He was a man who antagonized both
his enemies and friends; who engendered controversy with or without good cause.
The first controversial event concerning him here, is giving him this entry in
the first place. But I stand by my decision, and I will perhaps be able to
explain it in the course of this entry.
Antoine Arnauld (1612-1694) came
from a prominent and quite famous family. His father Antoine Arnauld Sr.
(1560-1619) was an eminent French lawyer and publicist, a devoted supporter of
King Henri IV, famous for his 1594 speech against the Jesuits in support of the
University of Paris, which made the Jesuit Order his relentless and dangerous
enemy. He had twenty children, ten of them reaching adulthood, and five of them
gaining prominence of their own, particularly including his last, twentieth
child, the subject of this entry. He (Antoine Arnauld, Jr.) has been
subsequently known as Le Grand. Webster’s Biographical Dictionary says
this about him:
“Antoine
Arnauld (1612-1694), known as ‘the Great Arnauld,’ philosopher and Jansenist
theologian famed for his controversial writings, chiefly against the Jesuits
and in favor of the Jansenists; religious director of the nuns at Port-Royal,
where he resided with his friends Pascal, Nicole, etc.; author of La
Pérpetuité de la Lois (in collaboration with Nicole).
Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy has this to say about him:
Antoine
Arnauld was a powerful figure in the intellectual life of seventeenth-century
Europe. He had a long and highly controversial career as a theologian, and he
was an able and influential philosopher. His writings were published and widely
read over a period of more than fifty years, and were assembled in 1775–1782 in
forty-two large folio volumes.
Evaluations
of Arnauld’s work as a theologian vary. Ian Hacking (modern Canadian philosopher of science) for example, says that Arnauld was “perhaps, the most
brilliant theologian of his time.” Ronald Arbuthnott Knox (English theologian, priest, and crime writer) on the other hand, says: ‘It was the fashion among the
Jansenists to represent Antoine Arnauld as a great theologian; he should be
remembered, rather as a great controversialist. A theologian by trade, Arnauld
was a barrister by instinct.’ It is agreed on all sides however that Arnauld
was acute and learned in theology as well as in philosophy. He was an important
participant in the philosophical debates of his century, having famous
intellectual exchanges with Dèscartes, Malebranche and Leibniz. In addition,
the Port-Royal Logic, L’Art de Penser (co-authored with Nicole), was a
standard text in the field for two centuries. Less attention has been paid to
Arnauld’s lifelong efforts to reconcile the doctrine of grâce efficace par
elle-même with freedom of will, though they have many connections with the
debate about determinism and free will that continues to this day.
Leaving the task of learning more
about Arnauld’s revised and improved Jansenian theology, and his rather
derivative Cartesian philosophy to the reader, I will only add that he had a
bad intellectual temper, attacking the Jesuits, the Calvinists and the
philosopher Malebranche with an uncommon and often totally undeserved
fierceness. (In this, he was the opposite of his submissive collaborator Pierre
Nicole, who was an unusually mild non-combative man, fearful of all
controversies, but firmly falling under the influence of his friend and
collaborator Arnauld.) There is one immensely negative influence Arnauld
exercised on Leibniz, however, which must be mentioned with greatest reproach
to Arnauld’s memory. When Leibniz, working on his most revolutionary
philosophical and logical projects, tried to share them with Arnauld, using him
as a sounding board, Arnauld brutally replied: “I find
in these thoughts so many things which alarm me, and which almost all men, if I
am not mistaken, will find so shocking, that I do not see of what use a writing
can be, which all the world will reject.” In another letter he also gave
Leibniz this advice: “It would be preferable if you
gave up, at least for a time, this sort of speculation, and applied himself to
the greatest business you can have, the choice of the true religion… a decision
that is of such importance for your salvation.”
It tells us something about
Leibniz that he allowed himself to be intimidated by Arnauld in this case, but
this does not make Arnauld’s crime against philosophy any more conscionable.
Having said that, however, we
must say that Arnauld was never a coward, that he was fearless in standing up
for his convictions, that he indeed possessed an active philosophical mind and
large knowledge. All of these qualities are commendable in a thinker, and it is
rather sad that his religious agenda had prevented him from applying himself to
a wider variety of philosophical pursuits, where he could have been far more
successful than in the actual areas where he labored.
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