Читать книгу Politics and Scepticism in La Mothe Le Vayer - Ioana Manea - Страница 10

The end of the intellectual road covered by the sceptical philosopher, the suspension of judgement is the consequence of the oppositions among the opinions considered as equally plausible. However, when he thinks about the theoretical mechanisms underlying his approach to the épokhè, La Mothe Le Vayer clearly reveals the out of the ordinary character of some of the arguments that he uses for the purpose of his argument:

These doubts and paradoxical opinions are as useful to the sceptics as it is for the music masters to take the right key a little bit too high or too low in order to bring back those who are discordant; their new and strange feelings having the same effect for pulling us from the flow of the multitude, from which we cannot go far enough.

Ces doutes et ces opinions paradoxiques sont utiles aux sceptiques, comme aux maîtres de musique de prendre un peu plus haut, ou plus bas que le juste ton, pour y ramener ceux qui ont discordé ; leurs sentiments nouveaux et étranges ayant le même effet pour nous tirer du courant de la multitude, dont nous ne pouvons trop nous écarter.1

In other words, the “paradoxical” or surprising opinions (“opinions paradoxiques”)2 are the basis of an approach that uses exaggeration in order to reach moderation. The writer does not seek to advocate the sometimes utterly disconcerting views of a phenomenon, which he includes in the juxtaposition of various opinions that underlies his works, but to weaken the absolute authority which is attributed by people to the beliefs that they usually hold. The reason why the “multitude” is the target of this approach comes from the fact that, according to La Mothe Le Vayer, there is “nothing more stupid than it” (“rien de plus sot”) and “there are no other opinions more certainly false, than those which are the most universally received” (“il n’y a guère d’opinions plus assurément fausses, que les plus universellement reçues”).3 Despite the domination that they exert over the establishment of commonly held opinions, the people are defined as a “beast with so many different heads” (“bête à tant de têtes différentes”),4 which highlights the irrational nature inherent in any of its numerous members. Consequently, the consensum gentium is not an element that argues for, but against an opinion. In order to fight against the authority of common opinions, La Mothe Le Vayer chooses to juxtapose them with contrary opinions. In so doing, he does not try to defeat the followers of the commonly accepted opinions, but to confuse them.5 More precisely, the right key sought for by the author aims at encouraging stubborn people or dogmatic philosophers to question the absolute value that they attribute to their convictions. The contradictions cultivated by the writer must, through the shock that they are supposed to provoke, call into question the certainties of the individuals who, usually, do not abandon their opinions.

Hence, the author uses the contradictions which abound in his works in order to attack, on the one hand, the opinions that belong to the common doxa and, on the other hand, the so-called knowledge of dogmatic philosophers. Furthermore, when mentioning the individuals who form the “multitude”, he shows that they come from all the social categories, namely the most well-to-do, and apparently the most educated as well as the most humble and ignorant:

[…] the witless judgements of an ignorant people, which can be found wherever there is the multitude; which drapes itself in silk as well as in the rough woollen fabric; which wears the cassock as well as the porters’ hooks, which attends the gilt studies as well as the fairs, because the people that we are talking about are made up of all sorts of professions.

[…] les sots jugements d’un peuple ignorant, lequel se trouve partout où est la multitude ; qui se pare de soie aussi bien que de bure ; qui porte la soutane aussi bien que les crochets, et qui hante les cabinets dorés, aussi bien que les foires, puisque toute sorte de professions composent le peuple dont nous parlons.6

The clothes that they wear and the jobs that they do distinguish the individuals only apparently. Thus, the clergymen or politicians are far from constituting, as they pretend, an intellectual elite. As highly placed as they may be in the social hierarchy, the individuals can reason as trivially as the most insignificant of their subjects.

Despite the mediocrity of its judgement, the “multitude” exerts, through its opinions generically called “common sense” (“sens commun”), a genuine tyranny. Launched whenever an opinion goes off the beaten track, the accusation of being deprived of common sense lowers the individuals to whom it is addressed to a status which is inferior to that of the most insignificant animals, supposed to make the difference between the good and the evil instinctively. In order to demolish this accusation, La Mothe Le Vayer argues that, in spite of its completeness ambitions, common sense overlaps only with a reunion of singular positions, which for random reasons and for a fluctuating time span, are promoted as the current opinion.7 Consequently, the author criticises the immoderate pretences of common sense, which despite being itself a tiny fraction of the views of the same question, has no qualms about disparaging the opinions that distance themselves from it, by reproaching them precisely for their singularity:

it [the human mind] believes that people do not have common sense as soon as they deviate from its way of understanding things, as if its sphere of activity had no other limits than those of the intellectual globe, as if it had registered all the human opinions, of which it does not represent the thousandth part.

il [l’esprit humain] croit qu’on n’a pas le sens commun, aussitôt qu’on s’écarte de sa façon de concevoir, comme si sa sphère d’activité n’avait point d’autres limites que celles du globe intellectuel, et qu’il eût tenu registre de toutes les opinions humaines, dont il ne fait pas la millième partie.8

The universality on which it pretends to rely enables common sense to replace critical reasoning. In this respect, it is useful to recall the functioning of the custom. As soon as it manages to win a large adhesion and to assert itself as custom, an opinion naturally enters the sphere of common sense. The wide support that an opinion which becomes custom succeeds in obtaining substitutes for the reflection on the real advantages that it is supposed to introduce in people’s life: “this bad use [managing one’s life more according to the example of the others than to what one’s own reason could prescribe] is one of the greatest evils of life, for there is no disorder which is not taken for good without being examined and which does not get established without causing any loathing ever since, by becoming fashionable, it becomes common ” (“ce mauvais usage fait un des plus grands maux de la vie, parce qu’il n’y a point de désordre, qui ne passe pour bon sans l’examiner, et qui ne s’établisse sans répugnance, depuis qu’étant devenu à la mode il s’est rendu commun”).9 Consequently, the broad support that customs usually enjoy is, in fact, the best argument in favour of itself.

Despite their so-called superiority, philosophers establish their theories on arguments that are slightly more rigorous than the ones put forward in favour of common sense by ordinary individuals who, in principle, make up the “multitude”. However bright they may be, philosophers are not an exception to the general rule according to which, as soon as an individual adopts an idea and starts to defend it, he uses his abilities only in order to strengthen the assent that he gives to it and to fight against what could undermine it. When they embrace an idea, philosophers go as far as relying on it in order to build their “separate system” or, in other terms, to explain the whole universe. This is the reason why, for instance,

Pythagoras submitted all his philosophy to the mystery of his numbers; Aristotle himself to the rules of his logic; Plato to his ideas; Democritus and your Epicurus to their atoms or insectile bodies; chemists to their principles and their stoves; the cabalists and the Rosicrucians to their traditions and enigmatic figures; Gilbertus to his magnetic virtue; Copernicus (following Philolaus and Hicetas, authors of this thought) to the mobility of the earth […]

[…] Pythagore assujettissait toute sa philosophie au mystère de ses nombres ; Aristote lui-même aux règles de sa Logique ; Platon à ses idées ; Démocrite et votre Épicure à leurs atomes ou corps insectiles ; les chimistes à leurs principes et fourneaux ; les kabbalistes et Rose-Croix à leurs traditions et figures énigmatiques ; Gilbertus à la vertu aimantée ; Copernic, après Philolaus et Hicetas, auteurs de cette pensée, à la mobilité de la terre ; […]10

Through this accumulation of examples La Mothe Le Vayer aims at showing that the philosophers who belong to the most diverse schools have, always, designed theories which, despite being founded on a single idea, are supposed to be capable of making the world comprehensible in all its rich variety. The fierceness of the philosophers who develop theories, which from a sceptical point of view are depreciated by their irreconcilable differences, makes the author share the vision expressed by Francis Bacon in the Novum Organum, according to which “man is a great idolater” (“l’homme est un grand idolâtre”).11 Otherwise saying, philosophers and, more generally, individuals show a blind attachment towards the ideas that they invent and that only the divinity deserves.

Given their obstinacy while seeking to promote their ideas, philosophers prove that they are governed by the same stubbornness as ordinary individuals, from whom they claim to be different. The stubbornness, which stops people from abandoning or questioning their ideas, is the consequence of self-love:

But hey! few persons are so fair as to get rid of this self-love, because of which we become stubborn concerning everything we have once proposed and we make a matter of honour of never abandoning either the affirmative or the negative of a position, ever since we declared ourselves for one or another.

Mais quoi ! peu de personnes sont assez équitables, pour se dépouiller de cet amour-propre, qui nous rend opiniâtres en tout ce que nous avons une fois proposé, et qui nous fait mettre le point d’honneur à ne nous départir jamais, soit de l’affirmative, soit de la négative, depuis que nous nous sommes déclarés pour l’une ou pour l’autre.12

Hence, according to La Mothe Le Vayer, the self-love, which by means of a term borrowed from humanist thought, is also called philautia sometimes,13 is responsible for the blindness that prevents people from acknowledging that they are wrong and prompts them to say that the others are wrong. Distorting the inviduals’ relationship with one another and with what is thought to be reasonable, the self-love as perceived by La Mothe Le Vayer does not have the religious significance that it has for the school of Port-Royal. Indeed, relying on Corneille Jansen’s Augustinus, the disciples of Port-Royal accuse self-love of standing in the way of individuals’ spiritual life.14 In the view of La Mothe Le Vayer, because of the fierceness that they use in order to try to impose their ideas, stubborn people are unable to have a conversation with others and retreat into their world: “We become almost unsociable and incapable of conversation because of this self-love, which dominates almost all the dogmatics” (“Nous devenons presque insociables et incapables de conversation par cet amour-propre, qui maîtrise presque tous les dogmatiques”).15 In addition to feeding the scathing polemics in which the dogmatic philosophers engage in the name of the truth, stubbornness is likely to damage life in society itself. Since it prompts the individuals whom it controls to impose themselves at all costs, it jeopardizes conversation, one of the privileged occasions for the honnête homme, social and aesthetic ideal of the 17^th century, to show his knowledge and qualities.16

In this respect, a significant example is provided by the dispute between Milon and his adversary, which is worthy of being mentioned because of its hyperbolic proportions, for in the eyes of a La Mothe Le Vayer who witnessed it with amusement, “there has never been a more stubborn fight of this kind” (“jamais combat de cette nature ne fut plus opiniâtre”).17 Milon and his antagonist, “a fighter as bold as he was” (“aussi hardi champion que lui”),18 take over a debate that has stopped because one of its previous protagonists, who defended a paradoxical position, acknowledged his incapacity to answer his rival straight away. The entrance on the stage of Milon and of his opponent stands for the beginning of a new stage in the polemic, which consists in the passage from the “dialectic” (“dialectique”) to the “sophistry” (“sophistique”).19 The two new actors of the polemic let themselves get carried away by the desire to shut the adversary’s mouth at all costs and end up by losing sight of the very issue that should be the subject of their replies: “For they were asking themselves questions that were so little related to the question that had been proposed and these questions were followed by so nonsensical answers, that it could be clearly seen that they no longer remembered the matter which had stirred them so much” (“Car ils se faisaient des demandes de si peu de rapport à la question proposée, et elles étaient suivies de réponses si absurdes, qu’on voyait manifestement, qu’ils ne se souvenaient plus du thème, qui les avaient mis si fort à l’essor”).20

Boiling down either to insults, or to insignificant questions devoid of connection with the initial topic, the content of the discourse undergoes an obvious deterioration. Moreover, the tone of the replies exchanged by the participants in the collective polemic set off by Milon and his adversary rises gradually. One of the types of individuals involved in the polemic is represented by those who “were always the loudest to speak” (“parlaient toujours le plus haut”), despite being “the least based on reason” (“les plus mal fondés en raison”).21 The conclusion of this rudimentary tactic, which aims at substituting the elevation of the voice to the shallowness of the opinion, is summed up by Sylvia Giocanti, who holds that “the most stubborn are also the most aggressive in the conversation” (“les plus opiniâtres sont également les plus agressifs dans la conversation”).22 The aggressiveness goes from the level of words to the level of gestures when a “heated” person (“échauffé”) who tries to win over the conversation receives a “slap” (“un soufflet”).23 The climax of the dispute between Milon and his antagonist, the slap is the proof of violence, which in a more or less obvious way, is intrinsic to every polemic and transforms it into a war.

In the view of La Mothe Le Vayer, the fierceness that dogmatic people, whether philosophers or ordinary people, use for maintaining their opinions, does not come from their interest in the truth, but from their desire to be victorious. Led by the wish to make their opinions triumph, stubborn individuals go against the ideal that should fill out the discussions in which they take part24 and transform them without fail into polemics.