworthy in itself, the end, that which he seeks to attain, is glory, the motive is self-interest (‘interest’) because glory is in his interest.43 Senault is not the only writer to cast doubt on the distinction between interest and glory. The relationship between the useful and the honourable, the utile and the honestum, was much scrutinized in early modern political and ethical thought. The trend started by Machiavelli was to affirm the sovereignty of the utile.44 Montaigne’s nuanced and empirical discussion attempts to balance the claims of both (Essais, III.1, ‘De l’utile et de l’honneste’, VS 789–803). The word intérêt is clearly aligned with the useful rather than the honourable. It could be taken to denote merely economic gain. But we find several moralists arguing for a much more extensive understanding 43 Senault, L’Homme criminel, 291. The distinction between end and motive is found in St François de Sales: to love God as our supreme good does not mean subordinating him to ourselves, and thus, though amour-propre enters it as a motive, it is not the ultimate end of such love (Traité de l’amour de Dieu, II.17, 460). Malebranche’s use of the distinction is discussed below. 44 Machiavelli, Il principe, chs. 18 and 20, in Niccolò Machiavelli, Il principe; Scritti politici, ed. Luigi Fiorentino (Milan: Mursia, 1969), 89, 103. See also Albert O. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before its Triumph, Twentieth Anniversary Edition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997 (1st pub. 1977)), 33.

194


of the term, encompassing the pursuit of honour or glory as well as gain.45 The preface Le Libraire au Lecteur of La Rochefoucauld’s Maximes, which made its first appearance in the second edition and was retained thereafter, states that ‘par le mot d’Intérêt on n’entend pas toujours un intérêt de bien, mais le plus souvent un intérêt d’honneur ou de gloire’. (The word ‘interest’ here does not always mean material advantage but most often a concern to increase one’s honour and glory.46 ) Jacques Esprit (1611–78), also, at one stage, an Oratorian like Senault, who collaborated with La Rochefoucauld on the early stages of the text that became the Maximes, similarly criticizes the restriction of the term intérêt to purely monetary gain: La plupart d’entre’eux prennent pour des actions desinteressées toutes celles qu’on n’a pas faites pour de l’argent, parce qu’ils se sçavent pas qu’il y a autant de sorte d’intérêts qu’il y a des passions differentes.47 Most [people] regard any action that has not been carried out for monetary gain as disinterested, since they do not know that there are as many kinds of interest as there are different passions.

Here we find the important concept of ‘disinterestedness’ used as an ethical criterion.48 The assumption is that an action from 45 On the relation between the narrow economic and the broader sense of interest, see Hirschman, The Passions, 38–9. 46 La Rochefoucauld, MMOD 111, cf. 399. The passage is quoted by Hirschman, The Passions, 38. 47 Jacques Esprit, De la fausseté des vertus humaines (1st pub. 1678), 2 vols. in 1, ´ separately paginated (Amsterdam: Etienne Roger, 1709), vol. I, ch. 17, p. 200. Esprit, La Rochefoucauld, and the Marquise de Sablé at first worked together producing ‘sentences’ or ‘maximes’. But La Rochefoucauld’s primacy gradually asserted itself: the first legitimate edition of the text now generally known as the Maximes (Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales (Paris: Claude Barbin, 1665 [in fact 1664])) presents it as the work of one author, identified by implication with La Rochefoucauld (see the ‘Discours sur les Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales’, MMOD 291). Mme de Sablé, as was noted above (p. 87), wrote ‘maximes’ of her own, published posthumously, while De la fausseté des vertus humaines is Esprit’s systematic exposition of the critique of false virtue. See Susan Read Baker, Collaboration et originalité chez La Rochefoucauld (Gainesville, Fla.: University Presses of Florida, 1980); Jean Lafond, La Rochefoucauld: L’Homme et son image (Paris: Champion, 1998), 43–74, 160–3 (where he criticizes Baker’s conclusions). 48 The emergence of the concept of disinterestedness as a moral and theological value is well examined by Force, Self-Interest before Adam Smith, 183–94.


195

which we stand to gain is inferior. Esprit is not here challenging the concept of disinterestedness as such, merely criticizing its misuse when non-monetary interests are in fact in play. He is echoed by the Benedictine Dom François Lamy, writing two decades later: Qu’importe de ne pas aimer par l’interet de l’argent & de l’utile: si l’on n’aime que par l’interet du plaisir & de l’agreable? L’amour en est-il moins interessé, moins impur, & moins mercenaire? Mais qui sont ceux qui ne cherchent pas le plaisir dans leur amour? C’est le plaisir qui les remuë, c’est ce qui les atache, c’est ce qui les enchaine; & c’est tout ce qu’ils se proposent dans leur attachement pour un objet. Ils ne l’aiment donc que pour leur propre satisfaction: ils ne l’aiment, aprez tout, que pour eux-mêmes, & que par raport a` eux: puisque le plaisir n’est pas different de nous-mêmes, & n’est qu’une maniere d’estre de notre ame. Ils ne l’aiment donc enfin que par interet: puisqu’il n’en est point de plus vif que celui du plaisir. En un mot, a` parler proprement, croyant aimer cet objet plus qu’eux-mêmes; ils n’ont vraiment d’amour que pour eux-mêmes.49 What difference does it make if our love is not motivated by pecuniary or other material interests, if instead it is motivated by the interest of pleasure and gratification? Is such love any less interested, less impure, less mercenary? But who does not seek for pleasure in their love? It is pleasure that stimulates them, attaches them, enchains them; it is their only consideration in their attachment to an object. They love it, then, only for their own satisfaction: they love it, when all is said and done, only for their own sake, and in relation to themselves: since pleasure is not something different from ourselves, but is only a modification of our soul. In short, their love is motivated by nothing but interest, since no interest is keener than that of pleasure. To sum up, strictly speaking, when they think they love the object more than themselves, their love is really only for themselves. 49 François Lamy, De la connoissance de soi-mesme, 1st edn., 5 vols. in 4, first two vols. paginated as one (Paris: André Pralard, 1694–8), III, 367–8. I also make use of the second edition, announcing itself as revised and expanded considerably (Paris: André Pralard, 1699). This, which I have consulted in the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, seems to contain only two volumes; this is confirmed by the catalogue of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. I have therefore used the second edition for these two volumes (it is referred to as C2) and the first (C1) for the remainder of the text. Vols. I and III of the first edition are available electronically at http://gallica.bnf.fr/.

196


Intérêt, then, is taken to mean not just material advantage: it regains its etymological sense of ‘involvement’ (Latin: interesse, literally ‘to be among’), and has something of the value of the psychoanalytic term ‘investment’. The issue is not merely abstract: it has an ideological edge. As La Rochefoucauld observes, it advances one’s interests to appear not to be pursuing them: ‘L’intérêt parle toutes sortes de langues, et joue toutes sortes de personnages, même celui de désintéressé’ (Interest speaks all sorts of languages, and plays all sorts of parts, including that of disinterestedness) (maxim 39).50 The restriction of the concept of interest to the monetary or the material tends to favour the illusion of disinterested behaviour, by narrowing the sphere of interests perceived by agents and observers. It thus favours interested behaviour, inasmuch as it disguises it as disinterested. In particular, it fosters the belief that behaviour aimed at honour or glory is disinterested, and therefore laudable. It is thus ideological, in that it tends to naturalize and vindicate typical aristocratic behaviour patterns, as against those of the commercial or professional bourgeoisie. On this reading, the writers who criticize the restriction of interest to the economic sphere are also denouncing an ideological mystification. They are participating in what Bénichou called the demolition of the aristocratic hero.51 But, as the presence of Senault and Lamy among their number testifies, this activity of demolition was not, as Bénichou tends to imply, confined to Jansenist writers. I shall say more about the concept of disinterestedness presently, but more needs to be said first about the effect of self-love, considered as the pursuit of interest or pleasure, on our relationships with other people. 50 The same position is found in Esprit, De la fausseté des vertus humaines, I.20, 218–23. 51 Bénichou, Morales du grand siècle, 128–48. Jean Lafond, however, argues that La Rochefoucauld should not be seen as demolishing heroism (La Rochefoucauld: L’Homme et son image, 91–100). But he sees Esprit as criticizing aristocratic values, and points out that the friendship between himself and La Rochefoucauld seems to have cooled from around 1664 or 1665 (pp. 61–8).


197

Self-Love and Others Seventeenth-century Augustinian writers pick out two aspects of our relationship to others. First, subjection to interest in the broad sense implants in all human beings a fundamental mutual hostility in general (quite antithetical to the natural sociability preached by Aristotle and the Stoics).52 But, secondly, our interest or pleasure causes us to need some other people in particular, just as theirs causes them to need us. This both leads to inauthentic relationships, and falsifies our relationship to ourselves. The first point can be found, for instance, in Senault. Since amourpropre drives people to pursue only their pleasure or glory, it encloses them in themselves, to the point where they lose sight of the public interest. They benefit the public only when it is to their advantage to do so (De l’usage des passions, II.i.2, 240–1). ‘Cette affection desordonnée’, he complains, ‘est la mort des familles, la ruine des Estats, & la perte de la Religion’ (this disorderly affection is death to the family, ruin to the state, and disastrous for religion) (II.i.2, 242). This denunciation of a force contrary to the public interest is perhaps lent point by the fact that Senault’s work is dedicated to Richelieu. We find the point echoed by Pascal and by Pierre Nicole. For Pascal, ‘Tous les hommes se ha¨ıssent naturellement l’un l’autre’ (All human beings naturally hate one another) (L 210/S 243/LG 196). For Nicole, the fundamental tendency of amour-propre is que l’homme corrompu [by original sin] non-seulement s’aime soi-même, mais qu’il s’aime sans bornes et sans mesures; qu’il n’aime que soi; qu’il rapporte tout a` soi. Il se désire toute sorte de biens, d’honneurs et de plaisirs, et il n’en désire qu’à soi-même, ou par rapport a` soi-même. Il se fait le centre de tout: il voudroit dominer sur tout, et que toutes les créatures ne fussent occupées qu’à le contenter, a` le louer, a` l’admirer. Cette disposition 52 Aristotle, Politics, ed. and trans. H. Rackham, Loeb Classical Library (London: Heinemann, and Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1950 (1st pub. 1932)), I.i.9–12 (1253a ); for the Stoic view, see, e.g., Cicero, De officiis, I.xvi.50–2; Seneca, De ira, II.xxxi.7, De clementia, I.iii.2 (both in Moral Essays, vol. I).

198


tyrannique e´tant empreinte au fond du cœur de tous les hommes, les rend violens, injustes, cruels, ambitieux, flatteurs, envieux, insolens, querelleux. En un mot, elle renferme les semences de tous les crimes et de tous les déreglemens des hommes.53 that corrupt man not only loves himself, but loves himself without limit or measure; that he loves only himself; that he subordinates everything to himself. He desires all kinds of goods, honours, and pleasures for himself, and only for himself, or in relation to himself. He treats himself as the centre of everything: he would like to dominate over everything else, and to see all creatures occupied only in satisfying him, praising him, admiring him. Being imprinted in the depths of all men’s hearts, this tyrannical disposition makes them violent, unjust, cruel, ambitious, flatterers, envious, insolent, quarrelsome. In a word, it contains the seeds of all men’s crimes and disorders.

Hobbes’s picture of man as born into a state of war, in which each is an enemy of all the others, is, says Nicole, an entirely accurate description, though his error is to regard this state of affairs as legitimate (p. 137).54 Esprit agrees with this pessimistic analysis: Non seulement il [l’homme] ne fait cas, & n’a soin des autres qu’à proportion de ce qu’ils contribuent a` sa gloire ou a` son plaisir, ou qu’ils peuvent le servir dans ses intérêts; mais encore [. . .] il est leur implacable ennemi dès qu’ils font mine de s’opposer a` ce qu’il desire. (I.17, 202) Not only does man respect and care for others only in so far as they contribute to his glory of pleasure, or can assist him in the pursuit of his interests; but also [. . .] he is their implacable enemy as soon as they show signs of thwarting his desires.

This passage, however, brings into play both the aspects of amourpropre mentioned above, its combination of a negative attitude (hostility) with its tendency to foster apparently laudable behaviour patterns such as love and respect. We may respect or care for others, 53

Nicole, ‘De la charité et de l’amour-propre’, I, EM III, 135–6. Hobbes is not mentioned by name, but it is clearly of him that Nicole is thinking. On the affinities between Nicole’s thought and Hobbes, see E. D. James, Pierre Nicole: Jansenist and Humanist: A Study of his Thought (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1972), 155–6. 54


199

in a self-loving spirit; or, in the same spirit, we may desire their respect and love. Thus Pascal stresses not simply the conflictual relationship between human beings, but the fundamental injustice that lies at the root of selfhood in fallen man, which cannot but take the form of self-centredness. We wish to appear better in other people’s eyes than we know we deserve: Nous ne voulons pas que les autres nous trompent: nous ne trouvons pas juste qu’ils veuillent eˆtre estimés de nous plus qu’ils ne méritent: il n’est donc pas juste aussi que nous les trompions et que nous voulions qu’ils nous estiment plus que nous ne méritons. (L 978/S 743/LG 758) We do not want others to deceive us; we do not find it just that they wish us to esteem them more highly than they deserve; by the same token, it is not just for us to deceive them, and to want to be esteemed by them more highly than we deserve.

For this reason, Pascal, addressing Damien Mitton, the spokesman of the ideal of the honnête homme, denies that it is possible to overcome the fundamental hatefulness of the self by acting obligingly towards other people: Le moi a deux qualités: il est injuste en soi, en ce qu’il se fait centre de tout; il est incommode aux autres, en ce qu’il les veut asservir, car chaque moi est l’ennemi et voudrait eˆtre le tyran de tous les autres. Vous en oˆ tez l’incommodite, mais non point l’injustice. (L 597/S 494/LG 509) The self has two qualities: it is unjust in itself, inasmuch as it treats itself as the centre of everything; it is oppressive towards others, inasmuch as it wants to enslave them, since every self is the enemy and would-be tyrant of all the others. You get rid of the oppressiveness, but not the injustice.

By the same token, all relationships between human beings founder on this injustice inseparable from the existence of the self in its fallen form. Our desire for others’ love is against their interests: Il est faux que nous soyons dignes que les autres nous aiment. Il est injuste que nous le voulions. Si nous naissions raisonnables et indifférents, et connaissant nous et les autres, nous ne donnerions point cette inclination a` notre volonté. Nous naissons pourtant avec elle, nous naissons donc

200


injustes. Car tout tend a` soi: cela est contre tout ordre. Il faut tendre au général, et la pente vers soi est le commencement de tout désordre, en guerre, en police, en ećonomie, dans le corps particulier de l’homme. (L 421/S 680/LG 397) It is not true that we are worthy of others’ love. It is unjust of us to want it. If we were born reasonable and impartial, and with a knowledge of both ourselves and others, we would not give our will this inclination. But we are born with it, and so we are born unjust. For everything has a tendency towards its own ends: this is contrary to any kind of order. It should tend towards the general good, and the inclination towards oneself is the beginning of every disorder, in war, in the state, in the household, in man’s individual body.

Love is based on a fundamental illusion that the other person can offer total fulfilment, and thus, again, to desire love is to desire that other people should err: Il est injuste qu’on s’attache a` moi, quoiqu’on le fasse avec plaisir et volontairement. Je tromperais ceux a` qui j’en ferais naˆıtre le désir, car je ne suis la fin de personne et n’ai pas de quoi les satisfaire. [. . .] Comme je serais coupable de faire croire une fausseté, quoique je la persuadasse doucement, et qu’on la crût avec plaisir, et qu’en cela on me fˆıt plaisir, de même, je suis coupable si je me fais aimer et si j’attire les gens a` s’attacher a` moi. (L 396/S 15/LG 375) It is unjust that anyone should be attached to me, even if they were so with pleasure and of their own accord. I would be deceiving anyone in whom I aroused this desire, for I am not the end [ultimate good] of anyone, and have not the wherewithal to satisfy them. [. . .] Just as I would be guilty if I made people believe what is false, even if I used only gentle persuasion and they were pleased to believe it, and were giving me pleasure by doing so, I am likewise guilty if I make myself loved, and draw other people into being attached to me.

The condemnation of love is doubtless part and parcel of the critique of the optimistic attitude to human nature so well analysed by Bénichou. It is not, in this case at any rate, to be read as sublimated misogyny, since Pascal’s analysis is entirely indifferent to gender. What is most striking in Pascal’s reflections on self-love


201

and concupiscence, and on the limitations of our relationships with others, is, perhaps, the conclusion to which they lead—or rather not the conclusion itself, since it is predictable enough, but the terms in which it is explained: La vraie et unique vertu est donc de se ha¨ır, car on est ha¨ıssable par sa concupiscence, et de chercher un eˆtre véritablement aimable pour l’aimer. Mais comme nous ne pouvons aimer ce qui est hors de nous, il faut aimer un eˆtre qui soit en nous, et qui ne soit pas nous. Et cela est vrai d’un chacun de tous les hommes. Or il n’y a que l’Etre universel qui soit tel. Le royaume de Dieu est en nous. Le bien universel est en nous, est nous-même et n’est pas nous. (L 564/S 471/LG 485) The true and only virtue is thus to hate oneself, for one is hateful on account of one’s concupiscence, and to seek a truly lovable being to love. But as we cannot love what is outside us, we must love a being that is inside us, yet not ourselves. And this is true for each and every human being. Now only universal being meets this requirement. The kingdom of God is within us. The universal good is in us, is ourselves, and is not ourselves.

One notes the terrifying moral solipsism: we are so imprisoned in ourselves that we simply cannot love what is outside us (the worst of concupiscence would be, then, that it is simply a sham love, or alternatively a projection of our love of ourselves). Our only escape is thus in the love of a being that is inside us, but is other: else our love would be nothing but self-love.55 Universal being overrides the opposition between the self and the not-self. Its otherness is not absolute, since it is a deeper self than our ordinary self (in this sense ‘[il] est nous-même’), but it is not ourself, in the sense that ‘ourselves’ ordinarily means ourselves alone, distinct from other beings or selves. Since it is also the deep self of all other selves, it is not ourself in this sense. Only in this relationship to the Other self, the Self-Other, can we escape the bounds of our self-centredness. Only as subjects of the kingdom of God within us can we transcend the limits of subjectivity. 55 Almost certainly Pascal is inspired by Augustine’s depiction of God as ‘interior intimo meo’ (more inward than my most inward part) (Confessions, III.6).

202


For Nicole, the quest for others’ love and esteem is an apparently autonomous form of self-love that cannot be reduced to interest in the crude sense (‘l’intérêt grossier’). Self-love, detected, is repulsive: and thus our desire for others’ love and esteem, which is nothing but a form of self-love, tends to purge its outward appearance of everything that might betray its own nature. It suppresses self-love, but only in the sense of keeping it in check: this suppression is nothing other than what is called human honnêteté, which was the idol of the pagan sages, but which is nothing but a more intelligent and cunning self-love than the ordinary kind.56 He sums up the matter by quoting ‘un grand Esprit de ce siècle’ (one of the great minds of our age)—he means Pascal—to the effect that Christian virtue destroys and annihilates self-love, whereas human honnêteté merely hides it and keeps it in check (‘supprime’).57 This perception of human beings as locked in a fundamentally conflictual relationship is clearly related to the perception of interest as the dominant human motivation. Why do these perceptions establish themselves so firmly in the thought of the middle and late seventeenth century? As regards intellectual influences, that of Hobbes was doubtless powerful (we have seen him alluded to by Nicole), but not an all-sufficient explanation: Senault’s analysis of interested behaviour in De l’usage des passions dates from 1641, the year before the appearance of Hobbes’s first major publication De cive. It is more probable to postulate a common source, and this may lie in part in the Augustinian suspicion of the motives that animate the building and preservation of the earthly city. No less important, though, in all probability is the Tacitist tradition of historiography, with its cynical exposure of the hidden motives of individuals, 56 ‘De la charité et de l’amour propre’, IV, EM III, 147–9. It would appear that Nicole is here using honnêteté both in the common seventeenth-century worldly sense of politeness and good breeding and as an equivalent for the Latin term honestum, denoting right conduct and moral virtue, the supreme good of the Stoics. 57 Nicole, ‘De la charité et de l’amour propre’, IV, EM III, 149. The remark is reproduced in the Lafuma text of the Pensées, as fragment L 1006. It is quoted, also, in Arnauld and Nicole, La Logique ou L’art de penser, III.xx.6, 267.


203

especially of those operating within a court environment.58 When Senault discusses pagan pretensions to virtue, it is to Tacitus that he turns for proof that apparently innocent actions can mask the most wicked intentions (L’Homme criminel, 216). But there must have been social preconditions for these intellectual influences to have asserted themselves. To speak of the development of capitalism as fostering the image of human beings as individuals defined by their interests is probably correct, but insufficient. The breakdown of aristocratic networks of clientage under the pressure of Richelieu’s absolutist state, and the concentration of magnates at the court, as competitors for royal favour, probably fostered a sense of personal isolation among nobility and gentry.59 The later experience of the insurrection known as the Fronde (1648–53), with its clashes between factions, fragile alliances, and betrayals, must have reinforced this affect. Even in the religious sphere, the Jansenist controversy came to be perceived not simply as a clash of doctrines, or between heresy and orthodoxy, corruption and purity, but as bound up with the pursuit of collective interests: in the Provinciales Pascal specifically invited his readers to perceive the Jesuits as acting in this way.60 Three modern critical accounts of the development of the conception of interest deserve mention. The first is Albert O. Hirschman’s well-known The Passions and the Interests, referred to above. Hirschman argues, first, that the notion of interest was developed in relation to that of the passions, in terms of a contrast between ‘the favorable effects that follow when men are guided by their interests’ and ‘the calamitous state of affairs that prevails when men give free rein to their passions’ (p. 32). At the source of the conception he finds 58 On the Tacitist tradition in the early modern period, see Burke, ‘Tacitism’; Arnaldo Momigliano, ‘Tacitus and the Tacitist Tradition’, in The Classical Foundations of Modern Historiography, with a foreword by Riccardo Di Donato (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990), 109–31. 59 On this development, see David Parker, The Making of French Absolutism (London: Arnold, 1983), 102–3. 60 Pascal, Lettres provinciales, V, PPOD 329–33, OC I, 625–8.

204


Machiavelli, and he stresses the interrelationship between the notion of interest and that of reason of state: a ruler should be governed by his interest, which is that of his state, rather than his passions, which can lead to disaster. But, for Hirschman, the concept really prospered when applied to groups or individuals within the state (pp. 33–6). It is then understood as ‘a disciplined understanding of what it takes to advance one’s power, influence, and wealth’. What happens thereafter, however, is that it becomes narrowed to ‘the pursuit of material, economic advantage’ (p. 38). He gives various explanations for this: the old semantic link between interest and money-lending; the appropriateness of the habit of rational calculation to economic activities, and, in France, the concentration and stability of power that led ordinary individuals to consider economic aspirations as the only ones within their control (p. 39). Whether or not Hirschman is right in detecting such a development, moral writers were certainly able to exploit a tension between the broad and the narrow senses of interest, unmasking, as we have seen, the pursuit of interest in the broad sense behind behaviour apparently indifferent to material gain. Jean Rohou offers a wide-ranging account of the emergence and diffusion of the conception of interest as the dominant force in human affairs. The development on the one hand of commerce, and on the other of the absolutist state are key factors in his analysis. Reason of state, the notion that the state may and indeed should pursue its own interest, even at the expense of moral and religious values, becomes the supreme political value; but individuals as well as states are increasingly perceived as driven by interest, as the absolutist state forces them to compete for power and influence at court (Le XVIIe Siècle, 42–7, 185–94, 248–57, 321–39, 416–22). Pierre Force’s insightful analysis, also mentioned above, is directed chiefly towards a major reassessment of the thought of Adam Smith. Smith is conventionally credited with the doctrine that self-interest is the fundamental motive of human action. But in his study of the prehistory of Smith’s thought, Force draws attention to earlier attempts to show how self-love or self-interest might


205

be compatible with the construction of a social order. He also emphasizes a general point of great suggestiveness: the convergence in the early modern period of the apparently antagonistic Epicurean and Augustinian traditions around the notion that pleasure is the fundamental motivation of human action. This was seen as the primary sense in which all our action is self-interested.61 The two schools of thought, he points out, had a common enemy in Stoicism (pp. 59–60), and a common concern with the critique of virtue (pp. 57–63). This helps to explain how one and the same writer (say, La Rochefoucauld) can be read in terms of either perspective, or how writers from apparently opposing schools of thought can be found echoing each other, the cynical Mandeville, for instance, sounding the occasional Augustinian note. In such a context, it is not surprising that self-love comes to be perceived as complicit in or even as driving the struggle over interests, of whatever kind. There seems to have been a fading of the Aristotelian–Thomist conception of self-love as a form of friendship for oneself, capable of different levels of moral worth, according as one loves what is best or worst, highest or lowest, in oneself, so that a proper self-love is the mark of a truly good person. Perhaps the belief in a healthy friendship with oneself has been damaged by the perception that in this viciously competitive world we can enjoy no true friendship with others. La Rochefoucauld’s sceptical but not wholly pessimistic analysis of friendship is discussed below (pp. 242–3, 244–6). Esprit reads Aristotle’s suggestion that friendship towards others originates in one’s friendship for oneself 61 Force, Self-Interest before Adam Smith, 48–57. He draws on Jean Lafond, ‘Augustinisme et e´picurisme au XVIIe siècle’, in L’Homme et son image: Morales et littérature de Montaigne a` Mandeville (Paris: Champion, 1996), 345–68. It can be plausibly argued that Augustine himself does not see pleasure as the primary and universal motivation. When he speaks of a fundamental will to be happy (De civitate Dei, XIV.4), he means more by ‘happiness’ than by pleasure. As Gilson showed, he conceives beatitude as essentially bound up with the knowledge of truth (Introduction, 1–10). But his seventeenth-century followers certainly tended to emphasize the hedonistic aspects of his thought, and from Force’s point of view the seventeenth-century reading of Augustine is naturally what counts.

206


(Ethics, IX.iv.1 (1166a ) ) as if it reinforced the view that all our behaviour tends ultimately to our own advantage or glory (I.4, 64). This cynical reading is foreign to Aristotle, but it is a striking proof of the weakening of the Aristotelian ethical framework, undermined by neo-Augustinianism. We can understand why friendship is scarce, says Esprit, if we grasp ‘que l’homme est prisonnier de luy-même, & que l’amour propre est une maniere de garde qui l’accompagne toutes les fois qu’il sort, & qui le ramene toûjours chez luy’ (man is a prisoner of himself, and self-love is a kind of guard that accompanies him whenever he goes out, and that always escorts him back home to himself) (p. 67). But could mystical experience offer a way out of this prison of self?

The Problem of Disinterestedness Pascal, Nicole, and Esprit are talking of love and self-love in relation to the ethical life of virtue, rather than of the spiritual, mystical, or ascetic life aimed at union with God.62 None the less, there is a certain convergence with the approach to the problem of the self taken by some spiritual writers. If human beings’ relationship to one another (except under the influence of grace) consists in a fundamental conflict of interests, one might wonder whether it is possible to escape the concern with one’s own interest in the relationship with God. And certain spiritual writers do indeed explore the possibility of a relationship with God purged of any relationship to interest. The problem did not pose itself in these terms for Augustine or Aquinas. For Augustine, says Burnaby, ‘the question of ‘‘disinterestedness’’ never arose at all’ (Amor Dei, 256). To love God was to love what is really and unchangeably good, as distinct from the 62 Michel Bouvier argues that the spiritual approach to the problem of self-love is somewhat different from the ethical approach discussed up to now. Here self-love is considered in the sense of ‘self-will’: one seeks to shed the pursuit of one’s own will since it is an obstacle to union with God (‘Considérations’, 41–2). Anthony Levi had already pointed out that in his correspondence St François de Sales uses amour-propre in a sense equivalent to what English ascetical writers call ‘vainglory’ or ‘self-will’ (‘Amour-propre: The Rise of an Ethical Concept’, The Month (May 1959), 283–94 (p. 287) ).


207

ephemeral goods we encounter in this world. For Aquinas, we cannot desire anything except under the appearance of good (ST IaIIae, q. 8, a. 1); and the good pursued by all things is their own perfection, what will utterly satisfy their appetite (IaIIae, q. 1, a. 5). But certain medieval theologians such as Duns Scotus were unhappy with such a conception of the love of God, which seemed to reduce it to concupiscence; and they were followed in this by Luther (Burnaby, Amor Dei, 272–7). Bremond identifies Pierre de Bérulle as bringing about a major reorientation of the debate. With a quite explicit reference to Copernicus, Bérulle suggests that the ‘science du salut’ must involve a similar revolution. The sense of man as the centre of the world must give way to vision of the world as centred on God.63 The statement ‘God is our end’ can be understood, as Bremond points out, both as meaning ‘God is for us’ and as meaning ‘We are for God’. He argues that the former sense long prevailed, though not to the exclusion of the other, in Christian thought, and that, though St Bernard began a reorientation of the Christian consciousness towards theocentrism, it was Bérulle who formulated this requirement most explicitly (III, 25–9). With theocentrism goes the idea of a love of God for his own sake, not for the good he can do for us. And the aspiration towards a ‘pure love of God’ becomes an insistent refrain in seventeenthcentury spirituality. But, without discounting the roots of the debate in medieval theology, and in the experience of the spiritual life, one might suggest that part of its urgency in seventeenth-century France derives from a sharpened awareness of the profane world as the sphere of conflicting interests, and of individuals as constituted and motivated by the interests they inject into the world’s activity, and from a corresponding desire to escape this battleground. In order to follow the development of the ideal of pure love, we need to go back in time before Jansenius to St François de Sales (1567–1622) and the Traité de l’amour de Dieu (first published in 63

Pierre de Bérulle, Œuvres, ed. Migne (Paris, 1856), 161, quoted in Henri Bremond, Histoire littéraire du sentiment religieux en France depuis la fin des guerres de religion jusqu’à nos jours, 11 vols. (Paris: Bloud et Gay, 1916–33), III, 24.

208


1616). At first sight, much of what he says about self-love will be familiar: Jansenius and he were, after all, drawing on a common Christian tradition. Love is the life of the heart, and all the soul’s movements (the affections of the will and the passions of the sensitive appetite) derive from it, just as the moving parts of a clock are moved by the counterweight (XI.20, 937). Divine love and amour-propre struggle in our heart as Jacob and Esau struggled in Rebecca’s womb (p. 938). Love of self can catch our faith unawares, presenting us with imagined good, and seducing our faculties into rebellion against God (IV.3, 536). But he draws also on a more positive way of thinking about self-love that is indeed just as Augustinian as anything in Jansenius. In that we know and love ourselves, we display the image of the Trinity, the Son being the expression of the Father’s knowledge, and the Holy Spirit that of the love of Father and Son (I.15, 396). Perhaps the greatest breach between his attitude and that of the later Flemish theologian, though, concerns his insistence that we have a natural inclination to love God above all things and that this remains from our first nature. It has not been destroyed by the loss of our original righteousness. Indeed, it can be reawakened by one who thinks attentively of God by the light of natural reason (I.16, 399) (like the Descartes of the end of the Third Meditation). This love of God is not patterned on or derived from our love for ourselves, as Aristotle thought: it is prior (X.10, 841). St François draws a distinction between love of concupiscence and that of benevolence, such as we have encountered already in Aquinas (and also in Senault): the former is geared towards the good we expect from the object of our love, whereas in the latter we love the object for its own sake and wish good to it, rather than to ourselves (I.13, 392). Our love of God, then, can be a form of concupiscence, if we love him for the good he has done us, or that we expect of him. That is interested love, but it is love all the same. To love him only for that reason would, indeed, be sacrilege: it would subordinate the love of God to the love of self (amour-propre). Our own good cannot be the end of a true love of God. But it can be a motive. When we do not reduce God to a mere instrument of our utility, but aspire to union


209

with him as our ultimate happiness, we have a mixture of love of self and love of God in which the latter predominates. This is a love of holy concupiscence: St François also terms it ‘love of hope’ (II.17, 459–60). But this love of concupiscence for God should ideally evolve into a love of benevolence. We cannot, indeed, wish good to God, who has and is everything, in any real sense. But we can form imaginary desires, ‘imagination[s] de chose[s] impossible[s]’: if God could receive some good from us, we would wish it him no matter how much it cost us (V.6, 583–4). Another ‘impossible supposition’ is voiced in Chapter Four of Book Nine, which deals with the love of submission to God’s will. The holy indifference St François prizes involves submission to the divine will, and this is purest when there is nothing in what we experience or choose that can be agreeable to us in itself. In such a state, one would prefer Paradise to the miseries of this world only because Paradise is in accordance with God’s will, and if, what is impossible, one knew that one’s damnation were more agreeable to God than one’s salvation, one would forsake the latter and embrace the former (IX.4, 770). It will be seen from even this very summary account that St François’s spiritual ideal is in the highest degree demanding, and also that there is much truth in Bremond’s characterization of that ideal as a form of Christian optimism, a ‘devout humanism’ since it depends on an evaluation of human nature as weakened but not radically corrupted by original sin. But this combination of a relatively positive vision of human nature and a demanding spiritual ideal of union with God through the mystical life came under pressure in the second half of the seventeenth century, as the influence of Augustinian pessimism grew. With its emphasis on man’s corruption, this latter school of thought was more alert to the possibilities of self-deception in spiritual experience (something of which, to be sure, St François was perfectly aware, as the next chapter will show) than to the scope for mystical union in this life. It would be misleading to reduce Port-Royal’s religion to a moralism (think of Pascal’s ‘Mémorial’ and ‘Mystère de Jésus’), but it tended in that direction. Nicole’s analysis of spiritual illusion will be discussed in

210


another chapter. For the moment, it will suffice to note that, in the last years of the century, a bitter controversy over mysticism was provoked by the so-called Quietist movement, in which Fénelon and Bossuet took opposite sides.64 This stimulated a vigorous debate about the possibility of a disinterested love of God.65 Fénelon’s defence of his vision of the mystical life, the Explication des maximes des saints sur la vie intérieure of 1697, accords a central place to the ideal of disinterested love of God, the highest degree of Christian perfection.66 But disinterestedness must be understood in a precise sense (and the form taken by the Explication is in fact to indicate both what Fénelon takes to be the authentic teaching of the mystics and the various misinterpretations to which their teaching might give rise): Son désintéressement [sc. celui du pur amour] ne peut jamais exclure la volonté d’aimer Dieu sans bornes ni pour le degré ni pour la durée de l’amour; il ne peut jamais exclure la conformité au bon plaisir de Dieu qui veut notre salut et qui veut que nous le voulions avec lui pour sa gloire. Cet amour désintéressé toujours inviolablement attaché a` la loi ećrite fait tous les mêmes actes et exerce toutes les mêmes vertus distinctes que l’amour intéressé, avec cette unique différence qu’il les exerce d’une manière simple, paisible, et dégagée de tout motif de propre interêt. (p. 1005) Its disinterestedness can never exclude the will to love God without limits, either on the intensity or on the duration of the love; it can never exclude conformity to the good pleasure of God who wills our salvation and who wishes us to wish it along with him for his glory. This disinterested love of God is always inviolably attached to the written law: it performs all the same acts and practices all the same separate virtues as interested love, with 64 See Peter Bayley, ‘What Was Quietism Subversive of?’, Seventeenth-Century French Studies, 21 (1999), 195–204. 65 As noted above, there is a good account of the controversy on disinterestedness in Force, Self-Interest before Adam Smith, 183–94. 66 François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon, Explication des maximes des saints sur la vie intérieure, Avertissement, in Œuvres, ed. Jacques Le Brun, 2 vols., Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1983–97), I, 999–1095 (p. 1004). Le Brun prints the text of the first edition, but notes that Fénelon subsequently corrected his text, softening his positions significantly (see I, 1542–4).


211

the sole proviso that it performs them in a simple, tranquil manner, cut off from all motives of self-interest.

The doctrine of pure love is not, that is, to be read as an antinomianism, or an ungrateful repudiation of salvation. Pure love is attained when we pass beyond meditation (methodical and discursive, as when one considers systematically one’s own unworthiness of a share in the merits of Christ’s passion) to contemplation, a simple experience of God that dispenses with sensible images and distinct ideas capable of being formulated in language (1005; cf. §27, p. 1067). The crucial distinction here is not between a higher and a lower kind of love determined as such by their distinct objects, as it would be if we were contrasting the love of God with that of creatures, including ourselves. Fénelon would certainly admit such a distinction: but it is not germane to his immediate purpose. In this case, the object of love is the same, God, and the quality of love is determined by its subjective status, by the kind of consciousness involved: methodical, systematic, distinguishing or simple and unified. Likewise, although Fénelon acknowledges the stark Augustinian distinction between cupidity and charity as motives (p. 1010), he does not hold that interested love of God is nothing other than cupidity. He distinguishes five grades of the love of God, distinguished by the kind and degree of presence of self-interest (pp. 1008–13). The first is purely servile, as when God is loved simply for benefits, distinct from himself, that we hope he will provide, such as material prosperity. This is not really love of God at all, but sheer self-love. ‘Mercenary’ love still takes up an instrumental attitude to God: we love him purely and simply as the sole possible source of happiness. In the ‘love of hope’, the third grade, our own interest is the dominant motive, but there is an inchoate love of God for his own sake. None the less, we are not then in a state of righteousness (‘justice’) since self-interest is still dominant, and God’s aim is to root out this ‘amour de nousmêmes, auquel se réduisent toutes nos affections’ (love of ourselves, to which all our affections can be reduced) and which is the ‘unique

212


racine de tous les vices’ (the single root of all the vices).67 In the fourth grade, which is that of the love that justifies, we seek God for himself, and prefer him to all else, but there is ‘quelque reste d’intérêt propre’ (some residue of self-interest) (p. 1009). That is, ‘l’âme aime alors Dieu pour lui et pour soi; mais en sorte qu’elle aime principalement la gloire de Dieu, et qu’elle n’y cherche son bonheur propre que comme un moyen qu’elle rapporte et qu’elle subordonne a` la fin dernière, qui est la gloire de son créateur’ (the soul at this stage loves God for himself and for itself, but in such a way that it chiefly loves the glory of God, and seeks its own happiness only as a means that it relates and subordinates to the ultimate end, which is the glory of its creator) (p. 1010). Although charity is dominant in this love, the residual presence of interest leads Fénelon to baptize it with the rather harsh term of ‘amour intéressé’ (interested love) (p. 1012).68 But in the highest kind of love of all, there is no admixture of self-interest (p. 1011). The soul then loves God in the midst of tribulations no whit less than it would if it were full of consolation. It loves him as much even on the impossible supposition (Spinoza’s supposition, of course, or rather his assertion) that he is unaware of our love, or that he would wish to condemn those who love him to eternal misery. It loves God as its good, but not because he is our good. It is no longer stimulated by the motive of self-interest. What is striking, for our purpose, in this ideal of pure love, is the clarity with which Fénelon sees that it involves radically modifying our natural relationship with our self. (In this sense, we must surely speak of the anti-humanism, rather than the humanism, of his 67 For these last two kinds of love, Fénelon’s authority is St François de Sales, Traité de l’amour de Dieu, II.17, 459. He proves the imperfection of ‘love of hope’ by a passage from the same chapter (p. 462). But in St François’s conception of love of hope, the love of God is already predominant: see II.17, 460. Even in this love, however, we are seeking our own good in God. For Fénelon this is true only when we move beyond the love of hope to the love of charity. Fénelon’s more elaborate taxonomy seems designed to create a steeper scale of purification from concern with one’s own good. 68 The label was later altered to ‘amour moins désintéressé’ or ‘amour mélangé d’intérêt propre’ (see Œuvres, I, 1559 (p. 1012, var. f .)).


213

conception.69 ) The ideal of disinterestedness involves desiring God’s glory, his good pleasure, and the fulfilment of his promises (which include of course the promise of salvation for some at least of his children) with no closer concern for oneself than for any other fellow creature (Explication, §XII, 1041). The souls that have achieved this ideal have become ‘comme e´trangères a` elles-mêmes’ (as it were, strangers to themselves) (p. 1041): they have shed the burden of self-centredness, but not that of responsibility. One is still responsible for one’s own soul: but one must treat it as a good pastor treats the souls of his flock, without any personal interest of his own. We can thus practise charity towards ourselves, precisely as we would towards our neighbour. In the high spiritual condition known as the ‘passive state’, the soul has passed beyond entanglement in any image of itself; at least that is how we could gloss what Fénelon says. When such souls speak of themselves, which they do if there is need or for obedience’s sake, ‘elles en parlent alors simplement ou en bien ou en mal, comme elles parleraient d’autrui, sans aucun attachement ni a` ce qui leur paraˆıt, ni a` la bonne opinion que leurs paroles les plus simples et les plus modestes pourraient donner d’elles’ (they speak simply, whether in positive or in negative terms, as if they were talking of somebody else, without any attachment either to their own views or to the good opinion of themselves that their simplest and most modest words could inspire [in other people]) (§XXXII, 1078). At the apex of the passive state is a state of transformation, where the image of self is replaced by the revived image of God, which had been obscured by sin: ‘Alors si cette aˆme parle d’elle-même par simple conscience’ (as distinct from deliberate reflection), ‘elle dit comme sainte Catherine de Gênes: Je ne trouve plus de moi; il n’y a plus d’autre moi que Dieu’ (Then if this soul speaks of itself on the level of pure awareness it says, like St Catherine of Genoa, ‘I can find myself no more; I have no other self left but God’) (§XXXV, 1082). (There is an echo here of Galatians 2: 20: ‘I am alive; yet it is no 69 On the general concept of anti-humanism in this period, see Henri Gouhier, L’Anti-Humanisme au XVIIe siècle (Paris: Vrin, 1987).

214


longer I, but Christ living in me.’) In rising above personal interest and involvement, learning to live itself, so to speak, as another human being, the soul may eventually come to transcend self and become part of the life of God. Certainly, Fénelon’s concerns here are with exalted mystical states of experience: but he himself was aware of their relevance to more properly ethical issues, such as the nature of friendship (if we, unlovable as we are, wish our friends to love us without self-interested motives, for our own sake, must not God wish the same?).70 Moreover, he attacked the hedonistic view of behaviour he found in the Jansenists, pointing out its Epicurean associations (Force, Self-Interest before Adam Smith, 185–9). Fénelon’s position was expressed with particular cogency; but it was not peculiar to him. François Lamy, a Benedictine monk and follower of Descartes, writing a little earlier, upheld similar views. And Lamy brought Malebranche into the debate by falsely identifying him as a fellow supporter, thus leading Malebranche to clarify his quite different position. Lamy criticized the Protestant writer Jacques Abbadie for holding that we cannot have a disinterested love of God, that our love of God must always be rooted in our love of self.71 But for Lamy this is not what love means at all. We would not want people to love us for their own sake—how should we expect God to? We are told that he created us to love him, but it is usually accepted that we do not love what we only love for some other reason, and that we love an object only in so far as we love it for its own sake (‘pour lui-même’) and ‘sans raport’ (without a relationship (that is, to ourselves) ). Loving something except for its own sake is to treat it as a means not an end: and to love God ‘par raport a` nous’ is uti, not frui (pp. 483–5). When we forget ourselves in the love of God, and think only of his interests, we are indeed doing what is most 70

Fénelon, ‘Sur le pur amour’, Lettres et opuscules spirituelles, XXIII, Œuvres, I, 664. Lamy, C1, III, 480–1; Jaques (sic) Abbadie, L’Art de se connoˆıtre soy-meme, ou La Recherche des sources de la morale (Rotterdam: Pierre Vander Slaart, 1692), 90–3, 308–11. Kept out of France by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, Abbadie spent much of his life in Ireland, becoming Dean of Killaloe. See Ruth Whelan’s entry ‘Jacques Abbadie’, in the new Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison, 60 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), I, 2–3. 71


215

in our interests: but that is not why we love him (pp. 485–6). In other words, Lamy is arguing that the only true love of God is one in which love of self is subordinated to that of God. This was the state of things before the Fall, according to the analyses of Senault and Pascal quoted above. But Lamy’s position is none the less in keeping with Aquinas’s thesis that the gift of charity restores the possibility and the obligation of loving God, as the universal good of all beings, more than ourselves (ST IIaIIae, q. 26, a. 3). The love God desires would altogether override our desire for self-preservation and well-being, since it would require that we should prefer annihilation or torment to offending him (pp. 486–7): there is clearly an echo here of the Salesian ‘impossible supposition’. In particular, Lamy cites Malebranche in support of the view that the blessed do not love God for the pleasure of His possession. At first sight the passage he mentions (the eighth ‘Entretien’ of the Conversations chrétiennes) seems to bear this out very fully. Malebranche there makes something close to the ‘impossible supposition’, when he suggests that, even if they suffered the pains of the damned, the blessed would still love God.72 We shall presently see how Malebranche responded to this interpretation of his thought. The theological issue of the proper nature of the love of God has profound ethical resonances. If we wish to purge the love of God of all interest, all connections with our self-love, this implies that self-love is intrinsically faulty, at least in our present fallen condition. On the other hand, if self-love is intrinsically legitimate, however faulty the forms it tends to take in actual experience, then there is nothing shameful about suggesting that the love of God is premised on the love of self. And this is the position of Malebranche and Abbadie. Malebranche’s theory is dealt with separately in the next 72 Malebranche, Conversations, VIII, Œuvres, I, 1285. But, as Geneviève Rodis-Lewis points out in her note on the passage, this is not really the impossible supposition in its usual form, since Malebranche is speaking of the blessed, not the damned (Malebranche, Œuvres, II, 1346 (p. 1345 n. 4)). The context of the discussion is not the problem of the love of God: by playing down the role of pleasure in the possession of God, Malebranche is encouraging a certain suspicion of pleasure in general.

216


chapter, on account of its complexity: although Abbadie was writing later than De la recherche de la vérité, in which Malebranche’s theory is first expounded, and may have well been influenced by him, it will be more convenient to expound his position here; all the more so because his writings may have in turn influenced Malebranche’s later formulations. In L’Art de se connoˆıtre soy-même, ou La Recherche des sources de la morale Abbadie adopts, as the title suggests, the perspective of ethics rather than theology, and though clearly presupposing the doctrine of the Fall, he does not foreground it in his analysis. Instead, he rehabilitates the idea of a natural love of self, involving sensibility to pleasure, the desire for what is good and hatred of what is bad for us, and the concern for our own preservation (pp. 75, 129–30). In fact, the origin of self-love is divine as well as natural: ‘Nous ne nous aymons, que parce que Dieu nous a aymés’ (we love ourselves only because God has loved us) (p. 130). At the same time he accepts that love of self can take a corrupt form. He appeals to linguistic usage to confirm the distinction between a natural and legitimate and a corrupt love of self, and systematically regulates his language accordingly: L’usage de nôtre langue est heureux en ceci, car elle nous fait distinguer entre l’amour propre & l’amour de nous mêmes. L’amour de nous mêmes est cet amour, entant qu’il est legitime et naturel. L’amour propre est ce même amour, entant qu’il est vicieux & corrompu. (p. 263) The usage of our language is felicitous here, for it causes us to distinguish between self-love and the love of ourselves. The love of ourselves is this love, in so far as it is legitimate and natural. Self-love is the same love, in so far as it is faulty and corrupt.

This attempt to analyse the nature of self-love by drawing on the resources of ordinary language may well be original to Abbadie (though it might be paralleled in Aristotle).73 The distinction 73 Aristotle explains why ‘self-loving’ (philautos) is used as a term of reproach, even though there is a laudable kind of self-love (Ethics, IX.viii (1168a –1169b ) ).


217

between amour de nous-mêmes as a neutral force and amour-propre as a corrupt force is not drawn with such clarity in any of the other seventeenth-century writers studied here, with the partial exception of Malebranche; it reappears in a well-known passage of Rousseau.74 (It is not simply, though, that Abbadie was clearing up a terminological mess that earlier writers had left untouched: Jansenius, for instance, would have denied that the conception of self-love as intrinsically neutral can be applied in our present fallen condition.) For Abbadie, then, the love of self is innocent in itself, corrupt when turned towards creatures, and holy when turned towards God (pp. 274–5). In fact, the proper love of self and the love of God are one and the same (p. 271). The love of self and the desire to be happy are identical (p. 322). If self-love is the root of all vice, it is also, in its highest form, the root of all virtue (pp. 259–62). Abbadie, then, opposes the totally negative portrayal of self-love as a moral force (pp. 131, 271). In this, of course, he differs from the Catholic neo-Augustinian writers studied above. But, however sternly they criticize amour-propre from a moral and spiritual point of view, they too are prepared to recognize that it is capable of producing positive effects.

Enlightened Concupiscence and Self-Love In a deservedly well-known article, Marcel Raymond traced the Enlightenment attempt to reconcile self-interest and the social order 74 As we shall see, Malebranche sometimes distinguishes between ‘l’amour de nousmêmes’ and ‘l’amour-propre’: G. Rodis-Lewis implies that the reading of Abbadie, as well as the controversy with F. Lamy, may have encouraged Malebranche to tidy up his terminology (Malebranche, Œuvres, II, 1347). Rousseau’s distinction between ‘amour-propre’ and ‘amour de soi-même’ is in Discours sur l’origine et les fondemens de l’inégalité parmi les hommes, note XV, in Œuvres complètes, ed. Bernard Gagnebin and Marcel Raymond, 5 vols., Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1959–95), III, 219–20. Abbadie is there cited as the earliest source for the distinction (OC III, 1376 (p. 219n. 1)). La Mothe Le Vayer, though, states that several writers have distinguished between ‘amour-propre’ and ‘amour de soi-même’, as if between an excessive and a legitimate concern for self: but he does not give references in support (De la vertu des payens (1641–2), in Œuvres, 3rd edn., 2 vols. (Paris: Augustin Courbé, 1662), I, 726; text also in Libertins du XVIIe siècle, II, 198.

218


to Jansenist moral reflection.75 Pascal had realized how concupiscence, which sets human beings at odds one with another, can be diverted into the construction of a social order: this emerges by his analyses of ‘raisons des effets’, the profound underlying reasons whereby some apparently futile behaviour pattern turns out to sustain the social order: Les raisons des effets marquent la grandeur de l’homme, d’avoir tiré de la concupiscence un si bel ordre. (L 106/S 138/LG 97) The reasons for these effects show the greatness of man, to have built so fine an order out of concupiscence. Grandeur de l’homme dans sa concupiscence même, d’en avoir su tirer un règlement admirable et en avoir fait un tableau de la charité. (L 118/S 150/LG 109) The greatness of man appears in his very concupiscence, in the fact that he has used it to produce such a marvellous ordered system, and turned it into a picture of charity.

What is here held up as a proof of man’s greatness is elsewhere advanced as a reflection of his fundamental worthlessness, the valuation switching dialectically according as one considers the outcome or the roots of the process: Tous les hommes se ha¨ıssent naturellement l’un l’autre. On s’est servi comme on a pu de la concupiscence pour la faire servir au bien public. Mais ce n’est que feindre et une fausse image de la charité. Car au fond ce n’est que haine. (L 210/S 243/LG 196; cf. L 211/S 244/LG 197) All human beings naturally hate one another. We have used concupiscence as best we could to make it work for the public good. But this is only a sham and a false image of charity, for at bottom it is nothing but hatred.

Pascal does not directly analyse how concupiscence is set to work in the creation of the social order, although there are many fragments 75 Marcel Raymond, ‘Du jansénisme a` la morale de l’intérêt’, Mercure de France, 330 (1957), 238–55. Pierre Force (Self-Interest before Adam Smith) does full justice to the Augustinian tradition, but stresses the alternative neo-Stoic current of influence on the thought of Smith in particular (on Nicole, see pp. 76–8).


219

that throw light on this process.76 It was left to Nicole to work out in more detail how the centrifugal forces of amour-propre might be channelled into the maintenance of a social order. Nicole’s vision of the social world is shaped by Cartesian physics: so it is relevant to note, as was pointed out above (pp. 48–53), that Descartes himself had sought to analyse how the pursuit of individual goods can cement rather than jeopardising social order. In ‘De la charité et de l’amour-propre’, Nicole examines how an enlightened self-love, which can discern its own interests, and work rationally towards its goal, might work.77 In a manner quite reminiscent of Hobbes, he attempts to reconstruct the origins of society from the dynamic of individual passions. Though amourpropre involves the desire for domination, this is less strong than its attachment to life and to its commodities. Realizing that others will not accept its domination, and that trying to enforce it jeopardises life itself, amour-propre obliges the individual to fall back on the basic instinct of self-preservation.78 This, it sees, can only be achieved by 76 Two perceptive reconstructions of the role of concupiscence in the foundation of the social order are Gérard Ferreyrolles, Pascal et la raison du politique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1984), 105–11, 131–46, and Christian Lazzeri, Force et justice dans la politique de Pascal (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1993), 61–4, 258–62. 77 Pierre Nicole, ‘De la charité et de l’amour-propre’, I, EM III, 134. On Nicole’s social theory, see E. D. James, Pierre Nicole, 137–61; Force, Self-Interest before Adam Smith, 76–8; Rohou, Le XVIIe Siècle, 477–82. 78 It will be seen that this does not imply that amour-propre is nothing but the basic instinct of self-preservation, merely that it subsumes it within itself. Nicole criticizes Pascal for suggesting that all so-called, natural principles are the effect of custom (Pensées, Port-Royal edition, XXV.17 OC II, 991; L 125/S 158/LG 116). He contends that ‘nous nous aimons naturellement, c’est-à-dire notre corps, notre aˆme & notre eˆtre. Nous aimons tout ce qui est naturellement joint a` ces premiers objets de notre amour, comme le plaisir, la vie, l’estime, la grandeur. Nous ha¨ıssons tout ce qui est contraire, comme la douleur, la mort, l’infamie: la bizarrerie des coutumes n’a lieu que dans les choses qui ne sont pas naturellement liées avec ces premiers objets de nos passions’ (We love ourselves naturally, that is to say, our body, our soul, and our existence. We love all that is naturally attached to these primary objects of our love, such as pleasure, life, esteem, greatness. We hate all that is contrary to them, such as pain, death, infamy: the strangeness of customs comes into play only in things not naturally linked to these primary objects of our passions) (Letter LXXXVIII, to the Marquis de Sévigné, EM VIII, 245). Love of self, even in its derivative forms such as the love of others’ esteem, is therefore natural. But it is striking that Nicole does not use the term amour-propre here: he seems to

220


banding together with others to resist those who would deprive us of life and property. Laws and punishments are instituted in order to strengthen this union and to repress the disruptive tendencies of individuals. So, although fear of death can be seen as a form of amourpropre, it also functions as a brake on amour-propre’s propensity to tyrannize over others (II, EM III, 138–9). What occurs now is the substitution of a new model of social interaction based on exchange for the model of violent conflict. Since we cannot tyrannize over others to get what we want, we must do so by appealing to their amour-propre: ‘On donne pour obtenir. C’est la source & le fondement de tout le commerce qui se pratique entre les hommes, & qui se diversifie en mille manieres’ (We give in order to get. This is the source and foundation of all the dealings that take place between men, in all their many and varied forms) (II, EM III, 140). Traffic in material goods is merely one variety of a generalized movement of exchange that incorporates favours, services, and displays of politeness: real goods are exchanged for real goods, imaginary goods for imaginary goods, and real goods for imaginary. The needs of life are thus fulfilled without the slightest intervention of charity (p. 140). The social world is patterned on the physical (this is where the Cartesian inspiration makes itself felt). Each individual’s amour-propre is kept under restraint by that of others, just as the movement of each particle of matter is restrained by all the others, though it seeks to break free of their restraint. Social units such as states and kingdoms are analogous to the vortices formed by the union of material bodies. But the pressure of adjacent vortices causes smaller vortices to arise within the great ones, and, although affected by the general movement of the whole, these smaller vortices have a movement of their own, that drags smaller bodies along in its wake.79 Likewise, the magnates in a state, following its general reserve this term for when he wishes to stress the pathological forms taken by the natural impulse. In the state of fallen nature, however, the forms it takes are never anything than pathological. 79 The point presumably is that the pressure of adjacent states causes rival interests to emerge within a state, or at least sustains them in being. The existence of Protestant states


221

movement, have a motion of their own, which affects that of their dependants: but these too retain some movement of their own, so that the duties they carry out as a result of their subordination to the great coexist with an ongoing regard for their own interest (p. 142). Social interaction, then, can be conceived as the resultant of the aggregate of interests that go to make up a social formation, without individuals’ needing consciously to pursue the ends of the collective. Of all the passions born of amour-propre, none is more widespread, or perhaps more powerful, than the desire to be loved (III, EM III, 145). This leads us, as was noted above, to purge our self-loving behaviour of all that could allow other people to recognize the self-love that underlies it (IV, EM III, 147–8). Our behaviour, thus refined, is in a sense deceptive. Yet, if we are to pursue others’ love and esteem, this is a more upright and reasonable way to do so than what is, by implication, the common approach, of demanding love and esteem while behaving in a self-centred fashion that dooms the demand to disappointment (p. 150). Throughout the essay, Nicole argues that the external effects of amour-propre (or, to be precise, of enlightened amour-propre (‘amour-propre ećlairé’) ) can resemble those of charity and holiness (see, e.g., IV, 147; V, 154; VII, 160–1); though, as regards their moral and salvific value, the two lines of conduct are quite different. Thus charity confers benefits with no hope of return, and even on one’s enemies, since it is concerned only with their good, and not one’s own interests. But so does amour-propre, since it knows that benefits that cannot be repaid in kind are repaid by other people’s affection (since they—no less moved by amourpropre —hope to receive similar benefits without obligation to return (X, 174). The attempt to eradicate self-love, even the complete renunciation of the love of life involved in martyrdom, can contain in Northern Europe and of an ultra-Catholic monarchy in Spain helped to maintain the existence of the Huguenot and Leaguer parties in the France of the Wars of Religion.

222


an admixture of amour-propre (pp. 178–9). On the other hand, the religious life is not a favourable environment for amour-propre, since it must do itself unnatural violence in order to achieve its ends. But worldly virtue and amour-propre go together very readily (p. 180). From all this, Nicole concludes that self-love could in fact provide the basis of a social order. Pour réformer entierement le monde, c’est-à-dire pour en bannir tous les vices et tous les désordres grossiers, & pour rendre les hommes heureux dès cette vie, il ne faudroit, au défaut de la charité, que leur donner a` tous un amour-propre ećlairé, qui sût discerner ses vrais intérêts, & y tendre par les voies que la droite raison lui découvriroit. Quelque corrompuë que cette société fût au dedans & aux yeux de Dieu, il n’y auroit rien au-dehors de mieux réglé, de plus civil, de plus juste, de plus pacifique, de plus honnête, de plus généreux; & ce qui seroit de plus admirable, c’est que n’étant animée & remuée que par l’amour-propre, l’amourpropre n’y paroˆıtroit point; et qu’étant entierement vuide de charité, on ne verroit par-tout que la forme et les caractères de la charité. (XI, 181–2) To reform the world entirely, that is, to banish from it all the more blatant vices and disorders, and to make people happy in this life on earth, nothing more would be necessary than to give them all (in the absence of charity) an enlightened self-love, capable of identifying its true interests, and of pursuing them by the means indicated by right reason. However corrupt such a society would be inside and in God’s eyes, there would be nothing, as regards the outward appearance, better-ordered, more civilized, more just, more peaceful, more honourable, and more noble; and the most remarkable fact would be that, although it would be inspired and motivated purely by amour-propre, that amour-propre would be invisible; and that although it would be entirely devoid of charity, it would everywhere exhibit the appearance and characteristics of charity.

What emerges from this survey of writers from Jansenius to Nicole is a complex overall picture of self-love. There is a natural attachment to one’s own existence and well-being. But this cannot serve to found even a limited morality, because, since the Fall, it


223

has been parasitically seized on by a love once directed towards God, but now turned back in on ourselves: amour-propre, which turns us into so many little gods, and sets us radically at odds with others. It is an unnatural force, considered in relation to our original prelapsarian nature; natural to us, as a fallen race. The distinction between a healthy and an unhealthy self-love, so crucial to the Aristotelian–Thomistic tradition, fades away because in our fallen condition the healthy variety is not available: we can only hope to have our illicit self-love curbed and eventually uprooted by charity. The distinction between enlightened and crude self-love is not (in Nicole at any rate) a distinction between good and bad forms: both are equally morally corrupt, only the former is more socially beneficial. In the Thomistic tradition, grace does not destroy nature but perfects it (ST Ia, q. 1, a. 8, ad 2): a maxim of immense scope, implying that political societies have a legitimacy founded in human beings’ sociable nature, although requiring to be consecrated, as it were, by the spiritual realm. In the neo-Augustinian view, on the contrary, because we are naturally and exclusively self-loving, it is impossible to conceive of society as founded on a sociable instinct in our nature. In other words, this theory generates a need for historical explanations of society, showing how individual need and interest can force us together instead of apart from or against one another. But what this means is that society can never be in harmony with the divine order, nor is there any continuity between social and theological values. There is no continuity between the socio-political order and the spiritual: the earthly city appears, of its very nature, as spiritually destitute—the more so, the more powerful and successful it is. The conception of self-love is thus a particularly strong indication of Lafond’s conception of ‘Augustinian naturalism’: the insistence by Augustinian writers on regarding human beings (in their fallen state) as purely natural creatures.80 As Nicole’s nod in 80 Jean Lafond, La Rochefoucauld: Augustinisme et littérature, 3rd edn. (Paris: Klincksieck, 1986 (1st pub. 1977) ), 159–60.

224


the direction of Hobbes implies, there is thus a kind of objective complicity (founded on the overlap between Epicurean and neoAugustinian anthropologies) between the neo-Augustinians, who sought to restate the message of Christianity in all its purity, and the most radical secular writers of the time.81 81 Rohou (Le XVIIe Sie`cle, 347–75) reads Pascal and La Rochefoucauld’s anthropologies in parallel with those of Hobbes and Spinoza.

4 La Rochefoucauld on Interest and Self-Love It was noted above that Senault’s analysis of amour-propre equated it with the pursuit of interest and pleasure, while Nicole adds the apparently autonomous desire to be loved and esteemed by others. La Rochefoucauld’s position is less easy to state. Helvétius, in the following century, pronounces his meaning perfectly clear, but then cannot explain how it was, as he sees it, misinterpreted: Lorsque le célébre Mr. de la Rochefoucault dit que l’amour propre est le principe de toutes nos actions, combien l’ignorance de la vraie signification de ce mot amour propre ne souleva-t’elle pas de gens contre cet illustre Auteur? On prit l’amour propre pour orgueil et vanité; et l’on s’imagina en conséquence, que Mr. de la Rochefoucault plaçoit dans le vice la source de toutes les vertus. Il e´toit cependant facile d’appercevoir que l’amour propre, ou l’amour de soi, n’étoit autre chose qu’un sentiment gravé en nous par la nature; que ce sentiment se transformoit dans chaque homme en vice ou en vertu, selon les goûts et les passions qui l’animoient, et que l’amour propre, différemment modifié, produisoit e´galement l’orgueil et la modestie.1 When the celebrated M. de La Rochefoucauld said that self-love is the principle of all our actions, how many were those roused to indignation against our illustrious author, by their ignorance of the true meaning of the word ‘self-love’! They took the term as meaning pride and vanity, and as a result imagined that M. de La Rochefoucauld was identifying vice as the source of all the virtues. But they might have easily seen that self-love, or 1 Claude-Adrien Helvétius, De l’esprit, ed. Jacques Moutaux, Corpus des Œuvres de Philosophie en Langue Française (Paris: Fayard, 1988 (1st pub. 758) ), I.4, 45.

226


the love of self, is nothing other than a feeling engraved in us by nature; that it is transformed into vice or virtue in each human being according to the tastes and passions by which he is driven, and that, differently modified, self-love produces pride and modesty equally.

But this is to treat La Rochefoucauld as a ventriloquist’s dummy, mouthing the Enlightenment discourse of self-love. We may feel that the ignorant contemporaries stigmatized by Helvétius were not entirely wrong in their reactions. Particularly if we had access to the Maximes only in the fifth and final edition, we should probably conclude that La Rochefoucauld does not propound, or attach himself to, a systematic moral theory. There is no reason, of course, why he should have done: he was not a professed theologian or philosopher and too much systematization would have smacked of the pedant, ill beseeming the aristocrat and man of the world.2 His concern is as often to amuse or annoy as to enlighten.3 His work is ideologically plural. In Morales du grand siècle Paul Bénichou presented him alongside Jansenist authors: in a later analysis of La Rochefoucauld, he notes that an egoistic account of motivation was no less familiar to writers of the school of Hobbes or Machiavelli than to religious writers.4 Norbert Elias’s superb analysis of the court society stresses the imperative of accurate observation of other’s motives, typically screened by their outward behaviour, and of one’s own passions, the better to conceal them effectively.5 Instancing La Rochefoucauld, he goes so far as to argue that the idea of the egoistic motivation of human action was a product of court culture. This is a highly plausible claim: for even if we take into account the long tradition of theological and spiritual analysis of self-love, 2 The ‘Discours’ by Henri de La Chapelle-Bessé that introduced the first edition argues precisely this (MMOD 292). 3 On La Rochefoucauld’s lack of system, see Jacques Truchet’s introduction to the Maximes (MMOD 89, 102–4), and van Delft, Le Moraliste classique, 156–69, and Littérature et anthropologie, 121–35. 4 Paul Bénichou, Morales du grand siècle, 128–48; ‘L’intention des Maximes’, in ´ L’Ecrivain et ses travaux (Paris: José Corti, 1967), 3–37 (p. 16). 5 Norbert Elias, The Court Society, tr. Edmund Jephcott (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983), 104–5.

La Rochefoucauld on Interest and Self-Love

227

we must acknowledge that the exploration of hidden motives and interests was promoted by the nature of court relationships, even independently of religious bodies of thought. This link to a secular ‘new realism’, and to the preoccupations of court culture, has been, more recently, particularly stressed by Henry C. Clark.6 Clark’s target is the Augustinian reading of La Rochefoucauld put forward, for instance, by Jean Lafond, who argued that the ‘naturalism’ (the deterministic psychology, the stress on the physical wellsprings of human behaviour) of the Maximes, so far from clashing with their Augustinian inspiration, is yet another index of the Augustinian perspective on fallen man, although here expressed in ‘laicized’ form.7 But in any case, Lafond does not propound Augustinianism, of whatever form, as the sole key to the work: he sees it as articulating Augustinian concepts with elements of aristocratic ideology.8 La Rochefoucauld’s personal connections might suggest an ideological link with Port-Royal. Mme de Sablé, his other collaborator, actually lived beside the Paris convent for several years, though her involvement eventually waned.9 La Rochefoucauld’s uncle, the marquis de Liancourt, was a staunch supporter of Port-Royal, and his town house, the hotel de Liancourt, was a gathering place for the like-minded. La Rochefoucauld himself actually lived there between 1653 and 1680.10 But it would seem that within the Liancourt circle La Rochefoucauld himself was not universally perceived as a supporter of Port-Royal. The evidence of this, such as it is, is provided by 6 Henry C. Clark, La Rochefoucauld and the Language of Unmasking in SeventeenthCentury France (Geneva: Droz, 1994), 20–1 (on Machiavelli), 121–37 (on the ‘new realism’), 39–54, 139–45 (on the courtly concerns of the text). 7 Lafond, La Rochefoucauld: Augustinisme et littérature. Rohou emphasizes this secularization of the Augustinian vision even more (Le XVIIe Siècle), 348–53. 8 Lafond, La Rochefoucauld: L’Homme et son image, 75–89, 91–100. 9 On Mme de Sablé, Ivanoff, La Marquise de Sablé et son salon, remains essential. On her relationship with Port-Royal, see pp. 59–87. 10 On La Rochefoucauld’s connection with the hôtel de Liancourt, see Jean Lesaulnier, ´ Port-Royal insolite: Edition critique du ‘Recueil des choses diverses’ (Paris: Klincksieck, 1992), 49.

228


the manuscript record of conversations known as the Recueil des choses diverses, which has been superbly edited by Jean Lesaulnier. This contains the judgement that the Maximes were plagiarized from a work of Protestant divinity called La Sonde de la conscience (in fact, a translation of The Mystery of Self-Deceiving by the English Puritan Daniel Dyke).11 They are not then identified as a respectable offshoot of St Augustine’s thought. The best maxims are credited to Mme de Sablé (p. 629). In general, though one speaker contends that they are a preparation for the Gospel, the opinions recorded are far from favourable (pp. 334–5). La Rochefoucauld is not recognized as a fellow campaigner in the same ideological conflicts. This does not, of course, refute the claim of affinity between his position and Augustinianism, since we all know that people committed to certain doctrinal allegiances, whether in religion or in politics, often perceive enormous differences between their own and others’ positions, whereas an outsider can see how they have almost everything in common. From a later historian’s viewpoint, it may be as legitimate to discern relationships ignored or denied by contemporaries as to detect unnoticed implications in the works of the past. None the less, in this case, the comments recorded by the Recueil are revealing evidence of how solidarities could be perceived or not perceived. Some especially striking contemporary responses to the text are provided by a group of letters addressed to Mme de Sablé by a number of mostly anonymous correspondents. These were responses to a consultation organized in 1663 by Mme de Sablé, who had circulated manuscript copies of La Rochefoucauld’s text to test the likely response to a possible published version (MMOD 596–7). Thus one of these readers notes that the text might appear superficially as a cynical attack on virtue in general, but that, properly read, it comes across as a satire targeted against the corruption of nature by original sin, and against self-love, pride, and the malignity of the human mind. It is a splendid commentary on Augustine’s claim 11

Lesaulnier, Port-Royal insolite, 314. The accusation is repeated on p. 335.


229

that all unbelievers’ virtues are vices.12 There is no space here to go into the controversy on pagan virtue: suffice it to say that not only Jansenists took this hard-line Augustinian view on the virtue of unbelievers. We find it also in non-Jansenist Augustinian writers like the Oratorian Jean-François Senault (L’Homme criminel, 289–97). And La Rochefoucauld’s access to this line of argument came, no doubt, through his association, mentioned in the previous chapter, with the sometime Oratorian Jacques Esprit. (In general, the Oratorians were careful not to align themselves too closely with Port-Royal.) This ‘Augustinian’ reading of the Maximes was not, however, universal among Mme de Sablé’s correspondents. Another reader (a man, to judge by the bookish references) agrees as to the spiritual benefits of the work, its brilliant demonstration of the falsity of human and philosophical virtues: he regrets only that the author had not also proclaimed the authenticity of Christian supernatural virtue.13 But he makes no reference to Augustine: rather he sees the work as a compendium of all that is wise and good in the teachings of philosophical sects old and new, and it reminds him strongly of a passage of Seneca (pp. 641–2). Mme de Schomberg herself perceived no Christian resonances: she read the text as dangerous, because it demolishes vice and virtue and suppresses free will (letter 30, to Mme de Sablé, MMOD 632). Another correspondent takes much the same line (letter 34, MMOD 639–40). In other words, the text of the Maximes read by these correspondents did not bear any unequivocal markers of its ideological allegiance. This is not true to the same extent of the first legitimate edition (dated 1665). Truchet suggests (MMOD 287) that La Rochefoucauld was concerned to forestall the interpretation, found in some of the letters mentioned above, that the text is an assault on the notion of virtue in general. The text was prefaced by a ‘Discours’ (by one Henri 12

Anon., letter 31, to Mme de Schomberg, forwarded to Mme de Sablé, MMOD

636. 13

Anon., letter 35, to Mme de Sablé, MMOD 640–3.

230


de La Chapelle-Bessé) confirming that the text is a critique of the false or inadequate virtue than which our corrupt nature is capable of nothing better, and that it leaves Christian virtue intact.14 Like the ‘Avis au lecteur’ of this edition, the ‘Discours’ invokes various Fathers of the Church (alluding, probably, but only implicitly, to St Augustine) as authorities for this picture of man (MMOD 289–90, 294, 297). In other words, the text was packaged in a way that associates it with the neo-Augustinian current of thought. But this state of affairs did not last long. The ‘Discours’ was jettisoned from all later editions, and the reference to the Fathers was omitted from the ‘Avis au lecteur’ of the second edition, which is largely reproduced, under the title ‘Le libraire au lecteur’, in the fifth and final edition of the text. What survives of the religious packaging in this preface is the statement that the perspective of the work is confined to man in the deplorable state of nature corrupted by sin, and that its criticism of virtue excludes those people vouchsafed a special grace by God.15 Whatever we make of these changes, we can see that they involve playing down the explicit Augustinian, let alone the Jansenist, affiliations of the text. The discarding of the portrait of amour-propre (MS 1) that headed the first edition probably had the same effect, whatever its motives may have been.16 To turn to the text, or rather, given the alterations from one edition to another, the texts, of the Maximes. There are, indeed, two 14 La Chapelle-Bessé, ‘Discours’, in MMOD 291–305; see Truchet’s introduction to the first edition (pp. 286–8). 15 ‘Le libraire au lecteur’, Maximes, 5th edn., MMOD 110; cf. the ‘Avis au lecteur’, 2nd edn., MMOD 399. 16 Some doubt that La Rochefoucauld was in fact the author of this portrait of self-love. The Recueil des choses diverses attributes it to Esprit (and terms it gibberish) (Lesaulnier, Port-Royal insolite, 334). But see Jacqueline Plantié, ‘L’Amour propre au Carmel: Petite histoire d’une grande maxime de La Rochefoucauld’, RHLF 71 (1971), 561–73. There are problems, though, with the dating of a letter she takes to refer to the portrait of amour-propre: see Lafond, La Rochefoucauld: L’Homme et son image, 47–9. In the absence of proof to the contrary, I go by the traditional attribution. I use the conventional abbreviations MS (maxime supprimée) for maximes printed in earlier editions but later discarded by La Rochefoucauld and ME (maxime écartée) for maximes unpublished by him. L refers to the Liancourt manuscript, which is reprinted in MMOD, 431–67.


231

maxims from the Liancourt manuscript that specifically allude to the doctrine of the Fall. Une preuve convaincante que l’homme n’a pas e´té crée´ comme il est, c’est que plus il devient raisonnable et plus il rougit en soi-même de l’extravagance, de la bassesse et de la corruption de ses sentiments et de ses inclinations. (L 195/ME 10) A convincing proof that man was not created as he is now is that, the more reasonable he becomes, the more ashamed he feels inside himself of the wildness, the baseness, and the corruption of his feelings and inclinations. Dieu a permis, pour punir l’homme du péché originel, qu’il se fˆıt un dieu de son amour-propre pour en eˆtre tourmenté dans toutes les actions de sa vie. (L 256/ME 22) In order to punish man for original sin, God has permitted him to make a god of his self-love, so as to be tortured by it in everything he does.

But, since La Rochefoucauld never published them, we cannot regard them as instructions to read the text in accordance with the doctrine of original sin, even though, like other unpublished or discarded maxims, they throw valuable light on La Rochefoucauld’s thought in general.17 From the point of view of conceptions of self-love, one of the major problems is this. La Rochefoucauld attributes much of human behaviour to self-love, and much to the pursuit of interest. One might assume, then, that the pursuit of interest is simply one of the dominant forms of self-love: but there are reasons for thinking that matters are not quite so simple. The relationship between the terms is complicated by the changes in the text. The fact is that a unified account of La Rochefoucauld’s conception of amour-propre may well be impossible, because there may be no overall conception 17 Lafond speaks of a ‘la¨ıcisation’ of the text taking place from the Liancourt manuscript to the first edition, and from the first to the second, but rightly points out that this does not imply that La Rochefoucauld has moved from a Christian to a non-Christian position. He also notes that the religious element returns in additions to the fourth edition (maxims 341, 358: see also ME 34, 36, 37 (in Lafond’s numbering (ME 35, 37, 38 in MMOD) ) (La Rochefoucauld: L’Homme et son image, 21–2).

232


that corresponds to the term, but transcends the various utterances that feature it, or that seem to allude to it by implication. This is not a general thesis (heaven forfend) about the relations between discourse and signification, but a more local observation bearing on the existence of the text of the Maximes in a succession of states, each (at least as regards the legitimate editions) representing the Maximes at that point in time. (The very title Maximes to denote all these states is a mere convenient shorthand.18 ) We cannot assume that one can, as it were, silently reinsert MS 1 into the fifth edition, so as to produce a supposedly comprehensive account of amour-propre in La Rochefoucauld. All we can do is to analyse different passages, while taking into account, where this seems significant, their position in the evolution of the text: to which edition, if any, they belong, and how long they were maintained. The role of interest in human action was indubitably a concern of La Rochefoucauld’s, irrespective of any links to Augustinian theology. The superb opening of the Apologie de M. le Prince de Marcillac, with its bitter lucidity and corrosive irony, explicitly raises the question of the relationship of interest to virtue, and points to the capacity of interest to blur moral perception and divert from duty.19 La Rochefoucauld’s relationship to the role of interest in human action was eminently pragmatic and empirical. The complexity of the Maximes derives partly from his discussing it in a language (that of moral philosophy and theology) that borrows a good deal from a different field from that of aristocratic politics and that is designed to deal with a rather different set of problems. That many human relationships should be conceived in terms of the often invisible interests at stake is obvious to any reader of the Maximes. What we take for virtue is often the combination of diverse actions and diverse interests (maxim 1); when we work for 18 The title page of the legitimate editions has Réflexions ou Sentences et maximes morales, but the actual text is headed Réflexions morales. The Liancourt manuscript has no title, and the pirate Dutch edition was entitled Sentences et maximes de morale (MMOD 108, 286, 396, 431, 469). 19 La Rochefoucauld, Apologie de M. le Prince de Marcillac, MMOD 837.


233

others’ advantage, we are merely, contrary to appearances, acting according to a calculation whereby the good that returns to us is greater than our outlay of effort (maxim 236); friendship, so-called, is simply ‘un ménagement réciproque d’intérêts, [. . .] un ećhange de bons offices; [. . .] un commerce où l’amour-propre se propose toujours quelque chose a` gagner’ (a reciprocal promotion of each other’s interests, an exchange of good turns, a trade in which selflove is always on the lookout for gain) (maxim 83).20 As Vivien Thweatt rightly points out, in the seventeenth-century ideological context, to present behaviour in the light of economic gain is to devalue it.21 There are maxims, to be sure, that suggest a more nuanced evaluation of interest. Thus La Rochefoucauld remarks that in a battle the participants are considering not the overall goal of victory, but their own chances of glory and distinction; yet it is the pursuit of these private interests that brings about the collective triumph (MS 41, discarded after the first edition). Again, if ‘les vertus se perdent dans l’intérêt, comme les fleuves se perdent dans la mer’ (the virtues are absorbed into interest, as rivers are absorbed into the sea) (maxim 171), this still implies that they have a relative identity and authenticity: that the Rhine flows into and merges with the North Sea does not mean there is no such river as the Rhine. Maxim 83, on friendship, explicitly links interest and self-love. Other maxims make the link by implication. Maxim 236 notes that, when acting kindly to others, we seem to be overcoming amourpropre, but that in reality our behaviour has the strategic aim of winning others over. Likewise, reliability in our dealings with others is usually an invention of amour-propre designed to advance our own 20 On the use of economic metaphors in the discussion of interest, see Philip E. Lewis, La Rochefoucauld: The Art of Abstraction (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 1977), 68, 107, and Vivien Thweatt, La Rochefoucauld and the Seventeenth-Century Concept of the Self (Geneva: Droz, 1980), 124–5. 21 Thweatt, La Rochefoucauld, 124–5. Thweatt suggestively remarks that this reduction of human behaviour to interest is more characteristic of the Liancourt MS than of the definitive edition (ibid.).

234


position and to gain others’ trust (maxim 247). The term intérêt does not occur in either of those maxims, but it does here: L’intérêt est l’âme de l’amour-propre, de sorte que comme le corps, privé de son aˆme, est sans vue, sans ou¨ıe, sans connaissance, sans sentiment et sans mouvement, de même l’amour-propre séparé, s’il le faut dire ainsi, de son intérêt, ne voit, n’entend, ne sent et ne se remue plus. (ME 26) Interest is the soul of self-love, so that, just as the body, in the absence of the soul, is without sight, hearing, consciousness, awareness, or movement, so self-love, cut off, so to speak, from its interest, can no longer see, hear, feel, or move.

The passage continues in a vein of comic fantasy, exploiting images of death, resurrection, paralysis, swooning and coming round, so as to drive home the lesson that interest is the life of the self. Perhaps it was this fantastic element that kept La Rochefoucauld from ever publishing this maxim. In any case, there are two points to be made. First, ‘intérêt’ here does not necessarily mean ‘advantage’, whether in the sense of material, or in that of symbolic gain (honour and prestige). It can denote a vaguer sense of involvement: thus, when we talk to someone of our own affairs, they sink into a deathlike sleep, from which they are resurrected when we mention something that concerns them. This involvement may be the beginnings of interest in the fuller sense: my interest (involvement) would be aroused by something that indicates a possibility of advancing my interests. But the interests here might be concerned more with pleasure than with any kind of objective advantage. Secondly, the rhetorical structure of the maxim complicates its conceptual content. We learn that a person loses and regains consciousness according as his interest becomes more or less remote. This suggests that we, as persons, are animated by interest. But, literally, the maxim states that interest is the soul of amour-propre, and that amour-propre loses its life functions when separated from its interest. This seems to remove us, so to speak, from the centre of the picture, and to make amour-propre the subject of interest, thus leaving open the possibility that its interests and ours may not be identical. We encounter this problem also in


235

MS 1, the portrait of amour-propre that headed the first edition, and was then discarded. Before we tackle it, however, we should note that not all the maxims on amour-propre link it with intérêt. It is sometimes linked with passion. An unpublished maxim (ME 28) states that the passions are only the different tastes ( goûts) of amour-propre. If La Rochefoucauld does not pursue this general claim, he finds amourpropre as operative in love (maxim 262), and as more significant a component of jealousy than love itself (maxim 324). Sometimes, amour-propre has a rather different sense—the attachment to and overvaluation of the self to which Augustinian writers draw attention: ‘L’amour-propre est le plus grand de tous les flatteurs’ (Self-love is the greatest of all flatterers) (maxim 2). All of these elements are to be found in MS 1, to which we now turn. The definition given at the opening, ‘L’amour-propre est l’amour de soi-même et de toutes choses pour soi’ (Self-love is the love of oneself and of all things for one’s own sake), seems to assert that self-love is a relationship of the self to the self, the two ‘selves’ being one and the same, or (to put it more simply) it seems to be saying that we love ourselves, and everything else for our own sake. One could interpret this along naturalistic lines, as a referring to the basic instinct of self-preservation, the necessary biological self-centredness of the human organism.22 A maxim that might at first sight accredit this interpretation is 504, where La Rochefoucauld states that amour-propre cannot help us overcome the fear of death, when it will itself be destroyed by death. But he would not need to say this if we were not tempted to turn to amour-propre for support, and amour-propre in this sense cannot possibly denote the survival instinct: it is rather an attempt to ennoble ourselves in our own eyes by striking impressive ethical attitudes. We could say that this 22 W. G. Moore, French Classical Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), 128. However, in La Rochefoucauld: His Mind and Art (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), Moore refers amour-propre to ‘the nature of man in society’ (p. 99): it seems to be intérêt that is associated with biology (pp. 96–7). The biologistic interpretation of amour-propre is shared by de Mourgues, Two French Moralists, 14–15.

236


sense of amour-propre, as self-approval, is circumscribed by the basic survival instinct on which, perhaps, it is grafted: but it cannot be reduced to that instinct. Returning to MS 1, there are two factors that further problematize the naturalistic interpretation, both rhetorical: the figure of personification, and a key metaphor. As Odette de Mourgues has observed, ‘the most remarkable stylistic feature [of MS 1] is the obsessive repetition of the pronoun il’.23 We might decide that this is nothing but an effect of style, and to read the passage as if it could be translated, with some awkwardness, into the first-person plural: what the passage would be saying is simply that we love ourselves. But the possibility of translation seems to be called into question once the discourse begins to speak of ‘ses désirs’, ‘ses desseins’, ‘ses conduites’: are these really our desires, designs, and behaviour under another name, or are they really ‘its’, amour-propre’s, not to be attributed to us at all? As the passage goes on, the reading strategy of treating the ‘il’ as mere embellishment comes increasingly under pressure. Il passe même dans le parti des gens qui lui font la guerre, il entre dans leurs desseins; et ce qui est admirable, il se hait lui-même avec eux, il conjure sa perte, il travaille même a` sa ruine. Enfin il ne se soucie que d’être, et pourvu qu’il soit, il veut bien eˆtre son ennemi. [. . .] Lors même qu’il est vaincu et qu’on croit en eˆtre défait, on le retrouve qui triomphe dans sa propre défaite. (MS 1; MMOD 241) It even joins the army of those who are making war on it, it goes along with their plans; and, what is quite remarkable, it hates itself as they hate it, it plots its own destruction, it works towards its own ruin. When all is said and done, all it is concerned about is its own existence, and, as long as it exists, it is prepared to be its own enemy. [. . .] Even when it is conquered and we think we are rid of it, we find it exulting in its own defeat.

In the first sentence, it is plainly impossible to eliminate self-love as an agent acting on itself as object; the reference is clearly to the 23

De Mourgues, Two French Moralists, 90.


237

Christian effort to eliminate self-love, in which we are not striving for our own destruction. The final sentence postulates a distinction between ‘il’ and ‘on’, the latter pronoun implying the existing of another self that reinforces the effect of self-love’s own illusions about itself with a set of illusions of its own.24 When we—the ‘we’ of our immediate experience, the ‘we’ we think we are talking of when we talk of ourselves to ourselves and to others—when we are consciously eschewing interest or pleasure, we are thwarted because there is a part of ourselves that thrives on and finds pleasure in that sacrifice. Going back a little, we find two other significant passages for our purpose: Rien n’est si intime et si fort que ses attachements, qu’il essaye de rompre inutilement a` la vue des malheurs extrêmes qui le menacent. (MMOD 240) Nothing is so intimate or so strong as its attachments, which it seeks in vain to break when faced with the prospect of extreme misfortunes. Il est capricieux, et nous le voyons travailler avec le dernier empressement, et avec des travaux incroyables, a` obtenir des choses qui ne lui sont point avantageuses, et qui même lui sont nuisibles, mais qu’il poursuit parce qu’il les veut. (MMOD 241) It is capricious, and we see it striving with intense zeal and incredible effort to obtain things that are not advantageous to it, or that are positively harmful, but that it pursues because it wants them.

Here it is possible to read ‘il’ as if it referred to ‘nous’, but the important point is that amour-propre emerges as a destructive, not a preservative force. It seems difficult, then, to read La Rochefoucauld’s use of the term as denoting a necessary relationship of ourselves to 24 As Philip E. Lewis observes, La Rochefoucauld treats self-love as an actor that seems to possess a consciousness (La Rochefoucauld, 67 n.), ‘a kind of contaminated consciousness’ (p. 68). Jean Starobinski speaks of a ‘conscience située en arrière de ma conscience, un eˆtre supplémentaire qui forme des projets singulièrement précis dans la nuit que je porte en moi’ (a consciousness located behind my consciousness, a supplementary being that forms strangely precise projects in the darkness I carry inside me) (‘La Rochefoucauld et les morales substitutives’, Nouvelle Revue Française, 163–4 (July–Aug. 1966), 16–34, 211–29 (pp. 17–18)). See also Lafond, La Rochefoucauld: l’Homme et son image, 17.

238


ourselves, whereby we seek always to promote our own pleasure or advantage. Indeed, as we saw apropos of Jansenius, seventeenthcentury writers were perfectly well capable of distinguishing between a natural instinct of self-preservation and an excessive, and illusionridden, attachment to the self.25 The key metaphor in the second sentence of the passage deals precisely with this kind of attachment, and seems further to problematize the equation of amour-propre with natural self-centredness: ‘Il rend les hommes idolâtres d’eux-mêmes, et les rendrait les tyrans des autres si la fortune leur en donnait les moyens’ (it makes men idolaters of themselves, and would make them tyrants over their fellows if fortune gave them the opportunity). As idolatry, self-love is by definition excessive, but more than that it is essentially misplaced: for in idolatry devotion is directed not just to the wrong object, but to an object that cannot possibly satisfy or even acknowledge the devotion.26 Self-love is quintessentially misrecognition. And to say this is to utter something quite different from the claim that everyone is always looking out for his or her advantage, or driven by a basic instinct of self-preservation. We offer sacrifices to the self that are ignored; we expect benefits in return that it cannot offer. We commit and subordinate our interests to an agency that is simply indifferent to them. Over our desires and projects presides a figure we have beautified and immobilized by our adoration but that is not, as it were, on our side, working for our interests, at least as we consciously perceive them. Self-love working within us is rather like a parody of the Augustinian God, more ourselves than ourselves, deeper inside us than ourselves (‘interior intimo meo’ (Confessions, III.6) ). Yet there is a further complication here. After all the idol, as 25

The implications of the personification of psychical forces, and its roots in traditional faculty psychology and allegorical psychomachy, are brought out with admirable clarity by Starobinski, ‘La Rochefoucauld’, 16–22. But some of the claims of his article are effectively challenged in E. D. James, ‘Scepticism and Positive Values in La Rochefoucauld’, French Studies, 23 (1969), 349–61. 26 There is an attempt, on which I draw here, to trace the motif of idols and idolatry in some seventeenth-century texts in my ‘Images and Idols’, Seventeenth-Century French Studies, 25 (2003), 1–20.


239

many Old Testament texts remind us, is, first, inanimate and useless, and, second, our own creation in the first place.27 The power of self-love within us is simply our own power, alienated to an image that we no longer recognize as our handiwork. I am very far from thinking that the thought or literature of the past is interesting only in so far as it happens to remind us of that of the present, and in general have refrained from interpreting early modern texts in terms of more recent systems of thought. But it is worth mentioning Lacan’s comments on La Rochefoucauld, if only because, so far from using psychoanalysis to interpret La Rochefoucauld’s text, he situates the text in a moralist tradition, culminating in Nietzsche, that prepared for the work of Freud.28 As he says, what is scandalous in La Rochefoucauld is not the claim that amour-propre is behind all human behaviour, for all previous thinkers had seen a link between the pursuit of pleasure and the pursuit of one’s good (he is arguably overstating this, but that is another question): it is the claim that this self-love is deceitful and inauthentic. We undertake so-called disinterested actions, and imagine that, in so doing, we are freeing ourselves from immediate pleasure in the pursuit of a higher good. But we are wrong, because there is a hedonism specific to the ego, and this deprives us both of our immediate pleasure, and of the satisfaction of being superior to that pleasure (since, after all, it was pleasure we turned out to be seeking) (Lacan, Le Séminaire, 18). Inasmuch as this hedonism frustrates us, we might say that it its relation to us is aggressive: it is a quest for (its own) pleasure that results in (our) pain and dissatisfaction. And this is true also of La Rochefoucauld’s amour-propre, if we recall the unpublished maxim quoted above (ME 22): self-love is not a source of satisfaction, but a continual torment, a punishment for a sin we did not personally 27

See Isaiah 44: 9–20; Wisdom 13: 10–18. Jacques Lacan, Le Séminaire, II, Le Moi dans la théorie de Freud et dans la technique de la psychanalyse (Paris: Seuil, 1978), 7–19. He perpetuates the exploded view that the Maximes originated in a salon game: see Lafond, La Rochefoucauld: L’Homme et son Image, 164. On Freud’s relationship to the moralist tradition, see also Lacan’s ‘La Chose ´ Freudienne’, Ecrits, 401–36 (p. 407). 28

240


commit (on the sufferings of pride and vanity, see also maxims 34, 232, and 289). Like the narrator of Joyce’s story ‘Araby’, we are ‘driven and derided by vanity’. The naturalist approach can at a pinch account for amour-propre’s association with misrecognition and deception, if it adheres to a reading that treats rhetoric as merely the fanciful expression of a plain thought; it cannot, I think, account for the perversity and destructiveness, directed either at itself or at ‘the self’, that La Rochefoucauld attributes to it. Once again, I am not saying that psychoanalysis discloses the truth of the Maximes: that amour-propre ‘is’ the ego, or the superego, for that matter, as if terms like ‘ego’ and ‘superego’ referred to an empirical reality that has passed, at different times, under other names (as one and the same human being’s identity subsisted under the successive names Octavius, Octavian, and Augustus). The point is rather that the psychoanalytic account of the ego, at least in Lacan’s hands, seems more attuned to the complexities of La Rochefoucauld’s discourse of amour-propre than a naturalistic reading. But this is not perhaps surprising if we bear in mind Lacan’s interest in La Rochefoucauld, expressed in other works as well as in the seminar on the ego. His account of the imaginary dwells on ‘ce rapport e´rotique où l’individu humain se fixe a` une image qui l’aliène a` lui-même’ (the erotic relationship in which human individuals attach themselves to an image that alienates them from themselves)—terms closely related to La Rochefoucauld’s portrait of amour-propre (though many another seventeenth-century moralist or theologian could also have subscribed to them, Jansenius for one).29 In other words, MS 1 does not confirm the obvious equation of amour-propre with intérêt. Perhaps we could say that wherever 29 ´ Lacan, ‘L’Agressivité en psychanalyse’, Ecrits, 101–24 (p. 113). La Rochefoucauld is twice referred to in this essay, once in relation to amour-propre (p. 107) and once with reference to maxim 113 on marriage (p. 119). Amour-propre is also invoked in ‘Propos ´ sur la causalité psychique’, Ecrits, 151–93 (p. 159). In ‘Fonction et champ de la parole et ´ du langage en psychanalayse’, Ecrits, 237–322 (p. 264), maxim 136 is used to reinforce the link between love and the symbolic. See also Serge Doubrovsky, ‘Vingt propositions sur l’amour-propre: De Lacan a` La Rochefoucauld’, in Parcours critique (Paris: Seuil, 1980), 203–34.


241

intérêt is, there amour-propre is also, but that the reverse is not necessarily true. Jacques Esprit makes the link between amour-propre and interest, via the notion that the spectacle of other people’s self-love is repulsive.30 L’amour propre donne a` l’homme cette pente a` se déguiser, & a` prendre autant de figures que le Protée des fables, parce que si l’homme paroissoit tel qu’il est, idolatre de luy même, sans souci & sans affections pour tous les autres hommes, & voulant sans cesse s’élever au dessus d’eux, il les revolteroit contre luy, & mettroit obstacle au dessein qu’il a de gagner leur cœur & d’attirer leur estime pour les faire tous servir a` ses interets.31 Self-love gives man this inclination to disguise himself, and to take on as many appearances as the mythical Proteus, because if he appeared as he really is, a self-idolater without concern or affection for any of his fellow creatures, and constantly seeking to raise himself above them, he would cause them to rise up against him, thus frustrating his project of winning their goodwill and earning their esteem so as to make them all work in his interests.

The role of amour-propre here is to mask our basic self-idolatrous and egocentric disposition. For this is repulsive to others, and though we care nothing for them, we need their affection and esteem if we are to set them to work for our interests, which, it would seem, the basic disposition urges us to pursue. To that extent the basic egocentrism is both committed to and contrary to our own interests; amour-propre, like a superior agency mindful of our interests, takes charge of masking it. But in a sense the basic disposition itself could be called amour-propre, in the sense in which the term is used in La Rochefoucauld’s MS 1. If we wished, then, we could distinguish a primary amour-propre, the brute attachment to self, from a secondary form, which attains the ends of primary amour-propre by disguising it, and so securing the interests that the primary disposition would 30 La Rochefoucauld himself notes that we find other people’s pride and vanity unbearable, on account of our own (maxims 34, 389). 31 Esprit, De la fausseté des vertus humaines, II, 233.

242


jeopardise by the brutality with which it asserts them. But it does not follow that our authors make this distinction. Esprit here asserts the position already encountered in various Augustinian writers that our self-love involves a radical indifference, indeed hostility to others. We find the same position in MS 1, where it is stated that amour-propre would tyrannize over others if it could. The maxims on love and on friendship confirm this. We do not love other people for their own sake (though we seem to believe we do), but for our own (‘Si on croit aimer sa maˆıtresse pour l’amour d’elle, on est bien trompé’ (maxim 374) ); there is no passion in which love of self (‘l’amour de soi-même’ here, not l’amour-propre) is more powerful than in love (maxim 262) ). Love may involve a relationship to one’s own passion instead of to the person that is ostensibly its object (maxims 471, 500). Yet, paradoxically, love, in which the beloved seems to vanish behind the lover’s own concerns or feelings, or to feature as a mere support for them, is also a subjection of the lover to the beloved, in which one is, so to speak, evicted from one’s position at the centre of oneself: ‘Le pouvoir que les personnes que nous aimons ont sur nous est presque toujours plus grand que celui que nous y avons nous-mêmes’ (The power that those we love have over us is almost always greater than our power over ourselves) (ME 24). There is no contradiction here: in love, the object has been so bound up with one’s love of self (maxim 262) that to be subject to it is in fact to be subjected to one’s own self-love, tyrannizing over us instead of minding our interests. Our powerlessness here is that of the rational self, which can envisage the relationship between a behaviour pattern and our own happiness or misery; the power is with this other force within the self, which has for the time being attached to itself the image of another person. Friendship too is actuated by self-love, here combining with interest, as maxim 83 asserts. Our friendship for those more powerful than ourselves is interested, even if we do not realize this, since it is based on the hope of receiving benefits from them (maxim 85). We judge our friends’ qualities by the way they treat us: the judgement is therefore inspired by self-love (maxim 88). Most friends put one


243

off friendship, just as most pious people put one off piety (maxim 427): true friendship is rare (maxim 473). Maxim 81 indicates what true friendship consists in, but that I will come to presently. La Rochefoucauld (in MS 1, at any rate) sees self-love as radically distorting our relationship with all objects of desire. He never uses the term concupiscence (which would smack too much of the theologian or preacher), but, inasmuch as he subordinates desire to self-love, his analysis shows a certain affinity with the neo-Augustinian conception of concupiscence. But MS 1 also exhibits a remarkable parallel with the mechanistic revolution in philosophy.32 For Descartes, say, and his followers, but for Locke as well, physical objects do not possess the qualities we experience in our sensations. Colour, sound, feel, taste, smell are supplied by the mind itself. It is as if La Rochefoucauld applies this insight in the affective realm, but extends it in even more radical form, towards something approximating a philosophical idealism. For the mechanists generally held that there were some objective properties in bodies that caused our minds to experience particular sensations. But the objects in MS 1 are evacuated of their own being, and appropriated by amour-propre as simulacra that amour-propre then reanimates with its own desires: L’on pourrait conclure assez vraisemblablement que c’est par lui-même que ses désirs sont allumés, plutôt que par la beauté et par le mérite de ses objets; que son goût est le prix qui les relève et le fard qui les embellit; que c’est après lui-même qu’il court, et qu’il suit son gré lorsqu’il suit les choses qui sont a` son gré. (MMOD 240–1)

32

I am not suggesting that La Rochefoucauld was consciously seeking to apply the mechanistic model: that seems very unlikely. But sometimes a certain pattern of thinking exerts an influence on a culture in ways that are difficult to track precisely. Newman’s Development of Christian Doctrine (1845) long predates Darwin’s The Origin of Species (1859); it is roughly contemporary with the composition of Marx and Engels’s The German Ideology, which traces the development of socio-economic formations. It would be absurd to look for concrete connections uniting these texts, and very doubtful whether a common ancestor could be plausibly traced, though many claimants to that status might be advanced. Yet it seems clear that each in its own way (as Mark Rutherford pointed out to Newman at the time) was pursuing the quest to understand present-day phenomena as the result not merely of a causal but of a developmental process.

244


We could quite plausibly infer that it is by itself that its desires are aroused, rather than by the beauty and the attractions of its objects; that its taste is the value that enhances them and the cosmetic that beautifies them; that it is itself that it goes chasing, and that when it is pursuing the objects it fancies it is its own fancy that is the object of the pursuit.

Most probably the ‘objects’ La Rochefoucauld has primarily in mind are love objects (a common sense of the word in the seventeenth century), as the surrounding vocabulary suggests (the word ‘attachements’ appears in the previous sentence). But the abstraction of the language suggests its more general applicability. Amour-propre thus locks us all into a solipsistic universe that lacks all substance and qualities of its own, and merely registers those we project on it. It generates objects to attach itself to so as to multiply and reinforce its attachment to itself. But, after all, La Rochefoucauld did jettison the portrait of amourpropre, and, without it, amour-propre tends to lose its prominence in the Maximes (though not its importance: the notion is still presupposed by many maxims that do not allude to it explicitly). More than this, he added a maxim to the fifth edition, to which many commentators have drawn attention, which seems to formulate afresh the relationship between love and the self, untrammelled by any reference to amour-propre (and thus to the theological traditions in which that term had played so important a role): Nous ne pouvons rien aimer que par rapport a` nous, et nous ne faisons que suivre notre goût et notre plaisir quand nous préférons nos amis a` nous-mêmes; c’est néanmoins par cette préférence seule que l’amitié peut eˆtre vraie et parfaite. (Maxim 81) We can love nothing save in relation to ourselves, and we are only following our own taste and pleasure when we put our friends’ interests before ourselves; nonetheless, unless we do so our friendship cannot be genuine and perfect.

E. D. James’s analysis of this maxim is especially penetrating (‘Scepticism and Positive Values’, 349). When we put our friends’ interests before our own (which is the sense of ‘preferring’ here:


245

it does not mean that we think they are nicer or better people), we might be thought to be behaving disinterestedly. But this is apparently being undermined by the assertion that we are simply pursuing our own pleasure. James, however, casts doubt on the scope of this claim: To exercise a choice or preference is indeed to do ‘as one pleases’, and in this sense it is a tautology to say that it is pleasure that determines our preference. But it is only in this innocuous sense and not in any other that the assertion is necessarily true. And in any case, from the proposition ‘nous ne pouvons rien aimer que par rapport a` nous’ it does not follow that we necessarily love selfishly. None of our actions can be totally unrelated to ourselves, otherwise they would not, by definition, be our own actions. But this self-relatedness is neutral with respect to the moral character of the actions. It is not however true to say that amour-propre itself is normally a morally neutral term in La Rochefoucauld. (p. 349)

James rightly observes the coexistence in La Rochefoucauld’s text of ‘two conceptions of self-interest, one of which serves in making moral judgments, while the other merely makes a logical point, namely that human action necessarily has a subject or owner’ (pp. 349–50).33 To put the matter rather fancifully, it is as if La Rochefoucauld eventually gets over the shock of the discovery of amour-propre lurking behind every action and attachment. The whiff of scandal surrounding amour-propre fades: what is left is a sense that it is impossible to transcend or to escape the presence of self in our actions and attachments. But this no longer seems to have the same corrupting effect on the moral status of our actions. X ignores the welfare of his friend, and pursues his own advantage; Y does the opposite; both are pleasing themselves, but we can still say with confidence that Y is a real friend, X not. Jean Lafond thus suggests that La Rochefoucauld maintains the condemnation of love 33 Cf. Truchet’s claim (‘Introduction’, MMOD 93–4) that the necessary relationship of our love to ourselves is of the nature of a postulate or logical intuition. But this applies better to maxim 81 than to MS 1, for it is not clear why a logical intuition should be developed with such rhetorical verve, or accompanied with the connotations of mystery and perversity in which MS 1 is so rich.

246


of self (‘amour de soi’) but seeks to go beyond it in the affirmation of genuine virtue.34 We can agree with this if we take it to mean that the true friend is not, in fact, actuated by self-love in the negative sense, which ceases to rank as a universal determinant of human action, and reverts to the more limited sense of an attachment to self that ignores the good of others and which is, empirically speaking, by no means universal. The suppression of MS 1 and the introduction of a more morally neutral account of self-relatedness in maxim 81 should not lead us to suppose that amour-propre altogether recedes from La Rochefoucauld’s field of interests. The final edition adds another substantial maxim on the subject: Ce qui fait voir que les hommes connaissent mieux leurs fautes qu’on ne pense, c’est qu’ils n’ont jamais tort lorsqu’on les entend parler de leur conduite: le même amour-propre qui les aveugle d’ordinaire les ećlaire alors, et leur donne des vues si justes qu’il leur fait supprimer ou déguiser les moindres choses qui peuvent eˆtre condamnées.35 We can see that human beings know their faults better than might be supposed from the fact that they never make mistakes when we hear them speaking of their own behaviour: the same self-love that normally blinds them here enlightens them and gives them such accurate insights that it leads them to suppress or disguise the tiniest thing that might be open to criticism.

This behaviour is, of course, interested inasmuch as the agent seeks to enjoy the good opinion of his or her hearers. Whether it is interested in the further sense that he or she needs their good opinion in order to subject them to his or her will, or whether the thought 34 La Rochefoucauld, Maximes, ed. Jean Lafond (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1998), 38–9. 35 Jean Lafond rightly stresses that this maxim implies the existence of a non-biological unconscious: see the corresponding note in his earlier edition of La Rochefoucauld, Maximes et Réflexions diverses, Collection Folio (Paris: Gallimard, 1976), 294n. 53. The introduction of this maxim in the fifth edition confirms Lafond’s observation, apropos of maxim 339, which dates from the third, that the theory of amour-propre is by no means abandoned after the first edition (La Rochefoucauld: Augustinisme et littérature, 29 n. 50).


247

of others’ good opinion is simply a source of self-gratification, we cannot tell. The delusive and deceptive character of self-love as analysed by La Rochefoucauld will be further explored in Chapter 9 on selfknowledge. In the mean time, we can sum up the main themes of his presentation of self-love, while bearing in mind that these cannot be blended into a synthetic account that transcends and reconciles the differences between versions of the Maximes. We cannot even definitely speak of an overall shift from one theoretical or ideological position to another. The fact that the text sheds its Augustinian packaging from the second edition on does not imply such a shift, though it does suggest that the author did not want to be seen as intervening in the religious controversies of the time. Much of the time, amour-propre denotes a concern for one’s own interests to which we subordinate all relationships with other people. We seek power over others, or at least recognition from them. Since our relationship with others often takes a passional form, and amourpropre determines the nature of that relationship, amour-propre is further linked to the passions. It is morally to be condemned in so far as it induces us to deceive, exploit, or harm other people. Since it would appear that it is impossible to act without some concern for one’s own welfare and pleasure, there is an underlying self-orientation that is, arguably, morally neutral, but when La Rochefoucauld seems to be making this point (maxim 81) he does not use the term amour-propre. Where amour-propre is detected, it seems to vitiate the acts it inspires; but not all actions are motivated by self-love inasmuch as we can choose to put other people’s interests above our own, and when we do so we attain genuine virtue. Amour-propre in this sense could be viewed as growing out of a basic instinct of self-preservation, extending the concern for our well-being and advantage into areas of social life remote from basic biological imperatives. But it is also a relationship to ourselves, a self-gratifying or narcissistic attachment to ourselves, or to an inauthentic and flattering image of ourselves. It would be possible

248


to connect this with the pursuit of interest in different ways. Pascal remarks that people with a completely unfounded belief in their superior intelligence (‘les habiles par imagination’) argue with greater conviction than those whose genuine intelligence perceives the complexity of the issues in debate. The former therefore impress the audience and hence succeed, which reinforces their belief in their own superiority (Pensées, L 44/S 78/LG 41).36 But it is fair to say that La Rochefoucauld himself does not make explicit the connection between amour-propre as this narcissistic attachment to self and amour-propre as the pursuit of interest. The ‘narcissistic’ perspective comes across above all, though not exclusively, in MS 1. Here it is expressed in such a way as to render the relationship between self-love and interest extremely problematic. The psyche appears to be split, with self-love operating deep undercover as an autonomous agency, pursuing its own ends unbeknownst to us, and consulting interests that may be quite different from or even diametrically opposed to ours (from those, that is, that our rational self could recognize). Self-love here seems to have a destructive rather than a self-preserving dimension. The withdrawal of MS 1 allows the other version of self-love, in which it is linked with interests of various kinds, to come to the fore. But the discarded text is none the less precious for the extraordinary vision it gives of a divided and decentred personality. 36 For another suggestion as to how we might understand the relationship between amour-propre, interest, and narcissistic self-love, see the discussion of Esprit, above, pp. 241–2.

5 Malebranche’s Synthesis Detaching himself from the ideal of pure love, Malebranche came to develop a powerful synthetic approach to the problem of selflove.1 His approach is based on the great Malebranchian thesis of our obscurity to ourselves.2 We might suppose that in order to discover our basic natural inclinations we have merely to look inside ourselves, and consult ‘le sentiment intérieur, que nous avons de ce qui se passe en nous’ (the inner awareness we have of what is going on within us) (De la recherche de la vérité, IV.1.i, Œuvres, I, 386). But this could only tell us what our inclinations are, and throws no light at all on what they should be. For if (as faith teaches us) our inclinations have been disordered by sin, then in the nature of the case the inclinations we can in fact discover by introspection must be vitiated. And thus to discover the basic inclinations of a well-ordered human nature, we are forced to leave the terrain of ‘sentiment’ and adopt a deductive rationalist approach (p. 386). In other words, the fact of self-love, prompting us as it does to misunderstand its nature,

1 Malebranche’s account of concupiscence has been touched on in connection with original sin. A striking passage links concupiscence implicitly with self-love in a way he does not elsewhere seem to develop: he refers to the difficulty of putting oneself in the presence of God, given the constant involuntary inclination to ‘nous représenter sans cesse a` nous-mêmes’ (to represent ourselves continuously to ourselves), which seems to be rooted in the body (Conversations, II, Œuvres, I, 1159 n. (and see var. a.; I, 1744) ). 2 We have no clear idea of our soul, we know it only through inner awareness (‘sentiment intérieur’), hence in confused fashion (De la recherche de la vérité, I.ii.7.iv, ´ Œuvres, I, 349–52; Eclaircissement XI, Œuvres, I, 933–41; Méditations chrétiennes et métaphysiques, I.25–8; IX.21–3, XVI.14–15, Œuvres, II, 203–4, 287–8, 364–5; Traité de l’amour de Dieu, Œuvres, II, 1056). See also my Early Modern French Thought, 229–40.

250


imposes the necessity of a methodology that will work against the intrinsic tendency of the object it aspires to study. Malebranche’s analysis engenders an elaborate set of distinctions, going quite beyond a basic antithesis between love of God and love of self. God has endowed human nature with one basic love, the love of the good in general: Nous ne pouvons rien aimer que par cet amour, puisque nous ne pouvons rien aimer qui ne soit ou qui ne paraisse un bien.3 C’est l’amour du bien en général qui est le principe de tous nos amours particuliers, parce qu’en effet cet amour n’est que notre volonté. (IV.1.iii, 388) We can love nothing save in virtue of this love, since we can love nothing that is not, or does not appear to be, a good. This love of the good in general is the root of all our particular loves, since in truth this love is identical with our will.

Malebranche is here presupposing the analysis of will he has given in the first book of De la recherche de la vérité. The will is a movement towards good in general imparted to the mind by God: its object is indeterminate. But we possess the power of freedom, that is, of diverting this movement towards objects that please us: in this way, the general inclination towards good comes to be directed towards particular objects. The role of the understanding is to present, at the behest of the will, particular objects capable of channelling this general movement towards good into themselves. But they cannot definitively engage the will’s attachment, since they can never be identified with the universal good. This is why we are free, because our attachment to particular goods is not necessary and inevitable, and we can therefore suspend it (I.1.ii, 27–8). But, as well as the inclination towards good in general, God has also endowed us with particular inclinations, rooted in the general inclination (IV.1.iii, 388). There is an inclination towards the preservation of our being, and the being of others to whom we are united by nature (IV.1.iii, 388). There is an inclination towards 3

This is a traditional position: cf. Aquinas, ST Ia, q. 82, a. 1, ad 1.

Malebranche’s Synthesis

251

other creatures that are useful to ourselves or those we love (IV.1.iv, 390). These particular inclinations, which are the fount of all others, are glossed as ‘l’amour de nous-mêmes’ (the love of ourselves) and ‘l’amour du prochain’ (the love of our neighbour) respectively (p. 390).4 There are thus three basic inclinations in all: (1) the love of the good; (2) the love of ourselves, and (3) the love of our neighbour.

The First Inclination: Love of the Good in General Malebranche therefore distinguishes (1), the love of good in general from (2), a love centred on the self. The love of good in general is the source of all psychic dynamism, in that the will, searching continually for good, obliges the mind to represent a host of objects, all candidates for the role of good. But, since none of them can satisfy a will that can be satisfied only by a universal good, then none of them can engage the will for more than a short time. Hence restlessness, or uneasiness, is the dominant characteristic of psychic life (IV.2.i, 391)—as Locke would later observe.5 In this picture of the never-ending displacement of desire, there is an affinity with Pascal’s analysis of happiness as the search for a lost object capable of satisfying the will, but above all a debt to Augustine’s ‘our heart is restless, till it find rest in thee’. At the same time, there is much that is consonant with St Thomas’s position that the will necessarily seeks its ultimate good, but that no particular good can determine its attachment (ST Ia, q. 82, a. 2). The second natural inclination, the love of ourselves and of our preservation, subdivides into the love of greatness (‘grandeur’) and 4 The first five editions gave ‘l’ amour-propre’ instead of ‘l’amour de nous-mêmes’ (Œuvres, I, 1495 (p. 390, var. d.) ). The alteration (dating from the 1700 edition) shows Malebranche’s concern to establish the ethical neutrality of love of self in this sense, as do other revisions to the text at the same stage. On the other hand, the fifth chapter of Book IV of the Recherche, which deals with ‘l’amour de nous-mêmes ou de notre propre conservation’, begins with a section entitled ‘De la seconde inclination naturelle, ou de l’amour-propre’ (IV.5, Œuvres, I, 415). 5 John Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding, ed. Peter H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979 (1st pub. 1975) ), II.xxi.31–2, 250–1.

252


the love of pleasure; or, in other words, ‘l’amour de son eˆtre et de la perfection de son eˆtre’ (the love of one’s being and of the perfection of one’s being) and ‘l’amour de son bien-être ou de la félicité’ (the love of one’s well-being or of happiness) (IV.5.ii, 416–17). At this point, one might wonder if Malebranche can, after all, sustain a distinction between the love of good and the love of ourselves? Do we not love only what is good for us? It is hard to distinguish the desire for good from the desire for happiness, which is a form of the love of self. The first inclination, towards good in general, is, as we saw, nothing other than the will itself. Now the will ‘[souhaite] toujours la félicité avec ardeur’ (always fervently [desires] happiness) (IV.2.ii, 392). In that sense, the desire for good is the desire for happiness. And the will directs the understanding only towards objects that have some relationship with us, that appear useful and produce pleasure (IV.2.ii, 392). It is indeed through pleasure that the soul recognizes its good (IV.2.i, 391), and pleasure is the motive force underlying all movements of the soul towards any kind of good (IV.5.ii, 417). We can love only what pleases, and the blessed in heaven love God’s perfections because the sight of these perfections is pleasing to them (p. 417).6 But, if this is true, then the love of good, the supposed first natural inclination, seems hard to distinguish from the love of pleasure, one of the main forms taken by the second inclination. To grasp the distinction correctly, one needs to bear in mind that the object of the first inclination, the will, is good in general: that is to say, it is indeterminate; whereas the inclination towards the conservation of our being is a particular inclination (IV.1.iii, 388). Our self is, after all, a particular entity. On the other hand, the two inclinations closely cooperate. How they do so is clear from the earlier analysis of the process of will. The movement towards the good in general is directed to particular objects by their relation to us, and we are attached to those objects by pleasure. Without the appeal of pleasure, which is obviously self-centred, in the sense that 6 Malebranche’s linking of pleasure and happiness is integrated into Pierre Force’s account of controversies about interest (Self-Interest before Adam Smith, 190–1).


253

it has to be our pleasure, the will could never be attached to any of the goods proposed to it by the intellect: it would career helplessly from object to object. On the other hand, without the movement towards the universal and indeterminate good, psychic life would be at a standstill, since every pleasure would glue us to its object. It is because the object cannot be recognized as the universal good sought by the will that the pleasure it provides cannot detain the will.7 That is why when Malebranche considers the impact on our intellectual life of the movement towards good in general, he emphasizes the restlessness or uneasiness (‘inquiétude’) of the will. For, though it prompts us to focus on objects that have some relationship with us, its restlessness positively impedes us from considering the intellectual issues that really do affect our vital interests, such as the existence of God, the truths of morality, and the immortality of the soul (IV.2.iii–iv, 393–400). It discourages us from considering abstract issues (IV.2.v, 400–4). It provokes curiosity, in the sense that what is novel seems to promise the fulfilment that the familiar denies us. This is a healthy attitude, but it needs to be regulated with care, lest we seek the appeal of the new in the wrong place (in the domain of faith, where submission to authority is paramount) or confuse what is new and what is true (IV.3–4, 404–15). In other words, the section on the first inclination confirms the point that it is essentially concerned with the relationship of the self to the manifold of objects outside itself.

The Second Inclination: Love of Ourselves The second inclination, on the other hand, is centred on the self. But that does not make it evil: it is a natural inclination. This is an absolutely crucial point, for Malebranche, though subscribing the Augustinian account of the Fall, does not analyse self-love within this framework that is to say, as originally legitimate, but presently 7 On the relation between the movement towards good in general and the movement towards particular goods, see also Traité de l’amour de Dieu, Œuvres, II, 1055.

254


corrupt. Its intrinsic legitimacy, founded on its naturalness, remains. Self-love is prone, though, to becoming unnatural, in the sense of transgressing the objective relationships between Creator and creator, what Malebranche elsewhere refers to as ‘l’Ordre’: [Dieu] veut donc qu’ils [les esprits crée´s] aient tous une inclination naturelle pour leur conservation aussi bien que pour leur bonheur, car ils ne peuvent eˆtre heureux sans eˆtre. Cependant il n’est pas juste de mettre sa dernière fin dans soi-même, et de ne se pas aimer par rapport a` Dieu; puisqu’en effet n’ayant de nous-mêmes aucune bonté ni aucune subsistance, n’ayant aucun pouvoir de nous rendre heureux et parfaits, nous ne devons nous aimer que par rapport a` Dieu qui seul peut eˆtre notre souverain bien, et nous rendre parfaits. (IV.5.i, 416) [God] therefore wills that created minds should all have a natural inclination towards their own preservation as well as towards their happiness, since they cannot be happy without existing. However, it is not right to locate one’s final end in oneself, or to love oneself irrespective of any relation to God; for since in truth we have, of ourselves, no goodness or continued existence, no power to make ourselves happy and perfect, we should love ourselves only in relationship to God who alone can be our supreme good and who alone can make us perfect.

The closing relative clause implies clearly enough that, in requiring us to love ourselves only in relation to God, Malebranche is not advocating a purely distinterested attachment. On the other hand, the kind of love of God we can achieve without grace is nothing but an unjust and inordinate amour-propre. Charity (the love of God for his own sake, as he is) is beyond human strength. Only God can give it by his grace. This is shown sufficiently by the difficulty we feel in even grasping what it would mean to love someone or something for its own sake, instead of in relation to ourselves (‘par rapport a` soi’) and for the ultimate end of our own satisfaction (p. 416).8 As was noted above, Malebranche distinguishes, within love of self, the second inclination, between ‘l’amour de la grandeur’ and 8

Here too, Rodis-Lewis notes, the text has been substantially rewritten to take account of the polemic with François Lamy, toning down the stress on the perversion of amour-propre by sin (Œuvres, I, 1502 (p. 416 n. 1) ).


255

‘l’amour du plaisir’. He equates the love of greatness with the love of one’s being and of its perfection because what we desire when we desire greatness is in fact independence: the kind of self-sufficiency that actually pertains to God. Pleasure, on the other hand, is the appetite not for being, but for well-being. One might think that the appetite for being takes precedence over the appetite for pleasure or well-being, and so the Stoics would have maintained. Malebranche denies this. The love of greatness and independence, the love of one’s being as such, aims at what cannot directly procure happiness: one may become less happy as one becomes more powerful. Pleasure, though, makes us directly happy, though it may not do so abidingly (‘solidement’). Greatness and independence are not wholly in our control, since they consist in a relation to our environment. Pleasure, however, is within ourselves, since it is an actual modification of our soul, intrinsically capable of satisfying it. The love of pleasure, or wellbeing, is stronger than the love of existence (IV.5.ii, 417–18), as the case of the suicide shows. It is therefore fair to speak of Malebranche’s conception of self-love as hedonistic, and in his stress on the driving force of pleasure he aligns himself with the same current of thought as Jansenius, for all their differences on theological issues.9 By equating the love of greatness with the love of the perfection of our own being, Malebranche shows that he is not considering it primarily as a form of interest, as a relationship of domination over others, but as a quality of being (perhaps rather like the Nietzschean will to power as glossed by Deleuze). We could perhaps think of this, in terms of a distinction earlier made, as the narcissistic strand of self-love, whereas the love of pleasure and well-being is linked more with the interested strand. On the other hand, amour-propre does play a major role in shaping our relationships with others. Human beings are driven by the desire to elevate themselves above others, 9 But also with Hobbes, inasmuch as Hobbes equates ‘Good’ in the sense of ‘the end desired’ with ‘Jucundum, Delightfull’ (Leviathan, I.6, 40), and, again, with Descartes, who holds that Epicurus was correct in identifying pleasure, understood as the contentment of the mind, as the motive or goal to which all our actions tend (to Elisabeth, 18 Aug. 1645, AT IV, 276: OP III, 597).

256


either by their qualities, such as learning and virtue, or by their social and material advantages. But this desire is anchored not in reason, but in the imagination of other people, as weak and wretched as ourselves (IV.6.i, 419). We therefore suppress the image of our own nullity by the creation of an image in others’ minds, by a mechanism already discussed above. Nor need this image correspond at all with the reality: the appearance of wealth is more important than the fact of it, and the same is true of virtue (in testimony of which Malebranche cites ‘l’auteur des Réflexions morales’ (i.e. La Rochefoucauld): ‘La vertu n’irait pas si loin si la vanité ne lui tenait compagnie’ (Virtue would not travel so far without the escort of vanity (IV.6.i, 419) ).10

The Third Inclination: Love of Our Neighbour Malebranche departs, however, from the Pascal/Nicole thesis of human beings’ fundamentally conflictual relationship with one another. He rehabilitates the Aristotelian and Stoic doctrine of man’s natural sociability. The third inclination, which links us first and foremost with other human beings, and then with our environment in general, serves to mediate between the first two: it prevents the love of ourselves from weakening the love we have for things outside ourselves. Its effect is that we participate in the emotions and situations of our fellow creatures, especially our fellow human beings (IV.13.i, 475–6). God has created invisible links between human beings that induce us to love one another, to preserve another’s life as we would our own, and to identify other people and ourselves as necessary parts in a whole without which we could not survive (p. 477).11 More strikingly still, he has so ordered our relationships with one another that apparently anti-social inclinations should in 10

La Rochefoucauld, Maximes, 200. Malebranche’s analysis of the psycho-physical mechanisms of this interaction with others connects with the earlier discussion of the tendencies to imitation and compassion (De la recherche de la vérité, II.i.7, Œuvres, I, 175–7). 11


257

fact conduce to the preservation of society. Thus, the love of greatness, which one might expect to engender nothing but rivalry and conflict, in fact produces emulation, which inspires military courage: it thus benefits the country as a whole, even though all are working for their individual interests (one is reminded of La Rochefoucauld’s analysis of victory in MS 41). Again, since it would be harmful for society as a whole if everyone frankly avowed his or her desire to rule over others, there is a secret inclination to civility in those most naturally fitted for authority, which indulges other people’s susceptibilities, and helps to reconcile them to their own subordination (pp. 480–1). The inclination to civility thus counterbalances the disruptive tendencies of the inclination to greatness, which we have already seen is one of the avatars of self-love. In general, the inclination towards friendship with others takes on, in Malebranche, a good part of the burden that Pascal and Nicole laid on the enlightenment of concupiscence and amour-propre.

Love of Self and Love of Order But it is to Malebranche’s specifically ethical and theological work that we must turn in order fully to grasp his mature doctrine on amour-propre. The concept receives its fullest ethical analysis in the Traité de morale, first published in 1684, the fourth and final edition appearing in 1707. Malebranche holds that we discover two sets of relationships in the divine mind. When I see truth, I discover part of what God is thinking. I discover relationships of magnitude, such as mathematical relationships, eternal truths of the speculative variety. When, on the other hand, I discover that there are some things more perfect, more estimable, more worthy of love than others, I discern something of what God wills, or in other words of the Order according to which he wills. These relationships of perfection are practical truths.12 For example, an animal is more estimable, higher 12 Malebranche, Traité de morale, I.i.4, 6–7, Œuvres, II, 426–7. The concept of Order is also expounded, in connection with the Malebranchian thesis that we see all ´ things in God, in De la recherche de la vérité, Eclaircissement X, Œuvres, I, 909–14.

258


on the scale of perfection, than a stone, less so than a human being (I.i.13, Œuvres, II, 429). Virtue consists in the knowledge and love of practical as distinct from speculative truths: in other words, in the love of Order (I.i.19, 431). ‘Order’ is therefore concerned with value rather than abstract truth, and its domain is the will rather than the intellect. The love of Order can be set against amourpropre inasmuch as the latter prompts us to judge according to our particular relationships to things instead of the objective hierarchy of perfection or value. These subjective relationships are false and imaginary (I.i.13, 429). For instance, if I value my horse above my coachman, to quote Malebranche’s example, this can only be because of some quirk of self-love on my part: I feel myself exalted because the noble animal is mine, and there are scores of people who would buy him from me at any price if I would consent to sell, whereas a coachman is a coachman is a coachman. The fact that he is a rational creature with a soul to save somehow escapes me altogether. This antithesis between the love of Order and amour-propre makes it easy to see that ‘l’amour de l’Ordre’ is simply Malebranche’s other name for charity (I.iii.1, 443). Malebranche now introduces a further distinction, or, rather, adapts an old one. He divides love into two principal varieties, the love of union and the love of benevolence.13 Sensual passion is an example of the love of union: the lover desires (deludedly) to be united with the object so that its action within him may make him happy.14 The love of benevolence is what we feel for worthy people, simply because they are worthy, even if they are in no position to 13 Here again there is an echo of St Thomas, and the distinction between love of concupiscence and love of friendship (ST IaIIae, q. 26, a. 4), which we have encountered in other early modern writers. Perhaps it is fair to say of Malebranche what has been said above of Descartes: that he is more tolerant of established doctrines and concepts in ethics than in metaphysics. 14 This is an excellent example of the affinity between Malebranche’s ethical and his metaphysical doctrines. The idea that a given object can be, in itself, a cause of pleasure or happiness is a metaphysical illusion, based on the false belief that creatures have causal powers of their own. The belief is refuted in De la recherche de la vérité, VI.ii.3, Œuvres, I, 646–53, and in Méditations chrétiennes et métaphysiques, V–VI, Œuvres, II, 231–52.


259

benefit us in any way. Now, since God alone can make us happy, our love of union should be directed to him alone (I.iii.8, 446), though it is virtually impossible to avoid the promptings of love for sensible goods on account of the soul’s dependence on the body, a result of original sin (I.iii.9, 447). On the other hand, since God has communicated a measure of perfection to created things, it is entirely proper to love them with a love of benevolence or esteem, in proportion to the level of perfection they actually possess, in so far as we can know it, by faith or reason (I.iii.10, 447–8). (Malebranche insists, however, that we owe a basic esteem to all human beings as such (II.vii.2, 584).) This kind of love, it is plain, is not intrinsically self-interested. How do these two loves relate to amour-propre? The love of union, it is obvious, can be complicit with amour-propre in the bad sense. But if it is properly directed, to God, it can be reconciled with an enlightened form of amour-propre. ‘L’homme veut invinciblement eˆtre heureux: il voit clairement que Dieu seul peut le rendre heureux. [. . .] Il est e´vident qu’il peut désirer d’être uni a` Dieu’ (Man wishes invincibly to be happy: he clearly sees that God alone can make him so. [. . .] It is plain that he can desire to be united with God) (I.iii.12, 449). But the love of esteem or benevolence is not directed only towards other people. We should entertain it towards ourselves as well. For instance, the appetite for happiness can be considered independently of the love of union: wishing ourselves happy is part of wishing ourselves well, and thus comes under ‘amour de bienveillance’. Again, it would be appropriate to esteem ourselves as possessed of certain perfections, even if only those pertaining to our species in general: it would be wrong to imagine oneself as no better than the brutes. But this love is always perverted by amour-propre, which does not willingly suffer any obstacle to its happiness or glory (thus, I might imagine myself more spiritually advanced than I am, and so expect rewards far exceeding my actual merit). Even an enlightened self-love, therefore, must be brought into agreement with justice, or regulated. However:

260


Lorsque l’amour-propre est ećlairé, lorsqu’il est réglé, lorsqu’il est d’accord avec l’amour de l’Ordre, on est dans la plus grande perfection dont on soit capable. Car certainement un homme, qui se met toujours dans le rang qui lui convient, qui ne veut eˆtre heureux qu’autant qu’il mérite de l’être, qui cherche son bonheur dans la justice qu’il attend du juste juge, qui vit de sa foi, et demeure content, ferme et patient dans l’espérance et l’avant-goût des vrais biens: Celui-là, dis-je, est solidement homme de bien, quoique ce soit l’amour qu’il a pour lui-même, qui soit le principe naturel, mais réglé et corrigé par la Grâce, de l’amour de l’Ordre sur toutes choses. (I.iii.13, 449) When self-love is enlightened, when it is regulated, when it is in agreement with the love of Order, we have reached the greatest perfection of which we are capable. For it is certain that a man who always places himself according to his rank, who wishes to be happy only in so far as he deserves to be, who seeks his happiness in the justice he expects from the righteous judge, who lives on his faith, and remains content, resolute, and patient in the hope and the foretaste of the true goods: such a man, I say, is truly good, even though it is his love for himself that is the root (natural, but regulated and corrected by grace) of his love for Order above all other things.

This is a very different conception of enlightened self-love from Nicole’s. For Nicole, self-love is always self-love, and therefore intrinsically vicious, even though it may be so enlightened as to produce acts of worldly virtue and social benefit. But to attain virtue in the real sense we must be motivated by charity, a gift of divine grace, instead of self-love. Malebranche’s point is that self-love itself can be regulated and corrected by grace, so that it is transfigured into the love of Order, or charity. In fact, enlightened self-love can have salutary effects at an earlier stage of the spiritual process. Raw self-love induces resistance to enlightenment, and makes it difficult to contemplate Order, since this always reveals our hidden disorders (I.v.22, 471). On the other hand, even if the heart is corrupt, enlightened self-love can sometimes arrest or diminish the movement of the passions, and indeed foster a desire for conversion, if one thinks that will increase one’s pleasures and ensure one’s happiness. To be sure, the help of grace is necessary if one is to work effectually for one’s conversion (p. 471). But nature can be


261

made to work for grace: enlightened self-love can induce one to withdraw into oneself, and devote some attention to examining the truths of religion: it can encourage one to eschew fleeting pleasures for the solid and authentic pleasure of eternity. In this sense, one can actually consider enlightened self-love, the desire to be solidly happy, as itself a sufficient grace (I.vii.3–4, 482–3). Thus, for all the corruption of which it is capable, self-love is not intrinsically bad. And this theoretical point has pronounced implications for religious values and practice. Thus, some condemn fear of hell as a motive to repentance, because inspired by amour-propre.15 This is wrong pragmatically: fear of hell, in Malebranche’s view, is the most efficacious and widespread stimulus to do what may lead to our justification. But it is also wrong in principle: L’amour-propre en lui-même n’est pas mauvais: Dieu le produit sans cesse en nous. Il nous porte invinciblement au bien; et par ce même mouvement, il nous détourne invinciblement du mal. Nous ne pouvons point nous empêcher de souhaiter d’être heureux, et par conséquent de n’être point malheureux. (I.viii.14, 498) Self-love in itself is not wrong: God is constantly producing it within us. It carries us invincibly towards the good; and by this very movement turns us invincibly away from evil. We cannot help wishing to be happy, and hence not to be unhappy.

Again: Tout motif est naturellement, et nécessairement fondé sur l’amour-propre, ou sur le désir invincible d’être heureux, j’entends solidement heureux, sur le mouvement que Dieu imprime sans cesse en nous pour le bonheur et la perfection de notre eˆtre, en un mot sur la volonté propre, car nous ne pouvons aimer que par notre volonté. (p. 499) 15 In accepting the value of repentance prompted by fear of hell (‘attrition’) as well as that of the true ‘contrition’ that takes the form of sorrow for the offence to God, Malebranche is clearly separating himself from the Jansenists. Pascal, for instance, polemicizes against the sufficiency of attrition in the tenth Provinciale (PPOD 430–5, OC I, 691–3).

262


Every motive is naturally and necessarily rooted in self-love, or in the invincible desire to be happy (I mean solidly happy), in the movement God is continually imparting to us for the happiness and perfection of our being, in a word, in our own will, for we cannot love except by our will.

It might seem that Malebranche has discarded the distinction upheld in De la recherche de la vérité between the movement towards good in general, equated with the will, and the particular inclination that is amour-propre. The problem with this view is that the last edition of De la recherche de la vérité dates from 1712, five years after the last edition of the Traité de morale, so that, if he did change his mind, he failed to register the fact in his revision. The contradiction arguably disappears if one bears in mind the different purposes of the two works. From the ethical point of view adopted in the Traité de morale, the movement of the will towards an indeterminate good has to be channelled towards particular objects, and Malebranche’s point is that it is our aspiration for happiness or greatness (our amour-propre in other words) that has to channel them. We cannot aspire to good unless it is apprehended as in some sense our good. But the goal of De la recherche de la vérité is to examine the roots of error, and here Malebranche wants to point out that the ceaseless movement of the mind towards good in general gives rise to one set of errors, whereas the particular inclination that is amour-propre gives rise to another set. The value of the distinction thus depends on the problematic adopted. None the less, Malebranche is aware of the danger that, if you make amour-propre the root of all spiritual aspiration and effort, you seem to end up with an image of man as using God, in the Augustinian sense, for his own ends. He circumvents this problem by the distinction (earlier encountered in St François de Sales and Senault) between motive and end: Il y a de la différence entre les motifs et la fin comme entre les effets et leurs causes. On est excité par les motifs a` agir pour la fin. Dieu se faisant connaˆıtre, se faisant goûter, il se fait aimer. Dieu est la fin, et son action en nous est le motif de notre amour. (I.viii.15, 500)


263

Between motives and end there is the same difference as between effects and their causes. We are stimulated by motives to act for the sake of the end. When God makes himself known and experienced, he makes himself loved. God is the end, his action within us is the motive of our love.

Amour-propre is therefore a legitimate motive of spiritual aspiration and effort. Without amour-propre, the desire for our own happiness, perfection, and pleasure, we could grasp the superiority of God to all other goods in a purely speculative and abstract fashion, but we could not be moved by love for him or for Order. Concupiscence presupposes amour-propre, and, according to Augustine, charity is a holy concupiscence (p. 500).16 Thus charity, so far from being opposed to amour-propre, presupposes it. Acceptable as the motive, amour-propre, however, is completely unacceptable as the end. ‘Il est défendu de s’aimer ou quelque créature que ce soit comme sa fin, ou la cause de sa perfection et de son bonheur’ (It is unlawful to love ourselves, or indeed any creature, as if it were one’s end, or the cause of one’s perfection and happiness) (I.viii.15, 500). In other words, though the quest for fulfilment must come from ourselves, and it is the quest for our fulfilment, we cannot seek fulfilment in ourselves. This was the vice of the Stoics, who thought their happiness entirely their own creation, and independent of the gods (I.viii.16, 501). On the contrary, the effect of the pleasures vouchsafed by God to the blessed is that they forget themselves and lose themselves in the divinity: love transforms the lover into the beloved. This loss of one’s own identity in the experience of happiness is quite conceivable if we bear in mind that happiness means more to us than being: we love or hate our being according as we are happy or unhappy, and anyone would prefer nonentity to an eternity of even mild suffering (I.viii.15, 500). This claim seems quite debatable, but in any case it makes clear that for Malebranche the appetite for survival is a secondary aspect of amour-propre to the appetite for happiness or pleasure. In any case, it follows from this view that it makes sense to say that, though our 16

Augustine, De spiritu et littera, IV.6, PL 44, 204.

264


love of God has its roots in the love of ourselves, we can and must none the less love God above ourselves and all things (I.viii.16, 501). Amour-propre, then, is an inevitable fact of human nature. Thus, instead of struggling to detect and root out the traces of amour-propre in one’s supposedly holiest aspirations and activities, we should aim to regulate it: On ne peut cesser de s’aimer: mais on peut cesser de se mal aimer. On ne peut arrêter le mouvement de l’amour-propre: mais on peut le régler sur la loi divine. On peut, par le mouvement d’un amour-propre ećlairé, d’un amour-propre soutenu par la foi et par l’espérance, et animé par la charité, sacrifier ses plaisirs présents aux plaisirs futurs, se rendre malheureux pour un temps, afin d’éviter la vengeance e´ternelle du juste juge. Car la grace ne détruit point la nature, le mouvement que Dieu imprime sans cesse en nous pour le bien général, ne s’arrête jamais. (II.xiv.3, 644) We cannot cease loving ourselves: but we can cease loving ourselves badly. We cannot put a stop to the movement of self-love; but we can regulate it by the divine law. We can, under the impulsion of an enlightened self-love, a self-love sustained by faith and hope, and vivified by charity, sacrifice our present to our future pleasures, and make ourselves unhappy for a time, in order to escape the eternal vengeance of the righteous judge. For grace does not destroy nature, and the movement towards good in general that God continually imparts to us is never stopped.

The imagery here is dynamic, mechanical, and in making the source of our will a movement imparted to us by God (rather than an inbuilt tendency) Malebranche is drawing on his own distinctive theory of causality and movement. Yet in asserting that grace does not destroy nature he is harking back to a classic Thomist thesis (‘grace does not destroy nature, but perfect it’ (ST Ia, q. 1, a. 8, ad 2) ), which it is not altogether straightforward to reconcile with the tendency of Augustine’s thought, since this does not depend on a clear demarcation between grace and nature.17 17

On the other hand, Augustine himself says that by grace the human will is not destroyed, but changed from evil to good (De gratia et libero arbitrio, XX.41, PL 44, 905).


265

The moral neutrality of self-love is made even clearer in what follows: Ainsi l’amour-propre, le désir d’être heureux n’est ni vertu ni vice: mais c’est le motif naturel de la vertu, et qui devient dans les pécheurs le motif du vice. (II.xiv.4, 644) Thus self-love, the desire to be happy, is neither virtue nor vice: no, it is the natural motive for virtue, which in sinners becomes the motive for vice. Notre amour-propre est donc le motif, qui, secouru par la grâce, nous unit a` Dieu, comme a` notre bien, ou a` la cause de notre bonheur; et nous soumet a` la Raison, comme a` notre loi, ou au modèle de notre perfection. Mais il ne faut pas faire notre fin, ou notre loi, de notre motif, il faut véritablement et sincèrement aimer l’Ordre, et s’unir a` Dieu par la raison. (II.xiv.5, 645) Our self-love is thus the motive that, with the aid of grace, unites us with God, as with our good, or as with the cause of our happiness; and subjects us to reason, as to our law, or as to the model of our perfection. But we must not turn our motive into an end, or a law, in itself, we must genuinely and sincerely love Order and unite ourselves to God by reason.

Thus one who abstains, out of enlightened amour-propre, from drunkenness and thieving, while at the same time wishing that God would not punish these behaviour patterns, is not righteous (‘juste’), and cannot be said to love God. Better the case of one who would rather there was no God than a God who took pleasure in damning those who genuinely love Order and reason: for such a God (‘fantastic, unjust, and cruel’) is not worthy of love (II.xiv.5, 645–6). This must be put forward first and foremost as an anti-Calvinist statement, but it is very likely directed also at Jansenism.18 But, if the love of God must be in accordance with the love of Order, there are important consequences for the debate about the possibility of a disinterested love of God. That Malebranche rejects this notion is apparent enough from the foregoing. But he sharpens his point by directly tackling the ‘impossible supposition’ 18 Of course, the Jansenist would say that one denied grace can have no sincere love of order and reason.

266


that we could and should go on loving God even if we knew he had condemned us to eternal torment. For this supposition is basically contradictory. According to Order, all merit must have its reward. To choose an eternity of suffering to please God would be a highly meritorious sacrifice. But on this hypothesis it must go unrewarded. In other words, God would be violating the Order that is his inviolable law. He could require a human being to choose unhappiness only for a limited time (I.viii.17, 501–2). This contradictory supposition cannot be the basis for a proper approach to the love of God: ‘Dieu veut qu’on l’aime tel qu’il est, et non pas tel qu’il est impossible qu’il soit. Il faut aimer l’Etre infiniment parfait, et non pas un fantôme e´pouvantable, un Dieu injuste’ (God wishes to be loved as he is, and not as it is impossible he should be. We are to love the infinitely perfect being, not a hideous phantom, an unjust God) (p. 502). Again, Malebranche is using the theory of self-love to challenge what he sees as an unintelligible and repulsive image of deity. There is a smack of Enlightenment rationalism in this, a reluctance to acquiesce in the traditional submission to the mystery of God’s ways. Malebranche develops this critique of disinterested love further in the Traité de l’amour de Dieu. The Traité was first published in 1697, a third edition appearing in 1707, contemporary with the fourth and final edition of the Traité de morale. The circumstances of the debate between Malebranche and François Lamy have already been mentioned.19 In the Traité, Malebranche insists that we cannot dissociate love and pleasure: we can love only what is pleasing, and hate only what is displeasing.20 It is not that lowly loves are governed by pleasure, of which higher loves are independent: we love Order because its beauty is pleasing, just as we love sensible objects because they are pleasing. There are indeed two kinds of pleasure: an enlightened pleasure, inclining us to love its true cause, the true good, the good of the mind, and a confused pleasure, 19 See above, pp. 214–16. For a detailed account of the controversy, see Geneviève Rodis-Lewis’s notes in Malebranche, Œuvres, II, 1344–50. 20 Malebranche, Traité de l’amour de Dieu, Œuvres, II, 1051.


267

which arouses love for powerless creatures and false bodily goods (Œuvres, II, 1051). Again, one notes the metaphysical foundation of the ethical doctrine. The first pleasure is reasonable both because it presupposes a correct understanding of the causal efficacy of God alone, and because it reflects the hierarchical superiority of mind over body. The second is based on an erroneous understanding of causality, but it is also confused in the way all bodily perceptions are confused, in that it projects onto the object the qualities that are in fact modifications of our own mind. Inasmuch as the first pleasure causes us to love what it is rational to love, it perfects us, whereas the second kind corrupts us by fostering attachments to what is forbidden by Order. But all pleasure, as such, makes us happy in some sense, though only the first kind makes us solidly happy, the other being accompanied by anxiety and unrest, not to mention fear of eternal punishment.21 Thus, all human beings love pleasure in general (which is tantamount to saying that they want to be happy), and this is in general the determining motive of their actions (pp. 1051–2). When we refrain from pleasure, it is only in the hope of having more, or of escaping pain; or because we feel an aversion from it based on our inclination for the perfection of our being (an inclination that we saw earlier can be regarded as a sub-species of amour-propre). Grace itself is a holy pleasure, and a foretaste of the supreme pleasure (p. 1052). This desire for happiness or pleasure, alias self-love, is the root of all our particular impulsions (‘mouvements’) (p. 1052). The love of God, so far from being antithethical to this desire, actually presupposes it: we can love God only out of the love of beatitude, since we can love only by our will (p. 1052). If this is so, then all love of God must be interested (‘intéressé’) in the sense that we perceive him as our good. But that is simply the motive of our love for God, and it does not exclude loving God himself as our end 21

Malebranche’s conception of happiness is thus hedonistic, though his metaphysical schema allows him to incorporate the idea of fulfilment stressed in the Aristotelian–Thomist tradition.

268


(p. 1053). Indeed, God himself has implanted the will to happiness as the motive that inclines us to seek him as our end (p. 1060). But this does not mean that we can never escape self-centredness. In all pleasure, Malebranche argues, the more intense it is, the more the soul forgets itself in it. The only pleasure, however, to which the soul should thus abandon itself is the pleasurable perception of the true good. Bring these two points together, and we find that if we were able to feel at maximum intensity the pleasure of the perception of the true good, God, the soul would forget itself and God would be all in all within it. In this life, however, there is a constant conflict between the actual intensity of the experience of pleasure and the objective Order of good: apart from grace, the strongest pleasures we feel are caused, or rather imagined to be caused, by sensible objects. But in heaven the contradiction would be overcome, and union with God would coincide with maximal pleasure (pp. 1055–6). Malebranche doubtless feels that the ideal of pure love, without ‘retour sur soi’ (reflexive awareness of oneself ), is so strongly entrenched in the mystical tradition that it must be accepted. What he wants is to reconcile it with his theory that our fundamental motivation is the desire for happiness. He rejects therefore the ‘impossible supposition’ that seeks to bracket out that desire from the soul’s relationship to God. What the ideal of pure love can dispense with is instead the sense of personal identity. After all, as he has said elsewhere, the desire for well-being is stronger than the desire to continue to exist: we love existence only for the sake of well-being (‘on n’aime donc l’être que pour le bien-être’ (p. 1056)). In fact, even in earthly love the lover forgets himself in his concern with the beloved, because he finds happiness only in the enjoyment of the beloved. Paradoxically, then, the greater the pleasure, the less interested is the love it produces, or, to put it another way, the more that love transcends self-awareness (‘plus le plaisir est grand, moins l’amour qu’il produit est intéressé, ou moins il y a de retour sur soi’ (p. 1056) ). What happens is annihilation of self, loss of self, in the beloved, transformation of self into the beloved: oblivious of our own, we take on the beloved’s interests and enter into its


269

inclinations. And, if even earthly pleasure (based on a misrecognition of its true cause) can achieve this, how much more must it be true of that of the saints (p. 1056)? (It is not quite clear whether he means the saints in heaven, who enjoy the vision of God, or those saints who enjoy mystical union with God in this life: but the difference is not material.) Malebranche’s idea of pure love does not, therefore, require a conscious indifference to one’s own happiness: it rather consists in an identification of oneself with God, and a weakening of one’s consciousness of separate identity. But it is not confined to the mystical realm, for it can be achieved on the moral level, when one regulates one’s desire for happiness by the order of divine justice, wanting to be happy only in so far as it is just that one should be so, striving to acquire the virtues, and to pattern one’s behaviour on the divine law. For in so doing one is conforming one’s will to the will of God, and thus, in a sense, loving him as he does himself: what more could pure love mean than this (p. 1059)? Such a love, for all its motive is our desire for happiness, has God as its ultimate end, because it does not terminate in the self, like Stoic moral perfection, or in sensible objects, like the ideal of the Epicureans (p. 1060). We have more than once encountered the problem of the relationship of self-love to friendship. Malebranche’s opponents argue that, if perfect friendship is disinterested, then a fortiori the same must apply to the love of God.22 Breaking with a long tradition that distinguishes between imperfect, self-interested, and perfect, disinterested friendship, Malebranche denies that friendship can be disinterested.23 If we love a friend for his or her qualities, it can only be because these qualities please us (this is true even of ethical qualities: we love righteousness because there is something in it that pleases us, as human beings). If we are aware of his or her failings, 22 As is mentioned above, the argument is found in Lamy, C1 III, 483, and in Fénelon, ‘Sur le pur amour’, Lettres et opuscules spirituelles, XXIII, Œuvres, I, 664. 23 Cf. Traité de morale, II.xiii.12, Œuvres, II, 643, where Malebranche argues that a ‘disinterested’ friend is one who, motivated by enlightened and righteous self-love, expects the reward of his or her friendship from God alone.

270


then our affection must be based on his or her affection for us, and is thus inspired by our love of ourselves (p. 1062). As in the Traité de morale, Malebranche again attacks the ‘impossible supposition’. Those who make it, he suggests, do so because they imagine (presumably not altogether consciously) that the acceptance of damnation will actually conduce towards their salvation (p. 1066). The attempt to vanquish amour-propre by cultivating indifference to happiness is a hollow imaginary victory (p. 1068). Thus in both cases amour-propre rises triumphant from its ashes, but now all the more dangerous because invisible. It is better, then, frankly to acknowledge the root of one’s love of God in the desire to be happy, even if the experience of union with God will transcend the self-centredness of our aspirations. Malebranche’s conception of self-love is thus complex and inclusive. In rehabilitating self-love, he might be seen as providing a healthy antidote to a moralistic pessimism. At the same time, by his distinction between the motive and the end of love, and by his insistence that, although disinterestedness is impossible, self-forgetfulness is not, he leaves room for an experience of union with God that transcends self-centredness: he does not reduce our relationship with God to the utilitarian or hedonistic kind of friendship decried by Aristotle and Aquinas.24 On the other hand, if uncoupled from the metaphysico-ethical concept of Order, his theory could be turned to advantage by the irreligious. The denial of disinterested love could be used to undermine the superior claims of Christian morality: you condemn me, says the libertine, for my pursuit of pleasure or advantage, but how do I differ from you? Again, the conception of enlightened self-love is, in itself, subjective and formal: formal in the sense that it can accommodate a variety of ethical and ideological contents. Thus, A’s enlightened self-love might lead him to ignore all earthly pleasures for the sake of religion; whereas B’s might teach her to regulate her pursuit of pleasure in accordance with purely social norms, or purely physical criteria such as the preservation of health. 24

Aristotle, Ethics, VIII.iii.1–2 (1156a ); Aquinas, ST IaIIae, q. 26, a. 4, ad 3.


271

A might say that, objectively, B’s ‘enlightenment’ is false: but, since B could say the same of A, the appeal to an objective guarantee of enlightenment is heard by a subjective authority. And, once self-love is admitted to be natural, it is not surprising to find Enlightenment philosophers ignoring any distinction between human kind’s original and its corrupt nature, and granting the self-love we observe empirically in ourselves and those around us an ethical legitimacy that would have scandalized Malebranche.25 By contrast, the writers studied in this chapter, including Malebranche, all perceive human nature as not coinciding with its own ideal, its own original pattern. If, therefore, self-love is in some sense natural, it is still, in the present state of our nature, out of kilter. It cannot be regarded simply as a direct growth of the natural urge to self-preservation. For this reason, there is something perverse and inauthentic in self-love, and this appears particularly clearly in its liability to illusion: which is the subject of the next chapter. 25 See, e.g., François-Marie Arouet de Voltaire, Lettres philosophiques, ed. Raymond Naves, Classiques Garnier (Paris: Bordas, 1988 (1st pub. 1964), XXV, §XI, 152; ClaudeAdrien Helvétius, De l’esprit, ed. Jacques Montaux (Paris: Fayard, 1988 (1st pub. 1758)), I.4, 45. Rousseau of course is the exception.


PART THREE PROBLEMS OF SELF-KNOWLEDGE


6 Forms of Self-Knowledge Self-love is frequently taken to involve blindness and error in our attachment to ourselves. The present chapter will deal in more sustained fashion with this issue, and with the general problem of self-knowledge.1 There is, however, a methodological issue here. To limit oneself to a small group of texts, with common ideological affiliations, permits detailed analysis but may lead to partial or distorted conclusions. So I begin with a brief and broad survey of a wider range of texts than those I intend to examine in detail. Few writers of the seventeenth century would have dissented from the lesson of La Fontaine’s hermit: Apprendre a` se connaˆıtre est le premier des soins Qu’impose a` tous mortels la Majesté suprême.2 To learn to know oneself is the first care Enjoined on mortals by the supreme Majesty.

And representations of self-ignorance often contribute substantially to the plot, and the overall emotional effect of many works of literature of the period. Self-knowledge and self-ignorance are 1 For the understanding of the philosophical problems associated with self-knowledge in French thought of this period, Geneviève Lewis, Le Problème de l’inconscient et le cartésianisme (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1950), remains indispensable. Henceforth I shall refer to it only in connection with specific points, but it contains much illuminating comment on individual authors and topics discussed here (including Nicole, François Lamy, Arnauld, ‘pensées imperceptibles’, and freedom). The chapter ‘Les Profondeurs de l’âme chez les théologiens cartésiens’ (pp. 188–257) is especially relevant. 2 La Fontaine, ‘Le Juge arbitre, l’hospitalier, et le solitaire’, Fables, XII.29, ll. 39–40.

276

Problems of Self-Knowledge

thus, like self-love, general preoccupations of the culture. But they are explored in keeping with many different agendas. To start with, it would be misleading to imagine that what seventeenth-century writers meant by ‘knowing oneself’ is necessarily what we mean. Selfknowledge is normally taken in our culture as an awareness of one’s own character and motivations, of the significance of one’s behaviour patterns. We deplore its absence, say, in a friend (like Wodehouse’s Bingo Little) who has just announced that he has found the love of his life, the first really meaningful relationship, compared to which nothing that came before was more than a fleeting attachment, when we remember, what he seems to have forgotten, that all the relationships he has just condemned to insignificance were themselves announced in just these terms. We are used to conceiving self-knowledge along Montaignian lines, as the ‘espineuse entreprise’ (thorny enterprise) of detecting the shifts and eddies of our thoughts, or the quest for the ‘forme maˆıtresse’ (mistress form—Montaigne’s term for the dominant character underlying all our fluctuations) that underlies them all.3 Or we think of La Rochefoucauld’s interest in the complexities of motivation. But this is not how all early modern writers would always have understood self-knowledge. In general, self-knowledge involves a sense of one’s fundamental relationships to the world and to others as much as a reflexive relationship to oneself. La Fontaine himself explores self-knowledge in a variety of perspectives. That it can involve self-examination is clear from the abundant use of mirror-imagery, often associated with water, in poems concerned with self-knowledge. ‘L’Homme et son image’ (I.11), addressed to La Rochefoucauld, shows how self-love blinds us to our own faults. The faults of others are mirrors of our own, in which, however, we manage to avoid looking. The Maximes, however, are a stream of pure water into which we cannot resist gazing, and thus beholding ourselves as we are. (The implication, however, might be that we might end up fascinated in the narcissistic contemplation of our own faults.) The stag in ‘Le Cerf se voyant dans 3

Montaigne, Essais, II.6, ‘De l’exercitation’, III.2, ‘Du repentir’, VS 378, 811.

Forms of Self-Knowledge

277

l’eau’ (VI.9) is enchanted by the sight of his antlers, disappointed in that of his spindly legs—failing to see, until bitter experience teaches otherwise, that in danger the legs are his best hope of survival, whereas the antlers may impede his flight. These two examples are not on all fours. In the first, there is a personal misrecognition of personal faults; in the second, a personal misrecognition of the characteristics of one’s species. In ‘Le Rat et l’éléphant’ (VIII.15), the real-world referent is an alleged national characteristic—social pretension—rather than a personal flaw: the error consists in a failure to perceive, not one’s individual qualities, but one’s place in relation to other creatures and to the physical, or by analogy the social, world, which is presented as a hierarchy of different and competing species. In ‘Le Juge arbitre, l’hospitalier, et le solitaire’ (XII.29), however, the stress does appear to be on discerning one’s personal needs: this emerges obliquely from the contrast between the hermit and the other two characters, whose engagement with other people (the litigious and the sick) have led them to disappointment and frustration. La Fontaine’s reserve, however, is striking: he upholds the imperative of self-knowledge and self-examination, without prejudging what we shall find, whether personal or generically human qualities, if we obey it.4 It might, then, be helpful to distinguish more explicitly between different kinds of self-knowledge, as long as we constantly attend to the relationships different writers construct, or assume, between them. First of all, we might distinguish a ‘metaphysical’ sense, in which self-knowledge consists in grasping one’s nature as a human being, and one’s position in relation to other categories of being. Augustine provides a good statement of this: he interprets the imperative of self-knowledge as requiring the mind to reflect on itself and to situate itself correctly in the order of beings, subject to God, yet above inanimate goods (De Trinitate, X.v.7, PL 42, 977). Secondly, an ‘introspective’ sense, in which we search inside ourselves 4

There is an illuminating account of this fable in Marc Fumaroli’s notes to his edition (La Fontaine, Fables) II, 436–8. See also Odette de Mourgues, La Fontaine: ‘Fables’ (London: Arnold, 1960), 29–30.

278


for our personal qualities, dispositions, and desires. But from the start we must recognize this distinction as provisional and porous. After all, it is through introspection that the Cartesian metaphysics proceeds, nor, in Descartes, does it lead to a particular insistence on the depths and complexities of the individual psyche (though I have argued elsewhere that Descartes allows for depth and complexity much more than we might suppose).5 Different authors, in any case, often combine the two, in different proportions, and the discussion of individual authors below will of course consider the scope of their conception of self-knowledge. But it may be helpful first of all to comment on a selection of works devoted wholly or in part to self-knowledge, two from the beginning and three from the end of the period under discussion, as regards the kind of self-knowledge to which their attention is devoted. For an example of the metaphysical viewpoint, we might cite a work published in 1637 (the year of the Discours de la méthode), ´ emens de la cognoissance de Dieu et de soy mesme. It was entitled Les El´ a translation by Guillaume Colletet of a text produced in 1580 by Pierre Séguier, grandfather of his namesake the Chancellor, and a contemporary of Montaigne. The work is essentially an exposition of Christian doctrine, with some apologetic element. Some of its themes are Augustinian: it displays suspicion of self-love (‘l’amour de soy-mesme’) as both a cause and a trace of original sin, which only grace, not moral philosophy, can remedy; it dwells on the power of concupiscence. It declares man’s prime duty to be the love of God, without which all our actions are futile and ineffectual, though it has elements, a hope for the salvation of virtuous pagans, that would have scandalized a neo-Augustinian.6 But it does not involve or recommend searching the inner depths of one’s own heart. With Pierre Charron’s De la sagesse (first published 1601), the matter is more complex. Self-knowledge is the first of the four 5

See my Early Modern French Thought, 50–99. ´ emens de la cognoissance de Dieu et de soy mesme, trans. from the Pierre Séguier, Les El´ Latin by Guillaume Colletet (Paris: Jean Camusat, 1637), 161–70, 192–6, 321, 37–8. 6


279

elements of the human wisdom Charron undertakes to teach (the others are freedom of mind, following nature, and true contentment) (Préface, 33–4). The first book therefore deals with ‘la cognoissance de soy, et de l’humaine condition’ (the knowledge of oneself and of the human condition). It is a broad survey of human nature and of man’s place in the universe (thus ‘metaphysical’ in terms of our distinction), dealing with the properties of the body and of the soul, the passions, our relationship to the animals, the course of human life, the main features of the human condition, and the different categories and social relationships of human beings. The subject of the book is human wisdom, rather than divine, though Charron points out that he has dealt with the latter in other works (Préface, 27–8). On the other hand, human wisdom, though relatively autonomous, is not independent of the knowledge of God. For true piety is the first duty of wisdom (II.5, 445–67): ‘La religion est en la cognoissance de Dieu, et de soy mesme: (car c’est une action relative entre les deux)’ (Religion consists in the knowledge of God and of oneself (for the two kinds of knowledge interact)) (II.5, 457). Again: Par la cognoissance de soy l’homme monte et arrive plustost et mieux a` la cognoissance de Dieu, que par toute autre chose, tant pour ce qu’il trouve en soy plus de quoy le cognoistre, plus de marques et traicts de la divinité, qu’en tout le reste qu’il peut cognoistre; que pource qu’il peut mieux sentir, et sçavoir ce qui est et se remue en soy, qu’en toute autre chose. (I, Préface, 45) By the knowledge of himself man ascends to and attains the knowledge of God sooner and better than by any other kind, both because he finds more materials for the knowledge of God in himself, more marks and traces of divinity, than in anything else he can know, and because he can more clearly perceive and know what exists and what is going on inside himself than in any other thing.

What is particularly striking about this last passage is the primacy given to first-person knowledge. Although Charron’s method is more descriptive than introspective, he constantly insists on the

280


necessity and the privileged value of introspection (one of his many debts to Montaigne). Knowledge, like charity, begins at home. ‘Tu t’oublie [sic], tu te respands, et te perds au dehors, tu te trahis et te desrobes toy-mesmes, tu regardes toujours devant toy, ramasse toy et t’enferme dedens toy: examine toy, espie toy, cognoy toy’ (You forget yourself, you disperse yourself and lose yourself outside, you betray yourself and elude yourself, you are always looking in front of you. Collect yourself and shut yourself up within yourself: examine yourself, spy on yourself, know yourself) (I, Préface, 45). We can learn more about the passion of anger, or the fallibility of judgement and memory, from our own experience than from Aristotle or Plato (p.46). We cannot learn to know ourselves simply by observing other people (p.48) though such knowledge is useful (II.1, 376); we need to practice prolonged and assiduous self-study, of our words and actions, but also of our most secret thoughts, and even of our dreams. Only thus can we hope to discern our secret vices (I, Préface, 49). Self-examination, then, is the key; but the truths it unlocks are sometimes personal, sometimes generic. To know oneself as an individual is part of practical wisdom: in choosing a way of life, we must know our own temperament and capacities (II.4, 442–3). But self-knowledge goes beyond the individual self. Careful self-study will disclose man’s combination of weakness and presumption (II.1, 377). Socrates excelled all others in self-knowledge, but this was shown in the fact that he recognized his subjection to the human condition, and lived accordingly (I, Préface, 47). Trying out various metaphors—tactile, auditory, and visual—for this process of self-examination, Charron insists that it reveals a basic moral obligation, the requirement to act in accordance with the law of nature which is the reflection within us of the eternal law of God (II.3, 420–3).7 In other words, 7 Charron’s account of law seems to be strongly indebted to Aquinas, for whom the natural law, by which humans are governed, is the eternal law of God, by which all things are governed, in so far as we participate in it as rational creatures (ST IaIIae, q. 93, a. 1–2). Of course, the ultimate source of this view is St Paul’s statement, which Charron quotes here, that the law is written on the hearts even of the Gentiles (Romans 2: 14).


281

self-knowledge involves an understanding of human nature and its attendant norms. But, if first-person introspective access to these general truths is especially prized, it is also acknowledged to be difficult. The mind is declared to be ‘un fond d’obscurité plein de creux et de cachots, un labyrinthe, un abisme, confus et bien entortillé’ (a deep dark space full of hollows and dungeons, a labyrinth, an abyss, confused and tortuous) (I.14, 131). But the point here is not so much that the individual is unaware of his or her own thoughts, desires, or motivations, as that the human mind has various generic qualities that render it elusive. For one thing, it has no direct awareness of itself: it knows itself, if at all, ‘sombrement, indirectement, et par reflection de la cognoissance des choses a` soy mesme, par laquelle il sent et cognoist qu’il s’entend, et a puissance et faculté de s’entendre, c’est la maniere que les esprits se cognoissent eux mesmes’ (darkly, indirectly, and by the reflection onto itself of the knowledge of other things, by which it perceives and knows that it understands itself, and has the power and faculty of doing so; this is how minds know themselves) (I.14, 132). This is far from a proto-Cartesian position: indeed it follows St Thomas’s claim that the mind knows itself not directly but via its operations.8 But St Thomas does not suggest that the indirect nature of the soul’s awareness of itself involves any difficulty or obscurity in our knowledge of it, as Charron appears to do. Moreover, Charron stresses the restless activity of the mind, its resistance to limits, its agility and versatility, less to celebrate it than to alert us to its unreliability (I.14, 134–8). The mind’s elusiveness as a cognitive agent is mirrored in the obscurity of its myriad desires: Il ne nait, et ne s’esleve point tant de flots et d’ondes en la mer, comme de desirs au cueur de l’homme; c’est un abisme, il est infiny, divers, inconstant, confus, et irresolu, souvent horrible et detestable, mais ordinairement vain et ridicule en ses desirs. (I.23, 177) 8 Aquinas, ST Ia, q. 87, a. 1 (the soul knows itself not by its own essence, but by its own operations, in particular through its abstraction of forms from sensible things).

282


The very waves and surges of the sea are less numerous than the desires of man’s heart; it is an abyss, boundless, diverse, changeable, confused and irresolute, often horrible and loathsome, but in general futile and ridiculous in its desires.

These general characteristics take effect at the individual level in self-deception, a theme so important as to deserve special treatment below. Charron’s insistence on the obscurity and elusiveness of the mind to itself is echoed much later in Pierre Nicole’s great essay ‘De la connoissance de soi-même’ (1675), a masterpiece of the ‘introspective’ approach, focused on the difficulty of knowing one’s own nature and inclinations. It will be discussed in due course, but in any case it would be wrong to think of it as confined to the ‘introspective’ approach. The ‘metaphysical’ perspective is discernible also within it, and it is even more prominent in other late-seventeenth-century authors, as a discussion of three will show: Bossuet, Jacques Abbadie, and François Lamy. In De la connaissance de Dieu et de soi-même Bossuet’s point of departure, like Charron’s, is a general description of human nature and its component parts. Whereas Charron begins with the body, and then moves on to the soul, presented in Aristotelian terms as the principle of life in general, Bossuet begins with the soul, moves on to the body, and then discusses their union. The perspective is Cartesian: we must form a clear and distinct understanding of the two component elements, before we can approach the question of their interaction. Again, self-knowledge involves a grasp of our relationship to God.9 The source of our self-knowledge is not only conceptual analysis and argumentation: reflection on our own or other people’s experience and feelings is crucial (‘Dessein et division de ce traité’, 9 Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, De la connaissance de Dieu et de soi-même, ed. Christiane Frémont, Corpus des Œuvres de Philosophie en Langue Française (Paris: Fayard, 1990), ‘Dessein et division de ce traité’, 7–8; III.20–1, 164–70; IV.8, 199–202. The text was first published posthumously in 1722, with the title Introduction a` la philosophie ou De la connoissance de Dieu, et de soi-mesme.


283

8; I.6, 26, 27). Bossuet places less emphasis than Charron on the difficulty of knowing what lies or goes on within us. But he does not overlook the possibility of ignorance or self-deception. Our natural temperament (‘humeur naturelle’) is a fundamental passion that has so merged with our nature as to become imperceptible: whatever accords with it, we perceive as in accordance with reason (I.16, 52). We may be unaware of our basic moral dispositions (to pride, say, or laziness): we try to muffle the voice of conscience when it reproaches us with our misdeeds. Self-love is the vice that prevents our knowing our faults (p.53). In intellectual matters, we sometimes persuade ourselves that we understand what we do not understand (p.54). Even more fundamentally, the rational soul is so subjected to the body that it comes to lose its specific sense of its own identity: Elle croit n’avoir a` chercher ni a` e´viter que les corps, elle ne pense, pour ainsi dire, que corps, et se mêlant tout a` fait avec ce corps qu’elle anime, a` la fin elle a peine a` s’en distinguer. Enfin, elle s’oublie et se méconnoˆıt elle-même. (V.1, 213)10 It believes that there is nothing it has to pursue or to avoid beside bodies, it thinks, so to speak, only bodies, and mingling itself completely with the body it animates, it ends up scarcely able to distinguish itself from it. In short, it forgets and misrecognizes itself.

But this is not so much a lack of awareness of one’s individual psychological depths as a kind of metaphysical-moral illusion as to one’s basic ontological nature. In fact, the ‘secret’ aspects of our nature to which Bossuet devotes most attention are not so much the complexities of our personal inner feelings as those of the mind’s operation and its interaction with the body. There is a ‘secret reflection’ of the mind that harmonizes our perceptions of size and distance, a ‘hidden reasoning’ underlying our judgement of proportion and beauty (I.8, 33). In passion, the desires of the 10 Cf. Bossuet, Traité de la concupiscence, VII, 35–6 (the passage is discussed above, p. 190).

284


soul are attached to a ‘secret disposition’ of the body that triggers a movement towards or away from the object (III.11, 135). We are altogether unaware of the processes in the brain and nerves that accompany sensation (III.7, 120), or of those in the animal spirits, the nerves, and the muscles that link an act of will to a bodily movement (III.12, 141). These secret processes are an object of wonder (‘merveilleux’, III.12, 141) and proof of the wisdom of the creator (III.11, 135). In fact, Bossuet’s principal argument for the existence of God is the design apparent in the workings of man (IV.1–4, 177–91), though he also makes use of a range of other proofs: the Augustinian argument from the existence of eternal truths to an eternal being in whom they subsist (IV.5, 191–6), a very pared-down version of St Thomas’s ‘third way’ (nothing can exist if there is not a self-existent eternal being) (IV.5, 194), and a Cartesian argument from the imperfections of our own understanding to the existence of a supreme intelligence (IV.6, 196–7). In other words, there are close affinities, despite the gap in time, and the intervening Cartesian revolution, between Bossuet’s and Charron’s conceptions of self-knowledge. Above all, it involves a grasp of one’s human nature and its constituent elements and of one’s place in the universal order of being. Charron, though, seems to emphasize more both the privileged status of introspection and the elusiveness of the soul that is its object. The Protestant writer Jacques Abbadie produced a treatise L’Art de se connoˆıtre soy-meme, ou La Recherche des sources de la morale in 1692 (the coupling of ‘psychology’ and ethics is still alive and well). ‘La morale ou la science des mœurs’ is there defined as ‘l’art de regler son cœur par la vertu & de se rendre heureux en bienvivant’ (the art of regulating one’s heart by virtue and of making oneself happy by living a good life).11 He aims to do justice to man as a creature capable of virtue and happiness, who finds himself in a state of corruption and wretchedness (p. 12). The picture, however, is certainly no 11

Abbadie, L’Art de se connoˆıtre soy-meme, ou La Recherche des sources de la morale, 1.


285

more pessimistic than would be found in most Roman Catholic theologians of the age: in some ways, Abbadie seems more positive than the Jansenists in his assessment of human nature as it is. He undertakes first to deal with man’s nature, perfections, end, duties, natural obligations, and powers, and with the motives and objects that can principally determine him in his actions, and then to cover the source of his corruption, his attachments, passions, and vices (p. 14). Again, then, psychology is subordinated to a metaphysical account of human nature, affirming the unbridgeable gap between matter and thought (pp. 26–33). Deducing from this the immortality of the soul (p. 33), Abbadie constantly stresses the difference that this must make to our perspective on life (pp. 74, 119–21, 137–204). The discussion of sensation (pp. 43–57) shows that Abbadie has absorbed the lesson of the new philosophies—Descartes and Malebranche being the most likely sources—that sensible qualities are in our minds rather than in objects. This he regards as an important principle from the point of view of self-knowledge, since it shows that the beauties and perfections of the world are in fact in our minds: mind, then, is superior to nature. We can deduce natural moral obligations from the two fundamental principles of our nature, self-love (in itself morally neutral) and reason (pp. 75–6). In the second part, Abbadie deals with psychological processes, and lays much stress on the role of illusion and self-deception in our lives (see, e.g., pp. 229–42, 277, 318, 344–77). Very often, though, these are collective errors, widespread false judgements, rather than tricks the individual plays on himself or herself. They are described as it were from the outside: the observations are often astute and penetrating, but there is no especial emphasis on the elusiveness of feeling, or of the self, as there is, say, in Nicole. Like Bossuet and Abbadie, the Benedictine writer François Lamy takes a strongly ‘metaphysical’ approach to the problem of selfknowledge, but combines it with the ‘introspective’ method, stressing, far more than they do, the elusiveness of the self and its processes. He is also readier than they to invoke theological doctrines, beginning his exposition with the doctrine of the Fall.

286


De toutes les pla¨ıes dont l’home s’est trouvé frapé par le premier peché, une des plus funestes et des plus déplorables, est cêle de l’ignorance où il est, et où il veut eˆtre de son e´tat, de sa nature & de tout son eˆtre. (C2, I, p. i). Of all the wounds with which man has been afflicted on account of original sin, one of the most deadly and deplorable is his ignorance—wilful—of his state, his nature, and his whole being.

Man’s grasp of his nature is purely empirical, based on his resemblance to other creatures called human, but he neither knows nor cares to know in what the essence of humanity consists (pp. i–ii). He thinks of himself as all body, using the word ‘soul’ simply in conformity to ordinary language, but thinking of the soul simply as a mysterious inward part of the body (p. iii). Yet this is surprising, for after all (this is of course a Cartesian position) the mind is easier to know than the body, and when it knows external objects, it knows itself even more, especially since it is itself the source of the sensible qualities it finds in objects: Rien n’est plus a` la portée de cet esprit, que cet esprit lui-même: rien ne lui est plus immédiat & plus intime: il n’est jamais sans se sentir & sans s’apercevoir lui-même en quelque maniere. Il ne se passe rien en lui dont il ne soit averti immediatement. Il ne voit rien hors de lui, qui ne lui serve a` s’apercevoir lui-même en quelque maniere: il s’aperçoit dans la vue qu’il a des choses sensibles, beaucoup plus qu’êles-mêmes; & la plupart du temps ce qu’il croit voir en eˆles, n’est que lui-même. (pp. viii–ix) Nothing is more within reach of his mind, than the mind itself; nothing is more immediately and intimately present to it; it is continuously feeling and perceiving itself in some way. Nothing occurs in it of which it is not immediately informed. It sees nothing outside itself that does not enable it to perceive itself in some way: it perceives itself in its perception of sensible things, far more than it perceives them; and most of the time, what it thinks it sees in them is only itself.

Yet there is a paradox here: ‘Rien ne lui ećhape de tout ce qui se passe en lui; & presque tout lui ećhape’ (Nothing escapes it that goes on in itself; and virtually everything escapes it) (p. ix).


287

To resolve the paradox it is necessary to examine various obstacles to self-knowledge. The most important of these lie in the relationship between soul and body. It is, perhaps—another paradox—because we imagine ourselves as all body, that we do not understand the actual impact of the body on our mental processes. This is the main shortcoming of most descriptions of the moral side of man: there are books that provide good depictions of the characters and passions of human beings, or searching and uncomfortable insights into our hidden motives and intentions, but they overlook the physical dimension of our being: ‘les impressions que font sur l’esprit & sur le cœur, les mouvemens de la machine a` laquêle ils sont unis; & jusqu’à quel point ces impressions & les mouvemens qui les forment, dépendent ou ne dépendent pas de nôtre liberté’ (the impressions produced on the mind and the heart by the movements of the machine to which they are attached; and the extent to which these impressions, and the movements that form them, depend or do not depend on our freedom) (pp. xiv–xv). Enough has been said to indicate the main lines of Lamy’s treatment. Self-knowledge must begin in the metaphysical domain, with the distinction between soul and body. As in Bossuet, it requires a clear and detailed awareness of the body’s workings. But what then has to be explained is the paradoxical fact, so much stressed by writers engaged in ‘introspective’ analysis, that so much that goes on inside us escapes our attention; and the rest of Lamy’s treatise is devoted to this. It is clear then that by the end of the seventeenth century the metaphysical perspective on self-knowledge has not been displaced by psychological analysis. On the contrary, Cartesianism provided the writers studied here with the means of connecting the two.

7 Literary Explorations So far in this part I have discussed works of philosophy, in a fairly broad sense, that explicitly address the topic of self-knowledge. But there is a much larger corpus of seventeenth-century writing that might be seen as exploring the issue, much of it ‘literary’ in character. There are at least two possible ways of approaching the thematics of literary texts historically. One can identify a given theme or problem as of dominant importance in the culture at large, and then argue that specific literary texts are bound to exhibit signs of its influence. Or one can seek to relate the text’s presentation of the theme to its own status as a literary text. In this perspective what matters is not whether the author, or even his audience, had any interest in the theme in its own right, only that it is clear that an author imagined that the theme would go down well, for whatever reason, with his or her audience, or would allow the production of valued aesthetic effects. And the reasons why the theme, or the effects, might appeal could be literary-historical, rather than more broadly cultural or ideological. Thus, when the ‘rules’ established themselves, certain subject matters became unworkable; one could not demonstrate a character’s change of heart over time, as in The Winter’s Tale or, to give a French example, Alexandre Hardy’s La Force du sang (1626), in which a rapist makes amends to his victim, when he meets the child born of the deed (this particular subject would also have been excluded by the bienséances). This does not necessarily mean that the seventeenth-century mentality must have become more pessimistic, because people did not watch plays depicting repentance and change, or more conservative because

Literary Explorations

289

the proscription of ‘indecency’ prevented the exploration of the interaction between sex and power (the subject of Hardy’s Scédase (1624), or, for that matter, Corneille’s Théodore (1646) ).1 On the other hand, the absence of plays depicting certain behaviour patterns or relationships may have contributed to a fading of the imaginative sense of them as possibilities. That is speculation. What is certain at any rate is that writers did exploit the literary potential of the depiction of self-ignorance, which suggests that the philosophical or theological interest in the topic ought not to be treated in isolation from the rest of the culture. The portrayal of self-ignorance often aims at comic effect. Cervantes was a powerful source of inspiration of such texts as Sorel’s Le Berger extravagant (1627), although romantic self-delusion is still a powerful novelistic resource in Furetière’s Le Roman bourgeois (1666). Corneille’s Matamore in L’Illusion comique (1639) is that typical comic stereotype, the miles gloriosus, the cowardly braggart, but unlike Shakespeare’s Parolles, say ( All’s Well That Ends Well ), he seems partly to believe his own propaganda. This appears if we compare two similar soliloquies, one from each play, where each is engaged in an undertaking he wishes he were free of. Ten o’clock. Within these three hours ’twill be time enough to go home. What shall I say I have done? It must be a very plausive invention that carries it. They begin to smoke [see through] me, and disgraces have of late knocked too often at my door. [. . .] Tongue, I must put you into a butter-woman’s mouth, and buy myself another of Bajazet’s mute, if you prattle me into these perils.2 1 Corneille’s play was unsuccessful. He drily compliments his contemporaries on the refinement of morals that prevented their tolerating a play about a martyr whose story (the persecutor tried to place her in a brothel) had been an ornament of the works of St Ambrose (Théodore vierge et martyre, A Monsieur L. P. C. B., OC II, 269). Scédase is a remarkably powerful play, dealing with a peasant’s hopeless attempt to see justice done against the aristocratic youths who have raped and murdered his daughters. It and La Force du sang may be found in vol. I of Théaˆ tre du XVIIe siècle, ed. Jacques Scherer, 3 vols., Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1975–92). Dates given in parentheses after the titles of plays are of first publication, not first performance. 2 Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well, IV.i.

290

Problems of Self-Knowledge Les voilà, sauvons-nous! Non, je ne vois personne. Avançons hardiment. Tout le corps me frissonne. Je les entends, fuyons. Le vent faisait ce bruit. Coulons-nous en faveur des ombres de la nuit. Vieux rêveur, malgré toi j’attends ici ma Reine. Ces diables de valets me mettent bien en peine. De deux mille ans et plus, je ne tremblai si fort. C’est trop me hasarder: s’ils sortent, je suis mort, Car j’aime mieux mourir que leur donner bataille, Et profaner mon bras contre cette canaille. Que le courage expose a` d’étranges dangers!3 Here they are, let’s get out of here! No, no one there. On we go, steady now. I’m trembling all over. I hear them, run! No, that noise was the wind. Softly we go now: darkness is my friend. In your despite, old fool, I await my queen. Those servants, damn them, they’re what’s worrying me. In two thousand years, I never shook like this. This is too dangerous. If they come, I’m dead. I’d rather die than stay to fight against them, And shame myself by combat with the wretches. Into what dangers does our courage lead us!

Parolles curses himself for talking himself into trouble with his extravagant boasts, and scours his brain for stratagems of deception. He is clearly lucid, and his lucidity extends to awareness of his tendency to lose it, to be taken in by his own fake personality. During those intervals of excitement he forgets his own fear. His word-created identity, enshrined in his name, deceives him, but not continuously. It is revealing that one of the eavesdropping lords comments on the gap between his self-knowledge and his apparently contradictory behaviour: ‘Is is possible that he should know what he is, and be that he is?’ Matamore (who is alone: the first-person plurals are addressed to himself) is on the contrary, quite aware that he is afraid, but not that that makes him something different from what 3

Corneille, L’Illusion comique, III.vii.861–71, OC 1, 649–50.


291

he professes to be. Instead of stratagems, he seeks rationalizations (it would be degrading to brawl with servants), and blames his courage, not his folly, for his present plight. Indeed, his terror, perversely, becomes the proof of his courage: only a brave person could get himself into such a hair-raising situation. He deceives himself systematically, Parolles intermittently, and then only when the presence of others stimulates his lust to impress. It has been said, and with some truth, that most of Molière’s comic protagonists can be understood as ‘imaginaires’ on the model of ‘le malade imaginaire’.4 True, most of them have very little inner life, so that we most commonly perceive them as deceived, and deceiving themselves, about other people’s perception of them rather than their own feelings. The result is sometimes ambiguous: is Tartuffe a hypocrite, consciously assuming religious sentiments he does not feel at all, or is he one of those dangerous people who manage to justify their own passions and interests to themselves and to others by a set of beliefs that they certainly hold, and that they hold precisely because such beliefs are advantageous? Is he simply a deluder or also deluded? There are some clergymen, and even more politicians, whose undoubtedly sincere beliefs foster the pursuit of their own interests, and/or those of their sect or class by any means necessary; and there is, to my mind, nothing in the text that proves indubitably that Tartuffe is a cold calculator who does not believe a word he says about ‘le Ciel’. (The protagonist of Dom Juan, on the other hand, is certainly faking his religious professions: he says himself that his ‘conversion’ is a purely political stratagem, to keep in his father’s good books and to protect himself (by the support of the devout) from any unpleasant consequences of his actions).5 True, Molière asserts explicitly that he means Tartuffe for the portrait of a hypocrite, and has made every effort to distinguish 4 Albert Thibaudet, ‘Molière et la critique’, Revue de Paris, 37/6 (1930), 386, quoted and discussed by W. D. Howarth, Molière: A Playwright and his Audience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 125. 5 Molière, Dom Juan ou le Festin de Pierre, V.ii, OC II, 80–1. The play was performed in 1665, but the full text not published till 1683.

292


clearly between a hypocrite and a genuinely devout person.6 But the question is not whether Tartuffe is a fraud and a villain, perverting Christian doctrines and practices to his own end. He is obviously that. The question is rather whether he may not, at some level, believe that he is not a villain, and that God is on his side. Is he an out-and-out impostor, like Parolles, or (to take another religious figure) Mr Stiggins in The Pickwick Papers, or might he at some level have deluded himself into thinking that he can have his cake and eat it, that he can seduce his benefactor’s wife without imperilling his soul, and that to drive his benefactor out of house and home is to serve the interests of religion and the state? More like Burns’s Holy Willie? He would still be a hypocrite in one sense, but in the sense of unconscious hypocrisy, a flagrant and culpable discrepancy between an agent’s understanding of his actions and their real nature.7 But tragic literature also examines the possibility of illusion about one’s feelings. When it does so, indeed, there is sometimes a comic edge. Had Félix in Corneille’s Polyeucte martyr (1643) candidly admitted that he was prepared to sacrifice his son-in-law’s life, and his daughter’s happiness, for the sake of his career, he would have been merely revolting or contemptible: that he takes himself for a heroic Roman, immolating all family attachments for the sake of the patria, in the tradition of the elder Brutus and Torquatus, imparts a certain comic touch to Corneille’s portrayal of him.8 But Corneille seems to admit the existence of psychological confusion 6 Molière, Le Tartuffe, Préface, OC I, 884; cf. Premier Placet, OC I, 890. The play was originally performed in 1664, but quickly withdrawn. Only in 1669, after much revision, was it authorized for performance and publication. See OC I, 833–47. 7 It would be wrong to assume that the only notion of hypocrisy available to seventeenth-century writers is that of a deliberate simulation. Quite apart from some examples to be discussed later, there is the evidence of the Gospel. Jesus calls the scribes and Pharisees hypocrites (hypocritai) (Matthew 25: 13, 15, 23, 25, 27, 29). He begins his denunciation precisely by pointing to the discrepancy between their words and their actions (25: 3), as if perhaps they were deliberately deceiving. But he later calls them repeatedly ‘blind’ (vv. 16, 17, 19, 24, 26), suggesting a culpable lack of self-awareness, a desire focused on the appearance, not the reality of holiness, rather than a deliberate pursuit of the appearance, recognized by the agent as such, instead of the reality. 8 Corneille, Polyeucte martyr, V.iv.1703–6, OC I, 1046.


293

even in his heroic characters. Camille in Horace (1641) seeks lucidly and deliberately to provoke her brother in order to discredit him, or so it has been argued; but his reaction, despite his appeal to ‘la raison’, is, arguably, proof of moral blindness. Not only does he fail clearly to perceive Camille’s tactics, so that (on this interpretation) he falls into her trap, but he fails to consider vital ethical issues: whether, supposing for argument’s sake that death is the proper penalty for treasonable speech, he is entitled to inflict it (this is his father’s only criticism of his conduct).9 Perhaps, then, he is simply responding blindly to an attack on his own heroic self-image, and his rage is that of outraged narcissism rather than patriotic zeal. Perhaps: but what his behaviour exhibits, from the point of view of the Stoic moral philosophy with which Corneille and many of his readers and spectators would be well acquainted, is the link between passion and confusion or false judgement.10 Because he is perturbed by passion, he cannot think straight: or, rather, his passion is itself a misrecognition: his laudable identification of himself with the cause of Rome flips over into a false identification of the cause of Rome and himself, so that an offence to himself becomes treason, which he, as the embodiment of Rome, is entitled to punish. And this is a misconception, as his father states, while the king, Tulle, goes further and brands the killing a crime, though pardoning Horace for his service to the state ( V.iii. 1733–62, OC I, 900). Horace may be deceived as to the significance of his feelings and his action. But he is not deceived as to what he is feeling: he knows he is angry as well as we do. What we have now to consider is the possibility of error as to one’s actual emotional state: the possibility 9 Corneille, Horace, IV.v.1262–1322, OC I, 886–8; cf. V.i.1411–18, OC I, 891. The interpretation of Camille as acting deliberately and lucidly, rather than in a blind passion, is that of Doubrovsky, Corneille et la dialectique du héros, 154–67. 10 For the Stoic link between passion and false judgement, see, e.g., Cicero, De finibus, III.x.35; Tusculans, IV.vii.14. Martha Nussbaum has given a persuasive exposition of the view in The Therapy of Desire, 366–401. André Stegmann, however, cautions against exaggerating Corneille’s Stoic affiliations (L’Héro¨ısme cornélien: Genèse et signification, 2 vols. (Paris: Colin, 1968), II, 212–17). Horace is equally at fault from the point of view of Aristotelian ethics: his response is excessive and inappropriate (to put it mildly).

294


of thinking one is feeling emotion A (and therefore not emotion B) when in fact the A-feeling is merely a mask for B, or exists alongside it. That is to say, the issue is not simply emotional confusion, but emotional illusion. Now here too, in a serious context, there is comic potential. The scene (II.V, OC I, 219–22) in Racine’s Andromaque (1668) in which Pyrrhus’ declarations of anger and hate for Andromaque conceal from neither his confidant nor the audience the fact that he still loves her might, in itself, if we knew nothing of the identity of the participants, have been found in a comedy.11 But elsewhere the most robust or perverse sense of the comic could find little to feed on in Racine’s portrayals of self-deception. Pylade accuses Oreste of deceiving him by the pretence that he no longer loves Hermione. Oreste replies ‘Je me trompais moi-même’ (I was deceiving myself ).12 We can hardly understand se tromper in here in a purely intransitive sense (‘to be mistaken’): it is a genuine reflexive (‘to deceive oneself’), as is indicated by the emphatic pronoun ‘moi-même’. The same applies in another case, from Bérénice (1671). Here the character is quicker to recognize his own self-delusion: Antiochus, in conversation with his confidant Arsace, briefly entertains the idea that, sent away from Rome, Bérénice may soften towards him: but then he comes to his senses: ‘Ah! que nous nous plaisons a` nous tromper tous deux’ (Ah! How we both delight in deceiving ourselves) (III.ii.798, OC I, 482). Compare an example from a different author and genre, Madame de Lafayette’s La Princesse de Clèves (1678). The princesse is distressed when she reads a lost letter, believed, incorrectly, to have been written to the duc de Nemours by his former mistress. She thinks she is distressed only because she has let Nemours notice her love for him: but the narrator corrects: ‘Mais elle se trompait elle-même; 11 Compare the lovers’-tiff scenes in Molière: e.g. Le Tartuffe, II.iv, OC I, 927–36; Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, III.x, OC II, 750–3. Incidentally, Samuel Beckett exploits the ‘chain-of-love’ motif from Andromaque (A loves B who loves C, etc.) to comic effect in the first chapter of Murphy. He lectured on Racine at Trinity College Dublin: see Vivian Mercier, Beckett/Beckett (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 74–82. 12 Jean Racine, Andromaque, I.i.37, in Œuvres completes: I. Théaˆ tre-Poésie, ed. Georges Forestier, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1999), I, 482.


295

et ce mal, qu’elle trouvait si insupportable, e´tait la jalousie’ (But she was deceiving herself; and the sufferings she was finding so unbearable were those of jealousy).13 Here again, the emphatic pronoun ‘elle-même’ confirms that this is self-deception, not merely a mistake. The princesse’s error is different from Horace’s because, in misidentifying the cause of her pain, she also misidentifies its character. She is not exactly wrong in supposing that her grief is due to the realization that she has betrayed her feelings for Nemours to Nemours himself, since this is something she regrets, but she has failed to perceive its dominant cause—namely, that she has been forced to contemplate the idea of Nemours loving and being loved by another woman. The feeling (jealousy) is there, its presence and pressure are registered, but it is not recognized for what it is. In this case, to understand the cause of a passion would be correctly to identify the passion itself. The case is different with Oreste in Andromaque. His error is to infer that a feeling does not exist, when it is in fact latent. But this reveals something of the nature of emotion. ‘Je me trompais moi-même’ must be interpreted in close relation to the nearby line ‘En ce calme trompeur, j’arrivai dans la Grèce’ (In this deceptive calm I arrived in Greece) (I.i.58, OC I, 200). He deceives himself on account of the deceptive calm of his emotions. What this reveals is an ordinary presupposition that emotion is normally accessible to consciousness: for without this supposition, one would not infer that an emotion is absent simply because it is not currently felt.14 More particularly, emotional states seem to deliver, so to speak, a version of identity, or to reflect a self-image. The absence of the habitual pain Oreste names ‘Hermione’ is not simply a negative thing, a mere privation; it expresses itself in the positive sense of a judgement: ‘I don’t love her any more.’ This tendency of 13 ´ Madame de Lafayette, La Princesse de Clèves, in Romans et nouvelles, ed. Emile Magne, introduction by Alain Niderst, Classiques Garnier (Paris: Garnier, 1970), 310. 14 Compare the case of physical pain. Someone who has been bothered by a nagging ache due to some invisible injury would not necessarily assume that the condition has cleared up because one day the pain is absent.

296


emotion to manifest itself in self-representation is here a source of error. But this example, and that from Bérénice, exhibit another feature of Racinian self-deception: the attempt to say ‘sour grapes’, and its failure. Oreste persuaded himself that he had overcome his feelings for Hermione when he realized that she was doubly lost to him: not only betrothed to Pyrrhus but in love with him. It is the realization that Pyrrhus has neglected her that restores her to circulation in his imaginary (I.i.41–88, OC I, 200–1). (There is also, however, a similarity with the princesse de Clèves in that he misrecognizes initially the nature of his emotion: he takes his excitement at the news of Pyrrhus’ infidelity as the gratification of a desire for revenge, and then realizes that it is simply that he is in love with Hermione, again or still (I.i.83–8, OC I, 201)). In this case, the perception of a desire as impossible of fulfilment enabled him to stifle it: it is reborn simultaneously with a renewed sense of possibility. The case of Antiochus is similar. He had achieved a sense of closure in declaring to Bérénice both his love and his acceptance of its futility, although he never claims to her or to himself to have overcome it (I.iv.251–8, OC I, 464). The anguish had been compensated for by the lucidity and the sense of innocence: it is corrupted and they are forfeited when he yields to the poison of hope. Bérénice’s rejection by Titus, and his own appointment by Titus as her escort, produce the momentary calculation that, forced into his company and having every opportunity to compare his fidelity with Titus’ coldness, she will learn to love him: it is this hope that he then terms a self-deception (III.ii.788–806, OC I, 482). At least he wakes from self-deception to something like his former lucid insight into his own exclusion: Oreste merely passes from one self-deception to another, from the belief that he has overcome his love for Hermione to the belief that she is again available. This difference suggests something of the difference in Racine’s conception of these two tragic characters. The flickering between lucidity and illusion is often so rapid as to be hard to follow. Worse, partial lucidity aids self-deception. Take Andromaque, IV.iii, (OC I, 239–42), where Hermione, having


297

learned that Pyrrhus is to marry Andromaque, offers to marry Oreste on condition he murders Pyrrhus. Among the arguments she uses is her own emotional volatility: Tant qu’il vivra, craignez que je ne lui pardonne. Doutez jusqu’à sa mort d’un courroux incertain, S’il ne meurt aujourd’hui, je puis l’aimer demain. (IV.iii.1202–4, OC I, 241/1198–1200)15 As long as he is alive, you must fear I will forgive him. Until he is dead, doubt my uncertain anger. If he does not die today, I may love him tomorrow.

The statement betokens a certain self-knowledge: she is indeed given to reversals of feeling and her will is brittle. So what she says is dreadfully credible. But that is precisely the problem. We can take the utterance at face value as an expression of emotion (she might be speaking without calculation, simply voicing her own half-lucid despairing grasp of her own instability, her hope that an irreparable action will finally terminate it), or in terms of its rhetorical effect (she might be, so to speak, deliberately presenting an image of her character, alluding to rather than feeling her volatility: as if (she thinks) she knows for sure that she wants Pyrrhus dead, but pretends there is a risk of wavering in order to goad Oreste into acting without delay). In either case, she is deluded: instead of killing off hope and therefore bringing a release from her emotional upheavals, Pyrrhus’ death drives her to suicidal despair. Her instability is not simply a facet of her character to be referred to, but the condition of her whole psychic life, the effects of which she cannot therefore predict or control. Oreste, for his part, has few enough illusions about his beloved’s character, and finds her self-portrayal as liable to change her mind entirely credible and convincing: and this helps to overcome his scruples about the murder. But precisely because she is liable to change her mind, he fails to realize that she might change it for 15 The second set of line numbers is that found in other editions of Andromaque than Forestier’s Pléiade edition used here.

298


other reasons than those she has said. A detached listener might have observed that the lady doth protest too much, and that it would be wise to pay no attention to her actual words, however insistent. With almost perverse cruelty, Hermione, when the murder is done, blames Oreste for not being that listener: Ah! Fallait-il en croire une Amante insensée? Ne devais-tu pas lire au fond de ma pensée? Et ne voyais-tu pas dans mes emportements, Que mon cœur démentait ma bouche a` tous moments? (V.iii.1585–8, OC I, 253/1545–8) Ah! Should you have believed a woman madly in love? Shouldn’t you have read the inside of my mind, And could you not see that, beneath all my outbursts, My heart was all the time giving my mouth the lie?

She now objectivizes herself as a ‘character’, an ‘Amante insensée’, and blames him for failing to take up the stance of an objective observer, whereas in the earlier scene she was insistently affirming her subjectivity and requiring him to react to her accordingly (in IV.iii.1192–1204/1188–1200 first-person forms, often more than one, occur in ten of the thirteen lines, and second-person forms in five. Only one line has neither (1195/1191), and in it Hermione refers to herself by name.) In IV.iii, she is identifying herself wholly with her speech, seeking recognition from him as identical with the self she is constructing in discourse; in V.iii, she is inviting him to see through her speech, now no more than a screen or a pathological symptom, to a supposedly real state of underlying feeling. Both perspectives on language are possible and necessary: in real life we are constantly shifting between them in our dealings with others, but are frequently condemned to uncertainty as to which to apply. Racine makes this uncertainty part of his tragic apparatus, and one of the ways in which his characters’ selfknowledge is problematized is that he subjects them to it as well as the spectator.


299

The unknown author of the Discours sur les passions de l’amour registers in more abstract vein the links between love and selfdeception: Quand nous aimons, nous paraissons a` nous-mêmes tout autres que nous n’étions auparavant. Ainsi nous nous imaginons que tout le monde s’en aperçoit. Cependant il n’y a rien de si faux, mais parce que la raison a sa vue bornée par la passion, l’on ne peut s’assurer et l’on est toujours dans la défiance.16 When we are in love, we appear to ourselves quite different from what we were before. So we imagine that the whole world has noticed. Yet there is nothing so false: but because reason’s insights are impeded by passion, we cannot be sure and we are in constant distrust.

The false assumption is that everyone notices the difference within us (real or imaginary?), and hence infers our passion: the anxiety being that love discovered is more vulnerable. Clearly, the effect of love here is simply to amplify a basic narcissism, an assumption that we are as prominent and significant a presence in others’ world as in our own. Yet, in certain circumstances, we may be: when we are ourselves the object of others’ love. That love sharpens our perceptions of the beloved (even if it blunts those of ourselves) is a theme of much seventeenth-century writing. It is voiced by La Fontaine, in one of those rapid shifts of perspective in which he excels: the fable of the stag attempting to hide among the oxen, whom no one notices but the farmer himself, ends with two morals, one, from Phaedrus, to which it apparently leads up, the other, La Fontaine’s own contribution, which seems to come from nowhere, but then casts a retrospective light on the foregoing narrative: Phèdre sur ce sujet dit fort e´légamment: Il n’est, pour voir, que l’œil du maˆıtre. 16 Discours sur les passions de l’amour, in Lafond (ed.), Moralistes du XVIIe siècle, 628 (no. 39). The work has been attributed, incongruously, to Pascal (see Michel Le Guern’s note in Pascal, OC, II, 1209); for a brief discussion of its authorship, see Lafond’s introduction in Moralistes du XVIIe siècle, 617–18.

300

Problems of Self-Knowledge Quant a` moi, j’y mettrais encor l’œil de l’amant.17 Phaedrus puts the point very elegantly: It’s the master’s eye that sees the sharpest. As for me, I’d incline to add: ‘And the lover’s’.

La Princesse de Clèves explores the relationship between the gaze of others and one’s own vision of oneself. In the lost letter episode, we saw that the heroine had a certain view of her own motivation, which the narrator corrected. But sometimes her perceptions of herself are corrected by other characters. Thus she believes that she is responding to her future husband’s passion as warmly as a well-brought up young lady can be expected to do, but the prince is far from agreeing: Au lieu que la bienséance vous retienne, c’est elle seule qui vous fait faire ce que vous faites. Je ne touche ni votre inclination, ni votre cœur, et ma présence ne vous donne ni de plaisir ni de trouble. (Romans et nouvelles, 258) It is not that propriety is keeping you back: it alone is making you do what you do. I have touched neither your inclination nor your heart, and when I am with you you feel neither pleasure nor excitement.

When she argues that her blushes are the sign of the ‘trouble’ he desires, again, he corrects her: they come from modesty not emotion (p. 259). At the time, these statements mean nothing to her, since she has no experience of the kind of emotion of which he bewails the lack. Even when she meets and is dazzled by Nemours, she does not clearly recognize what is going on inside her, until her mother (who is aware of her interest in the duke, but pretends to know nothing of it) suggests that Nemours is having an affair with the Reine Dauphine: ‘L’on ne peut exprimer la douleur qu’elle sentit de connaˆıtre, par ce qui lue venait de dire sa mere, l’intérêt qu’elle prenait a` M. de Nemours’ (It is impossible to express the suffering she felt when she realized, in the light of her mother’s words, how interested she was in M. de Nemours) (p. 275). But this recognition of herself in the discourse of the other is twofold: for at the same time she realizes 17 La Fontaine, ‘L’Œil du maˆıtre’, Fables, IV.21, ll. 37–9 (on the reading of the fable, see Fumaroli’s note, I, 383–4 (p. 278) ).


301

that ‘les sentiments qu’elle avait pour lui [Nemours] e´taient ceux que M. de Clèves lui avait tant demandés’ (the feelings she had for him were those her husband had so much desired in her) (p. 275). There are many other instances of the princesse’s vulnerability to others’ speech and perceptions and of the dependence of her self-knowledge on these.18 So far, I have deliberately concentrated on explicit representations of self-deception or self-ignorance. There is one other point, though, to consider apropos of literary texts: the representation of passion as not necessarily or at any rate fully intelligible to those who experience it. It is all too easy (and faithful to ethical traditions still active in the seventeenth century) to think of passion as in opposition to reason. We know what is good for us, and what we want with the best part of ourselves, but passion, like a mystery virus attacking the brain, has taken us over, and made us want and do things in which we do not recognize ourselves. And one can certainly analyse seventeenthcentury texts along these lines. Néron in Racine’s Britannicus, we might think, longs with part of himself to be a good emperor; unfortunately, he falls in love with Junie, who just happens to love and be loved by Britannicus, Néron’s half-brother and rival for the Empire, and this passion drives him to murder his rival, his first step along the road to infamy. But it is equally plausible to see the real conflict as between Néron and his domineering mother Agrippine, and then the passion for Junie is as it were a pretext (more a drug voluntarily taken than a virus), a necessary injection of the energy he needs in order to confront his mother, and poor Britannicus is killed as much to send a message to Agrippine as to remove a rival. Passion, then, displays a kind of rationality that is not that of our conscious values. If one wanted to argue this case in detail, one would point first of all to the curious self-indulgence with which Néron narrates his falling in love with Junie, the aesthetic sensibility with which he animates his memory of the scene (II.ii. 385–408, OC I, 389). 18 The princesse’s subjection to others’ words is discussed in my ‘Discourse and the Body in La Princesse de Clèves’, Paragraph, 10 (Oct. 1987), 65–86.

302


Of course Racine is here respecting the character of Nero as history has handed it down to us, the Emperor who killed himself with the words ‘What an artist is dying in me!’ (‘Qualis artifex pereo!’). But it is hard not to think that in detailing Junie’s charms (essentially, her combination of beauty and vulnerability) Néron is revealing what he wants from the relationship, as indeed his sadistic fantasies indicate (ll. 399–404): a chance to control another person as he is controlled by his mother and in so doing to liberate himself from his mother’s control. Later he manipulates Junie’s encounter with Britannicus precisely as his mother has manipulated him and the Senate, from a position of concealment (II.iii–vii.679–746, OC I, 398–401; cf. I.i.91–6, OC I, 380).19 A full consideration of this matter would require more of this play, and more plays, to be considered: suffice it to say that one of the enduring merits of Barthes’s Sur Racine is that it helps us see passion in Racine not as a datum, an intrusive and disastrous chance, but as significant; as the taking-up of a position, often contradictory, in relation to an external, generally oppressive, authority. If that were so, we should have to admit the possibility that the apparent victims of passion can in fact be unaware of the deep reasons and desires that have informed their attachments: desires conforming more closely to the psychoanalytical concept of the unconscious than the imperceptible thoughts recognized by some seventeenth-century writers and discussed in a later chapter. Seventeenth-century literature, then, is rich in explorations of selfignorance and self-deception. Characters fail to recognize their own moral nature, like Matamore: Tartuffe, as we saw, is an ambiguous case, since we cannot be sure if he is a cold-blooded hypocrite or a self-interested self-deceiver. They fail to recognize the state of their feelings (Oreste thinks he has got over Hermione), or their true cause and nature (the princesse de Clèves does not fully see why she is upset by the letter); or they fall prey to wishful thinking, like Antiochus. Many other examples might have been adduced. The theme is 19 This reading is put forward apropos of Barthes’s conception of Racinian tragedy in my Roland Barthes, 71.


303

particularly prevalent in texts from the last third of the century. Indeed, it has been justly said that ‘the motive of virtually all the dramatis personae of later seventeenth-century French literature is self-interest; their fatal vulnerability a failure of self-knowledge’; that the texts rest on ‘a psychology in which conscious intention is always undermined by hidden or unconscious motive; on this premiss is built a pessimistic ethics in which the possibilities of moral achievement or transcendence offered by surface values such as honesty or generosity cannot be fulfilled, because the values themselves are already flawed by self-deception’.20 This analysis throws much light on the selfdeceiving behaviour we have studied. The characters seem unable to access ethical values in themselves, without the mediation of an image of themselves. The code of female virtue offered to the princesse de Clèves involves an image of virtue as a source of distinction, a manifestation of one’s difference from other women, when she is subject to the same passions as they; in the end, she identifies herself with the image, asserting explicitly her own difference from other women (Romans et nouvelles, 248, 278, 333, 383). The triumph of her virtue is also (possibly, because nothing is cut-and-dried in this most ambiguous of texts) a kind of self-mutilation. Néron cannot do what he knows to be right because he cannot bear the image of himself as thereby submitting to the manipulation of his mother, Burrhus, and Sénèque (he thus submits utterly to the manipulation of Narcisse) (Britannicus, IV.iv.1414–80, OC I, 425–7).21 In this last chapter, I have departed somewhat from the method adopted in the rest of this work, which is to interpret texts within frames of reference available to their authors and contemporary readers—though, if we were to imagine Barthes and Racine meeting in a Fénelonian dialogue of the dead, it is tempting to think that Racine would be perfectly able to see what Barthes was getting at. But this aberration is perhaps justified in order to remind ourselves 20 Terence Cave, ‘The Early Modern Period: 1470–1789’, in Kay, Cave, and Bowie, A Short History of French Literature 154, 155. 21 On the importance of self-image in Racine and Madame de Lafayette, see Rohou, Le XVIIe Siècle, 437–49.

304


that literary texts may open up possibilities for understanding human behaviour that are not clearly formulated in the doctrines and theories prevailing at the time of their composition. In any case, however we analyse the self-deception and self-ignorance present in literary texts, its presence is clear enough, as it is in the more systematic analyses of moralists. Why these motifs might be so widespread in seventeenthand especially late-seventeenth-century culture is what we have now to consider.

8 Self-Knowledge and Self-Ignorance in Context Paul Bénichou in Morales du grand siècle was one of the first scholars to draw attention to seventeenth-century writers’ interest in the unconscious aspects of human behaviour. He interpreted this in ideological terms. Corneille he saw as the spokesman of a heroic optimism, a confidence in human nature and its powers, that was aristocratic in origin. This optimism culminated in the mystical doctrine of writers such as St François de Sales. It was challenged by Jansenist writers, waging a war—at bottom a masked class war, since he stressed their bourgeois origins—against the aristocratic sublime. The use of psychological analysis to cast doubt on the individual’s perception of his or her motives or psychological states was a particularly effective weapon. It enabled Nicole to discredit the mystical writings of Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin. More generally, it undermined the aristocratic pretension to heroic virtue.1 Jean Rohou’s much more recent analysis, like Bénichou’s, focuses on social and political developments. For him the key factor is the vigilant and controlling eye of the absolutist state. The failure of the Fronde blocks the possibility of seeking fulfilment in commitment to a cause: members of the social elite are reduced to individual motivations, interest, self-love, and the search for happiness, especially through relationships with others. Supervised even in the pursuit of 1

Bénichou, Morales du grand siècle, 116–18, 138–42. On the bourgeois nature of the Jansenist ethos, see pp. 149–53. Bénichou’s book remains an indispensable guide to seventeenth-century visions of human nature.

306


these by the absolutist state, and by their rivals in the same competition, they take refuge in their inner world, and become better acquainted with it; observing their rivals, they develop a more sophisticated awareness of hidden motives and feelings.2 Rohou agrees with Norbert Elias as to the role of court culture in fostering psychological insight into motivation. Undoubtedly, this helps to explain the widespread interest in the experience of ignorance, confusion, and self-deception as to one’s motives, such as is demonstrated in so many of the literary texts discussed in the previous chapter—texts addressed to a courtly public, like the plays of Racine or Mme de Lafayette’s La Princesse de Clèves. In this perspective, interest in self-knowledge and its shortcomings appears as a socially grounded phenomenon, but not, like in Bénichou, as ideologically targeted. Certainly, Nicole is not alone among Port-Royal writers in invoking self-deception or self-ignorance for polemical purposes. Arnauld (though, as we shall see, he later rejected Nicole’s theory of ‘imperceptible thoughts’) does so too. He argues that there are many who deceive themselves into thinking that they love God, a matter better judged from one’s actions and lifestyle than from purely internal thoughts or feelings (‘des sentiments purement intérieurs’), which can readily deceive us.3 It is difficult for a priest to judge of a penitent’s state, especially from his or her words, not only because of the possibility of hypocrisy but also ‘parce qu’il y a tant de détours, & tant de replis dans le cœur de l’homme, qu’il est le plus souvent inconnu a` l’homme même’ (there are so many windings and recesses in the heart of man that it is often unknown to the man himself ) (p. 390). On the other hand, this is an attack not on mysticism or on claims to heroic virtue, but on what Arnauld feels to be a pernicious dilution of Christian values, a promotion of moral complacency and empty ritualism. It has an ideological edge, as Leszek Kolakowski shows: it is attacking the idea that the Church needs to move with 2

Rohou, Le XVIIe Siècle, 289, 381–2. Antoine Arnauld, De la fréquente communion (1st pub. 1644), in Œuvres, ed. Gabriel Du Pac de Bellegarde and Jean Hautefage, 42 vols. (Paris and Lausanne: Sigismond d’Arnay, 1775–81), XXVII, 383–4. 3

Self-Knowledge and Self-Ignorance in Context

307

the times, that we need a modern Church (‘Eglise d’à présent’ (De la fréquente communion, 111) ), and that ancient disciplines are no longer valid.4 But it is not directed against an aristocratic ethic as such. Bénichou takes Nicole’s alleged hostility to mysticism to be typical of Port-Royal. This view, most vigorously affirmed by Henri Bremond, is widely accepted, but there are significant dissenting voices.5 To call even Nicole an ‘anti-mystic’ can be seen as misleading.6 He explicitly denies holding that all mystical states can be explained away as effects of imagination, and acknowledges the supernatural nature of the experiences of certain saints (Gregory, Bernard, and Teresa in particular).7 Of course, the emphasis of Nicole’s polemic is on spiritual illusion, and the role of the imagination therein, rather than on the positive experience of mystical union with God. And no doubt Port-Royal was not a milieu especially propitious to certain kinds of mysticism.8 But we should be chary of erecting a rigid partition with mysticism on the one side, and PortRoyal spirituality on the other. Nicole’s polemic against Desmarets 4 Leszek Kolakowski, God Owes Us Nothing: A Brief Remark on Pascal’s Religion and on the Spirit of Jansenism (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 67–73. 5 Port-Royal as hostile to mysticism: Bénichou, Morales du grand Siècle, 115; Bremond, Histoire littéraire du sentiment religieux en France, I, 523–4; IV, passim (on Nicole, see pp. 472–588); Goldmann, Le Dieu caché, 164; Kolakowski, God Owes Us Nothing, 96–7, 138, 227n. 35. The view is challenged by Mesnard, Les Pensées de Pascal, 331–47; Philippe Sellier, Pascal et saint Augustin, 2nd edn. (Paris: Albin Michel, 1995), 355–7. Nicholas D. Paige has traced a tendency in the mid-seventeenth century to present St Augustine’s Confessions in terms of ‘the mystical discourse of experience’: it is found in both Jansenist and Jesuit writers (Being Interior, 50–61). 6 E. D. James, Pierre Nicole, 90. 7 Pierre Nicole, Letter LX, ‘Sur diverses manieres de faire Oraison’, to Anon., EM VIII, 7–8; Les Visionnaires, I, in Les Imaginaires et Les Visionnaires [and other works] (Cologne: Pierre Marteau, 1683), 245–6. (The publication details are fictitious, a standard form of concealment for texts printed clandestinely.) 8 Benedetta Papasogli notes that the mystical passivity favoured by some spiritual writers was not particularly congenial to the Jansenists, who tended to see the heart essentially in moral terms, as the locus of choice and will (‘Le Fond du cœur’: Figures de l’espace intérieur au XVIIe siècle (Paris: Champion, 2000 (1st pub. in Italian as ‘Il fondo del cuore’: figure dello spazio interiore nel Seicento francese (Pisa: Libreria Goliardica, 1991) ), 49–51).

308


was a response to the latter’s anti-Jansenist activities: the depth of its analyses should not be taken as indicating the elevation of its target.9 To see it, even by implication, as anti-Salesian, to treat Nicole (or Port-Royal) and St François as embodying antithetical tendencies, is problematic. Saint-Cyran’s biographer Jean Orcibal speaks of him as a disciple of St François.10 For a time St François was the director of Mère Angélique, the reformer of the Port-Royal convent (Orcibal, Les Origines, II, 305), and she discussed her monastic reforms with him, in person and by letter: she has been described as imbued with Salesian spirituality, and at one with St François’s thinking.11 Nicole, to be sure, was very reserved in his attitude to claims of mystical experience: yet in other respects he has been shown to be much indebted to St François.12 Besides, we must not forget that this scepticism as to the spiritual value of one’s own interior states is itself an integral part of the mystical tradition. St François has indeed been declared a precursor of La Rochefoucauld for the acuity with which he tracks down the 9 Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin was a complex figure, author of a successful comedy Les Visionnaires (hence the name of Nicole’s polemic). He had been a close collaborator of Richelieu in the enterprise of marginalizing or neutralizing groups or individuals perceived as a threat to the State. He was targeted by Pascal in the fifteenth Provinciale, in the belief, mistaken but not erroneous given his record, that he had published an anti-Jansenist pamphlet (see Pascal, OC I, 760, and 1256n. 8), and he later weighed in on the anti-Jansenist side by publishing a set of replies to the Apologie des religieuses de Port-Royal by Nicole, Arnauld, and Claude de Saint-Marthe, in which he accused the Jansenists of disloyalty. Nicole attacked him in a set of writings entitled Les Imaginaires, succeeded by a series of Visionnaires. A particular target was Desmarets’s mystical writing such as Les Délices de l’esprit (1658). There is a detailed and valuable study of his career by Hugh Gaston Hall, Richelieu’s Desmarets and the Century of Louis XIV (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990); see esp. pp. 319–37. 10 Jean Orcibal, Les Origines du jansénisme, 5 vols. (Louvain: Presses de la Revue de l’histoire ecclésiastique, and Paris: Vrin, 1947–62), II, Jean Duvergier de Hauranne, abbé de Saint-Cyran et son temps, 530; cf. 318–19, 360, 607n. 6, 613–14, 672–7, 684. St François’s theology of grace and predestination differs from the positions later adopted by Jansenius and his followers (see ibid. III, 78–80), but in other respects, above all in the central role he gives to charity in the spiritual life, they are much more closely akin. 11 Antoine Adam, Du mysticisme a` la révolte: Les Jansénistes du XVIIe siècle (Paris: Fayard, 1968), 106–7. 12 E. D. James, Pierre Nicole, 108, 110, 112–15; Nicole, Essais de morale: Choix d’essais, ed. Thirouin, 18–19.


309

deceits of self-love (Orcibal, Les Origines, II, 55). Thus he explains that when charity (the supernatural love of God) has flourished for a time in the soul, it produces a purely human copy of itself, which can then survive the loss of charity, producing what appear to the inexpert judge to be the same effects as charity itself.13 Such an imperfect love is none the less good in itself: the danger is that we mistake it for the charity that originally engendered it and that it resembles: ‘pensant que ce soit [la charité] elle-même que nous avons, nous nous amusons et estimons d’être saints, tandis qu’en cette vaine persuasion, les péchés qui nous ont privé de la charité, grossissent et multiplient si fort qu’enfin ils se rendent maˆıtres de notre cœur’ (thinking that it is charity itself we have, we fool ourselves into thinking we are saints, while under the shelter of this empty belief the sins that have deprived us of charity swell and multiply so far that in the end they take over our heart) (IV.10, 558). It is our amour-propre that tricks us into confusing our imperfect habits with charity, as Jacob was tricked by Laban (Genesis 29: 23) into lying with Leah instead of Rachel (p. 558). Note that, at this level, we are quite far down the spiritual ladder: nowhere near the heights where we might expect a spiritual vertigo to confuse our sense of what we are. Higher up, such confusion does indeed occur. At a certain stage, we find the very opposite inversion to that which consists in taking the human shadow of charity to charity itself. A soul that really possesses faith, hope, and charity may doubt it has them: d’autant que la détresse l’occupe et accable si fort qu’elle ne peut faire aucun retour sur soi-même pour voir ce qu’elle fait: et c’est pourquoi il lui est avis qu’elle n’a ni foi, ni espérance, ni charité, ains seulement des fantômes et inutiles impressions de ces vertus-là, qu’elle sent presque sans les sentir et comme e´trangers, non comme domestiques de son aˆme. (IX.12, 792–3) inasmuch as distress so fills and overwhelms it that it cannot look back on itself to see what it is doing; and this is why it seems to it that it has neither 13

St François de Sales, Traité de l’amour de Dieu, IV.9, Œuvres, 555–6.

310


faith, nor hope, nor charity, but only shades and futile images of those virtues, which it perceives almost without perceiving them, as if they were interlopers in its soul, and not members of the household.

But even here St François maintains the contact between spiritual and everyday experience, for he adds that the mind is always in a similar state of alienation when under the influence of violent passion: ‘car ils [nos esprits] font plusieurs actions comme en songe, et desquelles ils ont si peu de sentiment qu’il ne leur est presque pas avis que ce soit en vérité que les choses se passent’ (for they perform several actions as if in a dream, of which they have so little awareness that they almost disbelieve that the things are really happening) (p. 793). He explores the abysses of reflexive consciousness in terms that precisely anticipate those used by Nicole: Certes, si nos esprits voulaient faire retour sur eux-mêmes par les réfléchissements et replis de leurs actions, ils entreraient en des labyrinthes esquels ils perdraient sans doute l’issue; et ce serait une attention insupportable de penser quelles sont nos pensées, considerer nos considerations, voir toutes nos vues spirituelles, discerner que nous discernons, nous ressouvenir que nous ressouvenons: ce seraient des entortillements que nous ne pourrions défaire. (VI.1, 608) Indeed, if our minds were to try to reflect on themselves, following all the thought processes and secret complexities involved in their operations, they would stray into labyrinths from which they would probably never find the way out; and it would be an unbearable strain of our attention to think what our thoughts are, consider our considerations, perceive all our spiritual perceptions, discern that we are discerning, remember that we are remembering: these would be tangles we could never undo.

Now the Traité appeared in 1616, a quarter of a century before the emergence of ‘Jansenism’.14 Again, one might suppose that the mystical/Jansenist opposition is confirmed at a later date by the antiJansenist stance of Fénelon: but, for all his opposition to Jansenism, 14 On the deceptions of amour-propre see also Traité de l’amour de Dieu, IX.7, 779; X.15, 857.


311

Fénelon’s spiritual writings are acutely aware of the problems of illusion and self-deception.15 The whole issue of the relationship of mystical discourse to the in-depth examination of the human heart has been greatly illuminated by Benedetta Papasogli’s fine study of images of inner space in seventeenth-century spiritual and moral writing. As noted above, she is acutely sensitive to the distinction between the spiritual worlds of Jansenist and mystical writers: she notes the discrepancy between Nicole’s agitated scrutiny of the heart and the mystics’ ‘serene blindness’ (‘Le Fond du cœur’, 57); she speaks of the mystical ‘anthropology’ and that of Pascal as two profoundly different expressions of the age’s spiritual culture. Yet in both she finds a common perception of the heart as bottomless, as a void or abyss (p. 55), an image that evades philosophical dualisms (p. 75). The image, however, takes different forms: depth, for the mystic, is the sign of a spiritual capacity for elevation, an inner unity and simplicity, whereas the moralist opposes depth to surface as face to mask, the base reality to the fine appearance. What she argues, however, is that, between the two ways of symbolizing deep space, there are correspondences and links (pp. 231–4). Even in authors, such as Gracián or Cureau de la Chambre, whose concern with reading the hearts of others and knowing one’s own is pragmatic rather than spiritual, she detects some residual echo of the sacred, most of all in La Rochefoucauld’s maxim 69: ‘S’il y a un amour pur et exempt du mélange de nos autres passions, c’est celui qui est caché au fond du cœur, et que nous ignorons nous-mêmes’ (If there is a pure love, with no admixture of our other passions, it must be one hidden in the depths of our heart, and of which we ourselves are unaware)—an opening, rare for La Rochefoucauld, onto a possible spiritual world (pp. 61–70). Over the period as a whole, though, she detects a shift in the conception of the heart from the metaphysical to the psychological and an increased awareness of the heart’s ambivalences and contradictions (p. 75). 15 See, e.g., Fénelon, Lettres et opuscules spirituels, Œuvres, I, 598, 614–15, 638, 720, 903.

312


The scrutiny, then, of human motivation, the critique of our perception of our own states and dispositions, ought not to be contrasted too sharply with the concerns of spiritual and mystical writers, especially since, far from being the distinctive property of Jansenist writers, it was practised by the mystical writers themselves. This seems somewhat to blunt the force of Bénichou’s interpretation of the critique of consciousness as a Jansenist ideological manœuvre directed against aristocratic optimism, at least in so far as mysticism is seen as a form of that optimism. But, if we leave ‘Jansenism’ (a debatable label anyway) aside, there is no doubt that Augustinian theology helped to foster an interest in self-knowledge, of the introspective rather than the metaphysical kind. When Augustine proclaimed that the capacity to fulfil God’s commandments was conferred only by grace, he had to face the Pelagians’ objection that pagans, after all, had performed many virtuous deeds. To this he replied by distinguishing the deed itself, as the fulfilment of a moral duty (officium) from the end ( finis) for which it is performed. It is the latter that determines its moral worth. A duty performed for the service of God is an act of virtue. Performed for any other end (glory; patriotism; moral self-perfection as an end in itself ) it is not. Pagans, then, could lay no claim to authentic virtue. They would not even know what it is, for they knew no higher value than those mentioned (Contra Julianum, IV.iii.14–33, PL 44, 743–56). The Augustinian theologian would not have to invoke psychological self-deception or self-ignorance here, because he might say, as Augustine himself says against the Pelagian Julian’s defence of pagan virtue, that ‘virtue’ not performed for the service of God is simply—objectively, as it were—not virtue at all. (IV.iii.19–22, PL 44, 747–9). The pagans were thus ignorant of the moral status of their actions, of their need to be related to God. They would thus be lacking a crucial element of what seventeenth-century writers mean by self-knowledge, but not necessarily deceived as to their intentions or motivations. But the Augustinian might say that they were in fact acting out of a delight, unsuspected by themselves, in the spectacle of their own moral purity—narcissistically, in short. This is more


313

or less what Augustine says elsewhere, when he says that virtues espoused for their own sake, that is, not subordinated to God, are ‘inflated and arrogant’, and that those who lay claim to them merely think they have them (De civitate Dei, XIX.25). Jansenius, citing this and other passages, equally contends that the ancient philosophers’ pursuit of virtue apparently for its own sake, if not aimed simply at glory, was vitiated in a more secret way (‘occultiori modo’): it was, in fact, a form of self-pleasing.16 They are therefore in error because they think they have the virtues when in fact they do not: but it is not quite clear that they are supposed to be self-deceived as to their own motivation, since they may have thought (and probably did) that it was entirely in order to delight in the spectacle of one’s own virtue. So what interests Jansenius is not so much any secret psychological process by which the pagans fell into error, but their fundamental (and, since they were pagans, inevitable) error in misrecognizing the relationship between virtue and the service of God. Again, Arnauld who relentlessly strikes down any claim that the pagan heroes or philosophers were truly virtuous is not interested in the psychological process by which they strayed into the pursuit of false virtue, merely in demonstrating that, since they were not actuated by the love of God, they must have been driven by the love of creatures.17 Self-deception, then, could in principle be invoked to discredit the ethical claims of non-believers, but in fact this seems less important than its use in analysing the behaviour and motives of agents whose conscious religious and moral beliefs may be broadly correct. The question thus arises whether a believer’s performance of a moral duty is, unlike a pagan’s, intrinsically virtuous. No, is the answer. For the officium/finis distinction can be mapped onto the opposition between the two loves, charity and self-love, or concupiscence, or cupidity. If we are not acting out of charity, we must be acting from its opposite: even when performing a moral duty, we are doing so for 16

Jansenius, Augustinus, vol. II, De statu naturae lapsæ, IV.11–12, 245–51. For a systematic demolition of pagan claims to virtue, see Arnauld, Seconde apologie pour Jansenius, Œuvres, XVII, 305–51. 17

314


the wrong end. Augustinian moralists such as Esprit can thus apply the critique of pagan virtue to demonstrate the falsity of human virtue in general (virtue, that is, without the inspiration of charity, which only divine grace can confer): their task is to analyse how good acts can be performed out of bad motives. At this point, they have to confront the apparent fact of experience that this does not occur only when the agent is a hypocrite or fraud: it may occur even when he or she is apparently attempting honestly to do good. The possibility of self-deception or self-ignorance is required in order to adapt the Augustinian critique of pagan virtue to a Christian society. And introspection comes into play since there is no one in whom we can pierce the screen of self-flattery and rationalization to disclose the faulty motives beneath so easily as we can in ourselves. But so robust and flexible is the Augustinian critique that it can function even outside the context of Augustinian theology: it can be directed towards a disabused account of human deviousness and self-deception nourished not by an acute awareness of the Fall but by bitter memories of the Fronde. But there is another contributory factor we cannot ignore: Cartesianism. It is Cartesianism that keeps alive the link between introspective and metaphysical models of self-knowledge. Descartes damages the whole descriptive and teleological approach to ethics in which, observing the properties of human beings, we become able to specify their nature, and to identify their end or fulfilment. Our knowledge of others, wrapped up in otiose definitions of man’s essence (‘rational animal’), is less reliable than our knowledge of ourselves: it is by attending to our own thought processes and to the contents of our thinking (our ideas, when rendered clear and distinct) that we attain reliable truth. The fundamental truths we discover are the existence of God, and the distinction between mind and body. Our understanding of the passions presupposes a clear grasp of the separate functions of body and mind, and our understanding of ethical values that of the superiority of the spiritual to the material. So far, introspection, having established a metaphysical basis for ethics, might be felt to have discharged its ethical responsibilities. The


315

crucial intellectual event, as regards the problem of self-knowledge, is the convergence of the Cartesian metaphysic with the Augustinian theology and moral psychology. Now we can no longer explain our subjection to concupiscence and passion by the rebellion of the sensitive appetite, the lower part of the soul, against the guidance of the higher intellectual part. For the Cartesian soul has no parts. We have to explain the clash of loves, charity and self-love or concupiscence, once thought of in terms of the upward or downward inclination ( pondus) that the soul has in common with bodies, in a mechanical world where no such inclinations are admitted. Our ethical explanations, to be philosophically respectable, must take account of the bodily nature of body and the intellectual nature of thought. But to be theologically and morally sound, they must explain moral conflict and weakness, and the vitiation of good acts by faulty motives. We find ourselves therefore examining the unsuspected pressures of bodily processes on those of the soul, and confronting the paradox that thought, which is intrinsically selfaware, can yet escape our awareness (its very intellectuality is what makes it elusive). And, since introspection is the royal road to truth, we have to search for these pressures and to encounter this paradox within ourselves. Probably then we should be wary of seeking for one common matrix for the analysis of self-deception and self-ignorance in seventeenth-century culture. There is a religious discourse, which can be found, however, both in mystical writing and in moraliste texts with an explicitly religious viewpoint. Perhaps we should speak of two discourses here: certainly, we cannot postulate an exclusive, or even a privileged, relationship between Jansenism and the interest in this topic. The religious discourse may attach itself to Cartesian philosophy. Secular analyses may derive from secular models (analyses of courtier behaviour) or borrow elements of the religious analyses. La Rochefoucauld is perhaps the clearest example of an author whose critique of self-knowledge is difficult to assign to a single overall ideological framework, and it is time to discuss him in more detail.

9 La Rochefoucauld and Self-Knowledge Part of La Rochefoucauld’s claim on our interest is that he stands, as it were, halfway between the literary writers seeking to produce mirth or pathos from their characters’ self-ignorance and the philosophers or theologians who seek an abstract analysis of the phenomenon and its relation to more general conceptions of the mind or soul. La Rochefoucauld appears to offer a general reductive theory of human behaviour (all motives are variants of self-love), but the fragmentariness and diversity of the Maximes militate against any attempt to reduce the text to the expression of a theory. In any case, there is no ‘metaphysical’ perspective here, no systematic account of the relation between mind and body, though there are suggestive insights as to the influence of the latter on the former. The Maximes imply that we are often deluded as to the motives or qualities of others. But they also presuppose that we are ignorant of, or deceive ourselves as to, our own motives or qualities. This is implicit in the formal structure so many of them exhibit, in which the true explanation is presented as replacing a false one. Take maxim 122: ‘Si nous résistons a` nos passions, c’est plus par leur faiblesse que par notre force’ (If we resist our passions, it is more because they are weak than because we are strong). This does not commit itself to the view that we do in fact resist our passions: but it presupposes both that we think we do, and that, if we do so (or think we do so), we credit ourselves, erroneously, with strength of character. Or maxim 78: ‘L’amour de la justice n’est en la plupart des hommes que la crainte de souffrir l’injustice’ (Love of justice in most people is nothing but the fear of suffering injustice). Here the implication

La Rochefoucauld and Self-Knowledge

317

is that, when we think that we are motivated by a commitment to justice in general, or that we possess the virtue of justice because we like to see justice done, we are probably, in fact, driven by pure passion (fear). But a number of maxims are quite explicit as to our tendency to deceive ourselves: ‘Nous sommes si accoutumés a` nous déguiser aux autres qu’enfin nous nous déguisons a` nous-mêmes’ (We are so used to disguising ourselves from others that we end up disguising ourselves from ourselves) (maxim 119). The insight surely emerges from the analysis of courtly or amorous intrigue (there is nothing specifically religious in the theme of disguising ourselves from others). The same would apply to other maxims on the topic like 114 and 115. But social interactions generate self-deception even when no one is trying to deceive anyone else. Nous nous persuadons souvent d’aimer les gens plus puissants que nous; et néanmoins c’est l’intérêt seul qui produit notre amitié. Nous ne nous donnons pas a` eux pour le bien que nous leur voulons, mais pour celui que nous voulons recevoir. (maxim 85) We often convince ourselves that we love people more powerful than ourselves; yet it is interest alone that has produced our friendship. We do not give ourselves to them for the sake of the good we wish them, but for the sake of the good we wish from them.

There is no explicit reference to the court, but only at court, or at any rate in magnate circles, would La Rochefoucauld have come into frequent contact with people more powerful than himself. We may compare this maxim with Esprit’s analysis of gratitude: Les premiers sentimens qui naissent dans le cœur d’un homme reconnoissant sont si tendres, si affectifs, & semblent si naturellement conçus pour son bien-faiteur [sic], que l’homme méconnoissant s’y trompe souvent luymême, & croit avoir pour son bienfaiteur [sic] une amitié non seulement sincere, mais cordiale. Cependant tout ce qu’il sent vient de son amour propre, qui fait qu’il sçait bon gré de tous les biens qu’il reçoit, a` ceux qui en sont les autheurs, non pour l’amour d’eux, mais par la seule consideration de son intérêt. (De la fausseté des vertus humaines, I.28, 293)

318


The first feelings that arise in the heart of a grateful man are so tender, so affectionate, and appear so naturally directed towards his benefactor that the deluded man is often himself deceived by them, and believes that he has for his benefactor a friendship that is not only sincere but heartfelt. Yet all he feels has come from his self-love, which causes him to feel grateful to the givers for all the goods he receives, not for their sake but purely in consideration of his own interest.

Related to the theme of self-deception is that of self-flattery. Clearly, this too, like self-deception, is fostered by our relationships with others: Si nous ne nous flattions point nous-mêmes, la flatterie des autres ne nous pourrait nuire. (maxim 152) Did we not flatter ourselves, others’ flattery could do us no harm. L’amour-propre empêche bien que celui qui nous flatte ne soit jamais celui qui nous flatte le plus. (MS 29) Thanks to self-love, not even our warmest flatterer ever flatters us more than ourselves.

But we flatter ourselves irrespective of any flattery we may receive from others. In particular, when we perform certain moral duties, we take this to indicate a corresponding underlying disposition: ‘Tous ceux qui s’acquittent des devoirs de la reconnaissance ne peuvent pas pour cela se flatter d’être reconnaissants’ (There are those who acquit themselves of the duties of gratitude who have no right to flatter themselves that they are grateful) (maxim 224). Compare maxim 481: ‘Rien n’est plus rare que la veritable bonté; ceux meme qui croient en avoir n’ont d’ordinaire que de la complaisance ou de la faiblesse’ (Nothing is so rare as true kindness: those who think they have it are commonly nothing more than indulgent or weak). Or we identify ourselves as the source of a psychological process in which we have no part: ‘Quand les vices nous quittent, nous nous flattons de la créance que c’est nous qui les quittons’ (When the vices forsake us, we flatter ourselves with the belief that we have forsaken them) (maxim 192). We perceive our selves where they are not.


319

By contrast, we can also fail to recognize our own involvement in feelings we take to be related to the person that is their apparent object: ‘Si on croit aimer sa maˆıtresse pour l’amour d’elle, on est bien trompé’ (Anyone who thinks they love their mistress for her sake is very much mistaken) (maxim 374). The implication here is clearly that love is in fact a form of self-love, a point made explicitly in maxim 262: ‘Il n’y a point de passion où l’amour de soi-même règne si puissamment que dans l’amour’ (In no other passion is the love of self so powerful as in love). In grieving, too, for the dead our concern is, unbeknownst to us, for ourselves: Sous prétexte de pleurer la perte d’une personne qui nous est chère, nous nous pleurons nous-mêmes. [. . .] Je dis que c’est une espèce d’hypocrisie, a` cause que dans ces sortes d’afflictions on se trompe soi-même. (maxim 233)1 On the pretext of lamenting the death of a person dear to us, we are lamenting over ourselves. [. . .] I call this a sort of hypocrisy, because in these kinds of distresses we are deceiving ourselves.

In general we seem to have no access to the reality of our own character, qualities, or involvements with others. Maxim 233 shows how we lose sight of self in a concern with the other where the self is in fact, though invisible, paramount. Maxim 236 makes a similar point: kindness is not self-forgetful, for it is a means to win over other people. But self-deception is merely one aspect of a general concern in La Rochefoucauld with problems of self-knowledge. He locates the cause of self-ignorance partly in the feedback effect of other-directed behaviour patterns, of which we have already seen several examples, partly in the fact that we are directed by forces of which we are unaware. These forces are of two kinds: those residing in the body, and those residing in the soul. The first kind are explored with 1 Truchet’s note clarifies La Rochefoucauld’s clarification by suggesting that he is justifying not the word ‘hypocrisie’ but the expression ‘espèce d’hypocrisie’: because we are deceiving ourselves instead of just others, this is a ‘sort of ’ hypocrisy rather than fully-fledged hypocrisy.

320


admirable subtlety in maxim 297, which loses none of its critical power for the fact that it depends on a theory (of the four humours) already outdated in La Rochefoucauld’s time: Les humeurs du corps ont un cours ordinaire et réglé, qui meut et qui tourne imperceptiblement notre volonté; elles roulent ensemble et exercent successivement un empire secret en nous: de sorte qu’elles ont une part considérable a` toutes nos actions, sans que nous le puissions connaˆıtre. The humours of the body have a normal and regular movement that affects and inflects our will imperceptibly: they flow all together, and successively exercise a secret sway within us; so that they have a considerable share in all our actions, without our being aware of this.

The reference to ‘un cours ordinaire et réglé’ and to ‘successivement’ suggests that La Rochefoucauld is thinking of the traditional doctrine that the four humours prevail in succession according to the time of day.2 This maxim was considerably altered from its earlier forms. In both the first edition (as I 48) and the Liancourt manuscript (L 50) it erects an antithesis between the ‘extraordinary’ movements of our humours (the first edition adds ‘et de notre tempérament’), such as violent anger, of which we are acknowledged to be aware, and the ordinary movements, which escape attention. In the final edition, as Truchet remarks, La Rochefoucauld has accentuated the physio-psychological trend of the statement by adding ‘du corps’ after ‘humeurs’;3 perhaps more importantly, he has suppressed the reference to self-awareness implied in the earlier mention of ‘mouvements extraordinaires’. The inaccessibility to consciousness of these humoral movements is further emphasized in the first edition by the addition of ‘secret’ after the reference to their ‘empire’, a change maintained in the fifth. There is more than one way of accounting for this inaccessibility, and they are not all mutually exclusive. Thus, one might argue that 2 On this doctrine, see C. S. Lewis, The Discarded Image, 173–4, and, for a more modern account of the humour theory, Ian Maclean, Logic, Signs and Nature in the Renaissance: The Case of Learned Medicine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 241–2. 3 MMOD 183n. 1; ‘Introduction’, 94.


321

we cannot perceive the influence of the body on our will because the latter has already been modified by that influence: as if the will is not simply pushed by the humoral movements (like a cogwheel forced to rotate by another and transmitting its movements to a third), but registers them, and, so to speak, incorporates and absorbs them into itself. The will on this showing is not merely passive, but endowed with activity and some kind of consciousness. Alternatively, we could read ‘notre volonté’ as denoting no longer a psychological faculty but simply ‘what we want’. Here, ‘what we want’ would simply be what our humours direct us towards. In any case, this consciousness of what we want is simply the obverse side of the psyche, concealing by its very nature (that is, its visibility) the secret empire of the humours—and thus, paradoxically, subjecting us to it all the more. In its final form, and indeed in the first edition, the maxim ends on the affirmation of unknowability. The version of the Liancourt manuscript (L 50) ends on a different note: ‘de sorte qu’elles ont une part considérable a` toutes nos actions, dont nous croyons eˆtre les seuls auteurs’ (so that they have a considerable share in all our actions, for which we think we have sole responsibility). The spotlight is here on the illusion that consists in attributing to ‘ourselves’, as self-moving principles of our own activity, actions that are in reality partly the effect of the humours: as if these latter, then, were not really ‘ourselves’. The ‘will’ is therefore either a misnomer for the temporarily dominant humour, or a psychological faculty that assimilates the humours into its own operation, and so blots out from consciousness its dependence on forces outside the self. The link between the will and the passions emerges again from the similarity between maxim 295 (‘Il s’en faut bien que nous ne connaissions toutes nos volontés’ (We are a long way from knowing all our volitions) ) and maxim 460 (‘Il s’en faut bien que nous connaissions tout ce que nos passions nous font faire’ (We are a long way from knowing all that our passions make us do) ). The latter stresses the determining influence of passion (‘nous font faire’); both relegate the wellsprings of action to the penumbral zone. In MS 2 La Rochefoucauld adumbrates a purely physical theory of passion:

322


‘Toutes les passions ne sont autre chose que les divers degrés de la chaleur, et de la froideur du sang’ (All the passions are nothing other than the various levels of heat and coldness within the blood): but too much must not be made of this, since the maxim was eliminated after the first edition. We move, therefore, from strictly physical determinants to psychical factors. La Rochefoucauld stresses our illusions as to the degree of rational control we can exercise over our actions: ‘L’homme croit souvent se conduire lorsqu’il est conduit; et pendant que par son esprit il tend a` un but, son cœur l’entraˆıne insensiblement a` un autre’ (Man often thinks he is directing himself, when he is in fact being directed; and while his rational mind is focused on one goal, his heart is imperceptibly dragging him towards another) (maxim 43). But the subversive force of the maxim paradoxically depends on its preserving the assumptions of traditional ethical thought: that the human being is to be identified with the rational mind, that only mind-directed action is truly spontaneous, that to act in accordance with non-intellectual factors is in fact not to act but to be acted on. Nothing particularly ‘Cartesian’, by the way, about these assumptions: they go back at least to Aristotle.4 But they would not apply within a different view of personality, say, a Romantic view, in which the apparently irrational urge towards an object other than that identified by one’s reason would be revelatory not of an outside agency controlling us, but of our deepest self. More succinctly, maxim 102 repeats the heart/mind antithesis: ‘L’esprit est toujours la dupe du cœur’ (The mind is always fooled by the heart), as does maxim 103: ‘Tous ceux qui connaissent leur esprit ne connaissent pas leur cœur’ (Not all those who know their mind know their heart). ‘Cœur’ here is less easy to grasp than it might seem. The term ‘non-intellectual’ used above is intended to 4 ‘As in the state it is the sovereign that is held in the fullest sense to be the state, and in any other composite whole it is the dominant part that is deemed especially to be that whole, so it is with man. [. . .] The intellect is the man himself. Also [. . .] it is our reasoned acts that are felt to be in the fullest sense our own acts, voluntary acts’ (Aristotle, Ethics, IX.viii.6 (1168b –1169a ); translator’s italics).


323

avoid a premature reduction of its ambiguity. We might understand it as a synonym for ‘emotion’. But it conceivably denotes a kind of intuitive knowledge contrasted with explicit reasoning, a sort of gut feeling, yet more akin to judgement than to blind emotion. (There would be some resemblance here with Pascal’s concept of cœur, but, firstly, it would be coincidental, since both these maxims date from the earliest surviving stages of the text, which pre-date by several years the publication of the Pensées; secondly, Pascal’s concept has an epistemological depth that is not pertinent to La Rochefoucauld’s use of the term; then again the cognitive sense of ‘heart’/cœur is well established before either writer: St Paul speaks of the Gentiles having a law written in their hearts (‘scriptum in cordibus suis’ (Romans 2: 15) ), and this does not denote a purely affective relationship5 ). In any case, the general point is clear: our attempts to direct our actions rationally are subverted by psychical factors that escape rational appraisal and indeed awareness. Of these the most notorious is of course amour-propre. In the long fragment that headed the first edition of the Maximes, but that was subsequently discarded, this image of a self at the mercy of drives of which it is unaware is depicted unforgettably (the grammatical subject of the passage is amour-propre): On ne peut sonder la profondeur, ni percer les ténèbres de ses abˆımes. Là il est a` couvert des yeux les plus pénétrants; il y fait mille insensibles tours et retours. Là il est souvent invisible a` lui-même, il y conçoit, il y nourrit, et il y e´lève, sans le savoir, un grand nombre d’affections et de haines; il en forme de si monstrueuses que, lorsqu’il les a mises au jour, il les méconnaˆıt, ou il ne peut se résoudre a` les avouer. De cette nuit qui le couvre naissent les ridicules persuasions qu’il a de lui-même; de là viennent ses erreurs, ses ignorances, ses grossièretés et ses niaiseries sur son sujet; de là vient qu’il croit que ses sentiments sont morts lorsqu’ils ne sont qu’endormis, qu’il s’imagine n’avoir plus envie de courir dès qu’il se repose, et qu’il pense avoir perdu tous les goûts qu’il a rassasiés. (MS 1, MMOD 240) 5 There is a wise discussion of the historical relationship between ‘reason’ and ‘heart’ in C. S. Lewis, The Discarded Image, 156–61.

324


We cannot sound the depths or pierce the darkness of its chasms. There it is safely hidden from the most penetrating eyes: it winds to and fro, unperceived. There it is often invisible to itself: it spawns, it feeds, it breeds up, unbeknownst to itself, a host of affections and hatreds; some of these are so monstrous that when it has brought them to light, it cannot recognize them for what they are, or cannot bring itself to acknowledge them. From this night in which it is buried arise its ridiculous beliefs about itself; hence come its errors, its ignorances, its blunders, and its stupidities about itself; hence it is that it believes its feelings are dead when they are only sleeping, that it imagines it no longer wishes to move when once it is at rest, and that it thinks it has lost all the tastes it has in fact satiated.

Self-love is first of all a monstrously fertile mother (the imagery insists on this), shockingly irresponsible like the feckless teenager of popular stereotype, giving birth to and nurturing a string of passions, while apparently unaware of their existence.6 Indeed, these are often monstrous births, disavowed when they force themselves on their parent’s awareness (here the model is more like Jean-Jacques Rousseau).7 Amour-propre is deluded about itself: that is, we live 6

That the various passions are allotropes of self-love is alleged in ME 28, ‘Les passions ne sont que les divers goûts de l’amour-propre’. That they are, in general, forms of love (be it self-love or charity) is an Augustinian position (De civitate Dei, XIV.7), which can be found in writers as different as Jansenius and St François de Sales. See above, Chapter 3. 7 I use ‘disavowed’ in its ordinary sense, as the nearest equivalent to La Rochefoucauld’s formulation. But in fact the choice of term opens up a question about the exact nature of this misrecognition. Is it that we refuse to recognize a passion (say, an illegitimate sexual desire) when we become aware of it, or is it that the desire takes such distorted form that we simply fail to recognize it for what it is? In psychoanalytic parlance, ‘disavowal’ is used for the second situation, the first being described as ‘negation’. Negation is defined by Laplanche and Pontalis as the ‘procedure by which the subject, while formulating one of his wishes, thoughts or feelings which has been repressed, contrives, by disowning it, to continue to defend himself against it’ ( J. Laplanche and J.-B. Pontalis, The Language of Psycho-Analysis, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (London: Hogarth Press and Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1985), 261). In disavowal, we have ‘a mode of defence which consists in the subject’s refusing to recognize the reality of a traumatic perception—most especially the perception of the absence of the woman’s penis’ (p. 118). This mechanism is invoked in Freud’s explanation of fetishism and the psychoses. In this latter model, to shuttle between Freud’s terminology and La Rochefoucauld’s, male amour-propre seeks to evade the traumatic encounter with women’s ‘castration’ by its attachments to fetishes that quite obscure the original source of their appeal (as substitutes for the lost woman’s


325

with flattering if not clearly perceived images of our character, and are equally unaware of the true nature of our emotions. Like Oreste in Racine’s Andromaque, we mistake a slumbering passion for a dead one, and read current states (fatigue or satiation) over which we have no control as if from them we could predict future states of desire. Again, amour-propre produces an effect already encountered (as in the grief of the bereaved): a projection onto the object of qualities of which the true location is in the self, but which we cannot afford to recognize where they truly are: L’on pourrait conclure assez vraisemblablement que c’est par lui-même que ses désirs sont allumés, plutôt que par la beauté et par le mérite des ses objets; que son goût est le prix qui les relève, et le fard qui les embellit; que c’est après lui-même qu’il court, et qu’il suit son gré, lorsqu’il suit les choses qui sont a` son gré. (MS 1, MMOD 241) We could quite plausibly infer that it is by itself that its desires are aroused, rather than by the beauty and the attractions of its objects; that its taste is the value that enhances them and the cosmetic that beautifies them; that it is itself that it goes chasing, and that when it is pursuing the objects it fancies it is its own fancy that is the object of the pursuit.

The passage has already been quoted (above, p. 243–4) to illustrate how the theory of amour-propre evacuates the world of objects of their own qualities. The further point now is that amour-propre’s desires seem to need this fundamental misrecognition if they are to accomplish their circuit: otherwise, they would be short-circuited within the self. Amour-propre deludes us into the belief in a world of objects with qualities to which we are responding. We are thus doubly deceived: ‘our’ desires are in fact amour-propre’s, and the objects it represents to us are simply the creation of its desires. But amour-propre is not pure illusion or misperception: ‘Cette obscurité e´paisse, qui le cache a` lui-même, n’empêche pas qu’il ne voie parfaitement ce qui est hors de lui’ (This dense obscurity that hides it from itself does not prevent seeing perfectly what is outside penis). But it is not likely that this kind of attachment is what La Rochefoucauld is talking about, and he is more probably discussing what would be called ‘negation’.

326


itself ) (MS 1, MMOD 240). That is to say, amour-propre is always alert to possibilities of, or threats to, gratification. Its lucidity is also ironically celebrated in maxim 494: Ce qui fait voir que les hommes connaissent mieux leurs fautes qu’on ne pense, c’est qu’ils n’ont jamais tort quand on les entend parler de leur conduite: le même amour-propre qui les aveugle d’ordinaire les ećlaire alors, et leur donne des vues si justes qu’il leur fait supprimer ou déguiser les moindres choses qui peuvent eˆtre condamnées. We can see that human beings know their faults better than might be supposed from the fact that they never make mistakes when we hear them speaking of their own behaviour: the same self-love that normally blinds them here enlightens them and gives them such accurate insights that it leads them to suppress or disguise the tiniest things that might be open to criticism.

As we read through the Maximes we have got so thoroughly used to the idea that people are generally blind to their faults that it is disconcerting to have this perception corrected. Amour-propre is apparently omnipresent: if there are any zones outside its influence, we can never know them: ‘S’il y a un amour pur et exempt du mélange de nos autres passions, c’est celui qui est caché au fond du cœur, et que nous ignorons nous-mêmes’ (If there is a pure love, with no admixture of our other passions, it must be one hidden in the depths of our heart, and of which we ourselves are unaware) (maxim 69). This enigmatic maxim seems to suggest that merely to become conscious of this pure love would be ipso facto to corrupt it: its integrity lies wholly in its invisibility. Self-knowledge, then, can never be complete, for it would appear that in becoming aware of our inner states, or attitudes, or desires, we modify their very nature. This is not to say that La Rochefoucauld condemns us to total ignorance of ourselves, any more than his assertion of the omnipresence of self-love reduces all actions to the same moral nullity. We may be unable to perceive all our impulses and motives: but we can prevent them from distorting or vitiating our behaviour if we seek knowledge of self in the correct fashion—that is, through


327

the filter of social codes governing one’s presentation of oneself to others. The starting point is not an introspective exploration of our inner processes, but a general idea of our ‘figure’ (appearance) and ‘talents’. Corresponding to these there is a particular appropriate demeanour (‘air’), and, if we stick to this, we shall never make a bad impression: we shall not seek to imitate manners or to acquire qualities that do not suit us. Knowing oneself and being oneself are thus closely related, and they are in turn related to pleasing others. But the ‘self’ we are to present is not a unique singularity: it is given partly by nature (appearance and innate abilities) but also by the social position into which we are born or have been placed, by our ‘état’ as well as our ‘figure’. 8 The essay on ‘falsity’ (Du faux) makes clear that what is suitable to us is what conforms not only to our individual nature but to our gender and rank: there are fields of knowledge, for instance, that are not appropriate for women.9 In social life, then, there is a practical resolution of problems that from the point of view of analysis appear insoluble. We know ourselves well enough if we know ourselves well enough to behave properly and thereby to make a good impression on others. For other analysts of self-knowledge, though, a purely worldly solution will not suffice. 8

La Rochefoucauld, ‘De l’air et des manières’, Réflexions diverses, III, MMOD 707–9. La Rochefoucauld, ‘Du faux’, Réflexions diverses, XIII, MMOD 726–8. There is a fuller discussion of this subject in my Taste and Ideology in Seventeenth-Century France, 136–40. 9

10 Religious Moralists La Rochefoucauld’s engagement in the Maximes with the problem of self-knowledge is conducted on the level of our awareness of our internal states, the attitudes, desires, motives, and passions that govern our behaviour but of which we are only imperfectly aware if at all. We find similar concerns in Nicole. But his account of self-knowledge also incorporates what we have called ‘metaphysical’ concerns, and the same, as we have seen, is true of other writers on the subject. The combination of the ‘metaphysical’ and ‘introspective’ approaches is most striking in Nicole himself and in François Lamy, and it is on these two that I shall concentrate (but not exclusively) in what follows. Both provide wide-ranging and searching accounts of the obstacles to our knowledge of ourselves.1 One of the major obstacles to self-knowledge is self-love. Jansenius’s account of self-love (above, pp. 171–85) traced the process whereby 1 On Nicole and Lamy in relation to the problem of self-knowledge, see Geneviève Lewis, Le Problème de l’inconscient et le cartésianisme (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1950), 188–265; Papasogli, ‘Le Fond du cœur’, 47–59, 71–4, 222–7. Nicole is discussed by Bénichou, Morales du grand siècle, 116–18. E. D. James, Pierre Nicole: Jansenist and Humanist, pays close attention to Nicole’s explorations of unconscious thoughts (see esp. pp. 32–44, 116–31). More recently, Laurent Thirouin has stressed the importance and scope of Nicole’s theory of ‘pensées imperceptibles’, especially in regard to the late seventeenth-century dispute about the moral value of theatre known as the Querelle du théaˆ tre. See his L’Aveuglement salutaire: Le Réquisitoire contre le théaˆ tre dans la France classique (Paris: Champion, 1997), esp. pp. 148–60. In his edition of Nicole’s Traité de la comédie and other works from the Querelle he argues that Nicole’s analysis of the spectator’s response adumbrates a theory of the unconscious (Pierre Nicole [et al.], Traité de la comédie et autres pieces d’un procès du théaˆ tre, ed. Laurent Thirouin (Paris: Champion, 1998), p. 46 n. 21, p. 74 n. 61). He has also highlighted the issue in his selection of Nicole’s Essais de morale; see p. 277, n. 1.

Religious Moralists

329

the self-love that has perverted the rational mind, the highest part of the soul, imprints itself on the animal appetite, the lower part of the soul and the seat of the passions. Therefore all our specific appetites or passions are tainted with self-love. However, writers influenced by Descartes (like Nicole and Lamy) discard the distinction between parts of the soul: the non-intellectual functions traditionally attributed to the animal or vegetable strata of the soul, are distributed between the unified soul (for example, sensation) and the body (for example, motion).2 The passions are no longer movements of the sensitive appetite, rebellious (in fallen man) to control by reason. Difficulties of self-knowledge can no longer be analysed in terms of conflicts between the different layers within the soul. Instead, relationships between mind and body come to the fore—though, as we shall see, self-love continues to play a major role in the analysis.

Mind and Body Nicole’s essay ‘De la connoissance de soi-même’ is not wholly concerned with self-scrutiny as to motive or inclination. It does partly deal with knowledge, or ignorance, of the motives behind particular actions (II.13, EM III, 128). But he devotes more attention to our errors regarding our qualities and defects (I.2, EM III, 6–7)—as distinct from psychological states. Again, if we had self-knowledge, he says, we could discover in the depths of our hearts the inscription of the natural law that forbids us doing to others what we would not have them do to us (I.9, EM III, 46–7).3 We apprehend ourselves here in the depths of our being not as individuals but as members of a species: our sense of uniqueness would thus be itself the illusion. And what we find within ourselves includes not only base motives 2 See Descartes, Les Passions de l’âme, §§2–6, 47, AT XI, 328–31, 364–6: OP III, 952–5, 990–2. 3 Cf. ‘Des rapports’, II, EM III, 300, for the existence of this law, which is also discussed below in connection with ‘pensées imperceptibles’.

330


but a knowledge of the fundamental law of our nature as rational beings, itself a reflection of God’s eternal law. Moreover, Nicole adduces metaphysical as well as psychological causes of our propensity to illusion. The union of mind and body generates confused ideas. We are governed by ‘puissances trompeuses’, to use Pascal’s phrases, faculties of the soul (the senses, the imagination, the understanding) that are directed at outside reality, but do not apprehend it as it is. With Descartes and Malebranche, Nicole shares a common posture of thought, what Charles Taylor has characterized as ‘disengagement’:4 a stance of suspicion faced with the mind’s and the body’s spontaneous promptings, a conviction of the necessity of introspection, combined with an awareness that introspection is itself a somewhat unnatural activity. Nicole remarks that the soul ‘ne sauroit rentrer en soi-même qu’en se faisant une extrême violence’ (can withdraw within itself only by doing itself extreme violence) (I.1, EM III, 5). Again, ‘les objets spirituels ne se présentant pas par eux-mêmes a` l’esprit, les sens empêchent souvent l’ame de s’y appliquer. Les objets de la chair au contraire sont vifs & penetrans’ (Spiritual objects do not present themselves to the mind by themselves, and so the senses often prevent the soul’s applying itself to them. On the contrary, the objects of the flesh are intense and penetrating).5 Such statements may remind one of Malebranche even more than of Descartes.6 The first three books of De la recherche de la vérité appeared in 1674, the third volume of Nicole’s Essais de morale in 1675. Influence is possible, then, but conjectural: more important is the common attitude. 4 ‘To bring this whole domain of sensations and sensible properties to clarity means to grasp it as an external observer would, tracing the causal connections between states of the world or my body, described in primary properties, and the ‘‘ideas’’ they occasion in my mind. Clarity and distinctness require that we step outside ourselves and take a disengaged perspective’ (Taylor, Sources of the Self, 146). The common posture is perhaps all the more important in that Nicole was not fully committed to all aspects of Descartes’s thought: see Geneviève Lewis, Le Problème de l’inconscient, 221. 5 Epistle, 14th Sunday after Pentecost, EM XIII, 4: cf. ‘De la connoissance de soi-même’, I.8, EM III, 40. 6 Cf., e.g., Malebranche, De la recherche de la vérité, Préface, Œuvres, I, 10–11; I.18, Œuvres, I, 132–5.

Religious Moralists

331

Second only to the power of the senses is the power of imagination, which Nicole characterizes as but a muted form of madness. For it presents images to the mind without the leave of the will, which is what happens in madness, except that there the images are more intense, so as altogether to be indistinguishable from the reality (‘De la foiblesse de l’homme’, X, EM I, 48). Moreover, although it is the mind that carries out the act of imagining, the process begins in the body, and the gap between imagination and madness could be bridged simply by raising the temperature of the brain by a few degrees. Nicole constantly contrasts the imagination as surface with the depth of the mind, the heart, in rather Pascalian fashion. Pascal says: ‘Les hommes prennent souvent leur imagination pour leur cœur: et ils croient eˆtre convertis dès qu’ils pensent a` se convertir’ (People often take their imagination for their heart, and they think they have been converted as soon as they think of converting) (L 975/S 739/LG 756). Likewise, those with a lively imagination, says Nicole, often take the impulses of their imagination, or their awareness of their own corruption, to be the real deep-seated disposition of their heart; and so, however sincere they may be, they are deceiving themselves (Letter XIV, to a female religious, EM VII, 97; cf. Gospel, Monday, 2nd week in Lent, EM X, 282). But the intellect itself is not unaffected by the influence of the Fall, which has corrupted both conception and reasoning. This is asserted in the Logique de Port-Royal, which Nicole composed with Antoine Arnauld. We run our lives on the basis of judgements of good and bad, and erroneous judgements derive from false ideas. These in turn are formed by the combination of ideas that have no objective connection. These combinations give rise to ‘de vains fantômes, après lesquels les hommes courent & dont ils se repaissent miserablement toute leur vie’ (idle phantoms that people chase after, and with which they indulge themselves wretchedly all their lives long) (Logique, I.10, 77). The connection between desire and the false idea recalls the Stoic association between passion and opinion or false judgement, but also the Augustinian tendency to associate knowledge of the

332


truth with that of the good. For these writers, it is impossible to separate disorders of the intellect from disorders of desire. This also applies to François Lamy. As was noted above (pp. 285–6), he finds the ultimate cause of our self-ignorance in original sin. But he lists three proximate causes. First, the impression of sensible objects, along with the attendant prejudices it occasions: that bodies possess the qualities we perceive in them, that they are the true instead of the occasional cause of our ideas and feelings (the influence of Malebranche is especially clear here) (C2 I, 28–42). Secondly, the residual moral sense thanks to which our fundamental iniquity and injustice can never quite escape us, resulting in fear and anxiety: hence we seek to escape from ourselves into an illusory image of self (C2 I, 43–9). Finally, we practise another form of self-escape, which is essentially Pascalian divertissement: Lamy carefully logs the various kinds of alienating activities practised by different categories of men and women, secular and religious (C2 I, 51–125). Like Nicole, like Descartes, and indeed like Malebranche, Lamy insists that we must do violence to ourselves to escape our spontaneous promptings and illusions, to return into the homeland of truth, the self (C2 II, p. xxv). Yet, in another way, self-discovery should be easy: ‘il n’y a qu’à demeurer chés soy’ (we have only to remain at home) (C2, I, 29–30). The soul is object and agent of this knowledge. ‘Ele [sic] est tout ensemble & le soi-même, qui doit eˆtre conu (qu’on me permette cete expression) & le soi-même, qui doit conoˆıtre’ (It is at the same time, both the ‘self’ (if I may put it this way) that is to be known and the ‘self’ that does the knowing) (C2, I, 30). Here, as elsewhere, Lamy’s apologies for his forms of expression indicate both the relative novelty of treating the pronouns moi and soi as nouns (as in the English expression ‘the self’) and the difficulty of the insights he is trying to formulate. The soul is said to be ‘toute intelligible’ and ‘toute intelligente’ (C2, I, 30–1): its intelligible and intellectual aspects are not different faculties (as the scholastic distinction between the active and the passive intellect might suggest). It is a unity that can simultaneously function as active and passive.

Religious Moralists

333

Reflection is not a separate activity, applied to primary thinking, as one might grasp one hand, already holding something, with the other: it is virtual in the process of thinking itself.7 Chaque pensée n’enferme-t-êle pas un regard sur eˆle-même? n’est-êle pas une réflexion secrete sur ce qu’êle est? & peut-on penser veritablement, sans en eˆtre averti par l’acte même de penser, & sans s’en apercevoir immediatement? (C2, I, 31) Does not every thought contain a perception of itself? Is it not a secret reflection on what it is? And can we think in the full sense of the word, without being made aware of it by the very act of thinking, without realizing immediately we are doing so?

On the other hand, Lamy is one with Malebranche in asserting that the self has not a clear idea of itself. Mais aprés tout, le fond n’est pas bien clairement conu. Je ne dis pas simplement qu’on ne pénetre pas assez tous les mouvemens & tous les replis de son cœur; cela est incontestable; j’ajoûte qu’on n’a pas même une assez claire idée de la nature de l’esprit, pour juger sur cette idée, de quêles sensations & de quêles manieres il est capable. (C2 II, p. vi) But after all, its depths are not clearly known. I am not just saying that we cannot sufficiently penetrate all the processes and recesses of one’s heart, which is undoubtedly true; I am saying further that we do not even have a sufficiently clear idea of the nature of the mind, on the basis of which we could judge of what sensations and modifications it is capable.

In the first part of the quotation, Lamy alludes to the moral and psychological realm, whereas in the second he is on the terrain of metaphysics in the broad seventeenth-century sense. The ease of transit between these regions appears from the fact that his discussion of bodily influences takes place in the third volume of De la connoissance de soi-mesme, which deals with ‘de l’estre moral de l’homme ou de la science du cœur’ (the moral nature of man or the knowledge of the heart). More will be said on this presently. But 7 This seems to be Descartes’s own position, though the matter is a difficult one. It is discussed with references in my Early Modern French Thought, 60–2.

334


for the moment what has been said suffices to confirm that it would be wrong to assume that seventeenth-century writers conceived the problem of self-knowledge essentially with reference to affects and motives. Moreover, inasmuch as knowing oneself in the full sense means knowing that one has been created by God, self-knowledge goes beyond the knowledge of oneself as an individual. On the other hand, Lamy certainly does also emphasize, as we have seen, the limits of our personal awareness of our selves, of the secret movements of the heart. And he sees these limitations as largely due to our embodied nature. He was not the first moralist to explore this terrain, as is clear from the earlier discussion of La Rochefoucauld’s maxim 297. He would doubtless find the general purport of this maxim congenial, while deploring the antiquarian pseudo-scientific reference to the humours. He offers a taxonomy of the effects on the heart occasioned by the body, and of the illusions that result from our ignorance of them, that is in keeping with the latest science, and he presents this stress on imperceptible or barely perceptible physical influences as a rather original feature of his work (C1 III, 34). (As regards the difficulty of distinguishing between motives—cupidity or charity—he cites Nicole as a precursor (C1 III, 33)). He cites proximate causes, within the body (the constitution of the fibres of the brain and of other organs; the nature of the animal spirits and the blood; temperament; and imagination) and remote causes, outside the body (climate; the seasons; diet; lifestyle; the appearance, manners, speech, and behaviour of those we encounter in our daily lives, and, finally, inanimate things) (C1 III, 75–6). These are then examined in detail. In the first place, we tend to forget how far our spiritual dispositions depend on bodily states (C1 III, 81). We impute to our spiritual development what is really the effect of age or enfeebled health: if we have become ‘emancipated’ from a passion, our heart may have had no more to do with this than it has with our hair falling out (C1 III, 88, and see pp. 89–94). We take our likings and dislikings to be based on rational evaluation of others’ qualities: but their true causes are hidden and corporeal: some people’s appearance and manners

Religious Moralists

335

are congenial to the current disposition of our body, those of others are not (C1 III, 108–9). The point of the analysis is not simply that our attachments have mechanical origins, but that we spontaneously overlook these, being conscious instead of rational evaluations that are in fact mere rationalizations of affect. (Just as, in the Cartesian theory of passion, one does not perceive the movement of the animal spirits in the brain, only the external object or behaviour to which (one feels) one is reacting by fear, anger, and so forth.) None the less, and this is an important point, Lamy does not deny all value to these illusory states. A religious conversion might be purely natural in origin: one has lost the appetite for worldly pleasure, say. But this might none the less pave the way for a genuine conversion (C1 III, 100). The body, then, as a whole, considered as a set of dispositions due to age, health, and so forth, is a powerful determinant of our behaviour, with the paradoxical quality that it acts only in a spiritual or intellectual disguise. Lamy proceeds to examine another set of illusions generated by particular faculties of the body—namely, the senses and the imagination, before he comes to deal with the heart itself, and its propensity to self-love. Lamy’s analysis of our attachment to objects is unmistakably premised on the Cartesian reconception of our relationship to the physical world. The sensible qualities we attribute to objects are illusory: what is real in them is the movement by which they act on our organs, but the qualities (colours, smells, and so forth) are ‘sentiments de nôtre ame’ (sensations of our soul) (C1 III, 10–16) that we project onto the external world. Light, colour, sound, smell, and so forth, all that we find most agreeable or wonderful in the world, is in fact supplied by our own souls (C1 III, 16–17). But these illusions affect the heart as well. It thus becomes a moral as well as a metaphysical necessity to ‘demasquer sans cesse toute la Nature; de dépoüiller les objets de nos sens de tout ce qui ne leur appartient pas; et de leur enlever ces charmes imposteurs qui nous séduisent’ (relentlessly to unmask the whole of Nature; to strip the objects of our senses of all that does not belong to them; and to

336


remove from them those delusive attractions that seduce us) (C1 III, 23).8 It would be hard to give a better example of the religious and moral investment in the disengagement from spontaneous habits of perception that also underlies the early-modern scientific attitude. Disons souvent aux objets de nos illusions: Que vous estes laides, que vous estes insipides, que vous estes dégoutantes creatures qui nous paroissiez si agreables; mais que vous estes foibles, que vous estes impuissantes, que vous estes incapables de nous faire ni bien ni mal. (C1 III, 25) Let us often address the objects of our illusions as follows: How ugly you are, how insipid, how disgusting, you creatures that appeared so delightful to us; yet, how weak you are, how impotent, how incapable of doing us either good or harm.

Here, as in the previous quotation, the imagery (‘charmes’, ‘séduisent’) and the feminine ending of the adjectives (coming in before the noun ‘créatures’ to which they grammatically relate (by prolepsis) and clashing with the nearest preceding noun, ‘objets’, to which one would naturally take them to refer) make it almost unnecessary to register the quasi-sexual anxiety in operation here. These illusions are connected with sensory experience, but they are due not to the senses considered as corporeal organs, but to our interpretation of their data. But there is a more particular source of illusion in the brain, that is, in the imagination, considered in its bodily aspect. Lamy, like Pascal and Nicole, opposes the imagination and the heart, citing La Rochefoucauld (maxim 102) in order to go beyond him: ‘Dans le commerce d’illusion qui est entre l’esprit, l’imagination & le cœur, l’esprit est souvent la dupe du cœur: mais il est encore plus ordinaire que le cœur soit la dupe de l’imagination’ (In the dealings in illusion that take place between the mind, the imagination, and the heart, the mind is often fooled by the heart: but even more commonly the heart is fooled by the imagination) (C1 III, 116). The imagination represents things only according to 8

For this ‘disenchantment’ of the sensible world, cf. Malebranche, Entretiens sur la métaphysique et sur la religion, IV.22, Œuvres, II, 739; Abbadie, L’Art de se connoˆıtre soy-meme, 55–6.

Religious Moralists

337

the mechanical dispositions of the brain, which vary markedly from one person to another (C1 III, 116–17). Whereas the mind (in the restricted sense of the understanding) makes judgements based on clear and distinct ideas, the judgements of the heart are based on confused sensible ideas, such as imagination supplies (p. 119). Imagination turns out to have a secret complicity with amour-propre through its effects on the heart, as appears if we consider the effects of preaching that appeals to the imagination: Il est vrai que ces idées vives & flatteuses e´branlant fortement l’imagination, remuent agreablement le cœur, & lui donnent une espéce d’ardeur & d’amour: mais, si l’on y prend garde, il se trouvera que cette ardeur & cet amour ne se terminent qu’à soi-même: on s’aime soi-même comme agreablement remué: le cœur est tout occupé de son plaisir & de son charme; & l’on prend cet amour de soi-même pour un vrai amour de Dieu dont le Predicateur parle, & dont l’idée voltigeant sur la surface de l’esprit de l’auditeur, donne lieu a` cette illusion. (C1 III, 121) To be sure, these vivid and flattering ideas strongly excite the imagination, stir the heart pleasurably, and impart to it a kind of fervour and love: but if we pay close attention, we shall find that this fervour and love terminate only in ourselves; we love ourselves as pleasurably stirred; the heart is totally occupied with the pleasure and the charm it feels; and we take this love of ourselves for a true love of God, such as the preacher is speaking of, the idea of which, hovering over the surface of the listener’s mind, gives rise to this illusion.

For the same reason, we should regulate our meditation by faith and intelligence rather than imagination, which can wreak havoc on the life of prayer. Elle fait prendre des phantomes pour des realités; de pures visions, pour des révélations: des e´tats chimeriques, pour des e´tats effectifs: des mouvemens purement naturels, pour des impressions surnaturelles de l’Esprit de Dieu: des e´puisements de teste, & des e´bloüissemens pour des extases: de simples mouvemens d’amour propre pour les plus vives flammes de l’amour de Dieu: quelque redoublement dans les batemens du cœur, pour de nouveaux accez de cet amour divin. (C1 III, 224–5).

338


It causes us to take phantoms for realities; pure illusions for revelations; chimerical states for genuine states; purely natural impulses for supernatural impressions of the Spirit of God; when our brain is exhausted and we feel dizzy, we take it for ecstasy; we take movements of sheer self-love for the brightest flames of the love of God, and a quickening of the heartbeat for a new impulse of this divine love.

Having examined the tendency of our own body to generate illusions, Lamy proceeds to examine the effect of external influences. He pays particular attention to the effect of the manners, behaviour, and speech of those around us. In his account of the contagious effects of imagination, and of the link between imagination, passion, and compassion, Lamy is much indebted to Malebranche. Both conceive the self as fragile, intensely permeable to external influences. The same is also true of Nicole, who lays stress on the power of language or discourse. Through language we receive false ideas: for not only faith, says Nicole, alluding to Romans 10 : 17, but worldly opinion comes through hearing. ‘Le langage commun est proprement le langage de la concupiscence’ (Ordinary language is nothing other than the language of concupiscence) (‘Discours où l’on fait voir combien les entretiens des hommes sont dangereux’, I.3, EM II, 56), because it attaches ideas to objects (great or small, estimable or contemptible) according as they are represented by concupiscence. Nor can these associations be modified at will or dissolved by the moral goodness of the speaker, for even the virtuous, in order to make themselves intelligible, have to borrow worldly language (I.6, EM II, 70). But—Nicole’s theory is almost behaviourist here—language reacts back upon the heart that in theory (even in Augustine’s theory) might appear as the source of it.9 Il y a cette communication entre le cœur & la langue, que c’est presque la même chose de régler la langue que de régler le cœur. Il est difficile que 9

For Augustine, an utterance in and of the heart precedes all voluntary action: ‘Nemo etiam volens aliquid facit, quod non in corde suo prius dixerit’ (De Trinitate, IX.vii.12, PL 42, 967).

Religious Moralists

339

le cœur soit déréglée, sans que la langue le soit: mais il est impossible que la langue soit déréglée, sans que le cœur le soit. (Epistle, 5th Sunday after Easter, EM XII, 7) The communication between the heart and the tongue is so close, that to govern one’s tongue is comes almost to the same thing as governing one’s heart. It is hard enough for the heart to be disordered without one’s language being disordered too: but it is quite impossible for one’s language to be disordered, and for the heart to escape disorder.

Lamy adds something of his own in this area. The image of vibrating strings to account for the transmission of passion between one person to another (C1 III, 209–10) is worth noting, because of its later philosophical history (Diderot). And the discussion of the effect of other people upon us through their language is accompanied by a fascinating digression on music, and its power to conjure up accessory ideas, which may corrupt the heart without our realizing it (C1 III, 243). Likewise, a colour or the scent of a flower can revive a passion we thought dead, without our realizing the connection (C1 III, 244), and Lamy concludes that, if we were to study ourselves closely, observing what goes on inside us, we should perhaps find that there are few sensible objects that do not play similar tricks with us (C1 III, 245).

Desire and Passion But the emotional impact of our sensory and imaginative experience is not derived only from the accessory ideas it occasions. We also have direct emotional attachments to inanimate objects, and these are more powerful than we realize. Our enjoyment of a party can be imperceptibly blighted by the thought that our vines have been touched by frost, or our carriage’s windows broken (Lamy, C1 III, 265–6). Our attachment to external bodies is the more pernicious because thus imperceptible: it generates illusions. To free ourselves from these, we have to learn to observe our impressions attentively, so as to discover how far they affect our behaviour, and to learn to distinguish that element in our actions that comes from purely

340


mechanical bodily stimuli from that which comes from reason, freedom, and perhaps grace (C1 III, 279–80). This, says Lamy, is the principal part of self-knowledge. The illusions that are due to our attachment to external objects are analysed in terms of ethical concepts such as concupiscence and the passions. Amour-propre, indeed, is always entertwined with concupiscence. Attachment to a misperceived self is connected with attraction to misperceived objects outside the self. Arnauld and Nicole analyse the link in the Logique. The Fall has left man with certain basic ideas intact: happiness, unhappiness, greatness, littleness, baseness, and excellence. To these his love should be naturally attuned. But, as a result of the Fall, he connects the idea of happiness with that of myriad objects of love incapable of providing it. Greatness and excellence being lost, Il est contraint pour s’aimer, de se représenter a` soi-même autre qu’il n’est en effet; de se cacher ses misères et sa pauvreté, & d’enfermer dans son idée un grand nombre de choses qui en sont entierement séparées, afin de la grossir et de l’agrandir (Logique, I.10, 78) He is forced, in order to love himself, to represent himself to himself as different from what he really is; to hide his wretchedness and poverty from himself, and to include in the idea of himself a great many things that are in fact entirely separate from it, in order to boost and expand it.

Arnauld and Nicole analyse this process on the basis of an axiomatic link between happiness and the possession of the good. First, concupiscence tends towards the pleasure of the senses, aroused by certain external objects. The fact of getting pleasure from these things leads us to associate them with the idea of good. But we then see that such objects are generally available only to the rich and powerful. We therefore come to regard wealth and power as goods. So we judge those who possess them to be happy, and vice versa. But our mind rightly retains the notion of a link between happiness and excellence, the desirable and the admirable. So we come to imagine the rich as deserving of esteem, and to regard the poor and unhappy with contempt (pp. 78–9). But these illusions have been made

Religious Moralists

341

possible by our tendency to import the idea of external goods into the illusory idea of the self. Again, Nicole glosses Ephesians 4: 22 (‘You were to put aside your old self, which belongs to your old way of life and is corrupted by following illusory desires’—‘desideria erroris’ in the Vulgate) by stating that fallen man loves objects not according to the truth they contain, but according to a false being with which he credits them, endowing them with a power to fulfil him that they lack (Epistle, 19th Sunday after Pentecost, EM XIII, 145). Relations with others reinforce the link between desire and illusion, since desire, says Nicole, is always mediated by an image of other people’s desire: Nous ne connoissons pas seulement les objets de nos passions, mais [. . .] nous concevons aussi les mouvements qu’ils excitent dans les autres; & l’idée qu’ils en ont, se communiquant a` nous, nous nous accoutumons a` regarder ces objets non par notre propre impression, mais par cette impression commune. (‘Combien les entretiens des hommes sont dangereux’, I.2, EM II, 50–1) We do not know only the objects of our passions, but we also grasp the movements they excite in other people; and since other people’s idea of them communicates itself to us, we get into the habit of considering the objects in accordance not with our own but with the common impression.

This dimension is also stressed in the Logique’s analysis of illusion. Our false idea of the rich is sustained by our knowledge that others entertain the same feelings of esteem and admiration for them. So we conceive their state as further enhanced by other people’s (erroneous) feelings towards it. What the ambitious person desires is not, then, the objective advantages of wealth and position, but ‘ce fantôme composé de tous les admirateurs des riches & des grands que l’on conçoit environner leur trône & les regarder avec des sentimens interieurs de crainte, de respect, & d’abaissement’ (the phantom composed of all the admirers of the rich and the great whom we conceive of as surrounding their throne, gazing on them with inner feelings of fear, respect, and abjection). This phantom is also termed an ‘idol’, as if to drive home the danger of this process: for in idolatry

342


there is always illusion, but the sacrifices made are real, and the effects of these phantoms on human behaviour are real as well (Logique, I.10, 79–80, 81).10 We would not be satisfied in a world of machines although they provided us with all the objective services we receive from human beings; for they would be incapable of satisfying our desire for the fear, esteem, and admiration of others, or, we might say, for the desire of others, since all those ‘mouvemens’ or passions are, as is elsewhere stated, forms of love (pp. 79–80). The delusions of desire are often discussed via the concept of the passions.11 Passion, says Nicole, manipulates reason: desiring our own self-esteem, we avoid the reproaches of reason by acting in accordance with its guidance: but to keep the passions happy, reason devises maxims of conduct that will suit them. The dual goal is thus obtained of acting in accordance with the passions, and enjoying reason’s approval (‘Discours sur la nécessité de ne se pas conduire au hazard & par des regles de fantaisie’, EM II, 7). To justify our conduct towards others, self-love covers the passions with a veil of justice, so that all opposition to our desires appears as unjust (‘Des moyens de conserver la paix avec les hommes’, XII, EM I, 260).12 The corrupting effect of passion is relayed by the imagination: this is especially clear in Nicole’s reflections on corruption: we aggravate the natural corruption of mankind, doomed to ignorance and amour-propre, by a contribution of our own. This is seen in the case of sensual pleasures: we are inclined to them by (fallen) nature, but the imagination embellishes them in our opinion, and it is this reinforcement of nature by opinion that often causes the violence of our passions (an echo here of the Stoic conception of passion) (‘Combien les entretiens des hommes sont dangereux’, I.2, EM II, 50). Passion blinds us to the laws of morality and to their application 10 The phantom or idol, then, is not a cluster of empirical individuals, but a kind of super-subject, formed by the image of their combination, and by which, above all things, we desire to be recognized. The figure of the idol in seventeenth-century moral and religious writing (which recurs below) is discussed in my ‘Images and Idols’. 11 For a wide-ranging and insightful analysis of the concept of passion in the period, see Susan James, Passion and Action. 12 For the image of the veil that covers passion, cf. La Rochefoucauld, maxim 12.

Religious Moralists

343

in particular cases: and this involuntary blindness is the effect of a voluntary abandonment to passion (Gospel, Wednesday, 4th week in Lent, EM XI, 68). The effect of the passions is methodically analysed by Lamy. They systematically misrepresent objects in a variety of ways. They show them only by their attractive and legitimate sides; if there is no legitimate element, they colour them seductively; they lead us to attribute our feelings to the objects themselves, when such feelings are purely subjective; they make us think the same objects will arouse the same passions in everyone (which thus seems to legitimate our own reactions); they encourage us to pursue their objects (which then when attained losed their appeal); and they represent impossible objects as possible.13 In short, ‘la plus longue vie n’est qu’une circulation perpetuelle de méprises & d’illusions sur les passions & sur leurs objets’ (the longest life is a perpetual circulation of mistakes and illusions about the passions and their objects) (C1 III, 323).14 But in Augustinian theory, the passions are not primary psychological realities: they are modifications of love.15 This analysis is adopted by Nicole (‘Des quatre dernières fins de l’homme’, II, EM IV, 156; cf. Gospel, 14th Sunday after Pentecost, EM XIII, 15). We are, in a sense, all love: ‘L’âme n’est qu’amour. C’est sa nature & son essence’ (‘Des quatre dernières fins de l’homme’, II, EM IV, 155) (not ‘thought’, then, or ‘consciousness’). Love is the underlying reality of our nature, the mainspring (‘ressort’) of all our passions and impulses (‘mouvemens’). The ethical issue is therefore first and foremost whether we love God or his creatures (Gospel, 17th Sunday after Pentecost, EM XIII, 105). This image of the mainspring is almost bound to come across as a perfect example of the often-discussed affinity of Jansenism and Cartesianism. But it belongs exclusively 13

C1 III, 287–8; for a detailed exploration of these points, see pp. 288–330. The conception of psychic life as a circulatory process is already in Malebranche: see De la recherche de la vérité, II.i.1.iii, Œuvres, I, 146; Traité de morale, I.iii.2, Œuvres, II, 537. 15 Augustine, De civitate Dei, XIV.7. 14

344


to neither tradition. It is found in St François de Sales (Traité de l’amour de Dieu, XI.20, 937). Again, we recall Nicole’s affinities with St François, and are reminded that seventeenth-century French religious culture was not, as it sometimes appears, systematically divided between two parties each with radically opposed visions of human nature. In a letter to Mme de Sablé of 1667, La Rochefoucauld gives a twist to this conception of passion: ‘Les passions ne sont que les divers goûts de l’amour-propre’ (Passions are no more than the different tastes of self-love).16 Esprit implies the same, and stresses the illusion that results, when he writes ‘les hommes [. . .] sont [. . .] trompés par leurs passions qui font qu’ils se considerent & se recherchent eux-mêmes secretement, lorsqu’ils croyent servir leurs amis d’une manière tout-à-fait desinteressée’ (Men are deceived by their passions which lead them secretly to consider and seek themselves when they believe they are helping their friends in an altogether disinterested fashion) (De la fausseté des vertus humaines, I.4, 81). As we should expect, then, the problems of self-knowledge and of self-love go together, and their relationship is the subject of the next section.

Self-Love and Self-Knowledge La Rochefoucauld and Esprit analyse self-love and self-knowledge principally with reference to our dealings with other people. Nicole and Lamy stress as much, if not more, the relationship with ourselves. It is easy to see how the unsuspected impacts of bodies and bodily processes on our thinking, as studied earlier, conduce to a form of self-love, since our unawareness of bodily determinations leads us to imagine that our attachments and actions are governed by reason. Self-love here as elsewhere goes with and fosters self-ignorance. But sometimes the converse is true. Self-love may need, it may even produce, self-knowledge to secure its ends, or our own. 16

La Rochefoucauld, ME 28: cf. letter 43, MMOD 652.

Religious Moralists

345

La Rochefoucauld’s maxim 494 shows how amour-propre can enlighten us as to the significance of our behaviour, so that we present it to other people in the most favourable light. I quoted earlier the following passage from Esprit on the relationship between self-love, self-disguise, and the pursuit of one’s interests: L’amour propre donne a` l’homme cette pente a` se déguiser, & a` prendre autant de figures que le Protée des fables, parce que si l’homme paroissoit tel qu’il est, idolatre de luy même, sans souci & sans affections pour tous les autres hommes, & voulant sans cesse s’élever au dessus d’eux, il les revolteroit contre luy, & mettroit obstacle au dessein qu’il a de gagner leur cœur & d’attirer leur estime pour les faire tous servir a` ses interets. (II.24, 233) Self-love gives man this inclination to disguise himself, and to take on as many appearances as the mythical Proteus, because if he appeared as he really is, a self-idolater without concern or affection for any of his fellow creatures, and constantly seeking to raise himself above them, he would cause them to rise up against him, thus frustrating his project of winning their goodwill and earning their esteem so as to make them all work in his interests.

Self-disguise then is self-loving, indeed self-interested. In contrast, Fénelon’s analysis relies on a psychological mediation, the feeling of shame, the internalized perception of others’ judgements. Sa perfection est tellement de sortir de soi par l’amour, que [l’homme] veut sans cesse persuader et aux autres et a` soi-même qu’il aime sans retour sur soi les amis auxquels il s’attache. Cette idée est si forte, malgré l’amour-propre, qu’on aurait honte d’avouer qu’on n’aime personne sans y mêler quelque motif intéressé. On ne déguise si subtilement tous les motifs d’amour-propre dans les amitiés, que pour s’épargner la honte de paraˆıtre se rechercher soi-même dans les autres.17 So much does man’s perfection consist in going out of himself through love, that he is constantly trying to persuade both others and himself that he loves the friends he is attached to, without any consideration for himself. 17

Fénelon, Lettres et opuscules spirituels, XIX, in Œuvres, I, 669. See also I, 903.

346


This idea, despite self-love, is so strong that we should be ashamed to admit that we love no one without some interested motive coming into play. We are so subtle in disguising all self-loving motives in our friendships, only so as to spare ourselves the shame of appearing to be self-seeking in our relationships with other people.

Fénelon, then, admits the link between the self-love and interest, but also introduces the idea of narcissism, that is to say, a delight in one’s self-image. At the same time, we find that self-knowledge may actually work against self-love, as Esprit remarks: Nous ne voyons pas ce que nous faisons pour nous dans ce que nous faisons pour les autres, parce que la plupart du temps les motifs qui nous font agir se cachent dans nôtre cœur, & que nous aimons beaucoup mieux nous persuader que nous faisons des actions belles et genereuses, que nous appliquer a` nous connoˆıtre et a` nous instruire de ce qui se passe au dedans de nous.18 We do not see what we are doing for ourselves in what we do for others, because most of the time the motives behind our actions are hidden in our heart, and because we much prefer convincing ourselves that we are performing fine and generous actions to making the effort to know ourselves and to discover what is going on within us.

It clearly facilitates our self-interested behaviour, then, to think that it is disinterested. ‘Il n’est rien qui nous soit si utile & si agreable, ou qui flatte tant nôtre vanité que ce que nous cherchons lors qu’il nous semble que nous ne cherchons rien’ (Nothing is so useful and so agreeable to us, nothing more flatters our vanity than what we seek when it seems to us that we are seeking nothing) (Esprit, De la fausseté des vertus humaines, I.4, 70). Paradoxically, it seems, it would be better for us, as worldly beings, more pleasurable and advantageous, not to know ourselves. The kind of self-knowledge in question here is moral and psychological. However, to think we could, after all, do without that knowledge would be a disastrous error from the point 18

Esprit, De la fausseté des vertus humaines, I.4, 69; cf. La Rochefoucauld, maxim 236.

Religious Moralists

347

of view of metaphysical and religious self-knowledge, which teaches us that we are more than worldly beings.

Narcissism But, in any case, self-love is not to be conceived purely as an orientation to one’s own interest, glory, or pleasure. As we noted above, Jansenius discusses fallen man’s attachment to himself in narcissistic terms.19 He is not alone. The analysts of the narcissism of self-love frequently stress its illusory nature. Nicole is particularly eloquent on the paradoxes this involves. He begins with the paradox of the human being’s relationship to itself. On the one hand, life is a long process of estrangement from self: ‘Nous sommes hors de nous-mêmes dès le moment de notre naissance’ (We are outside ourselves from the moment of our birth) (‘De la connoissance de soi-même’, I.1, EM III, 4–5). Paradoxically, we are inside ourselves only when inside another. In childhood the soul is so absorbed in external objects and bodily sensations that to return into itself requires ‘une extrême violence’ (EM III, 5): there is an echo here of Descartes’s theory of prejudice (Principles, I.47, AT VIII, 22/IX-2, 44: OP III, 118). Yet what we find, at the end of this violence, is not, as a general rule, a sovereign philosophical consciousness, but a lack, which is also a repulsion: ‘comme elle n’y trouve pas ce qu’elle désire, elle en sort le plûtôt qu’elle peut’ (as it [the soul] does not find there [inside itself] what it desires, it escapes as soon as it can) (EM III, 5). This desire not to know ourselves as we are is coupled with a desire to ‘se regarder en tout’ (behold ourselves in everything) (I.2, EM III, 5–6). L’homme veut se voir, parce qu’il est vain. Il e´vite de se voir parce qu’étant vain, il ne peut souffrir la vûe de ses défauts et de ses miseres. Pour accorder donc ces désirs contraires, il a recours a` un artifice digne de sa vanité, par lequel il trouve moyen de les contenter tous deux en même-temps; C’est de couvrir d’un voile tous ses défauts, de les effacer en quelque sorte de l’image 19

See above, pp. 177–8.

348


qu’il se forme de lui-même, et de n’y laisser que les qualités qui peuvent le relever a` ses propres yeux. S’il ne les a pas effectivement, il se les donne par son imagination; et s’il ne les trouve pas dans son propre eˆtre, il les va chercher dans les opinions des hommes, ou dans les choses extérieures qu’il attache a` son idée, comme si elles en faisoient partie; et par le moyen de cette illusion il est toujours absent de lui-même et présent a` lui-même; il se regarde continuellement, et il ne se voit jamais veritablement, parcequ’il ne voit, au lieu de lui-même, que le vain phantôme qu’il s’est formé. (I.2, EM III, 6–7) Man wishes to see himself, because he is vain. He avoids seeing himself because, being vain, he cannot bear the sight of his shortcomings and his wretchedness. In order then to reconcile these contrary desires, he resorts to a stratagem worthy of his vanity, by means of which he manages to satisfy them both at the same time: to cover all his shortcomings with a veil, to erase them, so to speak, from the image he forms of himself, and to leave nothing in that image but those qualities that can raise him in his own eyes. If he does not have these qualities in reality, he awards them to himself by means of his imagination; and if he cannot find them in his own being, he seeks them in the opinion of men, or in external things he attaches to the idea of himself, as if they were part of it; and by means of this illusion he is always both absent from and present to himself; he gazes on himself continually, and never sees himself truly since, instead of himself, he sees only the idle phantom of himself he has himself created.

Lamy provides another remarkable analysis of our hostility to the reality of the self: ‘Ce soi-même est pour un home [sic] du monde la plus fâcheuse rencontre qu’il puisse faire, c’est le plus afreux objet qui se puisse presenter a` ses yeux’ (There is nothing a worldly man so shrinks from meeting as this self: it is the most terrible object his eyes can behold’) (C2 I, 43). We therefore seek to evade the truth by establishing an alternative composite image of the self, of which Lamy stresses the corporeal nature: On prend l’écorce du soi-même, pour le soi-même; et alors on a raison de dire que l’home ne cherche que soi-même, car il est vrai qu’on ne se regarde gueres que par cet endroit. On ne conçoit, par le soi-même, qu’on cherche & qu’on aime si e´perdument, qu’une certaine statuë animée, de têle grandeur, de têle taille, de tels traits, tel poil, têle chevelure, têle force, têle

Religious Moralists

349

adresse; de tel rang, tel emploi, têle qualité; avec tels habits, tels ajustemens, tel e´quipage; environée d’une espece de petit monde uniquement fait pour eˆle, & composé de sa famille, de son train, de ses sujets, de ses creatures & de ses amis. (C2 44–5) We take the outer husk of the self for the actual self ; and in this sense it is quite right to say that man seeks only himself for it is true that we almost always look on ourselves from this point of view. The way we envisage this self we seek and love so desperately is as a kind of animated statue, with its particular height, build, features, hair, strength, bodily skill; of a particular rank, profession, social situation; wearing particular garments of a particular style in a particular way; and surrounded by a sort of little world created only for its sake, and comprising its family, its retinue, its subjects, its creatures, and its friends.

From these we exact a tribute of esteem, respect, submission. This factitious self is the image on which we are constantly focused (p. 45). In other words, the paradoxical effect of self-love is to assimilate the not-self into the self, and to efface the self as it really is. To love ourselves, we deny what we are. This strategy, as Nicole pointed out, is ultimately futile: Ces opinions qui sont fondées sur une erreur volontaire ne sont jamais fermes et assurées. [. . .] Au lieu de cette joie pure, et de cette satisfaction pleine et entiere a` laquelle l’amour-propre aspiroit, tout ce qu’il peut faire avec tous ses déguisemens est de suspendre un peu ces sentiments de tristesse qui se nourrissent au fond du cœur. (‘De la connoissance de soi-même’, I.5, EM III, 28) These opinions based on a voluntary error are never solid and reliable. [. . .] Instead of the pure joy and full unmixed satisfaction to which self-love aspired, all it can achieve, disguise itself how it may, is to banish for a while the feelings of sadness that feed in the depths of the heart.

But this condition is not to be remedied by an act of will. So deeply rooted is amour-propre that it seems impossible to distinguish, or at least in practice to separate, from consciousness itself. This account of the delusions of self-love reinforces the point that it is far more than a natural instinct of self-preservation, an essentially bodily egoism, and that it cannot be equated with a

350


tendency to pursue our own advantage (intérêt), although that pursuit is always a sign of amour-propre. The object of our love is not ourselves, but an image, and the goal of all our actions, save those prompted by charity, is to embellish this image, or idea, of the self. This process takes place on two levels. We attach qualities to ourselves that we do not possess, imagining ourselves to be wise or brave when we are not, and loving ourselves as possessed of these imaginary attributes. Yet beneath this level is a more subtle awareness of an entity ‘qu’on exprime’, as Nicole puts it, ‘par le mot de moi’ (we express by the word ‘me’ [or ‘self’]) (‘De la connoissance de soi-même’, I.3, EM III, 9), prior to any idea of negative or positive attributes. This ego is the main object of our love, and the source of our pleasures and griefs (EM III, 9). (By calling our idea of it ‘confused’ Nicole evokes Malebranche’s treatment of the matter.) Amour-propre, moreover, encloses us within ourselves, and fosters an ‘illusion naturelle’ of our centrality to the world (‘De la foiblesse de l’homme’, III, EM I, 12). This is of course echoed by Pascal when he states that ‘le moi [. . .] est injuste en soi, en ce qu’il se fait centre de tout’ (the self [. . .] is unjust in itself, inasmuch as it makes itself the centre of everything) (L 597/S 494/LG 509).

Blindness and Lucidity Amour-propre, then, is not simply an affective tendency: it has a contradictory effect on our cognitive capacities. It is on one level lucid, on another blind. We have already encountered this paradoxical combination in La Rochefoucauld’s portrait of amourpropre. Nicole likewise insists on this duality. Amour-propre is lucid when it recognizes the danger to itself posed by others’ resistance to its libido dominandi and perceives the necessity of some form of association with them (‘De la charité et de l’amour propre’, II, EM III, 138–9). But it is blind, simply because self-centred, and indifferent to objective scales of value: ‘Quelque grand que soit notre amour-propre, il est neanmoins aveugle, insensible, stupide,

Religious Moralists

351

déraisonnable. Il est pénetré de choses de néant; & il est insensible aux plus grands objets’ (However great our self-love, it is none the less blind, insensible, stupid, unreasonable. It is steeped in futilities and unaware of what is most important) (‘De la crainte de Dieu’, I, EM I, 155). It blurs our self-knowledge, producing a mixture of good and bad thoughts, which impedes our discernment of the truth (Letter 48, to the Superior of a convent, EM VII, 293–4). Yet it does so by exciting ‘des vues secretes d’intérêt ou de passion’ (secret perceptions on the part of our interests or passions) (EM VII, 293). In this sense it opens up our knowledge. But, on the other hand, these views are ‘secretes’. What can this mean? Either, perhaps, that amour-propre opens up a view—the world as seen from the position of interest or passion—while obscuring the position itself, so that the interested or passionate perception appears to itself as the view of reason, virtue, or religion. Or, that the views themselves are invisible: that is, interest or passion registers its perspective on the matter in hand, so as to influence the will, but does so imperceptibly. In the first case, I assume or adopt an interested or passionate motive, transformed by amour-propre into a more exalted reason for acting; in the second, I may have genuinely exalted motives in view, but they are insensibly eased aside by the baser perspectives. Certainly, the latter is sometimes the case. For Nicole elsewhere argues that, although we cannot act for an end ‘sans l’avoir dans la pensée’, the end may be in our mind in two ways: ‘Il y a des pensées expresses, connues, déclarées; et il y en a des secretes et des cachées, dont l’esprit ne s’apperçoit pas par une reflexion expresse’ (There are explicit, known, declared thoughts; and there are others that are secret and hidden, that the soul does not perceive by an explicit reflection) (Gospel, Pentecost, EM XII, 104). It is the latter kind of thought that often determines our action. More on these ‘imperceptible’ thoughts shortly. Nicole, then, is concerned both with the deceits of self-love in two contexts: as an illusory self-image, and as the secret and vitiating motive of most of our actions. Esprit also combines these two factors.

352


That is, self-love disguises our discreditable motives, and even when our motives are pure, it taints them by its very awareness of them as such: L’amour propre a toûjours quelque part a` tout ce que l’homme fait par son propre choix, & [. . .] lors même qu’il fait des actions toutes pures & toutes saintes, l’orgueil qui en est ravi & qui en triomphe secretement, les corrompt souvent & leur oˆ te tout leur merite. (De la fausseté des vertus humaines, II.22, 213) Self-love has always some share in whatever a man does by his own choice, and [. . .] even when he performs actions that are entirely pure and holy, pride, delighted by and secretly triumphing in this achievement, often corrupts them and strips them of all their merit.

Since purity of motive is desirable, to perceive one’s own purity is to expose oneself to one’s own attractions. Self-love, indeed, is not always the motive for our acts, but it succeeds always in gatecrashing the party. Mais ces divers e´tats de l’amour propre n’ont rien de comparable a` l’adresse & aux finesses dont il use, pour se dérober a` la connoissance de ceux qui ont l’esprit penetrant, & qui sont continuellement appliquez a` les decouvrir. Elles sont si nombreuses qu’on ne sçauroit les conter, & la plupart si deliées qu’il n’est pas possible de les connoˆıtre, & de sçavoir tous les pretextes dont il se couvre, & tous les desseins qui paroissent bons & desinteressez sous lesquels il se cache; ou il les forme luy seul ou il contribuë a` les former, ou il a quelque part a` leur execution quand il sait qu’ils ont e´té conçus par la charité & par une piété sincere: il entre même habilement dans la resolution que prennent ceux qui se declarent ses ennemis, parce qu’il sçait bien le moyen de reparer ses pertes, & que celuy même qui le ruine, le fait revivre en même temps, par la satisfaction qu’il a de le ruiner. (Esprit, De la fausseté des vertus humaines, II.24, 232–3) But these different states of self-love have nothing comparable to the skill and the tricks it brings into play so as to conceal itself from the knowledge of those people with penetrating minds whose constant effort is to discover its ruses. These are beyond counting, and most of them are so subtle there is no means of getting to know them or of learning all the pretexts with

Religious Moralists

353

which self-love screens itself, and all the apparently kind and disinterested plans behind which it lurks. It either devises these plans by itself, or has a share in devising them, or, when it knows that they have been conceived by charity and sincere piety, it takes a hand in carrying them out: it even slyly insinuates itself into the resolutions of those who declare themselves its enemies, because it well knows how to redeem its losses: it knows that even the person who is wrecking it, is at the same time reviving it by his own satisfaction in the wrecking.

The thought and the language echo the penultimate sentence of the portrait of amour-propre that originally headed the Maximes (MS 1). Nicole, too, describes with particular vividness and insight the mysterious alchemy by which uplifting impulses can be transformed into evil drives: pride produces humility, humility pride; we cease to be proud when we observe our pride, but also to be humble when we observe our humility (Les Visionnaires, VIII, 433). Not surprisingly, this renders self-knowledge problematic, because it changes its object in the very act of registering it. The transformative power seems to be latent in the nature of consciousness itself. ‘Les actions de notre ame sont accompagnées de reflexions secretes, par lesquelles elle connoist ce qu’elle fait’ (The actions of our soul are accompanied by secret reflections, by means of which it knows what it is doing) (Les Visionnaires, VIII, 433). They may be ‘secret’ but are not invisible to amour-propre: ‘en même temps que nous avons dans l’esprit quelque pensée d’humilité, l’amour-propre qui connoist cette pensée, peut exciter dans l’ame une complaisance de vanité, & il peut appliquer l’esprit a` cette pensée, parce qu’il sçait que c’est une belle chose que d’estre humble’ (at the same time as we have some thought of humility in our minds, self-love, which is aware of this thought, can summon up in the soul a vain self-indulgence, and can focus the mind on this thought, because it knows that humility is a fine thing (p. 433). Not only are our ephemeral states thus transformed, supplemented, or corrupted: we cannot know our dispositions. The soul never knows whether it is proud or humble because it cannot know where these movements of feeling begin and end, or whether it is not corrupting all its apparently best impulses ‘par des retours

354


secrets’ (by secret backwards glances) (p. 436).20 The use of terms like ‘reflexions’ and ‘retours’ does not, I think, imply that this self-awareness presupposes a specific reflexive act, distinct from the initial thought: for both terms are qualified with the adjective ‘secret’. It would seem that Nicole holds (like Lamy and probably Descartes) that every act of thought is virtually self-aware, so that, although it may escape the thinker’s attention, it has the capacity to be made the direct object of another thought. The passage on the shift from humility to pride seems to identify two levels of consciousness. Thus, from the humble thought ‘God be merciful to me, a sinner’ (Luke 18: 13), amour-propre might, first, generate a self-indulgent delight in one’s own state, a delight initially so faint as to be imperceptible and, left to itself, ephemeral; but, secondly, amour-propre can focus (‘appliquer’) the mind to this thought, pushing it to the forefront of consciousness (‘I’m humble: how splendid! I am certainly making spiritual progress’). This second stage is the really dangerous one, because the initial good thought has now not merely been brushed by corruption, but stained by it. But again, this sense that amour-propre lurks in the very awareness of our actions and impulses is not confined to writers of the PortRoyal school. It is found in Bossuet, who also speaks of a infinitely repeating process of backward glances (‘retours sur soi-même’) by which even the consciousness of our own nothingness in the face of God can become a theme of self-glorification (Traité de la concupiscence, XXIII, 102). Bossuet and Fénelon differed on many points: but they could concur on this, as appears from Fénelon’s analysis of spiritual pharisaism. A self-seeking soul converts the food of eternal life into poison: On nourrit l’amour-propre de bonnes œuvres et d’austérités; on se raconte a` soi-même secretement ses mortifications, ses victoires sur son goût, ses actions de justice, de patience, d’humilité, de désintéressement. (Lettres et opuscules spirituels, XIX, Œuvres, I, 644). 20 Cf. ‘mille vûes et mille retours d’amour-propre’ (‘Des moyens de conserver la paix avec les hommes’, II.2, EM I, 289).

Religious Moralists

355

We nourish self-love by good works and asceticism: we secretly tell ourselves the story of our mortifications, our victories over our own inclination, our acts of justice, patience, humility, disinterestedness.

However, at a certain stage of spiritual progress, this ‘inner witness’ (I, 644) escapes. The result is a state of disorientation. But it is also a state of purification inasmuch as one loses the spectacle of one’s purity: L’âme est si infectée de l’amour-propre qu’elle se salit toujours un peu par la vue de sa vertu; elle en prend toujours quelque chose pour elle-même: elle rend grâces a` Dieu; mais elle se sait bon gré d’être plutôt qu’un autre la personne sur qui découlent les dons célestes. (I, 645) The soul is so infected with self-love that it always taints itself somewhat by the perception of its own virtue: it always credits itself with a share of it; it gives thanks to God, but congratulates itself on being the recipient of the heavenly gifts that are withheld from others.

Nicole, however, does not thus take account of the possibility of escaping amour-propre through states that transcend the ordinary consciousness of self. The paradoxes recur. Amour-propre presents us with a false image of ourself. It obscures our true motivations. Yet it also reveals all possible opportunities for its own gratification. It hides our bad qualities and failings, but relentlessly brings our good qualities, motives, aspirations to light—and so pollutes them, gratifying itself while hurting us. This duplicity reflects itself in moralistes’ analyses: for they sometimes speak as if amour-propre were comparatively easy to trace, sometimes as if it were veiled inextricably in its own deceits. Thus, Nicole insists that, although our errors in regard to ourselves derive from a rooted aversion to the truth, the resulting illusion is voluntary (‘De la connoissance de soi-même’, I.5, EM III, 26–7).21 If the great reflected on the insincerity of their own displays of esteem 21 On our unwillingness to know the truth of our hearts, see also Nicole, Gospel, Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Lent, EM XI, 52.

356


and affection, they would not be taken in by those that others stage for their benefit (I.4, EM III, 19–20). We could, but do not, use introspection to interpret other people. But the movement in reverse is similarly blocked: we do not use our negative judgements of others to throw light on ourselves: ‘L’esprit aidé de l’amour-propre, retranche toutes les réflexions qu’il pourroit faire’ (With the help of self-love, the mind cuts short all the reflections it could make) (EM III, 20). We know self-deceivers are ridiculous, but do not imagine that this applies to us (EM III, 20). We conceal from ourselves both the truth itself and our disposition to conceal it (I.5, EM III, 28). Yet this illusion requires constant efforts to maintain it: the clouds are constantly breaking to let in a gleam of truth (EM III, 27). For, as we have seen already, the satisfactions of self-love are evanescent, and they leave a basic sadness in their wake (EM III, 28). The self often, then, eludes its own knowledge, but can equally be pinned down by an effort of attention. A similar confidence is apparent in Esprit. In fact, it seems that a quite moderate effort would suffice. The ancient philosophers, he says, upheld an exaggerated confidence in reason, when they could have been convinced of its weakness by a little attention to their own experience (De la fausseté des vertus humaines, Préface, I, 8v ). Again, if we wish to know whether pride is a passion, we have only to consult ourselves (II.21, 182), and ‘se sentir soy-même’ (to be aware of oneself) is sufficient to reveal the illusory nature of the Stoic sage (II.22, 206). The general lesson that we should not be deceived by the sight of fine and good actions can be easily learned ‘pourvû que [les hommes] veüillent bien r’entrer en eux-mêmes, & y considerer les principes & les motifs ordinaires qui les font agir’ (if only [people] will take the trouble to look into themselves and consider the ordinary sources and motivations of their actions) (II.28, 268). Illusion is rife, but, it would seem, surprisingly easy to dispel. Yet there is a counter-tendency, to insist on the ineradicability of illusion. This is particularly clear when the antithesis between cupidity, or amour-propre, and charity is brought into play. They are disconcertingly similar as they appear to the subject. And the

Religious Moralists

357

similarity is even more disconcerting when we reflect that for Nicole, as for all followers of Augustine, the impulse of charity can come only through divine grace: nature itself cannot rise so high. Thus, when we suppress our amour-propre, in the sense of concealing it from others, we are acting in accordance with ‘l’honnêteté humaine’ (human virtue): this is a more upright and reasonable way to other people’s love and esteem, but as such it is still an ‘amour-propre intelligent’ (‘De la charité et de l’amour-propre’, IV, EM III, 149). It is intelligent in the sense that it is better fitted to gaining our ends than overt competitiveness, but not in the sense of being transparent to itself: Ces vûes des jugemens des hommes, & des mouvemens de leur cœur a` notre e´gard, qui sont la regle, la source & l’objet de l’honnêteté humaine, ne sont pas toujours accompagnées de réflexions formelles & expresses, et [. . .] les mouvemens qu’elles produisent sont souvent encore plus imperceptibles. (XII, EM III, 183–4) These perceptions of people’s judgements and of the movements of their feelings in relation to us, which are the yardstick, the source, and the object of human virtue, are not always accompanied by explicit and definite reflections, and [. . .] the emotions they produce are often even more imperceptible.

This often half-conscious inexplicit awareness of others’ judgements of and attitudes to us leads to confusion as to whether charity or amour-propre is at the root of our actions (XII, EM III, 183–4).22 Nicole gives two other explanations for this confusion. The habit of regarding certain actions as likely to incur contempt creates an aversion difficult to distinguish from a more authentic hatred of their intrinsic evil. Then again charity and cupidity may follow the same path to the same object, albeit for different reasons, so that worldly and spiritual considerations and impulses become intertwined. 22

Cf. ‘De la charité et de l’amour-propre’, IV, EM III, 147–9, where Nicole argues that the desire for others’ love and esteem is far more likely to succeed in passing itself off as charity than fear or interest in the crude sense.

358


Il se fait un mélange dans l’esprit et dans le cœur, de ces deux sortes de vûes et de mouvemens, sans que l’on sache avec certitude qui est celui qui l’emporte, & qui est le vrai principe de nos actions. On cherche Dieu & le monde tout ensemble. Le cœur est bien-aise de plaire a` l’un & a` l’autre, & il ignore si c’est Dieu qu’il rapporte au monde, ou le monde qu’il rapporte a` Dieu: ce discernement ne se pouvant faire que par le discernement d’un certain fond qui est dans le cœur, & qui n’est connu avec e´vidence que de Dieu seul. (XII, EM III, 185–6) A blending takes place in the mind and heart of these two sorts of perceptions and impulses, without our knowing for certain which is dominant and which is the true source of our actions. We seek God and the world at the same time. The heart is well content to please both, and it does not know whether it is subordinating God to the world, or the world to God, since this cannot be discerned unless we can sound the depths of the heart, which are known clearly to God alone.

The dilemma is stated again in the essay ‘De la connoissance de soi-même’: Il y a toujours dans le cœur de l’homme, tant qu’il est en cette vie, des abˆımes impénétrables a` toutes ses recherches. Et c’est même une partie de la connoissance qu’on peut avoir de soi-même, que de bien comprendre que l’on ne se connoˆıt pas avec assurance, dans ce qui paroˆıt même le plus essentiel et le plus important. Car on ne connoˆıt jamais avec certitude ce qu’on appelle le fond du cœur, ou cette première pente de l’âme qui fait qu’elle est a` Dieu ou a` la créature; Je veux dire que l’on ne connoˆıt jamais certainement que l’on soit a` Dieu, quoique l’on puisse connoˆıtre quelquefois avec certitude qu’on n’y est pas. [. . .] On ne connoˆıt point avec certitude dans les actions particulieres, si l’amour de Dieu en est le principe, ou si la nature et la coutume n’empruntent pas la forme de l’amour de Dieu. (XIII, EM III, 128) There are always, while he is in this life, abysses in the heart of man that are impenetrable to all his explorations. Indeed, the knowledge we can have of ourselves consists partly in this realization that we do not know ourselves reliably, even in what appears most essential and important. For we never know with certainty what is called the depths of the heart, or the primary inclination of the soul in virtue of which we belong to God

Religious Moralists

359

or to creatures: I mean that we never know for certain that we belong to God, although we may on occasion know for certain that we do not. [. . .] We do not know for certain, as regards individual acts, whether their source is in the love of God, or whether nature and custom have not borrowed the form of the love of God.

The antithesis between the love of self and the love of God is so powerfully put (and in terms (‘pente’) designed to invoke the Augustinian conception of love as a basic inclination, a ‘pondus’) that it may lead us to forget that we might have been presented with a quite different antithesis, between the inordinate love of self, and the well-ordered love of self, such as we found in Aquinas (for whom part of the work of charity is that it restores order to our self-love, subsuming it, so to speak, into itself (ST IIaIIae, q. 25, a. 4) ). What lends Nicole’s thought its tension is that it retains the sharp opposition between charity and amour-propre but insists that they are indistinguishable to our ordinary consciousness: Car encore que pour travailler selon Dieu, pour combattre nos defauts d’une maniere chrestienne, pour prier & pour pratiquer les bonnes œuvres par l’esprit d’une veritable charité, on ait besoin d’une grace surnaturelle & efficace, il est certain neanmoins que chacune de ces actions en particulier peut se pratiquer sans grace par un mouvement d’amour propre, de respect humain, & de crainte purement servile. Or encore qu’il y ait une difference infinie entre l’amour propre & l’amour de Dieu, néanmoins les mouvements & les actions qui naissent de ces deux principes si différens, sont quelquefois si semblables, & nous avons si peu de lumiere pour penetrer dans le fond de notre cœur, que nous ne distinguons point avec certitude par quel principe nous agissons, & si c’est par cupidité ou par charité. [. . .] Nous avons donc toûjours en nous un principe divin ou un principe humain, pour accomplir ce qu’il y a d’exterieur & de sensible dans ces exercices de la vie chrestienne. Souvent même nous avons tous les deux ensemble: mais nous ne pouvons pas savoir avec certitude lequel de ces deux principes domine dans notre cœur & produit nos actions. Et, quoyqu’il soit de notre devoir de nous purifier sans cesse de tout interest & de tout amour propre, nous ne sçavons pas neanmoins si ce desir même d’en estre purifié ne vient pas d’un autre interest plus spirituel & plus

360


delicat. Car on peut desirer par amour-propre d’estre delivré de l’amour propre, comme l’on peut desirer l’humilité par orgueil. Il se fait un cercle infini & imperceptible de retours sur retours, de reflexions sur reflexions dans ces actions de l’ame; & il y a toûjours en nous un certain fond & une certaine racine, qui nous demeurent inconnus & impenetrables durant toute notre vie.23 For although, in order to act according to God’s law, to fight against our shortcomings in a Christian manner, to pray and to do good works in the spirit of authentic charity, we need supernatural and efficacious grace, it is none the less certain that each one of these actions in particular may be performed without grace under the impulsion of self-love, concern for others’ judgements, and purely servile fear [i.e. fear of punishment]. Now although there is an infinite difference between self-love and the love of God, none the less the impulses and actions that derive from these opposing forces are sometimes so similar, and we have so little light to investigate the depths of our heart, that we do not distinguish for certain which is the force behind our actions, whether cupidity or charity. [. . .] We always then have in us a divine force or a human force, in virtue of which we can accomplish the external and perceptible part of those exercises of the Christian life. Indeed we often have both together: but we cannot know for certain which of the two is dominant in our hearts and produces our actions. And although it is our duty to purify ourselves unceasingly from all interest and all self-love, we none the less do not know whether this very desire to be purified does not derive from a more spiritual and subtle form of interest. For we may desire, from self-love, to be purged of self-love, just as pride may foster our desire for humility. An endless circle is formed in these actions of the soul, of backward glances upon backward glances, reflections upon reflections; and there is always within us a kind of further layer and a kind of root, that remain, for us, unknown and impenetrable as long as our life lasts.

As Geneviève Lewis observes, this analysis maintains the distinction between unconscious dispositions and acts, which she has earlier 23 Nicole, Les Visionnaires, VII, 416–17. The passage is discussed by Bénichou, Morales, 118. There is a very similar passage in the essay ‘Des diverses manieres dont on tente Dieu’, V (EM III, 223–5): on the differences, see Nicole, Essais de morale, ed. Thirouin, 417, 435. I shall come back to this.

Religious Moralists

361

shown to be characteristic of the Cartesian approach to the problem of ‘unconscious’ thoughts (Le Problème de l’inconscient, 231; cf. pp. 63–9). In moral terms, this distinction between the action and the underlying disposition, or ‘habit’ as it is sometimes called, goes back to Aristotle (Ethics, II.iv.1–5 (1105a –1105b ) ). We should note that, although Nicole admits that both ‘principes’ (translated here as ‘forces’) may exist in us, he implies that at a given moment one is dominant and that this one alone produces our actions. Malebranche also restates the distinction between dispositions and acts, but in terms of the Augustinian conception of love as the ultimate source of our actions. His analysis also draws on his own distinction between awareness (‘sentiment’), which is essentially confused, and knowledge or understanding: Lorsqu’on est agité de quelque amour actuel, soit naturel, soit raisonnable, on ne connaˆıt point clairement ce que c’est que cet amour, mais on sent bien son action, car on a conscience ou sentiment intérieur de tous ses sentiments et de tous ses mouvements actuels. Mais il n’en est pas de même de l’amour habituel. Toutes les dispositions de l’âme lui sont entièrement inconnues, si ce n’est lorsqu’elles sont excitées. Et alors, quoiqu’elle sente bien qu’elle est disposée a` aimer certains objets, elle ne peut juger que fort confusément de la force et de la grandeur de sa disposition actuelle, elle ne peut la comparer avec celle qu’elle n’éprouve point en elle dans ce moment. Et c’est pour cela que l’homme ne peut s’assurer, si c’est la charité ou la concupiscence qui règne en lui.24 When one is actuated by some actual love, whether natural or reasonable, we do not clearly know what kind of love it is, but we are well aware of its acting on us, for we have consciousness or inner awareness of all our current feelings and impulses. But the same does not apply to habitual love. All the dispositions of the soul are altogether unknown to it, except when they are aroused. And so, although it is well aware that it is disposed to love certain objects, it can judge only in very confused fashion of the power and magnitude of its current disposition, it cannot compare 24

Malebranche, Méditations chrétiennes et métaphysiques, XVI.15, Œuvres, II, 365.

362


it with a disposition it is not presently experiencing within itself. This is why man can never be sure if it is charity or concupiscence that prevails within him.

In other words, our current impulsions towards an object (‘actual love’) reflect an underlying moral-affective state or disposition. We are aware of that disposition only in so far as it is aroused by some object, and that awareness is confused, because we may have more than one such disposition, or the disposition may take many forms, so that we do not really know which disposition is taking effect and how. For instance, the disposition to concupiscence may prompt us in more than one direction: towards sensual pleasure (libido sentiendi) or towards the affirmation of our superiority (libido dominandi). These two forms of concupiscence may diverge, prompting contrary attitudes to one and the same object, or may reinforce each other. The situation is further complicated if, alongside concupiscence, we have a disposition towards charity. Malebranche seems to hold that only one, charity or concupiscence, can be active at a given moment. So in a concrete situation, where we want to help a person in difficulties (a person, let us say, whom we might find very attractive), it looks as if either charity or concupiscence must win out, in such a way that we are aware which one it is. The feeling of attraction overcomes the empathetic awareness of the person’s difficulty, and our assistance becomes purely instrumental; or we manage to forget about the attraction, and think only of the trouble he or she is in. But the fact that in the end we were not aware of the disposition that did not take effect does not mean it is absent from us. Malebranche seems even to admit the possibility that it might even be dominant within us (this particular action then being an exception), whereas Nicole seems to identify the dominant disposition with the cause of the specific action. In like manner, Lamy speaks of concupiscence and charity as habits (C1 III, 333), and distinguishes between the habit or principle that engenders our acts and the thoughts that accompany them. And, like Nicole, he finds the application of this distinction problematic.

Religious Moralists

363

If the habit is known only through the acts it underlies, the trouble is that the external acts or duties of virtue are common to charity and cupidity (C1 III, 333).25 We would have to know the thoughts, ‘les vûe¨s dont l’esprit est alors occupé’ (the perceptions with which the mind is occupied at the time) (C1 III, 333). But the ideas that stir the heart may be quite different from those we have distinctly in the mind: they are often virtually imperceptible (C1 III, 334–5). In the end, we are no more aware of amour-propre and of ‘[les] vûe¨s secrêtes qui le remuent’ (the secret perceptions that arouse it) than we are of our heartbeat (C1 III, 337). We can only know the truth of our heart by a supernatural illumination (C1 III, 354). The difficulty of discerning one’s true motivation is intrinsic, it was pointed out above, to the nature of consciousness. How can I know myself if in the act of self-awareness I change that of which I am aware, staining a pure impulse with the familiar trace of selfgratification? The presence of self to self is in reality a gap between the self knowing and self known, a gap through which otherness enters and appropriates the self—the otherness of God, or of the Devil. We see a poor person, and are impelled to help—this is the influence of the Holy Spirit. And then we find ourselves thinking ‘And they’ll see how charitable I am’: the devil has usurped the management of the action (Nicole, Epistle, Sunday in the Octave of the Ascension, EM XII, 71: cf. Epistle, 20th Sunday after Pentecost, EM XIII, 171). But the devil cannot speak to us directly (Epistle, 21st Sunday after Pentecost, EM XIII, 199; Gospel, Saturday, 1st week in Lent, EM X, 242). He has to borrow the language of creatures, the language of our flesh and our passions (EM X, 242).26 So he does perforce what God chooses, in the ordinary way, to do: to operate through human capacities, influences, and propensities. He does not so much 25 St Thomas also holds that habits are known through the acts to which they give rise (ST Ia, q. 87, a. 2). 26 The wicked are ‘les animaux du Diable, animalia diaboli’ (Epistle, 4th Sunday in Lent, EM XI, 8). On the devil, see also ‘Des quatre dernieres fins de l’homme’, I, EM IV, 86.

364


interfere with the normal workings of the mind as direct them, and turn them to account. In other words, there is a double reason for the lability and inapprehensibility of our moral states: the involvement of secret reflections, a transforming self-awareness, on the one hand, and, on the other, the opposition between two different principles or sources of our actions: the Holy Spirit on the one hand and amour-propre on the other (Les Visionnaires, VIII, 433). This issue is not simply one of the conduct of the moral life: it affects the whole theology of grace. Nicole makes a distinction between extraordinary cases, such as certain saints have experienced, where the soul is clearly aware that it is in a supernatural state, and the ordinary action of grace. In the latter case, the supernatural influence conceals itself as such: the promptings of grace are indistinguishable from those of nature (Les Visionnaires, I, 244). This is why, although we need supernatural and efficacious grace to act in a truly Christian fashion (VII, 416), we are not normally aware of its presence. We do not know whether we love God or ourselves; because we cannot by introspection discern divinely inspired from purely natural processes.27 Esprit likewise speaks of our uncertainty whether, when we are acting in accordance with the law of God, we are being prompted by grace or nature (II.28, 273). Again, when Lamy argues against Arnauld that we are unaware of the impulsion of grace as such, Arnauld concedes the point, and refines the analysis: grace produces good thoughts and good love but ‘il n’y a que la pensée & l’amour que je puisse voir par un sentiment intérieur; au lieu que je ne puis connoˆıtre que par la foi, & par conjecture, que c’est la miséricorde de Dieu qui opère en moi cette pensée et cet amour’ (All I can see by an inner awareness is the thought and the love themselves: whereas I can know only by faith and by conjecture that it is God’s mercy that is producing them in me).28 27

Cf. ‘Des quatre dernieres fins de l’homme’, I, EM IV, 31, to the same effect. Arnauld, Règles du bon sens, §VI, Œuvres, XL, 191. The work of Lamy’s to which he is replying is lost: see Geneviève Lewis, Le Problème de l’inconscient, 212, 216. 28

Religious Moralists

365

Nicole, Esprit, Lamy, and Arnauld would all claim in some senses to be followers of Augustine, even if they would disagree as to what that claim in practice meant. But it seems to me that they have, wittingly or unwittingly, subtly modified the Augustinian conception of grace as restated by Jansenius: that is, of efficacious grace as a delectation in righteousness, overpowering the attraction of concupiscence. I do not think that this delectation is conceived by Augustine or by Jansenius as open to question: the feeling identifies itself unmistakably as what it is, a heaven-sent sweetness. Before receiving grace, we may have deceived ourselves into thinking we loved God, when it was concupiscence that drove our every act and thought. But, once grace has come, it seems we cannot be mistaken about its source or identity. The same is true in Pascal’s version of Augustine’s theory: for grace as he presents involves a radical shift in our whole perception of the world and not simply a change in our affective state.29 But the other writers just mentioned hold that I cannot recognize whether grace or self-love is at the root of my actions. Either they have abandoned the idea of grace as delectation, which is unlikely, or, as in the passage from Arnauld just quoted, they see the experience of delectation not as self-validating but as possibly deceptive, since its cause may have been purely human. Again, Augustine and Jansenius insist that all action must be rooted in love, and that therefore a given action is performed either out of love for God (under the influence of grace) or out of self-love or concupiscence (human forces). Arnauld takes the same line. Nicole, however, holds that the two motives can blend and merge, although one or other must predominate in a given action. The point is not to credit Nicole or anyone else with keener psychological acumen than Augustine’s. But, if there is indeed a difference here, I think there may be two explanations. First, we 29 See Henri Gouhier, Blaise Pascal: Conversion et apologétique (Paris: Vrin, 1986), 71–81, and my ‘Grace and Religious Belief in Pascal’, in Nicholas Hammond (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Pascal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 144–61.

366


could suggest that Augustine’s theory is founded on the experience of conversion, a radical break with one’s former self: the same is arguably true of Pascal. In such cases, we may well have an overwhelming certitude that some previously unfelt influence is at work within us. The other writers are focusing on the day-to-day spiritual life over a longer term, in which the fervour we think of as an effect of grace is liable to fluctuate, so that our affective state no longer seems to bear witness to the presence of grace. In this case, there is the risk, that, to persuade ourselves we still have grace, we may delude ourselves by producing a kind of substitute artificial fervour. Secondly, though this would not explain the case of Pascal, one could simply say that the culture of Louis XIV’s France is simply more suspicious about human motivation. Perhaps theological polemics, devoid of all charity, between co-religionists fostered the awareness that many may think they are serving God who cannot be doing so; perhaps the suspicious mindset of courtier culture may have found its way into the religious sphere as well. But one can see how the suspicion may have grown inside the Augustinian doctrine itself. If charity is a good concupiscence, and amour-propre is so cunning, it can pass itself off as a good concupiscence. Indeed, we have only to recognize our concupiscence as good for it to cease to be so. Our delight in righteousness evaporates as soon as it becomes a delight in our own delight in righteousness. Indeed, how could one have such a delight without being aware of it, and so corrupting it? It is therefore clear that human beings’ deepest impulses, the loves that gives direction to their being, escape their clear awareness, and must escape it. This is, indeed, one of the major distinctions between Jansenism and Calvinism. Whereas Calvinism tends to foster certainty of one’s election, Jansenism specifically denies this source of comfort.30 It may be that this is one reason why it did not in 30

Calvin admits that some of the reprobate have a deceptive belief that they are of the elect, but holds that this is qualitatively different from the certitude of the elect (Institution de la religion chrétienne, III.ii.11–12 (III, 27–9)). He sees faith not just as a

Religious Moralists

367

the end, as has often been noted, have quite the same transformative efficacy as Calvinism.31

Imperceptible Thoughts At various points in the above, the notion has emerged of thoughts (sometimes called ‘imperceptible’) that have a certain reality and significance, but of which we are only slightly, if at all, aware. These thoughts fall into different categories, as appears from the various passages quoted in this connection. They may be purposes of which we are unaware but that determine our action (Nicole, Gospel, Pentecost, EM XII, 104; cf. Lamy, C1 III, 333–5). They may be perceptions of how others judge us and feel about us, and reactions to those perceptions (Nicole, ‘De la charité et de l’amourpropre’, XII, EM III, 183–4). These too are likely to influence our actions. They may be moral dispositions, such as self-love, cupidity, or charity, which may be prompting our desires and actions without our realizing, and which impart to these actions much of their moral value (Nicole, Les Visionnaires, VII, 416–17; cf. Lamy, C1 III, 337). It is time now to look further at these ‘imperceptible’ thoughts.

Nicole’s Theory of ‘General Grace’ I shall not discuss Nicole’s theological use of the concept in any detail, nor the controversy with Arnauld that resulted, but merely touch on certain points that add something to our understanding general confidence in the saving merits of Christ, but as a certitude that they are effective in relation to us: III.ii.7 (III, 23); III.ii.16 (III, 33). Jansenist theologians hold that we can never be certain of our election: see Pascal, Ecrits sur la grâce, VI–IX, XII, OC II, 251–6, 262, 264–71, 278–83, 296–8, which deal with the ‘double abandonment’ (by God of man, and man by God). See also his Letter VI to Mlle de Roannez, 5 Nov. 1656, OC II, 33. 31 Bénichou, Morales, 166–70. Kolakowski argues that belief in double predestination was a source of belligerence and self-confidence in Calvinism (God Owes Us Nothing, 34–6). Despite his tendency to treat Calvinism and Jansenist doctrine as simply equivalent, he recognizes the difference between the two as regards certitude of one’s individual salvation (p. 116).

368


of the moralist’s analysis of self-knowledge. Briefly, he conceived that the notion of ‘imperceptible’ thoughts might serve to reconcile discordant conceptions of grace, and to dissolve the deadlock between the ‘disciples of St Augustine’ and those other Catholic theologians whose views they opposed. His hope was to overcome resistance to Augustine’s theory by removing some of the rebarbative terms in which it was stated, while preserving its substance.32 Nicole’s basic concept is that God imparts certain thoughts to everyone, even infidels and sinners, that, if properly grasped and followed up, would enable them to do good and avoid evil. That they fail to follow up these ‘general graces’ (unless indeed they are supplemented by efficacious grace) is due to the corruption of our nature. The theory is thus a synthesis between the conception of a grace given to all (upheld in different ways by Molinists and neo-Thomists), and the Augustinian insistence that, without an efficacious grace that actually moves the will (but that is not given to all human beings), we shall remain enslaved to sin.33 General grace is, first and foremost, a knowledge of principles. Nicole holds that all human beings have a knowledge of the basic principles of the natural law, even though they may fail to grasp many particular precepts. I may know that murder is wrong, yet fail to realize that this means that killing members of the neighbouring tribe is wrong. However, in theory, we could use our knowledge of the general principles to deduce their more detailed application (Traité, I, 84–5). Nicole attaches his position here to that of St Thomas. For 32 Pierre Nicole, Traité de la grâce générale, 2 vols., ed. J. Fouillou, n.p., 1715, Part I, ‘Discours qui peut servir de préface’, 1–4. See Geneviève Lewis, Le Problème de l’inconscient, 188–257; E. D. James, Pierre Nicole, esp. p. 7–44; Bernard Chédozeau, ‘Antoine Arnauld et Pierre Nicole: Le Conflit de la grace générale’, Chroniques de Port-Royal, 44 (1995), 113–43. 33 Nicole presents this conception of general grace as pretty close to the Thomist conception of sufficient grace, and specifically admits that his theory was designed to facilitate an alliance with the Thomists when the Jansenists needed their help against the Molinist onslaught (Traité, II, 477–80). (‘Thomist’ in this context does not refer so much to Aquinas as to his later followers. It does not seem that Aquinas himself attributes the knowledge of the natural law to grace. Man, he says, has a natural inclination to act in accordance with reason (ST IaIIae, q. 94, a. 4).)

Religious Moralists

369

St Thomas, the precepts of the natural law stand in the same relation to the practical reason as the first principles of demonstrations (that is, scientific arguments) to the speculative reason (ST IaIIae, q. 94, a. 2).34 The first principles, whether of the speculative or the practical reason, are themselves indemonstrable (IaIIae, q. 91, a. 3). As St Thomas observes, even though all people grasp the most fundamental precepts of the natural law, they may fail to apply them when concupiscence or some other passion thwarts reason from making the connection between the general precept and the particular case (IaIIae, q. 94, a. 6). Nicole’s particular point is that this knowledge of principles imparted by God does not of itself lead to right conduct because it is imperceptible.

‘Imperceptible’ Thoughts: Nicole But how can thought be imperceptible, if, as Arnauld objected, the essence of thought is precisely to be aware of itself?35 Nicole replies that he never meant to assert that such thoughts were 34

Nicole does not in fact reproduce the fine detail of St Thomas’s analysis, according to which there are absolutely basic principles (we should act according to reason) and other precepts that are in fact derived from these (deposits should be restored): these latter, he argues, have not the same universality as the former, both de jure, because they admit exceptions (it may be wrong in certain circumstances to restore a deposit) and de facto, since experience shows that some communities may fail to perceive them (like the ancient Germans who did not think stealing was wrong) (ST IaIIae, q. 94, a. 4). The ultimate source of the conception is of course Romans 2: 14: the Law has not been revealed to the Gentiles as it has to the Jews, but there is a law engraved on their hearts. 35 See Antoine Arnauld, Règles du bon sens, §5, Œuvres, XL, 170–3, where he says ‘On est donc porté naturellement a` croire, que conscientia suæ operationis, est ou la même chose que la pensée, ou une propriété inséparable de la pensée’ (One is thus naturally inclined to think that consciousness of its own operations is either the same thing as thought or an inseparable property of thought) (p. 173). This text is directed particularly against a lost defence of Nicole by François Lamy (Geneviève Lewis, Le Problème de l’inconscient, 212–18), but the issues remain the same as in the conflict with Nicole. Arnauld does in fact admit that some thoughts are more perceptible than others: he denies that any can be entirely imperceptible (and Nicole concedes this). More particularly, his point, as Lewis shows, is to refute the notion that half-perceptible thoughts (inklings of some moral principle, say) could sustain the thesis of a general grace. They could never be sufficient prompting for us to examine and amend our conduct (Règles du bon sens, §5, 179–85).

370


altogether imperceptible, and that Arnauld has systematically misunderstood him by taking ‘imperceptible’ in a rigidly literal sense. ‘Imperceptible’ thoughts are indeed perceived, but by ‘sentiment’, a term denoting a lower degree of perceptibility (II, 463).36 (This shows clearly that ‘imperceptible thoughts’ are not to be confused with unconscious thoughts in the strict psychoanalytical sense; for these are supposed to have been repressed below the threshold of perception altogether, releasing themselves, unless they are brought to consciousness by analysis, only in the distorted forms of dreams and neurotic symptoms.) But, more particularly, Nicole seeks to conflate this notion of sentiment with the Pascalian notion (II, 463). The relevant Pascalian thesis is that ‘Les principes se sentent, les propositions se concluent’ (We grasp principles by ‘sentiment’, whereas propositions are known by inference) (Pensées, L 110/S 142/LG 122). Taken by itself, this proposition might suggest that ‘sentiment’ is equivalent to ‘intuition’. If that were so, we should find ourselves pretty close to the Thomist position already mentioned, that the precepts of the natural law, like those of the speculative reason, are indemonstrable. These indemonstrable truths that form the basis of all demonstrations are said by Aristotle to be known directly by nous —which term in general means ‘the mind’ but which is sometimes translated in this context as ‘intuition’.37 However, ‘sentiment’ in Pascal is a highly complex term.38 In the fragment just quoted the basic principles we grasp by ‘sentiment’ relate to fundamental realities such as space, time, movement, 36 As Bernard Chédozeau points out, there is a certain shift in Nicole’s position here: instead of ‘pensées’ he now talks of ‘sentiments’ or at least tends to fuse the two concepts (‘Antoine Arnauld et Pierre Nicole’, 136). 37 Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, I.2–3 (71b –72b ), II.19 (99b –100b ), in Posterior Analytics, ed. Hugh Tredennick, Topica, ed. E. S. Forster, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, and London: Heinemann, 1966 (1st pub. 1960) ). 38 The various ways in which ‘sentiment’ is used by Pascal are excellently traced by Buford Norman, Portraits of Thought: Knowledge, Method, and Styles in Pascal (Columbus, OH.: Ohio State University Press, 1988), 3–17.

Religious Moralists

371

number: it is by ‘sentiment’ we know that there are three dimensions in space and that numbers are infinite. However, we cannot grasp the nature of these realities in themselves, so as to be able to formulate a definition of them.39 As Nicole says, the idea we have of those things we know by ‘sentiment’ is not ‘distincte, maniable, formée’ (distinct, manageable, clearly formed). For Aristotle, however, definitions (real and not merely nominal) are among the first principles of a science.40 It is tempting then to suppose that Nicole is interpreting the Thomist thesis about the universal grasp of moral principles in terms of Pascalian ‘sentiment’ rather than the Thomist–Aristotelian concept of intuitive or primary knowledge, and that this helps him to argue for its involving an imperceptible element. Be that as it may, Nicole argues that our actions are prompted by an implicit grasp of certain maxims that we might never formulate. For instance, if we see a shattered vase on the ground, we enquire how it has come there, without needing to resort to the principle that every event must have a cause (I, 96–8). Nicole goes so far as to say that most of our thoughts are unknown to us (‘la plus grande partie de nos pensées nous sont inconnues’), and yet such unknown thoughts, retrievable if at all only with difficulty, are the basis of our conclusions and decisions (I, 93).41

Thought and Language One important aspect of the imperceptibility of thoughts concerns their relationship to language. We know distinctly only thoughts expressed in words. What we have known without this envelope of sounds remains no longer in the memory than if we had never 39

Pascal, De l’esprit géométrique, PPOD 114–16, OC II, 158–9. See W. D. Ross, Aristotle, 3rd edn. (Methuen, 1937), 55. 41 From an aesthetic viewpoint, Nicole points out, these implicit ideas, forming a kind of supplement to the explicit discourse, account for most of the beauty of a text (I, 96). This is relevant, as Laurent Thirouin has convincingly demonstrated, to his analysis of the effect of theatre (see above, p. 328n. 1). 40

372


known it at all. That does not mean that we never knew it, only that we never distinctly formulated it. But there are many truths grasped in this way. Not everyone has heard the formulation ‘The whole is greater than its part’, but everyone would judge that a part was less than the whole (I, 87). Nicole has touched here on a paradoxical element in Cartesianism. Thought is conceived as essentially a pure intellectual act: it may resort to language, but language is not essential to it. For if it were, there would be a material element in thought, words perceived in visual or acoustic form, and traces of these words. Thus, in the Cogito, ‘I am’ or ‘I exist’ is apprehended as necessarily true, whenever it is uttered, or conceived in the mind (‘quoties a me profertur, vel mente concipitur’ (Second Meditation, AT VII, 25: OP II, 183; cf. AT IX, 19: OP II, 415–16) ). The apprehension does not depend on the verbal utterance, though it may often take verbal form. Again, thought in Descartes is always, as Arnauld saw, potentially aware of itself: seeing or hearing are not proof of my existence except in so far as they can become awareness of seeing or hearing: it is this awareness that constitutes thought as such, as distinct from purely animal sensation (AT VII, 29/IX, 23: OP II, 186/422). Yet here is Nicole arguing, on Cartesian principles, that we can clearly grasp only what we encounter formulated in language. He particularly insists on the ability of thought without its linguistic casing to escape from the memory. Memory, as we know, was a problem for Descartes also, since he notes that the certainty of current clear and distinct perception does not communicate itself to the memory that one has perceived something clearly and distinctly in the past (though this is also an opportunity for him, enabling him to assert that all knowledge depends on the divine veracity).42 Like Nicole, he admits, specifically in the case of children, the existence of thoughts of which the thinker is both unaware and forgetful, because their forms (‘species’) have not remained attached to the memory (Fourth 42 Descartes, Second and Fourth Replies, AT VII, 140, 245–6/IX, 110, 189–90: OP II, 563–4, 690.

Religious Moralists

373

Replies, AT VII, 246/IX, 190: OP II, 691). Language as such is not mentioned, but words would surely be among the forms or ‘species’ that would fix thought in the mind. Malebranche too was conscious of the complexity of the relationship between language, thought, and memory (De la recherche de la vérité, II.i.5.i–iii, Œuvres, I, 161–8). It is difficult in practice (in this life at any rate) to envisage pure intellection, without the carving or stimulation of traces in the brain by the animal spirits. Except, paradoxically, in one who is unconscious. For the definition of the mind as thought requires that it is always thinking: but someone coming round from a faint remembers nothing of the period of unconsciousness. Malebranche has to argue that either the movements of the animal spirits while the person was unconscious were too random for any particular sensation or idea to take shape in the mind, or, that, if the faint was due to a temporary shortage of animal spirits, the person was thinking thoughts of pure intellection that, precisely because of the shortage of animal spirits, could leave no traces on the brain (III.i.2.i, Œuvres, I, 301). Pure thought seems to be constituted also by the capacity to be unaware of itself, and the more purely intellectual the thought, it would seem, the more it tends to behave as unconscious rather than conscious. Does thought’s self-awareness in fact depend on its impurity, its encounter with something other than itself—physical sensations, as in the passage from the Second Meditation just quoted, or, for Nicole, language as a medium, or at least a background on which it can become visible, a mirror in which it can recognize itself?43 It is vain to argue, with Arnauld, that ‘rien ne nous est plus certain que le sentiment que nous avons de nos pensées’ (nothing is more certain than our awareness of our thoughts), so that, if a freethinker says he has never had the slightest idea of praying to God, 43 Ian Maclean shows that some late Renaissance Aristotelians, unlike Descartes, held that language was indispensable to thought (‘Language in the Mind: Reflexive Thinking in the Late Renaissance’, in Constance Blackwell and Sachiko Kusukawa (eds.), Philosophy in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: Conversations with Aristotle (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999), 296–321 (pp. 318–19) ).

374


we have to accept his statement.44 This is fallacious, says Nicole: there is a clear difference between the statement that we have many thoughts we know with certainty, and the statement that we know all our thoughts and actions with certainty (I, 122). The former is undoubtedly true: I may be quite certain, at a given moment, that I am thinking. But the latter is not, and it belies the role in our lives of various kinds of non-explicit thoughts, especially of ‘certains sentimens secrets qu’on a dans le cœur & que l’ame ne discerne pas, ce qui fait que son fond est inconnu a` elle-même, & que ce qui nage sur la surface de la pensée, est souvent bien different de ce qui domine dans le cœur’ (certain secret feelings [or ‘intuitions’] we have in the heart, and that the soul does not discern, as a result of which its depths are unknown to it, and what floats on the surface of our thoughts is often very different from the dominant influence in our heart) (I, 122).

Freedom This has important implications for Nicole’s view of freedom. Nicole holds that we are infallibly determined by a combination of reason and inclination: if there are reasons and inclinations on both sides of an alternative, we will act in accordance with the stronger (I, 6–9). A rigorous philosophical treatment would require him to distinguish the role of reason and inclination in determining the judgement, but he is not offering a philosophical analysis of the nature of freedom as such, but using everyday experience in a theological argument. The point is this. For Nicole, our experience of freedom is irrefutable. We know we are free, because we know we could always act differently if we wanted to. Infallible determination by natural causes is thus not incompatible with freedom. But in that case one cannot argue, as the anti-Augustinians do, that the socalled efficacious grace of Augustinian theory, which infallibly exerts ´ ´ Arnauld, Premier Ecrit de la grace générale selon la méthode des géomètres [Ecrit géométrique], Lemma VIII, in Œuvres, X, 468–9; cf. Nicole, Traité de la grâce générale, I, 121. 44

Religious Moralists

375

its effect (as the Augustinians claim of efficacious grace), would extinguish human freedom (I, 6–23). On Nicole’s theory, it seems possible to argue that I am acting freely even when I am not fully aware of the motives by which I am actuated: he does not draw the Spinozist inference that freedom is purely illusory, an effect of ignorance as to the forces that determine our action.45 Suppose someone is acting under the influence of a given passion. To it there corresponds a ‘vue qui le fait agir & qui le détermine’ (an idea that makes him act and determines him) (I, 100) (for instance, ‘I’ve a perfect right to do this: it’s just the way I’m made’). Yet the agent is free, and aware of being so. Freedom consists here in the existence, at any given moment, of a multitude of alternative possibilities of action, to which there correspond a number of half-ideas (‘think whom you’re letting down’), none of which may be very explicit and which, perhaps, resolve themselves into a mere vague consciousness that one could be acting differently. It is important, though, to recognize that this vagueness does not simply belong to the disregarded ideas, for the agent is not always aware of the idea by which he is determined (I, 100). To be determined by an idea of which we are not fully aware is not, however, to forfeit one’s freedom, or to act out of blind necessity. Not only may we be unaware or only imperfectly aware of specific motivations; we are (as has already been shown) unaware of the basic orientation of our being (‘love’ in the Augustinian perspective): ‘Cette ame, qui s’imagine qu’elle aime ce qu’elle n’aime pas, se cache & se dissimule qu’elle aime ce qu’elle aime en effet; elle ignore donc son amour & ses pensées’ (This soul, which imagines it loves what it does not love, hides and conceals from itself that it loves what it really loves: it is thus unaware of its love and its thoughts) (I, 101). But this is not just a matter of hidden evil desires: why should there 45

Spinoza, Ethics, Part I, Appendix. Geneviève Lewis discusses the controversy between Cartesians and Spinoza as regards the consciousness of freedom (Le Problème de l’inconscient, 123–38).

376


not be good thoughts and desires that we do not perceive, but that suffice to give us a power to act that does not, however, result in action (I, 101–2)? But, alongside the a priori objection to the very concept of ‘imperceptible thoughts’, Nicole has to face the empirical objection that many people would claim never to have even a basic grasp of so-called universal moral truths. To this Nicole counters that what this proves is that they had no immediate insight into particular conclusions, but not that they lacked knowledge of the primary moral truths from which all others derive (I, 123). Nicole here is quite ready to set aside the claim to be acquainted with the processes of one’s own mind. Here the theory of ‘pensées imperceptibles’ does indeed bear a certain resemblance to Freudian psychoanalysis in its polemical mode: it claims both to explain certain facts and to account for its opponents’ rejection of that explanation. In short, Nicole’s theory of self-knowledge has two complementary aspects. We do know ourselves fully in the sense that, if we are aware of possessing a faculty (in this case, freedom), we possess it. Freedom is not simply an illusion due to ignorance of our determinations. We do not know ourselves morally, both because we have no sure knowledge of our basic love or inclination (towards God or towards self ), and because there are specific thought processes affecting our actions of which we are only partially aware.

‘Imperceptible’ Thoughts: Lamy Lamy’s concern in De la connoissance de soi-même is not with the theology of grace, but specifically with psychological analyses. He argues, like Nicole, that the actual determinant of actions may be a thought of which we are virtually unaware (C1 III, 334–5). He contends that the mind has no thoughts it does not perceive to some extent, but that many of its thoughts are confused and indistinct. Such thoughts (‘sombres & clandestines’ (shadowy and secret) ) can produce a powerful but unnoticed effect on the heart (C1 III, 375). Thus the impression of a passion can remain on the heart, though

Religious Moralists

377

we have no clear memory of the thoughts that gave rise to it (C1 III, 376, 380); and its influence on our actions can be all-pervasive while escaping all but the most careful self-examination. We may thus be moved by ‘cent ressorts inconnus’ (a hundred unknown mechanisms) (C1 III, 383). Cartesian mechanism has found its way into the operations of the immaterial soul. But this raises a problem on the level of freedom: Souvent ce n’est que par le mouvement de ces impressions secretes que l’on agit, quoi qu’on ne le croye pas. On en est, la plûpart du temps, remué, soutenu, emporté, lors qu’on croit se remuer avec plus de liberté. (C1 III, 381) Sometimes we act wholly under the influence of these secret impressions, although without realizing this. Most of the time, we are stirred, sustained, swept away by them, even when we think we are moving ourselves most freely.

This particular argument is problematic for Lamy, because he has already committed himself to the view that we know we are free in virtue of a direct experience of freedom.46 Here it appears that we can believe we are acting freely, when in fact our action is determined. The implication here is that, when we are determined, in this case by secret motives, our belief in our freedom is illusory, and we are not free. This seems to give rash hostages to Spinozist determinism. This was less of a problem for Nicole, since he argued that an action’s being determined is still compatible with liberty. Let us take an example. Both Nicole and Lamy would accept that, for instance, when I choose one way to my destination rather than another, I may be actuated by thoughts of which I am not (fully) conscious. I might want to avoid the painful associations of an alternative route, like Rousseau, when he avoided a particular way out of Paris without, for a long time, knowing why.47 In Lamy’s 46

Lamy, C1 II, 365; cf. C2 II, 82–3. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire, VI, OC I, 1050–1. Rousseau realizes eventually that he is trying to avoid a beggar who always stood at a 47

378


analysis, I think I am acting freely (as if I have chosen this way because it is the quickest or most pleasant), but apparently I am not. In that case, there is a false consciousness of freedom, something he elsewhere declares impossible. (Suppose, though, the way chosen is in fact the quickest and most pleasant route: the secret aversion to the alternative route would then be an overdetermining motive, but not in such a way as to suppress my freedom.) In Nicole’s, there is not such a problem. What I am conscious of is not the (supposedly false) motives for my choice of route, but my power to go another way if I want to, and it is in this that my liberty consists. In considering the argument from the consciousness of freedom to its reality, we have then to be clear whether what we are supposedly conscious of is the bare power to act alternatively (compatible with determination by secret thoughts) or certain motives that may or may not be the true or adequate explanation of my action. In any case, we see that the controversy over secret thoughts (apart from its theological dimension) affects not merely moral self-knowledge, our awareness of the sources of our actions, but the metaphysical issue of freedom. The invocation of the ‘imperceptible’ or ‘clandestine’ motives of our actions tends to foreground the role in our moral life of halfexamined or not-examined actions: of those micro-acts that, woven together, form the moral texture of our lives, the black-and-white check that presents the superficial observer with the appearance of shades of grey, while all the time it bespeaks our dual allegiance to cupidity and charity. Or, to put it another way, the eventual victory of cupidity or charity (and one of them must win) will come through innumerable little battles in which we seem to be engaging only part of our psychological and moral forces, and which are conducted for the most part in a fog. This conception has its drama. But it is a far cry from the Thomistic humanism that distinguishes properly particular gate, to whom he had given in the past, but whose expectations of a gift had become irksome: this incident crystallizes a profound awareness of his inability to adapt to civil society and its obligations.

Religious Moralists

379

human acts (actiones humanae), characterized by deliberate will, from actions carried out by human beings without this distinctively human investment (actiones hominis): what a later age would call mechanical actions, such as stroking one’s beard (ST IaIIae q. 1, a. 1). The stress on secret motivations tends to downplay the importance of deliberation in volition: it goes arguably with a degree of uncertainty about the status of human nature in a world characterized by a split between thought and extension. It tends to privilege a view of action that focuses on the efficient rather than the final cause, and that can lead in the end to our being perceived, in the Spinozist phrase, as ‘part of nature’: no more, no less.

Fighting Illusion If self-illusion is thus so profound, and so omnipresent, is there no escape from it? Amour-propre itself is indestructible in this life (Nicole, Letter 48, to the Superior of a convent, EM VII, 294). It can, indeed, be enlightened, so as to produce behaviour conducive to the well-being of society (‘De la charité et de l’amour-propre’, XI, EM III, 181). Honnêteté would be one manifestation of this intelligent amour-propre (IV, EM III, 149); and this is very much La Rochefoucauld’s perspective: we naturally prefer ourselves to others (that is, put our needs, interests, and so forth higher than theirs), but we must conceal this preference and take care never to wound other people’s amour-propre.48 But, for Nicole as for Pascal, this would be inadequate on the spiritual level. To resist the corruption of amour-propre requires the stripping of its illusions. It is true that the mechanism of illusion can also serve truth. Consciousness of humility breeds pride; but consciousness of pride can breed humility (Nicole, Les Visionnaires, VIII, 433–6). We can sometimes cheat amour-propre, for instance, by applying our acute awareness of others’ shortcomings to our own (Letter 48, EM VII, 294–5). We can sometimes use imagination, so 48

La Rochefoucauld, Réflexions diverses, II, ‘De la société’, MMOD 704–5.

380


involved in the deceits of amour-propre, against itself: thus, when in perplexity we imagine how we should advise someone else in the same situation (EM VII, 296–7). And Nicole’s own use of images, some as striking as those of Pascal, is surely intended as a corrective to our spontaneous and deluded image of reality: the human race is a ‘multitude de cadavres qui marchent & se remuent’ (a horde of corpses walking and gesticulating) (‘Pensées morales sur les mysteres de Jesus-Christ’, EM XIII, 431); behind the glamour of a ball, the eye of faith perceives ‘un massacre horrible d’ames qui s’entretuent les uns les autres’ (a horrible massacre of souls slaughtering one another) (‘De la crainte de Dieu’, III, EM I, 162); ‘Ce monde qui nous porte est un fleuve de sang’ (The world that bears us along is a river of blood) (V, EM I, 178). But to attempt to see through one’s own illusions is to risk trapping oneself more and more inextricably in the cycle of blindness and lucidity, ‘retours sur retours’. An alternative or complementary strategy is to replace the oscillations of that cycle by a regular practice of self-examination. Desmarets’s contempt, as Nicole sees it, for this practice leads to a dangerous acquiescence in the promptings of concupiscence (Les Visionnaires, VI, 385; VII, 425). In ordinary life there is a constant shuttling back and forth between the self that acts and the self that takes cognizance of its actions. We have to turn a vague frontier, constantly traversed by the contraband of corruption, into a rigid boundary between the two selves. The self-possessed in the worldly sense have exploited to the full the self’s capacity to perceive its own actions: they are aware of and master of all their impulses, and can direct all their actions to a single end (‘De la vigilance chrétienne’, IX, EM IV, 395). The devout must aim at a similar self-possession, dividing the mind’s attention so that part is directed to the action, part to what is going on inside us (p. 397). This latter part, sad to say, would, however, be usurping a function already performed by amour-propre, which acts as: un certain Juge & un certain Supérieur que nous avons en nous-mêmes, qui se mêle quelquefois de juger nos actions, & de nous imposer des peines, selon

Religious Moralists

381

ses caprices. [. . .] Il ordonne quelquefois des pénitences disproportionnées & sans raison, pour empêcher qu’on n’apperçoive quelque défaut en luy. (Letter 39, to Mademoiselle ***, EM VII, 229) a kind of judge and superior we have in ourselves, who sometimes takes it upon himself to judge our actions and to inflict penalties on us, according to his fancy. [. . .] He sometimes prescribes disproportionate and irrational penances, to prevent our detecting any fault in him.

Self-love then is prepared to take on the function of self-punishment, which is another way of saying that our self-punishment is often a form of self-love. Even here, then, there is a possibility of confusion. How can I distinguish between my own self-observation, that of a would-be pious Christian, and that of self-love in its disguise as my religious superior? No reliable criterion of self-knowledge can be found within the self. The keynote of Nicole’s Essais de morale is a kind of anxious vigilance, ever striving yet fatigued with its own strivings, and longing to be dissolved in the hoped-for union with God. This endorsement of a rigidly self-critical posture conflicts with Fénelon’s beautiful eulogy of simplicity: ‘La simplicité est une droiture de l’âme qui retranche tout retour inutile sur elle-même et sur ses actions’ (Simplicity is an uprightness of the soul that cuts out all futile backward glances at itself and its actions).49 The archbishop’s language in this short work recalls that of the worldly moralists of honnêteté, who would have echoed his praise of spontaneity and naturalness, and one wonders if the contrast does not reflect basic differences, not of individual personality, nor, in this case, of theological doctrine, but of social position and disposition, between him and the Port-Royal writer. Lamy suggests a less aggressive method of self-examination, one geared to the heart’s own ways of working. When the heart wishes to direct the mind’s attention to the object of its love, it prompts it to scan a series of ideas, rejecting the ones it does not want as they come up (‘that’s not the one, that’s not the one’). (There is a clear debt 49

Fénelon, ‘De la simplicité’, Lettres et opuscules spirituels, XXVI, Œuvres, I, 677.

382


here to Augustine’s account of the workings of memory (Confessions, X.18–19).) When the idea of the object that is currently stirring the heart presents itself, the mind’s indeterminate motion ceases, to be replaced by a steady orientation to the object akin to rest, and giving rise to the pleasure of rest (C1 III, 386–7). The implication is that we can learn to direct this spontaneous process in order to discover the influences that would otherwise exert themselves without our being aware of them. Nicole is well aware that the conception of amour-propre he is working with, as capable of mimicking the workings of charity and grace, can give rise to scruples, a morbid concern with one’s own spiritual state, a kind of spiritual hypochondria. In a letter to ‘a soul burdened by excessive fear’, he takes issue with a common supposition (which indeed his own writings might encourage): first, that when someone turns away from creatures to God, the impulse to do so might come from human reason instead of the spirit of God; secondly, that such an impulse is good and meritorious (conducive to salvation) only when it is inspired by God. If this were so, he concedes, we should have no mark or criterion by which our conscience (‘conscience’, which is beginning also to bear the sense of ‘consciousness’) could vouch for our belonging to God, for the workings of grace are imperceptible. (We feel their results, say an intense spiritual joy, but not their workings, any more than we are actually aware of what a medicine is doing to our system, even though we know we feel better.) But it is in fact false to suppose that a conversion from creatures to God could be the work of human reason. If reason could really turn our will from creatures to God, then it would be sufficient to put us in a state agreeable to him: would be sufficient, in short, without grace, for salvation. This (Pelagian) position being intolerable, it follows that a genuine conversion to God can be the work only of his Spirit. So the question is not ‘What is the motive force behind my actions?’—there is no point in worrying about that—but ‘Is my conversion genuine?’ And the test of that is whether my acts and thoughts are in conformity with the rules of the Gospel. Whether they are or not will tell us what

Religious Moralists

383

their underlying source is (EM V, 363–5). We must not assume that the conscious thoughts that accompany our actions are in fact their source (Gospel, Pentecost, EM XII, 104). Conscious thoughts here have an epiphenomenal status. True, we are required to refer our actions to God—that is, to perform them for his sake.50 But one who consciously refers his actions to God ‘par des réflexions formelles’ (by an explicit thought process) may not in fact be acting for God’s sake, and conversely. To be sure, we can act for an end only if we have it in our thoughts: but then there are two kinds of thought, as has been already seen—on the one hand, explicit, and, on the other, secret, requiring a specific act of reflection to bring them to light. The thoughts behind our action are often of this latter kind (EM XII, 104). So one might be acting from charity without being fully aware of it. In any case, Lamy, more moderate, argues, the presence of an element of amour-propre does not necessarily corrupt our feelings of devotion: they may still help us turn towards God (C1 III, 115). Nicole’s analysis of the indiscernibility of grace and human motives, when directed against Desmarets, served a polemical purpose. But, when adapted for the Essais de morale, it took on a therapeutic function, as a means to keep anxiety and despair at bay. It is true that, when we believe we are acting in accordance with charity, we may be deceived by a masked amour-propre. But the converse is also true. When we possess efficacious grace, we may still act from human motives; but even when we act ‘par un principe d’intérêt humain’, grace may still be the ultimate source of our action. Neither feeling (affect) nor consciousness is a sure guide to our spiritual state. The important thing is that we should desire to submit ourselves to God and his law (‘Des diverses manieres dont on tente Dieu’, V, EM III, 224). As was noted above, this passage is a revised version of one in Les Visionnaires, VII. The changes tend to 50 The notion that we must refer our actions to God—perform them, that is, for his sake—is a mainspring of Augustinian and Jansenist ethics. See Augustine, Contra Julianum, IV.iii.21–6, PL 44, 749–51; Jansenius, Augustinus, vol. II, De Statu Naturæ Lapsæ, III.17, 208–9.

384


emphasize the reassuring aspect of the theory. He added the sentence ‘Dans cette obscurité la raison nous oblige a` prendre le parti de faire toujours ce qui est commandé, en laissant a` Dieu le discernement du principe qui nous fait agir’ (In this darkness, reason compels us to act on the maxim of always fulfilling the commandments, leaving it to God to discern the source of our actions) (p. 224). Committing ourselves to the letter of the law, we liberate ourselves from the obsessive fascination with our own image.51 Elsewhere, he cites a maxim of St Bernard: whatever is true, sound, in conformity with Church teaching, is to be ascribed to God’s spirit; whatever is not, to the devil or our imagination. Our lives as a whole are the most reliable test for the source of our impulses (‘Résolutions sur quelques difficultés proposées par une personne de piété’, EM V, 328). Another passage comes to the same conclusion by the opposite road: it is because charity and fear can merge into one another that there is no point in worrying about whether one’s appeals to God are motivated by one or the other (Gospel, Wednesday in Passion Week, EM XI, 203). The logician would detect an inconsistency here with the injunction elsewhere to scrutinize our actions and the attendant thought processes. A spiritual director, however, would know that some people, complacent and with Pharisaical tendencies, need to be taught self-examination, while others can be only depressed and disorientated by it. Another rule of thumb is that actions against the pull of the flesh are likely to involve effort, reluctance, and struggle (Epistle, 14th Sunday after Pentecost, EM XIII, 3–4), though this is perhaps hard to reconcile with the conception of efficacious grace as a delectation that overpowers the attraction of created goods. If spontaneity is often a sign of the workings of amour-propre, then the best way to purify our actions of self-love is to act according to a rule and after long premeditation (Les Visionnaires, VII, 424). Again, those 51 Cf. ‘De l’usage du temps’, §IV, EM V, 43–4; ‘De la soumission a` la volonté de Dieu’, I.2, EM I, 81–2.

Religious Moralists

385

subject to obedience are less obliged to rely on their own inadequate powers of discernment (‘De l’obéissance’, IX, EM V, 9). All of this converges on the same conclusion: the final truth of the self is registered outside the self, and ultimately unavailable to the most tenacious introspection. The final passage I want to discuss reveals with great acuteness the fundamental paradox of spiritual self-knowledge. Although, in God’s eyes, it is the depths of the soul that matter, rather than the external actions, which might emanate from a faulty internal principle, in the conduct of our lives we are forced to reverse this hierarchy: Il y a cette différence entre les actions extérieures & les intérieures, que l’on connaˆıt beaucoup mieux si les actions extérieures sont conformes ou contraires a` la loi de Dieu que l’on ne fait des intérieures, qui sont couvertes souvent par les nuages que la concupiscence y répand, en sorte que nous ne saurions assurer si nous avons le fond du cœur dans l’état où Dieu veut que nous l’ayions. (‘De la soumission a` la volonté de Dieu’, I.7, EM I, 100) This is the difference between outward and inward actions, that we know much more clearly whether the outward ones are in keeping with or against the law of God than we do with the inward ones, which are often obscured by the clouds of concupiscence, so that we cannot be clear whether the depths of our heart are in the state in which God would wish them to be.

We must therefore regulate the exterior, since this is a means to the ultimate inner reformation of our soul (EM I, 100). An outward show of affection towards someone towards whom we feel bitter is no hypocrisy, because it is founded on a truth more absolute than that of our feelings. If the appropriate feelings, whether we have them or not, are imprinted on our external behaviour, we may hope ‘que Dieu nous fera la grace de regler nos mouvements intérieurs, comme nous avons reglé les extérieurs pour l’amour de lui’ (that God will vouchsafe us the grace of regulating our inner movements, since we have regulated our outward actions for his sake) (EM I, 102). It is unnecessary to cite the parallel of Pascal, when he urges the would-be convert to act as if he believes in order to believe (L 418/S 680/LG 397), to work, through custom, on the body, the

386


machine, ‘qui entraˆıne l’esprit sans qu’il y pense’ (which inclines the mind without its realizing) (L 821/S 661/LG 671). Even the process of conversion will be achieved through a subjection (conscious and willed) of oneself to processes of which one is never fully aware. The pious are unaware of the purely human attachments that coexist in their spiritual ties with others (‘De la civilité chrétienne’, IV, EM II, 137): and perhaps (I think Nicole is suggesting), if they became aware of them, the spiritual ties would themselves suffer. So that illusion might be not merely inescapable, even in the spiritual life, but in some sense necessary to it. It is clear by now that the themes of self-knowledge, self-ignorance, and self-deception were a central concern of seventeenth-century writers, whether exploring spiritual states, psychological motivations, or passionate attachments. It will be helpful to recapitulate the main outlines of the analysis, but this task will be left for the overall conclusion to the book.

Conclusion 1 I said in the Introduction that I had no new narrative of modernity to propound. Throughout the specific chapters, I have not sought to trace developments from one position or one thinker to another, or to insert the period studied within a larger history of thought. But perhaps in this brief conclusion it may be in order to engage in something more like storytelling, with a tinge of conjecture and speculation. Again, up to now, I have concentrated on individual texts, or small groups of texts, quoting liberally in order to emphasize the particularity of texts as utterances. It may be helpful now to step back from this detailed set of pictures so as let them come together as a broader landscape. But it will be a varied landscape, from points of which other points will be invisible. That is to say, I am not trying to extract a ‘vision du monde’, a` la Goldmann, or an ‘anthropology’, as more recent writers say, transcending and informing individual texts. This is simply a summary of certain themes that can be found in a number of texts, but not necessarily in all. It exhibits connections between positions (‘if you think x, this may lead you to go on to affirm y’) but the connections are contingent: they are not in the nature of strict logical implications, and you can find x and y in some writers, and only x or y, or neither, in others. And this is true not only of specific positions, but of the larger perspectives to which these positions belong. Thus we find writers that combine metaphysical

388

Conclusion

and introspective approaches to self-knowledge, others that pursue one only. We find writers who seek to analyse self-deception and others who are content simply to indicate its existence and its effects on our lives. This is partly a matter of genre: writers of plays and novels are not required to justify their use of a certain ‘psychology’, a representation, say, of the relation between reason and passion. Authors of moral reflections are more likely to do so. But there is no straightforward antithesis here. La Bruyère expounds a certain vision of human nature, and of his approach to it as a writer, as a preamble to his text; La Rochefoucauld does not. Yet this is not to say that La Rochefoucauld’s writing was inspired solely by empirical observation, devoid of any theoretical framework. I now want to say something of the frameworks of ethical and psychological writing in the period.

2 It was noted in the Introduction that works of systematic moral philosophy from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries preserved an approach to ethics ratified by most of the great schools of antiquity and, in its Aristotelian form, consecrated by scholastic thought: that is, the vision of man as a hierarchical whole, whose end and happiness consists in living according to that hierarchy, or in other words in living a distinctively human life; that is, in placing the best part of himself, the reason, in command of his appetites and actions, including those that spring from the lower or animal parts of his nature. The recognition of this hierarchy conditioned the quest for man’s supreme or sovereign good—in other words, the ultimate goal at which he should aim because it most perfectly fulfilled his nature, as thus conceived. In this perspective, the task of ethics was to observe how the domination of reason was to be secured in different fields of human behaviour and different relationships, so as to guide us to the supreme good. This was achieved through the category of the virtues, considered as habits, consistent behaviourpatterns bespeaking a more or less fixed state of character. But this

Conclusion

389

approach to ethics seems strikingly absent from the later authors studied here. This is probably connected to another development. The earlier works were careful to observe the boundary between human and divine wisdom. They felt that it made sense for certain purposes to consider human nature and duties while bracketing out both revelation and divine influence (grace). Even theologians admitted that this was legitimate, when they sought to consider man, albeit hypothetically, in a ‘state of pure nature’. The Augustinian revival of which, theologically speaking, Jansenius was the spearhead jeopardized this partition between ethics and theology. The Augustinians, or neo-Augustinians, averred that any moral philosophy of pagan origin was, so to speak, objectively Pelagian, since it implied that man could achieve virtue by his own efforts, by the free exercise of a will guided by reason. This, they claimed, was utterly to overlook the impact of the Fall on our human nature. The notion of an ethics not informed by theology was an absurdity. It was useless to define and enumerate the virtues if behaviour that outwardly conformed to the Aristotelian definition of virtue was in fact inspired by concupiscence or self-love. The Augustinian doctrine of the Fall, extracted from its Thomist reformulation, thus did much to discredit the ethical approach based on a vision of man’s nature and powers. One might suppose that Cartesianism had the same effect: for it denies the hierarchy of faculties within the soul, and divides the lower functions of the soul between soul and body. But the issue is somewhat more complex. Descartes himself came late to ethical matters, and never produced a systematic and definitive presentation of his ethics, for a knowledge of which we are largely indebted to the letters to Elisabeth. Les Passions de l’âme offers an understanding of the passions, and how to master them, and propounds a strong intellectualist conception of virtue. But it did not have the same impact on ethical discussions as the metaphysical and scientific works did in their domain. True, an ethic whose supreme value is générosité might have appeared untimely at a particularly base period of French history, the Fronde. But it

390

Conclusion

might have therefore appeared all the more timely: neo-stoicism, after all, had flourished during the far more traumatic Wars of Religion. Perhaps the fact is that Descartes was more interested in the practical benefits to be derived from his philosophy, which he celebrates in the Discours de la méthode: machines to facilitate our lives, and medical progress to lengthen them. And, as we saw, the ethical imperative he most stresses in the Discours is our duty to procure the general good of mankind (Part VI, AT VI, 61–2: OP I, 634–5). We saw also that he makes pleasure, albeit pleasure bound up with virtue, the supreme good: the supreme good thus becomes a subjective aim, rather than a norm inscribed in our nature as rational animals. Yet in other ways Cartesianism ratified, and even reinforced, traditional philosophical hierarchies of value. For it preserved the valuation of the soul as nobler than the body; it accentuated the specificity of our humanity by relegating animals to the purely material world. It validated belief in a divine creator and in providence, and its dualism facilitated belief in personal immortality, whereas Aristotle’s teaching was far from clear on this point. It upheld belief in human freedom. Descartes’s metaphysics might thus have been expected to generate a vigorous religious ethic. One could indeed imagine a Cartesian regeneration of Neoplatonic or neo-stoic teachings, within a framework compatible with Christianity, but on a more solid philosophical basis than Renaissance thinkers had been able to provide for these revivals. But it is not quite this that we find in writers such as Malebranche or Nicole or François Lamy. The reason is not difficult to seek. Philosophical Augustinianism could recognize itself in aspects of Descartes’s philosophy, especially its anti-Aristotelianism. Like Augustine, Descartes rejects the notion that knowledge is derived from sensation, and he puts the soul in closer contact with God than with material objects. But in another way, as Pascal saw so clearly, theistic metaphysics can never give access to Christ, of whose redemptive activity we stand so in need. Without the knowledge of God, the knowledge of Christ, he says, is useless and sterile (L 449/S 690/LG 419). It is plausible to suppose

Conclusion

391

that the context of this remark is anti-Cartesian.1 By making God accessible to human reason, philosophy can even obscure our need for Christ. And the kind of theistic ethic sketched out above would have struck the Augustinian as likely, if it took a Christian guise—for it might simply give aid and comfort to deism—to appear in the old garments of Pelagianism: since the promotion of human reason and willpower seemed, to the Augustinian, to lead in that direction and no other. The belief in original sin cast its shadow on the activity of reason in both metaphysics and ethics. If we were corrupt, then all our faculties were corrupt; it was not enough to urge us to turn away from the fallacious senses and imagination and commit ourselves to the incorruptible intellect, in the hope that it would guide our will to its true goal. The propensities to error that derive from the pure understanding were studied at length by Malebranche in the third book of De la recherche de la vérité. We can trust ourselves safely to the intellect only when we realize that we discover truth not by our own efforts, but through God’s illuminating us with his ideas. As if in proleptic vindication of Charles Taylor, we find Malebranche attempting to restore the lost ‘ontic logos’, the conception of the universe as the embodiment of an order of Ideas, shaped by the Good, which (as Charles Taylor argues) Descartes had banished from philosophy (Sources of the Self, 143–4, 161).2 For Malebranche’s ethics is based precisely on the notion of an Order, a set of relations of perfection contained in the substance of the divine mind, according to which we should regulate all our love (Traité de morale, I.i.7–14, Œuvres, II, 427–9). But it was not enough for Malebranche to infuse into Cartesianism some more of the Platonic legacy of Augustine. In those of his writings studied here, we noted a constant concern to factor original sin into the philosophical quest, 1 See PPOD, 1235n. 3, where the editors point to the word ‘inutile’ (useless) as a link with ‘Descartes useless and uncertain’ (L 887/S 445/LG 702). 2 I argued in the Introduction that the sense of a divine moral order in the universe was not altogether absent from Descartes: but no one could claim it is prominent in his thought in general.

392

Conclusion

and the same is true of Nicole’s and Lamy’s moral and psychological explorations. More will be said of these presently: the main point to note is that writers such as Malebranche, Nicole, and François Lamy, all of whom were in different degrees profoundly influenced by Descartes’s metaphysics, did not use it to develop an ethics. They developed his thought in a rather different direction, towards psychological analysis subordinated to an Augustinian ethics and theology. There is a certain conjectural element in all this. I am not suggesting that Nicole or Lamy said to himself: ‘Descartes is all very well, but though he has never developed a fully-fledged ethics based on his metaphysics, someone else might, and that would lead either to Pelagianism or to deism: so we had better get in there first, and develop aspects of his thought that will make it more difficult for anyone to do that.’ But I think it is fair to say that their Augustinianism led them to dwell on our moral corruption and weakness, and therefore on aspects of Cartesian thought that, contrary to its general trend, helped to reinforce their vision of human nature. In so doing, they arguably did make it more difficult to develop an ethics based on the Cartesian metaphysical vision, of the kind sketched out above.3 Cartesianism did not then provide them with a vision of human nature to be slotted into the structure of ancient moral philosophy in the place of outmoded Stoic or Aristotelian models. It was not to be the basis of an effective counter to psychological and ethical approaches of a materialist and naturalist stamp—such as we find in Hobbes, whom I cite as the thinker, apart from Spinoza, who breaks most explicitly with the model of moral philosophy derived from antiquity and focused on the quest of the supreme good for man. 3 Malebranche is not an exception to this, since his ethics are profoundly Augustinian in inspiration. Abbadie does not fit so well into this argument, for he does attempt to derive ethical norms from a basically Cartesian image of human nature, and yet pays strong attention to our moral failings. A fuller study of his position would need to take his Protestantism, and his position within Protestant theology, into account.

Conclusion

393

3 Descartes and Hobbes did both consider, in their very different ways, the relationship between the pursuit of self-interest and the general good. And to analyse and evaluate various forms of self-love or self-interest was a paramount concern in early modern writing, in theology, philosophy, and moral reflection, but also in plays and novels. By no means always, but very commonly, this prompted an interest in the problem of self-knowledge, or rather its absence, as manifested in self-ignorance or self-deception. Let us begin with the more systematic approach to human nature we find in theologians and philosophers. We are born, they agree, with a natural instinct to preserve our existence, and also with a natural appetite for happiness, often, perhaps increasingly, understood as equivalent to pleasure. But we cannot live our lives simply according to these natural instincts: they impel us to pursue nonnatural goods, material objects we do not need in order to stay alive, pleasures we could perfectly well do without, that perhaps jeopardize our capacity to survive and to enjoy life in the long run. This may be, as some would say, because we are a fallen race, enslaved to concupiscence. It may be, or may also be, because of the conditions of human life on this earth. It may be that a basic malignity impels us to compete with others or that the need to compete with others in order to survive in a world that is no paradise sets us in conflict with them, and thus engenders malignity. But we need other people also. We need them because our own existence, and chances of pleasure, are on balance more secure if we cooperate with them. Perhaps we need them also because of our desire for other people’s esteem. This may be a primary psychological force, or perhaps an aspect of a primary narcissistic love of self, which, again, some would see as an effect of original sin. But it might be a derivative formation: we desire others’ esteem because we know that those who are esteemed are less exposed to others’ aggression and competition. For society, which we need, cannot be imagined (in this historical perspective) without inequality, and the reproduction of inequality. Take the case

394

Conclusion

of an individual whose social role is that of a duke—an estate he was born into. As a human being, he does not need fine clothes or servants: most of his fellow creatures do without them. But without them he would be less respected, and thus more vulnerable. In the last analysis, without all the conventional trappings of aristocracy, his physical survival might be jeopardized: however brave and strong he is, he does not know how to live by the work of his own hands, and would have difficulty learning to do so. Without noble privilege, he might be the victim of aggression or injustice, as ordinary people are. In other words, the natural instinct for survival must in his case prompt desires for things he needs not qua human being but qua duke, since his survival as a human being is bound up with his survival as a duke.4 Society, then, has constituted him as a bearer of certain interests. But, to a greater or lesser extent, this is true of all his fellow creatures: the peasant who can live by the work of his own hands cannot necessarily protect his land by himself; he too has interests, in the form of good relations with others he has to maintain. We all, then, have interests, or, what comes to the same thing, non-natural desires (‘cupidities’), as well as those imparted by nature. These tend to set us in competition with others. Where this is the case, it is an advantage in pursuing our interests, that others shall not be aware that we are doing so: that they think us to be acting for the sake of honour, or moral virtue, or religion. Now we could apply this maxim entirely cynically, along Machiavellian lines. But, although many seventeenth-century writers are cynical, their culture as a whole is not. Hypocrisy, the homage vice pays to virtue, testifies to this. The maxim (no. 218) is stale by its familiarity: but the word 4 Montaigne points to the difficulty of invoking ‘nature’ as a criterion for selecting and discarding desires. He sets forth the teaching of ancient philosophy (Seneca, Epistles, XVI.7–8) that we must distinguish natural desires from those derived from opinion, which he equates with disordered imagination: a distinction more or less corresponding to that between natural desires and non-natural ‘cupidities’. But he concedes that it is it unrealistic to suggest that people should really content themselves only with what they need for physical survival. He suggests that the sense of ‘nature’ should be expanded to include ‘l’usage et condition de chacun de nous’ (the habits and [social] situation of each of us) (‘De mesnager sa volonté’, Essais, III.10, VS 1009–10).

Conclusion

395

homage was no dead metaphor for the aristocrat La Rochefoucauld. Homage is a submission one displays to an overlord in return for being confirmed in possession of a fief. Vice cannot pursue its own ends, it cannot, that is, even realize itself as vice, if it does not acknowledge the superiority of virtue. (Again, this is a historical picture. A twenty-first-century capitalist tycoon does not and need not pretend to be pursuing more than his own advantage and gratification. But, interestingly, this is not so true of corporations.) That is, even those whose behaviour is utterly self-interested may well believe for the most part that it is in the abstract better to be honourable, or virtuous, or pious, or any two or all three, than not. Molière’s Dom Juan does not: but he is exceptionally lucid in his egocentrism. (Perhaps, also, he is very wrong.) The disguise of one’s own interests may not then simply be a sham. It may reflect a quite profound desire to be as one would wish to be perceived by others. In other words, we come again upon the notion of desires distinct from the wish for immediate concrete advantage: a desire for others’ esteem, or a narcissistic desire to be beautiful in one’s own eyes, or both. And the result of the encounter between these desires and the pursuit of interest is self-delusion: for it suits people locked into competition and conflicts of interest not only for others to believe that they are acting for reasons other than self-interest, but to believe the same themselves. ‘Suits’ here means more than simply ‘gratifies’. The self-deception is functional: to misrecognize the source of one’s own (interested) actions empowers one to perform them with all the more vigour and conviction. There is a kind of feedback effect: in our activities involving others, we often have to disguise our goals and intentions, and we ourselves are then taken in by the disguise as well. A degree of self-delusion or self-deception thus seems to follow from the basic relationship between human beings situated in social relationships in which they have to compete for non-natural goods, but in which their competitive capacity is enhanced by apparent conformity to moral or social norms—real conformity to which might weaken it: norms that tend to proscribe, or that claim precedence over, the direct pursuit of one’s interest.

396

Conclusion

But people are not simply in quest of their own interest, in the sense of concrete advantages of power, wealth, prestige. They are also (the theologians would say, on account of the Fall) vulnerable to passion, uncontrollable desire. Such desires sometimes present themselves to fictional characters as brute facts, extensions of their identity: it is their misfortune to be Oreste, therefore in love with Hermione, or Hermione, therefore in love with Pyrrhus. We are sometimes tempted to imagine that the desires are not brute facts but derivatives of some more ultimate force: that, if they are so unamenable to conscious and rational control, it is because their roots are in layers of the person unamenable to consciousness—rebellions, submissions, identifications of which the character is only intermittently, if at all, aware. Something of this was suggested apropos of Néron. At other times, it almost seems as if, through the desires of individuals, Rodrigue and Chimène in Corneille’s Le Cid (1637) or the princesse and Nemours in La Princesse de Clèves, it is a social order that tends towards its own reproduction. The desires that seem to the characters to constitute the stuff of their individual identity are transindividual in origin, and in this discrepancy lies the source of fundamental misrecognitions. There is no room here to explore or substantiate these suggestions, which would in any case involve concepts and forms of analysis unavailable to seventeenth-century authors and readers. But, remaining within a perspective such readers could share, we can still observe that passion is depicted as an abundant source of self-deception and illusion. In comedy, it is not that the characters are unaware of the passions, or for that matter the interests, that drive them: Monsieur Jourdain in Molière’s Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (1671) knows full well that he is socially ambitious and in love with the aristocratic Dorimène, just as Harpagon in L’Avare (1669) knows better than anyone that money is the most important thing in his life. What they are unaware of is how absurd their passions or interests appear to other people: their lack of self-knowledge reflects a failure to internalize social norms. They might be said to be victims of the illusions of narcissistic self-love, rather than of the self-interested kind. And the same is true of tragic protagonists, unless we admit the

Conclusion

397

conception of them as bearing interests of which they are unaware. They are not completely devoid of self-knowledge, far from it, and if they were they might appear less than tragic: but, in so far as they lack it, they are deluded either directly by passion (they imagine someone can after all love them who will never do so) or by an image of themselves in relation to passion: they suppose themselves invulnerable to it, like Racine’s Hippolyte (Phèdre et Hippolyte, 1677) or capable of acting in defiance of it, like Pyrrhus in Andromaque when he decides (briefly) to marry Hermione. In both these cases, we might also speak of narcissistic self-delusion; and it seems as if this is the kind of self-ignorance that literary texts (plays and novels as distinct from works of moral reflection) most explore. So far, the analysis of self-deception and self-delusion has been presented within a mainly secular perspective: theological considerations have been mentioned, but they are not indispensable to the explanatory schema. How much difference does theology, in particular Augustinian theology, make when its contribution to the understanding of self-deception is more explicit? There are two key concepts here: love and grace. First, all motivations are said to be forms of love, and in our fallen state all love is reducible to one of two antithetical forms: charity, the love of God, on the one hand; self-love or concupiscence, on the other. The idea of a love of self in a natural harmony with the love of God (that is, subordinate to it) does not correspond to the reality of our current condition. Secondly, nothing we can do by ourselves can change this state of affairs: a divine influence, an ‘efficacious grace’ directly acting upon our will, is required—and it is not given to all. Without such grace, all our motivations must be suspect. They may be blatant manifestations of amour-propre or of cupidity, which comes to the same thing; in which case there may be no self-deception. But suppose I think I am acting according to reason and virtue. I may be deceiving myself along the lines set out above, conveniently forgetting the advantages that will accrue to me by so acting. But suppose, again, that I am aware of that possibility, and have scrutinized the action and its likely consequences with care: I cannot see how I would stand to

398

Conclusion

gain by it—in fact I may be jeopardizing my worldly position and reputation for the sake of doing what is right. Suppose, further, that I have no faith in Christ, or even belief in God. In all these cases, the seventeenth-century Augustinian would hold, I cannot be acting under the influence of grace, and so my motive must be amour-propre in some form: love, for instance, of the idea of my own perfection. Someone might try to turn the Augustinian ethic against itself. If self-interested action is vicious, and I am acting for the sake of my own salvation, it follows my action is vicious. Or they might say, as Kant does say, that to perform virtuous deeds for any other reason than in obedience to the moral law is to fall short of virtue. This would not worry the Augustinian. There is nothing impure or discreditable, he would say, about wanting to be happy. If I learn that Christianity promises supreme happiness after death to those saved, and come to believe that it is true, then I would be irrational not to desire salvation. There is no reason why I should conceal that desire from myself, except perhaps in the extreme case of attempting to make the impossible supposition. The Augustinian ethic then does not condemn self-interest, if by that is meant the pursuit of what is good for one: it condemns self-interest in so far as it means making my interest a paramount object of concern, instead of subordinating it to my duty to God. But of course if I behave in this bad self-interested way, I am in fact acting against my long-term interests. On the other hand, there are relationships to God that are self-interested in the bad sense. Thus Nicole lists ‘servile fear’ (the fear of punishment) alongside amour-propre, as a bad motive for an action good in itself, effectively assimilating the two.5 Malebranche’s position is similar: to refrain from forbidden actions while wishing they could go unpunished is to act out of an amour-propre that is enlightened, but not regulated. This is not sufficient for virtue.6 In these cases, self-deception as to one’s motives 5 Nicole, Les Visionnaires, VII, 416–17. Cf. the very similar passage in ‘Des diverses manieres dont on tente Dieu’, V, EM III, 223–5. 6 Malebranche, Traité de morale, II.xiv.5, Œuvres, II, 645–6. The passage is discussed above, p. 265.

Conclusion

399

is certainly possible: indeed, in the passage just quoted Nicole argues that we cannot know whether an individual action has been inspired by self-interested amour-propre or by charity. However, he goes on to argue that, for that very reason, we should not in the end agonize over the inevitable complexity of our motives. Apart from theological doctrines, there are other factors reinforcing the theme of the difficulty of self-knowledge. Many writers, as Benedetta Papasogli has shown, are fascinated by a certain imaginary of the mind, as a dark and labyrinthine space, stirred by currents out of reach of our gaze. La Rochefoucauld’s portrait of amour-propre is but one example of this. In Jansenius, we noted a liking for images of movements of the air, little gusts or breezes of feeling, eluding our conscious attention but subtly influencing our decisions. Such images can migrate from one genre of writing to another, nor are they rooted in particular doctrines. Philosophical positions may leave a clearer imprint on texts: but the imprint may be that of their own ambiguities. Thus we might think that Cartesianism, insisting that the mind is easier to know than the body, involves a belief in the ‘transparency’ of the mind: I have only to turn my gaze inside to have a full and clear picture of my thoughts. But this is only partially true, even for Descartes. Malebranche insists that we have no knowledge in the strict sense of our souls. Like Descartes, he accepts the existence of dispositions of which we may be unaware. And the limits imposed by Cartesian philosophy on our capacity for self-knowledge are explored in depth by Nicole and François Lamy. Like Malebranche, they have assimilated from Descartes the lesson that we perceive and experience the everyday world as profoundly embodied creatures, and that the pressure of the body tends to suffocate the ideas (innate or divinely imparted) by which we can come to know the truth. But they develop this insight above all in the moral and consequently the psychological sphere (since they do not treat psychology in separation from ethics). This leads them, Lamy especially, to treat of the imperceptible bodily influences affecting our thoughts and desires: imperceptible because thought is not directly aware of the bodily processes as such (I feel anger,

400

Conclusion

not a stream of animal spirits rushing through a particular part of my brain). Thought, of course, on the contrary is intrinsically aware of itself: but this awareness is virtual, and may elude us when our attention is not directed to a given thought. On the other hand, the very awareness of a thought may change its nature, as when I become aware of a charitable impulse, and so taint it with self-satisfaction or calculations of gain. Moreover, the intellectual nature of thought itself renders it elusive, unless we encase it in the material framework of language. Cartesianism is thus paradoxically conducive to an exploration of the imperceptible influences on our lives. But, from a moral-psychological viewpoint, such influences might be felt to compromise the kind of Cartesian-influenced ethics sketched out above, suggesting that our moral lives are less amenable to reason than the metaphysical power of reason might lead us to think. If imperceptible thoughts can influence our behaviour, this might compromise or at least circumscribe our activity to act freely. Whether from plays and novels or from essays and treatises, what emerges is a picture of human thought processes and motivation of great complexity and subtlety. No doubt these qualities result in part from habits of observation and from a posture of suspicion that social structures and developments did much to promote. But there is more than simply sharp observation here. The more abstract writers at any rate are for the most part mobilizing theories of theological or metaphysical origin, dealing with self-love, divine grace, the immateriality of the soul. It is, moreover, fair to say that seventeenth-century moralists offer more subtle psychological analyses than the philosophes of the following century. For if, as the latter argued, amour-propre is intrinsically natural, if, even, it is the source of good impulses, then why should we worry about whether we are driven by it?7 We are inevitably driven by it, and this is only natural. Relatively 7 For the positive estimate of amour-propre, see, e.g., Voltaire, Lettres philosophiques, XXV, §XI, 152); Helvétius, De l’esprit, I.4, 45.

Conclusion

401

indifferent to the internal realm explored by practitioners of a ‘fugitive and cloistered virtue’, they were more concerned to act on the external world. Rousseau is, of course, the exception: in his case, the insight into the evils of contemporary society led him to challenge the orthodox Enlightenment psychology and to produce a richer and more complex theory of self-love that owes much to the seventeenth-century moralists.8 In any case, the moralists’ lessons about self-love and its deceits continue to inform the penetrating psychological analyses we find in the theatre and fiction of the age of Enlightenment: the works of Marivaux, or Prévost, or Laclos. They are echoed in the assertions of our fatal self-ignorance that run like a mournful refrain through the first part of Proust’s Albertine disparue.

4 I mentioned above the challenge to traditional ethical perspectives of the secular naturalism of which Hobbes is the clearest spokesman—a vision of human beings as fundamentally defined not by their rational nature with its intrinsic norms, but by the pleasures they seek and the interests they seek to advance. It is fair to say that the Augustinian writers do not meet this challenge head-on. Malebranche’s ethics are certainly opposed to the naturalist anthropology, but they are so bound up with his general philosophy (which of course is a philosophical virtue) as to be, perhaps, too complicated to serve as the basis of a counter-ideology. Certainly, the other Augustinian writers did not develop a counter-ideology capable of withstanding the naturalist current—for the excellent reason that they had so much in common with it: the sense of the limits on our free will, the 8 Another exception ought to be made for Vauvenargues, who tends to distinguish between good and bad forms of amour-propre (Réflexions et maximes, §§290, 291, and cf. 294 (Introduction a` la connaissance de l’esprit humain, ed. Jean Dagen (Paris: GarnierFlammarion, 1981), 229–30) ). He endorses but does not always adhere to the distinction between an innocent love of self (‘amour de nous-mêmes’) and an appropriative amourpropre. The former but not the latter is involved in all our passions (Introduction, 85–7).

402

Conclusion

acceptance of pleasure as the supreme good, the reluctance to admit our capacity to live up to exalted ethical ideals, the insistent sense of humanity’s weakness, folly, and vice. But this might seem to expose them to the Sartrean–Barthesian critique I discussed in the Introduction: that seventeenth-century writing was limited by its moral framework, confining itself to the moral and psychological realm because it took for granted established solutions to religious, metaphysical, political, and social problems; and so that it was, in the end, on the side of the established order. It is time to review this claim. It cannot, indeed, be argued that the writers studied here consider political and social problems in their own right, independently of moral categories, still less that they see moral categories as determined by social and political structures. Yet their moral preoccupations lead them to be far more critical of patterns of social behaviour than the Sartrean–Barthesian critique might suggest. If they accept, or partially accept, Cartesian metaphysics, this is not in itself a conformity with orthodoxy, but an alignment with one of the most critical and innovative movements of thought of their time. Cartesian (and Augustinian) perspectives are instruments of a generalized suspicion, a penetrating critique of the difference between behaviour as it appears and behaviour as (to judge by its psychological origins to which they trace it) we should really judge it to be. The writers here studied have a complex and paradoxical relationship with the developments generally identified as constituting an emergent modernity. Jansenius writes as a theologian, not a moralist or commentator on modern society. But he is of course advocating a return to doctrines formulated 1,200 years before: developments in theology since then are likely to be corruptions. When he refers to more recent theologians (‘recentiores’), he is usually about to explain why they are wrong. In De la fréquente communion Arnauld explicitly accuses his opponent of trying to make a Church for the present day, and neglecting the glories and disciplines of primitive Christianity. Senault sees the whole history of humanity’s domestication and

Conclusion

403

appropriation of the universe as an assertion of amour-propre. He is not explicitly alluding to early modern scientific developments, but, in the context of the Baconian–Cartesian vision of progress in the mastery of nature, his lament acquires an acuter historical point. But, as has often been noted, extreme religious traditionalism could go with an innovative attitude to science: Pascal famously demarcates the spheres of knowledge where the writ of authority runs (such as theology) from those where it loses all force. The ancients cannot be blamed for their errors about the heavens, but we should certainly deserve to be if we repeated what they said, when telescopes can show it to be false.9 Moreover, in effectively abandoning the Aristotelian ethical perspective, Augustinian thinkers such as Pascal and Nicole were, as noted above, at one with the most innovative secular thinkers like Hobbes and Spinoza. Their ‘Augustinian naturalism’ helped them, or at least Pascal and Nicole, to develop a theory of the workings of a society based on the pursuit of individual interest, where no room need be left for moral values in their own right, since enlightened self-love will guide us to fulfil the external duties of morality. But their Augustinian theology prevented them from thereby justifying a society based on self-love, for in God’s eyes it would still be radically corrupt. They show how a competitive individualistic society works; but they stand apart from it as critics. What is more, the theory of motivation and the exploration of selfknowledge we find in the Augustinian moralists renders it impossible to found a morality on the needs and projects of individual egos, just as Malebranche’s philosophy insists that the discovery of truth can never be the activity of an ego. And, just as in Malebranche, knowledge involves opening oneself to the divine illumination, so for Nicole virtue can never be attained in and through ourselves: it can consist only, on one level, in our conformity to the divine law, and, on another, on the presence of a divine influence that ratifies that 9 Pascal, ‘Sur le Traité du vide: Préface’, PPOD 84–92 (at pp. 90–1); OC I, 452–8 (at p. 457).

404

Conclusion

conformity as an expression of charity.10 What is lastingly fascinating about so many thinkers of this period is the combination of an acute awareness of the omnipresence of ego, in our relations both with ourselves and with others, with a steadfast refusal to treat this as a natural and justified state of affairs. Ego, suffused with illusion, appropriative and assertive, yet fragile, and elusive, can never ground any but illusory and exploitative relationships. At a fairly early stage in the development towards an egotistic individualist society, it was above all the theology of the Fall and of grace that prompted and enabled the writers studied here to develop this critical vision. 10

On the socio-political level, Pascal also shows that social relationships can never be reduced to relations between individuals, since they are always suffused with misrecognitions that reflect historical power-struggles: see my Early Modern French Thought, 111–21. Malebranche follows Pascal in certain aspects of his theory of the social role of imagination: see my ‘Imagination et rapports sociaux chez Pascal et Malebranche’, Chroniques de Port-Royal, 50 (2001), 525–39.

Bibliography PRIMARY SOURCES Abbadie, Jaques (sic), L’Art de se connoˆıtre soy-meme, ou La Recherche des sources de la morale (Rotterdam: Pierre Vander Slaart, 1692). Anon., Discours sur les passions de l’amour, in Moralistes du XVIIe siècle: De Pubrac a` Dufresny, ed. Jean Lafond et al., Collection Bouquins (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1992), 615–31. Aquinas, St Thomas, Summa theologiae, rev. edn. (Milan: Editiones Paulinae, 1988). Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, ed. and trans. H. Rackham, 2nd edn., Loeb Classical Library (London: Heinemann, and Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1934). Politics, ed. and trans. H. Rackham, Loeb Classical Library (London: Heinemann, and Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1950 (1st pub. 1932) ). Posterior Analytics, ed. Hugh Tredennick, Topica, ed. E. S. Forster, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, and London: Heinemann, 1966 (1st pub. 1960) ). Rhetoric [The ‘Art’ of Rhetoric, ed. and trans. J. H. Freese, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, and London: Heinemann, 1926)]. The Poetics, ‘Longinus’, On the Sublime, ed. and trans. W. Hamilton Fyfe, Demetrius, On Style, ed. and trans. W. Rhys Roberts, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, and London: Heinemann, 1982 (1st pub. 1927, rev. edn. 1932) ). Arnauld, Antoine, Œuvres, ed. Gabriel Du Pac de Bellegarde and Jean Hautefage, 42 vols. (Paris and Lausanne: Sigismond d’Arnay, 1775–81). De la fréquente communion, Œuvres, XXVII, 71–673. ´ ´ Premier Ecrit de la grace générale selon la méthode des géomètres [Ecrit géométrique], Œuvres, X, 465–80. Règles du bon sens, Œuvres, XL, 153–260. ´ eque d’Ypres, Œuvres, XVII, Seconde apologie pour M. Jansenius, Evˆ 1–637.

406

Bibliography

Arnauld, Antoine and Pierre Nicole, La Logique ou l’art de penser, ed. Pierre Clair and François Girbal, 2nd edn., Bibliothèque des Textes Philosophiques (Paris: Vrin, 1993). Augustine, St, Bishop of Hippo, Confessions, ed. W. H. D. Rouse, trans. William Watts, 2 vols., Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, and London: Heinemann, 1912). De civitate Dei [The City of God against the Pagans, ed. and trans. George E. McCracken et al., 7 vols., Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, and London: Heinemann, 1957–72)]. De doctrina Christiana libri quatuor, PL 34, 15–122. De vera religione, PL 34, 122–71. De diversis quaestionibus 83, PL 40, 11–100. De Trinitate libri quindecim, PL 42, 821–1098. De spiritu et littera, PL 44, 199–246. Contra Julianum, PL 44, 641–874. Opus imperfectum contra Julianum, PL 45, 1055–1607. Bacon, Francis, Essays, with an introduction by Oliphant Smeaton, Everyman’s Library (London: Dent, and New York: Dutton, 1965). Bossuet, Jacques-Bénigne, De la connaissance de Dieu et de soi-même, ed. Christiane Frémont, Corpus des Œuvres de Philosophie en Langue Française (Paris: Fayard, 1990). Traité de la concupiscence, ed. Stéphan Huynh-Tan and Andrea de Lauris (Paris: La Bibliothèque, 2000). Calvin, Jean, Institution de la religion chrétienne, ed. Jean-Daniel Benoˆıt, 5 vols. (Paris: Vrin, 1957–63). Charron, Pierre, De la sagesse, 2nd edn. (Paris: David Douceur, 1604), ed. Barbara Negroni, Corpus des Œuvres de Philosophie en Langue Française (Paris: Fayard, 1986). Cicero, Marcus Tullius, De finibus bonorum et malorum, ed. and trans. H. Rackham, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, and London: Heinemann, 1983). De officiis, ed. and trans. Walter Miller, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 1990 (1st pub. 1913) ). Tusculan Disputations, ed. and trans. J. E. King, Loeb Classical Library (London: Heinemann, and Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971 (1st pub. 1927).

Bibliography

407

Corneille, Pierre, Œuvres complètes, ed. Georges Couton, 3 vols., Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1980–7). Descartes, René, Œuvres, ed. Charles Adam and Paul Tannery, 11 vols., rev. edn. (Paris: Vrin/CNRS, 1974–83). Œuvres philosophiques, ed. Ferdinand Alquié, 3 vols., Classiques Garnier (Paris: Garnier, 1963–73). ´ Discours de la méthode, ed. Etienne Gilson, 6th edn. (Paris: Vrin, 1987 (1st pub. 1925) ). Dufresny, Charles Rivière-, Amusements sérieux et comiques, in Moralistes du XVIIe siècle: De Pibrac a` Dufresny, ed. Jean Lafond et al., Collection Bouquins (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1992), 977–1050. ´ Dupleix, Scipion, L’Ethique ou Philosophie morale (Paris: Laurent Sonnius, 1610). Du Vair, Guillaume, Philosophie morale des sto¨ıques (1st pub. 1585), in De la sainte philosophie: Philosophie morale des sto¨ıques, ed. G. Michaut (Paris: Vrin, 1945). Esprit, Jacques, De la fausseté des vertus humaines (1st pub. 1678), 2 vols. in ´ 1, separately paginated (Amsterdam: Etienne Roger, 1709). Eustachius a Sancto Paulo (Eustache de Saint-Paul), Ethica, sive Summa Moralis disciplinae in tres partes divisa (Cambridge: William Morden, 1654). Fénelon, François de Salignac de La Mothe-, Œuvres, ed. Jacques Le Brun, 2 vols., Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1983–97). Gallutius, Tarquinius, SJ (Tarquinio Galluzzi), Explanatio et quæstiones in Aristotelis Moralium Libros, 2 vols., In Aristotelis libros quinque priores moralium ad Nicomachum nova interpretatio, commentarii, quæstiones (Paris: Sebastien Cramoisy, 1632), In Aristotelis libros quinque posteriores moralium ad Nicomachum nova interpretatio, commentarii, quæstiones (Paris: Sebastien Cramoisy, 1645). de Góis, Manuel, Moral a` Nicomaco, de Aristóteles, ed. and trans. António Alberto de Andrade, Curso conimbricense, 1 (Lisbon: Istituto de Alta Cultura, 1957). Helvétius, Claude-Adrien, De l’esprit ed. Jacques Moutaux, Corpus des Œuvres de Philosophie en Langue Française (Paris: Fayard, 1988 (1st pub. 1758) ). Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan (1st pub. 1651), ed. Richard Tuck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

408

Bibliography

In libros Ethicorum Aristotelis ad Nicomachum, aliquot conimbricensis cursus disputationes (Lisbon: Simon Lopes, 1593), reprinted as Manuel de Góis, Moral a` Nicomaco, de Aristóteles, ed. and trans. Alberto de Andrade, Curso Conimbricense, 1 (Lisbon: Instituto de Alta Cultura, 1957). Jansenius, Cornelius, Bishop of Ypres, De Interiore Hominis Reformatione Oratio, in quâ vera virtutum Christianarum fundamenta ex D. Augustini doctrinâ iaciuntur, 2nd edn. (Louvain: Widow of Henricus Hastenius and Jacobus Zegers, 1631). Traduction d’vn Discours de la réformation de l’homme intérieur, où sont établis les veritables fondemens des Vertus Chrestiennes, selon la doctrine de S. Augustin, [trans. Robert Arnauld d’Andilly] (Paris: Pierre Le Petit, 1659 (1st pub. Veuve Jean Camusat, 1642) ). Augustinus, 3 vols. (Rouen: Jean Berthelin, 1643 (1st pub. 1640) ). La Bruyère, Jean de, Les Caractères ou les mœurs de ce siècle, ed. Robert Garapon, Classiques Garnier (Paris: Garnier, 1962). Les Caractères, ed. Emmanuel Bury, Le Livre de Poche Classique (Paris: Librairie Générale Française, 2004). Lafayette, Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne, comtesse de, La Princesse ´ de Clèves, in Romans et nouvelles, ed. Emile Magne, introduction by Alain Niderst, Classiques Garnier (Paris: Garnier, 1970). La Fontaine, Fables, ed. Marc Fumaroli, 2 vols. (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1985). La Mothe Le Vayer, François de, De la vertu des payens (1641–2), in Œuvres, 3rd edn., 2 vols. (Paris: Augustin Courbé, 1662), I, 555–744 (also in Libertins du XVIIe siècle, vol II: see below). Lamy, François, De la connoissance de soi-mesme, 1st edn., 5 vols. in 4, first two vols. paginated as one (Paris: André Pralard, 1694–8). De la conoissance de soi-même, 2nd edn., 2 vols. (Paris: André Pralard, 1699). La Rochefoucauld, François VI, duc de, Maximes et Réflexions diverses, ed. Jean Lafond, Collection Folio (Paris: Gallimard, 1976). Maximes, ed. Jean Lafond (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1998). Maximes, Mémoires, Œuvres diverses [Maximes, Réflexions diverses, ed. Jacques Truchet, rev. Marc Escola; Portraits, Mémoires, Grands ´ Ecrivains de la France edition, rev. Alain Brunn], La Pochothèque: Le Livre de Poche/Classiques Garnier (Paris: Garnier, 2001).

Bibliography

409

Libertins du XVIIe siècle, ed. Jacques Prévot, Laure Jestaz, and Hélène Ostrowiecki-Bah, 2 vols., Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1998–2004). Locke, John, An Essay concerning Human Understanding, ed. Peter H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979 (1st pub. 1975)). Lucretius, De rerum natura, trans. W. H. D. Rouse, rev. Martin Ferguson Smith, rev. 2nd edn., Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 1992). Machiavelli, Niccolò, Il principe; Scritti politici, ed. Luigi Fiorentino (Milan: Mursia, 1969). Malebranche, Nicolas, Œuvres, ed. Geneviève Rodis-Lewis and Germain Malbreil, 2 vols., Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1979–92). Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin), Œuvres complètes, ed. Georges Couton, 2 vols., Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1971). Montaigne, Michel de, Les Essais, ed. Pierre Villey and V.-L. Saulnier, 3 vols. paginated as one (Paris: Quadrige/Presses Universitaires de France, 1992). Moralistes du XVIIe siècle: De Pibrac a` Dufresny, ed. Jean Lafond et al., Collection Bouquins (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1992). Nicole, Pierre, Essais de morale, 14 vols. (Paris: Desprez, 1755–82). Essais de morale: Choix d’essais, ed. Laurent Thirouin (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1999). Les Imaginaires et Les Visionnaires [and other works] (Cologne: Pierre Marteau, 1683). Traité de la grâce générale, 2 vols, by J. Fouillou, n.p., 1715. Nicole, Pierre [et al.], Traité de la comédie et autres pieces d’un procès du théaˆ tre, ed. Laurent Thirouin (Paris: Champion, 1998). Pascal, Blaise, Œuvres complètes, ed. Michel Le Guern, 2 vols., Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1998–2000). Pensées, ed. Philippe Sellier, Classiques Garnier (Paris: Bordas, 1991). Les Provinciales, Pensées, et Opuscules diverses, ed. Philippe Sellier and Gérard Ferreyrolles, Classiques Modernes, La Pochothèque: Le Livre de Poche/Classiques Garnier (Paris: Garnier and Librairie Générale Française, 2004). Patrologiæ cursus completus, Series latina, ed. J. P. Migne (Paris: Migne, 1844–55).

410

Bibliography

Plato, Phaedrus and the Seventh and Eighth Letters, trans. and intr. Walter Hamilton (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973). The Republic, 2 vols., ed. and trans. Paul Shorey, Loeb Classical Library (London: Heinemann, and Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1946). Poulain de la Barre, François, De l’égalité des deux sexes, Corpus des Œuvres de Philosophie en Langue Française (Paris: Fayard, 1984 (1st pub. 1673) ). Racine, Jean, Œuvres complètes: I. Théaˆ tre-Poésie, ed. Georges Forestier, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1999). Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, Œuvres complètes, ed. Bernard Gagnebin and Marcel Raymond, 5 vols., Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1959–95). Sablé, Madeleine de Souvré, marquise de, Maximes, in Moralistes du XVIIe siècle: De Pibrac a` Dufresny, ed. Jean Lafond et al., Collection Bouquins (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1992), 243–55. Saint-Paul, Eustache de: see Eustachius a Sancto Paulo. de Sales, St François, Œuvres, ed. André Ravier and Roger Devos, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1969). ´ emens de la cognoissance de Dieu et de soy mesme, trans. Séguier, Pierre, Les El´ from the Latin by Guillaume Colletet (Paris: Jean Camusat, 1637). Senault, Jean-François, De l’usage des passions (Paris: Veuve Jean Camusat, 1641). L’Homme criminel ou la corruption de la nature par le péché selon les sentimens de saint Augustin (Paris: Veuve J. Camusat and Pierre Le Petit, 1644). Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, Epistles (Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales, ed. and trans. Richard M. Gummere, 3 vols., Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1917–25) ). Moral Essays, ed. and trans. John W. Basore, 3 vols., Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1928–35). ´ Spinoza, Benedict (Baruch), Ethics [Ethique, Latin text with a French translation by Bernard Pautrat (Paris: Seuil, 1988)]. On the Improvement of the Understanding, The Ethics, Correspondence, tr. and ed. R. H. M. Elwes (New York: Dover, n.d.). Suárez, Franciscus (Francisco), SJ, Opera omnia, ed. M. André and C. Berton, 28 vols. (Paris: Louis Vivès, 1856–78).

Bibliography

411

Théaˆ tre du XVIIe siècle, ed. Jacques Scherer, 3 vols., Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1975–92). Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, marquis de, Introduction a` la connaissance de l’esprit humain, ed. Jean Dagen (Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1981). Voltaire, François-Marie Arouet de, Lettres philosophiques, ed. Raymond Naves, Classiques Garnier (Paris: Bordas, 1988). Traité de métaphysique, in Mélanges, ed. Jacques Van den Heuvel, preface by Emmanuel Berl, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1976), 157–202. SECONDARY SOURCES Adam, Antoine, Du mysticisme a` la révolte: Les Jansénistes du XVIIe siècle (Paris: Fayard, 1968). Alison, James, The Joy of Being Wrong: Original Sin through Easter Eyes (New York: Crossroad, 1998). Allem, Maurice (ed.), Anthologie poétique française: XVIIe siècle, 1, GarnierFlammarion (Paris: Garnier, 1965). Angenot, Marc, Les Champions des femmes: Examen du discours sur la supériorité des femmes, 1400–1800 (Montreal: Presses de L’université de Québec, 1977). Ariew, Roger, Cottingham, John, and Sorell, Tom (eds.), Descartes’ ‘Meditations’: Background Source Materials (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Baker, Susan Read, Collaboration et originalité chez La Rochefoucauld (Gainesville, Fla.: University Presses of Florida, 1980). ‘The Reception of La Rochefoucauld’s Maximes (1659–1665): A Question of Gender?’, PFSCL 24 (1986), 65–81. ´ Marty, 3 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, Barthes, Roland, Œuvres complètes, ed. Eric 1993–5). Bayley, Peter, ‘What Was Quietism Subversive of?’, Seventeenth-Century French Studies, 21 (1999), 195–204. Beauvoir, Simone de, Le Deuxième Sexe, 2 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1976 (1st pub. 1949). Bénichou, Paul, Morales du grand siècle, Folio/Essais (Paris: Gallimard, 1992 (1st pub. 1948) ). ´ ‘L’Intention des Maximes’, L’Ecrivain et ses travaux (Paris: José Corti, 1967), 3–37.

412

Bibliography

Bordo, Susan R., The Flight to Objectivity: Essays on Cartesianism and Culture (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1987). Bouvier, Michel, La Morale classique (Paris: Champion, 1999). ‘Considérations sur la manière de parler de l’amour-propre afin d’en bien juger’, PFSCL 36 (1992), 37–54. Bozoviˇc, Miran, ‘Malebranche’s Occasionalism, or, Philosophy in the ˇ zek (ed.), Cogito and the Unconscious Garden of Eden’, in Slavoj Ziˇ (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 1998), 149–74. Bremond, Henri, Histoire littéraire du sentiment religieux en France depuis la fin des guerres de religion jusqu’à nos jours, 11 vols. (Paris: Bloud et Gay, 1916–33). Brockliss, L. W. B., French Higher Education in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: A Cultural History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987). Brody, Jules, Du style a` la pensée: Trois études sur les ‘Caractères’ de La Bruyère (Lexington, Ky: French Forum, 1980). Brown, Peter, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (London: Faber and Faber, 1967). Burke, Peter, ‘Tacitism’, in T. A. Dorey (ed.), Tacitus (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969), 149–71. Burnaby, John, Amor Dei: A Study in the Religion of St Augustine (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 1991 (1st pub. 1938) ). Caron, Philippe, Des ‘belles-lettres’ a` la littérature: Une archéologie des signes du savoir profane en langue française (1680–1760) (Paris: Société pour l’Information Grammaticale and Louvain: Peeters, 1992). Cave, Terence, Pré-Histoires: Textes troublés au seuil de la modernité (Geneva: Droz, 1999). ‘Problems of Reading in the Essais’, in I. D. McFarlane and Ian Maclean (eds.), Montaigne: Essays in Memory of Richard Sayce (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), 133–66. Chédozeau, Bernard, ‘Antoine Arnauld et Pierre Nicole: Le Conflit de la grace generale’, Chroniques de Port-Royal, 44 (1995), 113–43. Chesterton, G. K., The Everlasting Man (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1947 (1st pub. 1925) ). Clark, Henry C., La Rochefoucauld and the Language of Unmasking in Seventeenth-Century France (Geneva: Droz, 1994). Copleston, Frederick, A History of Philosophy, 9 vols. (Tunbridge Wells: Burns & Oates, 1999 (1st pub. 1946–75) ).

Bibliography

413

Aquinas (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1955). Cottingham, John, A Descartes Dictionary (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993). (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Descartes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). Davies, Brian, The Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992). Davis, Natalie Zemon, Society and Culture in Early Modern France: Eight Essays (London, Duckworth, 1975). Delumeau, Jean, Le Péché et la peur: La Culpabilisation en Occident XIIIe –XVIIIe siècles (Paris: Fayard, 1983). Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, ed. Alfred Vacant and Eugène Mangenot, 15 vols. (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1899–1950). Dort, Bernard, Corneille dramaturge (Paris: L’Arche, 1972 (1st pub. 1957) ). Doubrovsky, Serge, Corneille et la dialectique du héros (Paris: Gallimard, 1963). ‘Vingt propositions sur l’amour-propre: De Lacan a` La Rochefoucauld’, in Parcours critique (Paris: Seuil, 1980), 203–34. Elias, Norbert, The Court Society, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983). Ferreyrolles, Gérard, Pascal et la raison du politique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1984. Force, Pierre, Molière ou le prix des choses (Paris: Nathan, 1994). Self-Interest before Adam Smith: A Genealogy of Economic Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). Foucault, Michel, Histoire de la sexualité, vol. I, La Volonté de savoir (Paris: Gallimard, 1976). Freud, Sigmund, Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety, in On Psychopathology, ed. Angela Richards, trans. under the general editorship of James Strachey, Pelican Freud Library, 10 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979). Friedrich, Hugo, Montaigne, rev. edn. 1967, trans. Robert Rovini (Paris: Gallimard, 1968). Fumaroli, Marc, Héros et orateurs: Rhétorique et dramaturgie cornéliennes (Geneva: Droz, 1990). Garber, Daniel and Ayers, Michael (eds.), The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Gaukroger, Stephen, Descartes: An Intellectual Biography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995).

414

Bibliography

´ Gilson, Etienne, Introduction a` l’étude de saint Augustin, 2nd edn. (Paris: Vrin, 1987). La Liberté chez Descartes et la théologie (Paris: Alcan, 1913). ´ Goldmann, Lucien, Le Dieu caché: Etude sur la vision tragique dans les ‘Pensées’ de Pascal et dans le théaˆ tre de Racine (Paris: Gallimard, 1959 (1st pub. 1955) ). ‘Le Problème du mal: A` propos de Rodogune et de l’Annonce faite a` Marie’, in Structures mentales et creation culturelle, 10/18 (Paris: Anthropos, 1970), 131–44. Gouhier, Henri, La Vocation de Malebranche (Paris: Vrin, 1926). Cartésianisme et augustinisme au XVIIe siècle (Paris: Vrin, 1978). Blaise Pascal: Conversion et apologétique (Paris: Vrin, 1986). L’Anti-Humanisme au XVIIe siècle (Paris: Vrin, 1987). Gould, Stephen Jay, Ever since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1980 (1st pub. 1978) ). Grosrichard, Alain, ‘The Case of Polyphemus, or, A Monster and its ˇ zek (ed.), Cogito and the Unconscious (Durham, NC, Mother’, in Slavoj Ziˇ and London: Duke University Press, 1998), 117–48. Hall, Hugh Gaston, Richelieu’s Desmarets and the Century of Louis XIV (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990). Hammond, Nicholas, Fragmentary Voices: Memory and Education at PortRoyal, Biblio 17, 152 (Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 2004). (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Pascal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). Harth, Erica, ‘Classical Disproportion: La Bruyère’s Caractères’, L’Esprit Créateur, 15 (1975), 189–210. Cartesian Women: Versions and Subversions of Rational Discourse in the Old Regime (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992). Hirschman, Albert O., The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before its Triumph, Twentieth Anniversary Edition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997 (1st pub. 1977) ). Howarth, W. D., Molière: A Playwright and his Audience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). Ivanoff, Nicolas, La Marquise de Sablé et son salon (Paris: Les Presses Modernes, 1927). James, E. D., Pierre Nicole: Jansenist and Humanist: A Study of his Thought (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1972).

Bibliography

415

‘Scepticism and Positive Values in La Rochefoucauld’, French Studies, 23 (1969), 349–61. James, Susan, Passion and Action: The Emotions in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997). ‘Spinoza the Stoic’, in Tom Sorell (ed.), The Rise of Modern Philosophy: The Tension between the New and Traditional Philosophies from Machiavelli to Leibniz (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 289–316. ´ rebelle: Littérature et dissidence a` l’âge classique (Paris: Jeanneret, Michel, Eros Seuil, 2003). Jolley, Nicholas, ‘The Reception of Descartes’s Philosophy’, in John Cottingham (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Descartes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 393–423. Kay, Sarah, Cave, Terence, and Bowie, Malcolm, A Short History of French Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). Kenny, Neil, The Uses of Curiosity in Early Modern France and Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Kolakowski, Leszek, God Owes Us Nothing: A Brief Remark on Pascal’s Religion and on the Spirit of Jansenism (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1995). Koppisch, Michael S., The Dissolution of Character: Changing Perspectives in La Bruyère’s ‘Caractères’ (Lexington, Ky: French Forum, 1981). Kraye, Jill, ‘Conceptions of Moral Philosophy’, in Daniel Garber and Michael Ayers (eds.), The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), II, 1279–1316. Kretzmann, Norman, and Eleonore Stump (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). ´ Lacan, Jacques, Ecrits (Paris: Seuil, 1966). Le Séminaire, II, Le Moi dans la théorie de Freud et dans la technique de la psychanalyse (Paris: Seuil, 1978). Lafond, Jean, La Rochefoucauld: Augustinisme et littérature, 3rd edn. (Paris: Klincksieck, 1986 (1st pub. 1977) ). L’Homme et son image: Morales et littérature de Montaigne a` Mandeville (Paris: Champion, 1996). La Rochefoucauld: L’Homme et son image (Paris: Champion, 1998). (ed.), Moralistes du XVIIe siècle: De Pibrac a` Dufresny, Collection: Bouquins (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1992).

416

Bibliography

Lancel, Serge, Saint Augustin (Paris: Fayard, 1999). Laplanche, J., and Pontalis, J.-B., The Language of Psycho-Analysis, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (London: Hogarth Press and Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1985). ´ Laporte, Jean, ‘La Liberté selon Descartes’, in Etudes d’histoire de la philosophie française au XVIIe siècle (Paris: Vrin, 1951), 37–87. Lazzeri, Christian, Force et justice dans la politique de Pascal (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1993). ´ Lesaulnier, Jean, Port-Royal insolite: Edition critique du ‘Recueil des choses diverses’ (Paris: Klincksieck, 1992). Levi, Anthony, SJ, French Moralists: The Theory of the Passions, 1585 to 1649 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964). ‘Amour-propre: The Rise of an Ethical Concept’, The Month (May 1959), 283–94. Lewis, C. S., The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964). Lewis, Geneviève, Le Problème de l’inconscient et le cartésianisme (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1950). See also Rodis-Lewis. Lewis, Philip E., La Rochefoucauld: The Art of Abstraction (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 1977). Lloyd, Genevieve, The Man of Reason: ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ in Western Philosophy, 2nd edn. (London: Routledge, 1993). Lougee, Carolyn C., Le Paradis des femmes: Women, Salons and Social Stratification in Seventeenth-Century France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976). ´ Lubac, Henri de, SJ, Surnaturel: Etudes historiques, 2nd edn. (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1991). McFadyen, Alister, Bound to Sin: Abuse, Holocaust and the Christian Doctrine of Sin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). McFarlane, I. D., and Ian Maclean (eds), Montaigne: Essays in Memory of Richard Sayce (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982). ‘The Concept of Virtue in Montaigne’, in I. D. McFarlane and Ian Maclean (eds.), Montaigne: Essays in Memory of Richard Sayce (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), 77–100. McInerney, Ralph, ‘Ethics’, in Norman Kretzmann and Eleonore Stump (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 196–216.

Bibliography

417

Macintyre, Alasdair, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 2nd edn. (London: Duckworth, 1985). Maclean, Ian, Woman Triumphant: Feminism in French Literature, 1610–1652 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977). Montaigne philosophe (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1996). ‘Language in the Mind: Reflexive Thinking in the Late Renaissance’, in Constance Blackwell and Sachiko Kusukawa (eds.), Philosophy in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: Conversations with Aristotle (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999), 296–321. Logic, Signs and Nature in the Renaissance: The Case of Learned Medicine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Menn, Stephen, ‘The Intellectual Setting’, in Daniel Garber and Michael Ayers (eds.), The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), I, 33–86. Mercier, Vivian, Beckett/Beckett (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977). Mesnard, Jean, Les ‘Pensées’ de Pascal, 2nd edn. (Paris: SEDES, 1993). Miel, Jan, Pascal and Theology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1969). Momigliano, Arnaldo, ‘Tacitus and the Tacitist Tradition’, in The Classical Foundations of Modern Historiography, with a foreword by Riccardo Di Donato (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990), 109–31. Moore, W. G., French Classical Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961). La Rochefoucauld: His Mind and Art (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969). Moriarty, Michael, Taste and Ideology in Seventeenth-Century France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). Roland Barthes (Cambridge: Polity, 1991). Early Modern French Thought: The Age of Suspicion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). ‘Discourse and the Body in La Princesse de Clèves’, Paragraph, 10 (Oct. 1987), 65–86. ‘Imagination et rapports sociaux chez Pascal et Malebranche’, Chroniques de Port-Royal, 50 (2001), 525–39. ‘Images and Idols’, Seventeenth-Century French Studies, 25 (2003), 1–20.

418

Bibliography

Moriarty, Michael, ‘Grace and Religious Belief in Pascal’, in Nicholas Hammond (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Pascal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 144–61. ‘Malebranche: Le Combat contre le préjugé’, in ‘Qu’est-ce que les Lumières?’, ed. Guillaume Pigeard de Gurbert, Jean Salem, and Kate Tunstall, Studies in Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, forthcoming), 71–83. ‘The Transmission of Original Sin’, in Bradley Stephens and Isabelle McNeill (eds.), Transmission: Essays in French Literature, Thought, and Culture (Bern: Peter Lang, forthcoming). de Mourgues, Odette, La Fontaine: ‘Fables’ (London: Arnold, 1960). Two French Moralists: La Rochefoucauld and La Bruyère (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978). Nadler, Steven (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Malebranche (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Norman, Buford, Portraits of Thought: Knowledge, Method, and Styles in Pascal (Columbus, Oh.: Ohio State University Press, 1988). Nussbaum, Martha C., The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). Orcibal, Jean, Les Origines du jansénisme, 5 vols. (Louvain: Presses de la Revue de l’histoire ecclésiastique, and Paris: Vrin, 1947–62). Paige, Nicholas D., Being Interior: Autobiography and the Contradictions of Modernity in Seventeenth-Century France (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 2001). Papasogli, Benedetta, ‘Le Fond du cœur’: Figures de l’espace intérieur au XVIIe siècle (Paris: Champion, 2000 (1st pub. in Italian as ‘Il fondo del cuore’: figure dello spazio interiore nel Seicento francese (Pisa: Libreria Goliardica, 1991) ). Park, Katharine, and Kessler, Eckhard, ‘The Concept of Psychology’, in Charles B. Schmitt and Quentin Skinner (eds.), The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1988), 455–63. Parker, David, The Making of French Absolutism (London: Arnold, 1983). Plantié, Jacqueline, ‘L’amour propre au Carmel: Petite histoire d’une grande maxime de La Rochefoucauld’, RHLF 71 (1971), 561–73. ´ ‘Saint Augustin’, in DTC I, 2268–2472. Portalié, E.,

Bibliography

419

Prévot, Jacques, Jestaz, Laure, and Ostrowiecki-Bah Hélène, (eds.), Libertins du XVIIe siècle, 2 vols., Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1998–2004). Ranke-Heinemann, Uta, Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven: Women, Sexuality and the Catholic Church, trans. Peter Heinegg (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991). Raymond, Marcel, ‘Du jansénisme a` la morale de l’intérêt’, Mercure de France, 330 (1957), 238–55. Rodis-Lewis, Geneviève, L’Anthropologie cartésienne (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1990). See also Lewis, Geneviève. Rohou, Jean, Le XVIIe Siècle: Une révolution de la condition humaine (Paris: Seuil, 2002). Ross, W. D., Aristotle, 3rd edn. (London: Methuen, 1937). Rutherford, Donald, ‘Malebranche’s Theodicy’, in Steven Nadler (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Malebranche (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 165–89. Sartre, Jean-Paul, L’Etre et le néant: Essai d’ontologie phénoménologique (Paris: Gallimard, 1943). Qu’est-ce que la littérature? (Paris: Gallimard, 1948). Scherer, Jacques (ed.), Théaˆ tre du XVIIe siècle, 3 vols., Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1975–92). Schmaltz, Tad M., ‘What has Cartesianism to Do with Jansenism?’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 60 (1999), 37–56. Scholar, Richard, ‘La Force de l’imagination de Montaigne: Camus, Malebranche, Pascal’, Littératures classiques, 45 (2002), 127–38. Screech, Michael, Montaigne and Melancholy: The Wisdom of the ‘Essais’ (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991 (1st pub. London: Duckworth, 1983)). Sellier, Philippe, Pascal et saint Augustin, 2nd edn. (Paris: Albin Michel, 1995). Skinner, Quentin, ‘Hobbes and his Disciples in France and England’, in Visions of Politics, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), III, Hobbes and Civil Science, 308–23. Starobinski, Jean, ‘La Rochefoucauld et les morales substitutives’, Nouvelle Revue Française, 163–4 (July–Aug. 1966), 16–34, 211–29. Stegmann, André, L’Héro¨ısme cornélien: Genèse et signification, 2 vols. (Paris: Colin, 1968).

420

Bibliography

Taylor, Charles, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). Thirouin, Laurent, L’Aveuglement salutaire: Le Réquisitoire contre le théaˆ tre dans la France classique (Paris: Champion, 1997). Thweatt, Vivien, La Rochefoucauld and the Seventeenth-Century Concept of the Self (Geneva: Droz, 1980). Tocanne, Bernard, L’Idée de nature en France dans la seconde moitié du XVIIe siècle: Contribution a` l’histoire de la pensée classique (Paris: Klincksieck, 1978). Tuck, Richard, ‘The Institutional Setting’, in Daniel Garber and Michael Ayers (eds.), The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), I, 9–32. Turnell, Martin, The Classical Moment: Studies of Corneille, Molière and Racine, 2nd edn. (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1964). van Delft, Louis, La Bruyère moraliste: Quatre études sur les ‘Caractères’ (Geneva: Droz, 1971). Le Moraliste classique: Essai de définition et de typologie (Geneva: Droz, 1982). Littérature et anthropologie: Nature humaine et caractère a` l’âge classique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1993). Viala, Alain, Naissance de l’écrivain: Sociologie de la littérature a` l’âge classique (Paris: Minuit, 1985). Whelan, Ruth, ‘Jacques Abbadie’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison, 60 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), I, 2–3. ´ Wiel, Véronique, Ecriture et philosophie chez Malebranche (Paris: Champion, 2004).

Index Abbadie, Jacques 170 n. 10, 214, 215–17, 282, 284–5, 336 n. 8, 392 n. 3 Abraham 129 absolutism 305–6 Academics (philosophers) 39 n. 62, 161 Adam 110, 111, 140, 175 n. 18, 179 and Eve 99, 101, 114, 144–52, 180 Adam, Antoine 308 n. 11 Alexander the Great 121 Alison, James 156 n. 73, 186 n. 33 Althusser, Louis 8 n. 6, 117 n. 15 amour-propre: see self-love Angenot, Marc 85 n. 34 Aquinas, St Thomas 15, 16, 17, 38 n. 61, 39 n. 62, 55, 56, 63–4, 68 n. 12, 85, 110, 111–13, 115, 143 n. 55, 159–60, 164–7, 168, 170, 177 n. 22, 178, 180 n. 25, 182, 191, 206, 207, 215, 250 n. 3, 251, 258 n. 13, 264, 270, 280 n. 7, 281, 284, 363 n. 25, 368–71, 378–9 Ariew, Roger 13 n. 17, 16 n. 24 aristocracy 7–11, 30, 83, 203 aristocratic values 192–3, 196, 227 Aristotelian, Aristotelianism 14–18, 22–3, 32, 39 n. 62, 43, 46–7, 85, 134, 144, 155, 256, 282, 293 n. 10, 373 n. 43, 388, 389, 390, 392, 403 see also Peripatetics Aristotelian-Thomism 43, 205, 223, 267 n. 21 Aristotle 4, 12, 14–17, 22, 27–8, 46–7, 48, 62, 64, 65, 71, 85, 93

n. 48, 120, 155, 162–3, 164, 166, 167 n. 7, 168, 170, 191, 192, 197 n. 52, 205–6, 208, 216, 270, 280, 322, 361, 370–1 Arnauld, Angélique (‘Mere Angélique’) 308 Arnauld, Antoine 57, 110, 149 n. 65, 188, 275 n. 1, 306–7, 308 n. 9, 313, 364–5, 367, 369–70, 372, 373–4, 402 see also Logique Augustine 4, 15, 16, 38, 39, 55, 56, 57, 68 n. 12, 92 n. 46. 99–108, 109, 110–12, 114, 123, 125, 133, 138 n. 48, 139, 144, 147, 148, 149 n. 65, 154, 159, 160, 163–4, 166, 168, 171, 172, 173, 174 nn. 15–17, 180, 181 n. 26, 183 n. 28, 184–5, 190, 201 n. 55, 205 n. 61, 206, 230, 238, 251, 263, 264, 277, 307 n. 5, 312–14, 324 n. 6, 338, 343, 365, 382, 383 n. 50, 390, 391 Augustinian, Augustinianism 1, 3, 31, 55, 62, 89, 91, 93, 99, 109–56, 159–224, 227, 228, 229, 230, 232, 235, 242, 247, 253, 262, 278, 314, 315, 331–2, 361, 368, 375, 387–404 Bacon, Francis 403 Baius, Michael 114, 115 Baker, Susan Read 87 n. 38, 194 n. 47 Barthes, Roland 5, 9–12, 70–1, 302, 303, 402 Bayley, Peter 210 n. 64

422 Beauvoir, Simone de 11 n. 14 Beckett, Samuel 294 n. 11 Bénichou, Paul 61 n. 2, 196, 200, 226, 305–7, 312, 328 n. 1, 360 n. 23, 367 n. 31 Bernard of Clairvaux, St 207, 307, 384 Bérulle, Pierre de 118, 207 Blot (Claude de Chouvigny, baron de ´ Blot-l’Eglise) 74 n. 21 Boethius , Anicius Manlius 15 Bordo, Susan R. 190 n. 37 Bossuet, Jacques-Bénigne 178 n. 24, 187, 190, 210, 282–4, 285, 354 Bouvier, Michel 168 n. 8, 206 n. 62 Bozoviˇc, Miran 145 n. 57, 148 n. 61 Brecht, Bertolt 11 Bremond, Henri 207, 209, 307 Brinvilliers, marquise de 69 Brockliss, L. W. B. 13 n. 18 Brody, Jules 82 Brown, Peter 109 n. 1 Brutus, L. Junius 292 Burke, Peter 29, 203 n. 58 Burnaby, John 100 n. 59, 109 n. 1, 174 n. 16, 184 n. 31, 206, 207 Burns, Robert 292 Caesar, C. Julius 121 Cajetan, Thomas 113 Calvin, Jean 109–10, 143 n. 55, 366 n. 30 Calvinism 115, 265, 366–7 capitalism 78, 203 Caron, Philippe 25 n. 41 Cartesianism 1–3, 82, 85–6, 91, 119 n. 18, 124 n. 26, 147, 150, 152, 155, 179, 220, 281, 282, 286, 287, 314–15, 322, 335, 343, 361, 372–3, 375 n. 45, 377, 387–404 see also Descartes Catherine of Genoa, St 213 Catiline (L. Sergius Catilina) 121

Index Cave, Terence 6 n. 5, 21 n. 35, 23–4, 30 n. 52, 162 n. 5, 303 n. 20 character 11–12, 70–84 charity 160, 164, 166, 167 n. 7, 174 n. 16, 182, 185, 186–7, 188, 189, 211, 212 n. 67, 213, 215, 218, 219–23, 254, 258, 260, 263, 264, 308 n. 10, 309–10, 313–15, 334, 350, 356–66, 367, 378, 382–4, 397, 399, 404 see also love of God Charron, Pierre 17, 66–7, 98–9, 180 n. 25, 278–84 Chédozeau, Bernard 368 n. 32, 370 n. 36 Chesterton, G. K. 155 children 88–95, 102–7, 150–3, 347, 372–3 Christ, Jesus 111, 125, 129, 130, 132, 133, 141, 142, 143, 148, 149, 214, 292 n. 7, 390–1, 398 Cicero, M. Tullius 15, 18, 20, 46, 64 n. 6, 65 n. 8, 102, 120 n. 19, 175 n. 19, 176, 178 n. 23, 197 n. 52, 293 n. 10 Clark, Henry C. 227 Cogito 96–7, 372 Coimbra commentators on Aristotle 15 Colletet, Guillaume 278 concupiscence 55, 99–100, 109, 111, 114–16, 118, 119, 127, 146–7, 148, 151, 153, 154, 155, 159–224, 249 n. 1, 257, 263, 313, 315, 340, 361–2, 365–6, 380, 385, 389, 393, 397 love of concupiscence (distinguished from love of friendship or benevolence) 165, 191, 208–9, 258 n. 13 see also cupidity Condé, prince de 68 Conrius, Florent 57

Index

423

Copernicus, Nicolaus 207 Copleston, Frederick 99 n. 56, 110 Corneille, Pierre 10, 11 n. 12, 26–30, 57, 128 n. 33, 289–91, 292–3, 295, 305, 396 Cottingham, John 13 n. 17, 16 n. 24, 96 n. 51 cupidity 99, 160–1, 187–8, 313, 334, 356–61, 363, 367, 378, 394, 397 see also concupiscence Cureau de la Chambre, Marin 311 custom 89–90, 171, 180, 219 n. 78, 385

dispositions 360–2, 367 see also habits Dort, Bernard 11 n. 12 Doubrovsky, Serge 11 n. 12, 240 n. 29, 293 n. 9 Dreyfus, Ginette 148 n. 64 du Vair, Guillaume 64–5, 66, 180 n. 25 duels 8, 121 Dufresny, Charles Rivière 93 n. 48 Duhamel, Georges 61 n. 1 Duns Scotus 207 Dupleix, Scipion 14–15, 16 n. 24 Dyke, Daniel 228

Darwin, Charles 243 n. 32 Davies, Brian 110 Davis, Natalie Zemon 85 n. 34 Decius, the Decii 50 definitions 96–8, 314 deism 132 delectation 148, 155, 180, 183, 184, 188, 365 Deleuze, Gilles 255 Delumeau, Jean 106 n. 71 Descartes, René 1, 2–3, 4, 11 n. 12, 13–14, 34–54, 57, 69 n. 13, 82, 91 n. 44, 96–8, 124, 136, 162 n. 5, 180 n. 25, 190, 208, 214, 219, 243, 255 n. 9, 258 n. 13, 278, 284, 285, 314, 329, 330, 332, 333 n. 7, 335, 354, 372–3, 389, 393–9 desire 236, 238, 243–4, 324 n. 7, 325–6, 328, 331–2, 339–42, 375–6 Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin 305, 307–8, 380, 383 devil 363 Diderot, Denis 339 Discours sur les passions de l’amour (Anon.) 299 disinterestedness 162, 168, 194–6, 206–15, 254, 265–70, 344

Elias, Norbert 226, 306 Elisabeth, Princess of Bohemia 38 n. 60, 39, 41–2, 43, 45, 52, 255 n. 9, 389 end and motive 193, 208, 262–3 Engels, Frederick 243 n. 32 English Civil War 8 Enlightenment 3, 53, 154, 226, 266, 271, 401 epicherema 103–5 Epicurus, Epicureanism 18, 45–6, 128, 161, 205, 210, 214, 224, 255 n. 9, 269 Esau 208 Esprit, Jacques 122 n. 22, 168, 194–5, 196 n. 51, 198, 205–6, 229, 230 n. 16, 241–2, 248 n. 36, 314, 317–18, 344, 345, 346, 356, 364–5 essentialism 70, 84, 88, 93 ethics 12–54 Fall 62, 89, 90, 91, 99–108, 176–7, 185–90, 191–2, 193, 216, 222, 231, 253, 285, 314, 340, 389, 393, 396, 397 see also original sin fashion 73–4 Fathers of the Church 230

424 Fénelon, François Salignac de la Mothe- 168, 210–14, 269 n. 22, 310–11, 345–6, 354–5, 381 Ferreyrolles, Gérard 125 n. 28, 219 n. 76 fetish 173, 324 n. 7 Force, Pierre 56 n. 74, 194 n. 48, 204–5, 210 n. 65, 214, 218 n. 75, 219 n. 77, 252 n. 6 Foucault , Michel 74 free will, freedom 250, 275 n. 1, 374–9, 390 see also will Freud, Sigmund 2, 106, 239–40, 324 n. 7, 376 Friedrich, Hugo 19–20 friendship 162–7, 191, 192, 205–6, 233, 242–3, 244–6, 269–70, 344, 345–6 Fronde 7, 30, 203, 305, 314, 389 Fumaroli, Marc 28 n. 48, 277 n. 4, 300 n. 17 Gallutius, Tarquinius 16 n. 24, 167 n. 7 Gaukroger, Stephen 13 n. 18, 14 gender 9 see also women general good: see public good générosité 37–8 ´ Gilson, Etienne 99 nn. 56, 58, 101, 109 n. 1, 141 n. 50, 184 n. 31, 205 n. 61 Girard, René 156 n. 73 glory 192–4, 347 God, existence of 132, 134, 135, 136–7, 140, 141, 284 Góis, Manuel de 15, 180 n. 25 Goldmann, Lucien 11 n. 12, 27 n. 46, 307 n. 5, 387 Gouhier, Henri 119 n. 17, 124 n. 26, 213 n. 69, 365 n. 29 Gould, Stephen Jay 106 n. 74

Index grace 100–1, 116, 141, 148–9, 155, 180, 183, 184, 185, 186, 188, 206, 254, 260–1, 264, 265 n. 18, 267, 268, 340, 357, 364–6, 367–9, 382–4, 385, 389, 397–8. 400, 404 Gracián, Baltasar 29, 57, 311 Gregory of Nyssa, St 307 Grosrichard, Alain 151 n. 68 habit 361–3, 388 see also disposition Hall, Hugh Gaston 308 n. 9 Hammond, Nicholas 89 n. 41 happiness 18, 45, 92, 100, 104–5, 107, 112, 120–1, 122 n. 22, 126, 128–30, 137–8, 161, 189, 205 n. 61, 209, 211–12, 242, 251, 252–70, 284, 305, 340, 388, 393, 398 Hardy, Alexandre 288, 289 Harth, Erica 78 n. 24, 86 n. 35 heart 322–3, 328–86 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 11 Helvétius, Claude-Adrien 225–6, 271 n. 25, 400 n. 7 Hirschman, Albert O. 193 n. 44, 194 nn. 45–6, 203–4 Hobbes, Thomas 29, 32–3, 43, 53, 56, 57, 198, 202, 219, 224 n. 81, 226, 255 n. 9, 392, 393, 401, 403 Holmes, Sherlock 104 homosexuality 73–5 honnête homme, honnêteté 136, 199, 202, 379, 381 honour 8, 121, 193–4 Howarth, W. D. 291 n. 4 human nature 55, 61–108, 109–56, 113–18 historical perspective on 88–9, 90, 101, 107 humours 320–1 hypocrisy 56, 291–2, 319, 394–5

Index ideology 6–8 idol, idolatry 238–9, 241, 341–2 imagination 119, 136, 331, 336–8, 342, 379–80, 404 n. 10 imperceptible thoughts 275 n. 1, 302, 306, 328 n. 1, 329 n. 2, 351, 363, 367–79, 399–400 impossible supposition 209, 212, 215, 265–6, 268, 270 inclinations 250–7 innate ideas 98 interest, interests, self-interest 49–53, 169–70, 191–223, 225–48, 345–6, 349–50, 351, 359–60, 393–403 interiority, interiorization 76–84, 190 Ivanoff, Nicolas 87 n. 39, 227 n. 9 Jacob 208, 309 James, E. D. 198 n. 54, 219 n. 77, 238 n. 25, 244–5, 307 n. 6, 308 n. 12, 328 n. 1, 368 n. 32 James, Susan 1, 34 n. 57, 342 n. 11 Jansenism, Jansenists 9, 57, 110, 117, 118, 119, 124 n. 26, 148, 149 n. 65, 168, 196, 203, 210, 214, 226, 230, 261 n. 15, 265, 284, 305–15, 343, 366–7 Jansenius, Cornelius 4, 56, 110, 114, 117–18, 131 n. 34, 161, 163, 168, 171–85, 187–8, 190, 207, 208, 217, 222, 238, 240, 255, 313, 324 n. 6, 328–9, 365, 383 n. 50, 389, 399, 402 Jeanneret, Michel 74 n. 21 Jesuits: see Society of Jesus Jews 129, 131 n. 34 John Damascene, St 180 n. 25 Johnson, Samuel 9, 86 Jolley, Nicholas 124 n. 26 Joyce, James 240 Julian of Eclanum 104–5, 112, 312

425 Kant, Immanuel 14, 36, 162, 398 Kay, Sarah 6 n. 5 Kenny, Neil 172 n. 13 Kessler, Eckhard 12 n. 16 Kolakowski, Leszek 306–7, 367 n. 31 Koppisch, Michael S. 78 n. 23, 81 n. 25 Kraye, Jill 14 n. 20, 32 n. 53, 46 n. 69 La Bruyère, Jean de 8, 9, 12, 20, 25 n. 43, 55, 68–9, 69–84, 86–7, 388 La Chapelle-Bessé, Henri de 226, 229–30 La Flèche (college) 13 La Fontaine, Jean de 20, 33, 275, 276–7, 299–300 La Mothe Le Vayer, François de 7, 217 n. 74 La Rochefoucauld, François VI, duc de 1, 4, 9, 10, 11, 20, 29, 33, 55, 56, 57, 69, 87, 93–5, 159, 176, 187, 194, 196, 205, 224 n. 81, 225–48, 256, 276, 308, 311, 315, 316–27, 328, 334, 336, 342 n. 12, 344, 350, 353, 379, 388, 395, 399 Laban 309 Lacan, Jacques 103, 106, 239–40 Laclos, Choderlos de 401 Lafayette, Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne, comtesse de 20, 30–1, 56 n. 75, 87, 294–5, 296, 300–1, 303, 396 Lafond, Jean 194 n. 47, 196 n. 51, 205 n. 61, 223 n. 80, 227, 230 n. 16, 231 n. 17, 237 n. 24, 239 n. 28, 245–6, 299 n. 16 Lafuma, Louis 126 Lamy, François 195, 196, 214–15, 217 n. 74, 254 n. 8, 266, 269 n. 22, 275 n. 1, 285–7, 328–86, 390, 392, 399

426 Lancel, Serge 109 n. 1 language 338–9, 371–4 Laplanche, J., and J.-B. Pontalis 324 n. 7 Larkin, Philip 84 Lazzeri, Christian 219 n. 76 Le Guern, Michel 125 nn. 27, 28, 126, 128 n. 33, 131 n. 34, 299 n. 16 Leah 309 Lesaulnier, Jean 227 n. 10, 228 Levi, Anthony 172 n. 13, 174 n. 15, 180 n. 25, 206 n. 62 Lewis, C. S. 68, 121 n. 21, 190 n. 37, 320 n. 2, 323 n. 5 Lewis, Geneviève 275 n. 1, 328 n. 1, 330 n. 4, 360–1, 364 n. 28, 368 n. 32, 369 n. 35, 375 n. 45 see also Rodis-Lewis Lewis, Philip E. 233 n. 20, 237 n. 24 Liancourt, marquis de 227 libido dominandi 88, 163, 178, 186, 350, 362 literature 25, 288–304 Lloyd, Genevieve 85 n. 33 Locke, John 57, 243, 251 Logique (Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole) 103–7, 202 n. 57, 331–2, 340–1, 341–2 Lougee, Carolyn C. 85 n. 34 Louis XIV 366 love 114 n. 13, 122–3, 128, 138–40, 145, 149, 159, 160, 163, 164–5, 173–4, 177, 182–3, 185, 195, 199–201, 242, 244, 319, 343, 391, 396, 397–8 love of God 148, 153, 176, 206–17, 250, 358–65, 375, 397 see also charity Lubac, Henri de 113, 114, 117 Lucretius (T. Lucretius Carus) 106, 133, 134 n. 39 Luther, Martin 207

Index Lutheranism 115 luxury 122 Machiavelli, Niccolò 12, 29, 193, 204, 226, 227 n. 6, 394 machines (people as) 82, 84 Macintyre, Alasdair 22 n. 37 Maclean, Ian 20, 21, 23 n. 38, 24, 61 n. 2, 66 n. 9, 85 n. 34, 320 n. 2, 373 n. 43 Malebranche, Nicolas 2–3, 7, 25 n. 43, 91, 122 n. 22, 124, 133–54, 159, 170 n. 10, 174, 214, 215, 217, 249–71, 285, 330, 332, 333, 336 n. 8, 338, 343 n. 14, 350, 361–2, 373, 390–2, 398–9, 401, 403, 404 n. 10 Mandeville, Bernard 205 Manichaeism 102, 190 Marivaux, Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de 401 Marx, Karl 2, 243 n. 32 Marxism 8, 118 McFadyen, Alister 109 n. 1, 156 n. 73 McFarlane, I. D. 22 n. 37 McInerney, Ralph 110 mechanistic philosophy 32, 35, 43, 44–5, 53, 68–9, 108, 134, 243, 377 Menn, Stephen 13 n. 17 Mercier, Vivian 294 n. 11 Mesnard, Jean 126, 128, 131, 307 n. 5 Miel, Jan 107 n. 75, 117 n. 16 Milton, John 124 mind and body 22, 40, 45, 54, 144–53, 329–39 see also soul and body Mitton, Damien 199 modernity, early modern 1–2, 3–4 Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin) 56, 67–8, 79, 291–2, 294 n. 11, 395, 396 Molinism 118, 368

Index Momigliano, Arnaldo 203 n. 58 Montaigne, Michel de 4, 16, 17, 19–25, 54, 64, 66, 76, 93 n. 48, 95–6, 116, 122 n. 22, 184, 193, 276, 278, 280, 394 n. 4 Moore, W. G. 235 n. 22 moralistes 19–20, 86, 239, 315 Moses 129 motive 226, 227, 247, 316, 326, 328, 329, 334, 345–6, 351–2, 356–67, 375, 377–8, 382–3, 397–400, 403 mysticism 209–14, 268–9, 307–12 de Mourgues, Odette 19–20, 30, 61 n. 2, 77 n. 22, 87, 235 n. 22, 236, 277 n. 4 natural and supernatural 111–13, 154 Neoplatonism 390 Newman, John Henry 243 n. 32 Nicole, Pierre 187, 188–9, 190, 197–8, 202, 206, 209, 218 n. 75, 219–23, 225, 256, 257, 275 n. 1, 282, 285, 305–8, 310, 311, 328–86, 390, 392, 398, 399, 403 see also Logique Nietzsche, Friedrich 2, 239, 255 Noah 129 Norman, Buford 370 n. 38 Nussbaum, Martha C. 62, 85, 293 n. 10 O’Brien, John 3 n. 2 occasionalism 145 n. 57 Ockham, William of 49 Oratorians 118–19, 194, 229 Orcibal, Jean 308–9 Order (in Malebranche) 138, 254, 257–71, 391 original sin 55, 109–56, 231, 391, 393 see also Fall

427 pagans 188, 312–14 Paige, Nicholas D. 102 n. 66, 307 n. 5 Panaetius 22 Papasogli, Benedetta 307 n. 8, 311, 328 n. 1, 399 Park, Katharine 12 n. 16 Parker, David 203 n. 59 partisans 78 Pascal, Blaise 1, 2–3, 7, 8, 11 n. 12, 57 n. 75, 69 n. 13, 88, 89–91, 92 n. 47, 98, 110, 116, 117, 121 n. 20, 122 n. 22, 123, 125–32, 133–4, 135, 136, 141, 149 n. 65, 154, 185–6, 187, 197, 199–201, 202, 203, 206, 209, 215, 218–19, 224 n. 81, 248, 251, 256, 257, 261 n. 15, 299 n. 16, 308 n. 9, 323, 330, 331, 332, 336, 350, 365, 366, 367 n. 30, 370–1, 379, 385, 390, 403, 404 n. 10 passions 14–15, 29–30, 34, 119–20, 128, 136, 173, 180, 181, 235, 247, 293, 295, 299, 301–2, 303, 315, 316, 321–2, 324, 328, 329, 331, 334, 335, 338, 339, 340, 341, 342–4, 351, 356, 363, 369, 375, 376, 386, 388, 389, 396–7, 401 n. 8 Paul, St 91 n. 43, 99 nn. 57–8, 100, 101–2, 115, 123, 139, 151, 171 n. 12, 213–14, 280 n. 7, 323, 338, 341, 369 n. 34 Pelagius, Pelagianism 105, 119, 175, 183, 188, 312, 382, 389 Peripatetics 39 n. 62, 161 philosophes 8 n. 6 Pickwick Papers, The (Charles Dickens) 292 Plantié, Jacqueline 230 n. 16 Plato, Platonic 17–18, 36 n. 59, 280, 391 pleasure 25, 29–30, 46–7, 51–3, 92, 100, 120, 122 n. 22, 123

428 pleasure (cont.) n. 23, 137–9, 142, 146–50, 161, 162, 163, 165, 167, 171, 178, 185, 189, 191–216, 219 n. 78, 225, 234, 237–9, 244–5, 247, 252–3, 255, 258 n. 14, 260, 261, 263, 264, 266–70, 347, 362, 390, 393, 401–2 pondus 68, 114, 171, 173, 315 ´ 109 n. 1 Portalié, E. Port-Royal 126, 155, 168, 209, 227, 229, 307–8, 354, 381 Poulain de la Barre, François 86 n. 35 prejudice 91, 136, 152, 153–4 Prévost, Antoine François, abbé 401 property 88–9 Protestants, Protestantism 7, 9, 131 n. 34, 228, 284–5, 392 n. 3 Proust, Marcel 401 psychoanalysis 118, 240, 302, 324 n. 7, 370, 376 see also Freud psychology 9–54 public good, general good 48–53, 192, 197, 200, 218, 219–23, 390, 393 Pyrrhonism 55, 128 quietism 210 Rachel 309 Racine, Jean 10, 11, 20, 29, 30–1, 56 n. 74, 294, 295–8, 301–2, 303, 306, 325, 396–7 Ranke-Heinemann, Uta 85 n. 33 Raymond, Marcel 217–18 Rebecca 208 Recueil des choses diverses 228, 230 n. 16 Reformers 109 Richelieu, Armand Jean du Plessis, cardinal de 197, 203, 308 n. 9 Rodis-Lewis, Geneviève 96 n. 51, 124 n. 26, 135 nn. 42, 44, 148

Index nn. 61, 63, 64, 149 n. 65, 215 n. 72, 217 n. 74, 254 n. 8, 266 n. 19 see also Lewis, Geneviève Rohan, Mme de 87 n. 38 Rohou, Jean 5 n. 3, 8 n. 7, 38 n. 60, 168, 190 n. 37, 204, 219 n. 77, 224 n. 81, 227 n. 7, 303 n. 21, 305–6 Romanticism 37 Ross, W. D. 371 n. 40 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 153, 217, 271 n. 25, 324, 377 Rutherford, Donald 141 n. 51 Sablé, Madeleine de Souvré, marquise de 87, 94, 194 n. 47, 227–9, 344 Sade, Donatien-Alphonse-François, marquis de 39 Saint-Cyran, Jean Duvergier de Hauranne, abbé de 308 Saint-Marthe, Claude de 308 n. 9 Saint-Paul, Eustache de 16–17, 180 n. 25 Saint-Pavin 74 n. 21 de Sales, St François 168–71, 174 n. 15, 193, 206 n. 62, 207–9, 212 n. 67, 215, 262, 305, 308–10, 324 n. 6, 344 Sartre, Jean-Paul 5–9, 11 n. 14, 402 Schmaltz, Tad. M. 124 n. 26 Scholar, Richard 122 n. 22 Schomberg, Mme de 229 Séguier, Pierre (Chancellor) 278 Séguier, Pierre (grandfather of the preceding) 278 self-deception 55–6, 209, 291, 294–9, 304, 306, 313–14, 316–19, 356, 388, 393, 395–9 self-ignorance 289–91, 292–3, 300–1, 304, 306, 314, 316–27 self-knowledge 275–386, 388, 393, 396–7, 399

Index self-love, love of self 55, 89, 109, 118, 119, 123, 156, 159–271, 275, 276, 278, 283, 285, 305, 313, 315, 316, 319, 323–6, 344–50, 356–65, 367, 380–1, 382–4, 389, 393, 396–403 self-love distinguished from love of self 216–17, 251 n. 4, 401 n. 8 enlightened self-love 219–23, 257, 259–61, 264–5, 269 n. 23, 270, 379, 398, 403 narcissistic self-love 169, 177–8, 247–8, 255, 346, 347–50, 393, 395–7 self-preservation 161–2, 163, 175–85, 216, 219, 235–6, 238, 247, 271, 349, 393–4 Sellier, Philippe 126, 131, 307 n. 5 Senault, Jean-François 8 n. 7, 118–24, 168, 173 n. 15, 174 n. 15, 178 n. 24, 180 n. 25, 186–7, 191–3, 194, 196, 197, 202, 203, 215, 225, 229, 262, 402 Seneca, L. Annaeus 18, 41, 65 n. 8, 120 n. 19, 161 n. 4, 191, 197 n. 52, 229 sensation 137, 145–50, 154, 243–4, 285, 286, 329, 330 n. 4, 333, 335–6, 347, 372, 373 Shakespeare, William 9, 288, 289–91 Sinnich, Paul 57 Skinner, Quentin 33 n. 55 Smith, Adam 204 Society of Jesus 13, 14, 203, 307 n. 5 Sorel, Charles 289 Sorell, Tom 13 n. 17, 16 n. 24 soul and body 99, 119–20, 190, 282–4, 287, 315, 389–90, 399 see also mind and body sovereign good: see supreme good

429 Spinoza, Benedict (Baruch) 33–4, 44, 53, 56, 142, 212, 224 n. 81, 375, 377, 379, 392, 403 Starobinski, Jean 237 n. 24, 238 n. 25 state of pure nature 113–18, 127, 389 Stegmann, André 293 n. 10 Stoics, Stoicism 14, 15, 18, 22, 34, 39 n. 62, 41, 43, 46, 52, 53, 65, 92, 119, 120, 128, 131, 161–2, 179, 181, 191, 197 n. 52, 202 n. 56, 218 n. 75, 255, 256, 263, 269, 293, 331, 342, 356, 390, 392 Suárez, Francisco 4, 56, 113–18, 147, 182 n. 27 ‘subject’ 1 supreme good, sovereign good 32, 34, 39, 45–8, 64–5, 107, 161, 388, 390, 392, 402 syllogism 103–5 Tacitus, Tacitism 29, 202–3 Taylor, Charles 4 n. 3, 35–7, 41–2, 49 n. 70, 52, 53, 98, 133 n. 37, 190 n. 37, 330, 391 ´ Teresa of Avila, St 307 Theophrastus 69–70, 71–2, 76 Thibaudet, Albert 291 n. 4 Thirouin, Laurent 189 n. 36, 308 n. 12, 328 n. 1, 371 n. 41 Thomism 99 n. 56, 119, 161, 223, 368, 389 see also Aristotelian-Thomism Thweatt, Vivien 233 Tocanne , Bernard 61 n. 2, 113 n. 12 Torquatus, T. Manlius 292 Truchet, Jacques 226, 229, 230 n. 14, 245 n. 33, 319 n. 1, 320 Tuck, Richard 13 n. 18 Turnell, Martin 61 n. 1

430

Index

uti and frui 100 n. 59, 214 utilitarian 36, 52

Voltaire, François-Marie Arouet de, 9, 63, 271 n. 25, 400 n. 7

van Delft, Louis 20, 29 n. 51, 61 n. 2, 62, 72 n. 19, 81, 82 n. 26, 95, 96 Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, marquis de 19, 401 n. 8 Viala, Alain 25, 128 n. 33 Virgil (P. Vergilius Maro) 21, 23 virtue 14–16, 22–3, 27–8, 35, 38–41, 45–52, 111, 112–13, 120, 140, 222, 225–6, 228–30, 233, 246, 247, 256, 258, 260, 265, 269, 284, 303, 312–14, 388–90, 394–5, 397–8, 401, 403–4

war 121 wealth 78, 80, 121 Whelan, Ruth 214 n. 71 Wiel, Véronique 136 n. 45 will 38 n. 61, 111, 119, 250–3, 258, 262, 264, 267, 268, 320–1, 351 see also free will, freedom Williams, Raymond 20 Wodehouse, P. G. 276 women 73–4, 75–6, 85–8, 150–3 Zeno of Citium, Stoic philosopher 46

Fallen Nature, Fallen Selves: Early Modern French Thought II

Fallen Nature, Fallen Selves: Early Modern French Thought II

Fallen

Fallen

Fallen

Fallen

Fallen

Fallen

Fallen

Fallen

Fallen

Fallen

Fallen

Fallen

Fallen

Fallen

Fallen

Fallen

Fallen

Fallen

Fallen

Fallen

Fallen

Fallen

Fallen

Fallen

Fallen

Fallen

Fallen

Fallen

Fallen

Recommend Documents