Print

Aristotelianism in the 17th century

DOI
10.4324/9780415249126-DA081-1
Versions
DOI: 10.4324/9780415249126-DA081-1
Version: v1,  Published online: 1998
Retrieved March 29, 2024, from https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/aristotelianism-in-the-17th-century/v-1

2. Textbooks and notions of order

Eustachius a Sancto Paulo studied at the Sorbonne, receiving his doctorate in 1604. The following year he entered the Cistercian congregation of the Feuillants where he held various prominent positions, and became very influential in the French Catholic revival. He wrote two popular textbooks, a Philosophy (1609) and a Theology (1613–16), as well as two manuals of spiritual exercises.

Eustachius’ Philosophy was considered by Descartes to be the best textbook in philosophy – Descartes even considered publishing it, together with his notes, other opinions, and his own philosophy. To understand the genre and its popularity, it must be contrasted with other such texts. Among the widely-read authors at the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century were the Coimbrans and Franciscus Toletus. The Coimbrans (the Conimbricenses) were professors at the Jesuit Colègio das Artes, Coimbra (Portugal), who published a series of encyclopedic commentaries on Aristotle’s works (see Collegium Conimbricense). The principal Coimbran was Petrus Fonseca, who separately published his own commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Franciscus Toletus, a professor at the Jesuit Collegio Romano, similarly published commentaries on Aristotle’s works, including an important Logic (1572), Physics (1573) and On the Soul (1574). (Other noted Jesuits who published textbooks for the collegiate curriculum included Rodericus Arriaga, Christopher Clavius and Antonius Rubius). In France, non-Jesuit philosophy texts from the same period included those by doctors associated with the University of Paris, such as Eustachius and Charles d’Abra de Raconis (whose Philosophy was published in 1617), Jean Crassot (1618), Jean-Cécile Frey (1633) and François Le Rées. Judging from the number of editions, the texts of Eustachius and de Raconis were the most widely read Latin-language philosophies of the first half of the seventeenth century, Eustachius’ Philosophy taking first place.

The seventeenth century also saw an enormous growth of philosophy textbooks in French, written by the tutors of the nobility (themselves often nobles). The movement began in the 1560s with the first French translations of Aristotle’s works, but took off in the 1590s with the first French-language commentaries on Aristotle’s Physics. Works in this genre include the 1614 textbook by Henry IV’s almoner, Théophraste Bouju, and the 1643 volume by René de Ceriziers, a Jesuit who became a secular almoner of the Duc d’Orléans and later counsellor to the King. The most frequently reprinted work in the genre was the Philosophy (1627) by Scipion Dupleix, Cardinal Richelieu’s favourite historian. This work alone seems to have exceeded Eustachius’ in popularity.

The proliferation of textbooks in philosophy was a response to important changes taking place in pedagogy. The Jesuits, following the example of the University of Paris, had reorganized and standardized their curriculum. Textbooks, both Jesuit and non-Jesuit, were consequently modified. For example, the Coimbrans wrote volumes by committee, presenting the works of Aristotle that were taught in the curriculum; they followed the model of the great medieval commentaries, each volume treating a specific text (Physics, On the Soul, On the Heavens and so on), but with an elaborate (post-Renaissance) scholarly apparatus, giving both Aristotle’s Greek text and its Latin translation, as well as Latin paraphrases (explanationes) and quaestiones, the analysis of standard problems relevant to the text being discussed. This pattern was generally followed by other textbook writers, although later editions of the Coimbran commentaries and textbooks such as those of Toletus omitted the Greek versions of Aristotle. Ultimately, Eustachius’ Philosophy even omitted Aristotle’s text itself. Eustachius simply arranged the quaestiones in the order in which the curriculum would have presented them, doing so for all the Aristotelian sciences within the frame of the whole philosophy curriculum – ethics and logic, physics and metaphysics – in a single volume. Dupleix followed the same pattern, as did de Raconis who also gave paraphrases along with the quaestiones. As their names generally indicated, the latter works were usually divided into four parts, following the collegiate curriculum. However, the Philosophy (1644) by the Protestant, Pierre du Moulin (whose logic text was also translated into English), was a three-part textbook (metaphysics having been omitted), and the Philosophy (1642) of Léonard Marandé added theology as a fifth part.

Underlying the format of these textbooks was a Renaissance concern with order or method. In one of the preliminary questions on the Physics Eustachius asked whether there is an order in the different parts of philosophy. He affirmed that there is one, appropriate both for the nature of things and for doctrine: namely, that which goes from the simplest to the more complex, from the principles to that of which they are constituted, and at the same time proceeding from the most universal things to the less universal, to the genera and species. Eustachius also asserted that Aristotle used such an ‘order or method’ in his writings on the various parts of philosophy. According to Eustachius, Aristotle in the Physics began with the principles, causes and general properties of natural things, then proceeded ‘in part according to an analytic order and in part according to a synthetic order’, from the most universal principles to the particular species of natural bodies. Eustachius consequently ordered his own presentation of natural philosophy into three parts: (1) natural bodies in general, from the principles of natural things to their causes and common properties, from matter and form, to causes, to place, infinity, void, time and motion; (2) inanimate natural bodies, from the world to the heavens and from elements to heterogeneous bodies; and (3) animate natural bodies, from soul in general to vegetative, sensible and rational soul. In fact, Eustachius reorganized Aristotle’s topics and even reordered the Physics itself in keeping with his notion of order.

A general characterization of the doctrines of the first half of the seventeenth century is that the Jesuit textbooks (Coimbrans and Toletus, for example) usually propounded Thomist interpretations of Aristotle, while those associated with the University of Paris (Eustachius and de Raconis) did not, often preferring Scotist doctrines (see Aquinas; Duns Scotus, J.). The French-language authors varied in outlook: Bouju was a Thomist in many respects; Dupleix was vociferously anti-Thomist, resembling greatly the non-Jesuit Paris philosophers; and de Ceriziers seems to have supported a later, hybrid version of Thomism, answering many of the charges levelled against Thomism. By 1665 even the Jesuits, as evidenced by Pierre Galtruche’s textbook (a work approved by the Order), seem to have rejected the Thomist positions in philosophy. However, the debate about Thomism and Scotism continued into the seventeenth century. (To illustrate these generalizations, §§3 and 4 of this entry offer two examples from the foundations of natural philosophy.)

Print
Citing this article:
Ariew, Roger. Textbooks and notions of order. Aristotelianism in the 17th century, 1998, doi:10.4324/9780415249126-DA081-1. Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Taylor and Francis, https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/aristotelianism-in-the-17th-century/v-1/sections/textbooks-and-notions-of-order.
Copyright © 1998-2024 Routledge.

Related Articles