Читать книгу Politics and Scepticism in La Mothe Le Vayer - Ioana Manea - Страница 12

The assent to the plausible brings about a flexibility that plays the role of a borderline between minds:

The case of the minds is almost similar to that of the metals, among which the most precious is the most flexible of all; these persons whom you see without any flexibility in their conversation […] and who do not yield to whoever it might be, have iron souls, all the more infamous since they display an insurmountable stiffness.

Il est quasi des esprits comme des métaux, dont le plus noble est le plus flexible de tous ; ces personnes que vous voyez n’avoir aucune souplesse dans leur conversation […] et qui ne ploient pour qui que ce soit, ont des âmes ferrées, d’autant plus viles qu’elles sont d’une invincible dureté.1

The comparison between iron and the stubborn who, because of their steeliness, never retract their opinions, is likely to be based on two main facts. On the one hand, at that time, iron is considered the “hardest, driest and the most difficult to melt of all the metals” (“le plus dur, le plus sec et le plus difficile à fondre de tous les métaux”).2 On the other hand, it is also associated with a moral negative connotation, dating back to the myth of the human races from Hesiod’s The Works and Days: “Iron is figuratively said in ethics about something that has a great hardness. Hence the Ancients have called the iron century the one when men were harsh and cruel” (“Fer, se dit figurément en morale de ce qui a une grande dureté. Ainsi les Anciens ont appelé le siècle de fer, celui où les hommes étaient durs et cruels”).3

Unlike rigidity, the flexibility that is specific to the superior minds materialises in the capacity to easily change one’s mind or to abandon an opinion in favour of another one that is different from the initial one or even opposed to it. This means that, when adopting an opinion, the sceptic La Mothe Le Vayer does not commit himself to holding it forever, but only until the moment, more or less distant in time, when he is likely to come across another one, which is more plausible: “I philosophise from one day to another; and if presently I am of an opinion, it is with the pledge that I will change my mind within an hour and whenever I will be shown that the contrary position has more plausibility” (“Je philosophe au jour la journée ; et si je suis présentement d’un avis, c’est avec protestation, que j’en changerai dans une heure, et toutes les fois, qu’on me fera paraître plus de vraisemblance dans l’opinion contraire”).4 Allowing the sceptics to move swiftly among the most diverse opinions, this theoretical position makes them comparable to

those animals, which are called amphibians because they shift from one element to another without any inconvenience and without harming themselves. Similarly these indifferent people adopt on some occasions the opinions of some, on other occasions the opinions of others, according to the way in which they find them more or less plausible, although always without bias and without forcing themselves for the future to support one party more than another.

ces animaux, qu’on nomme amphibies, parce qu’ils passent d’un élément à l’autre sans s’incommoder, et sans se faire aucun préjudice. Ces indifférents prennent de même les opinions tantôt des uns, tantôt des autres, selon qu’elles leur paraissent plus ou moins vraisemblables, quoique toujours sans partialité, et sans s’astreindre à l’égard de l’avenir plus à l’un qu’à l’autre partie.5

Since they are aware of the fallible character of the opinions that they embrace, sceptics like La Mothe Le Vayer keep a certain detachment in respect to them. The inner detachment prompts them to adopt a behaviour that is different from that of the usual disciples of an idea who, in addition to never abandoning it, strive to impose it on others by all possible means. Similarly to the animals that live “sometimes in water and sometimes on land” (“tantôt dans l’eau, tantôt sur la terre”),6 the sceptics can move among the most diverse opinions without being disturbed by remorse or reproaches coming from other individuals with whom they partly share, for a certain while, the adherence to the same idea. The key to the easiness with which they are capable of going from one opinion to another comes from the relative indifference inherent in the suspension of judgement that they keep permanently in the background of their intellectual activity: “Thanks to this reserve or sceptical suspension, we are never compelled to shamefully retract an opinion that we thought probable, because we are quits to say when leaving it that another one which has more plausibility forces us to embrace it” (“Avec cette réserve ou suspension sceptique l’on n’est jamais réduit à se rétracter avec honte d’une pensée que l’on a crue probable, parce qu’on en est quitte pour dire en la quittant, qu’une autre qui a plus de vraisemblance oblige à l’embrasser”).7

Prompted by the adherence to flexibility, in two works, Dialogue sur le sujet de la vie privée and La Promenade. VII Dialogue, La Mothe Le Vayer builds his own philosophical system, which from the point of view of the dogmatic philosophies is completely unsystematic. Despite being dependent on all the other philosophical systems, this system goes beyond them all and does not confine itself to any of them. Justifying his preference for the “sceptique”, he argues that “it has this advantage, that without becoming particularly attached to anything, it makes up its system from everything that seems apparently acceptable in all the other schools […] ” (“a cet avantage, que sans s’attacher déterminément à rien, elle compose son système de ce qui lui paraît apparemment recevable dans toutes les autres sectes […]”)8 In so doing, La Mothe Le Vayer places himself in the continuation of the eclecticism established by Potamo of Alexandria:

If I were to express my desire and to cast my vote for one [philosophical school], I would value above all the others the one that Potamo of Alexandria named ἐκλεκτική or elective, because it chose what it liked from all the others and composed of them its separate system, like a pleasant honey from the juice of a diversity of flowers.

Que s’il fallait donner son vœu et son suffrage en faveur de quelqu’une [secte de philosophie], j’estimerais sur toutes celle à laquelle Potamon d’Alexandrie donna le nom de ἐκλεκτική ou élective, parce qu’elle faisait choix de ce qui lui plaisait en toutes les autres, dont elle composait son système à part comme un agréable miel du suc d’une diversité de fleurs.9

The main source of information about the philosophy of Potamo of Alexandria, Diogenes Laertius stresses the singular character of his philosophy.10 The distinctive feature of the Alexandrian philosopher, the reason why he cannot fit into any of the traditional philosophical schools, comes from the fact that, without joining any of them, he develops his own philosophical theory by relying on a selection carried out among the ideas that they defend. Likely to be attracted by the heterogeneous character specific to Potamo’s eclecticism, La Mothe Le Vayer is not too concerned about the fact that by founding his approach to philosophy on “criteria of truth”, the Alexandrian philosopher is closer to the dogmatics than to the sceptics.11 In the view of La Mothe Le Vayer, eclecticism materialises in a philosophy that allows the gathering of the plausible interpretations of a phenomenon, which are usually considered as rivals. Thanks to the metaphor of the honey, La Mothe Le Vayer insists on the mixture underlying his philosophy, which is achieved according to criteria whose flexibility is not, however, synonymous with carelessness: “just like good honey is made of the juice collected from various flowers, the best philosophy is formed of expressions well chosen from diverse systems, without deciding that anything is certain, but only plausible” (“comme le bon miel se fait du suc recueilli de diverses fleurs, la meilleure philosophie se forme des sentences bien choisies de divers systèmes, sans rien déterminer opiniâtrement comme certain, mais seulement comme vraisemblable”).12 By putting together the plausible conceptions of one and a single matter which can go as far as being contradictory, the author does not yearn to be exhaustive, but only to illustrate the richness of the world.13

Additionally, he does not profit from the metaphor of the honey in order to refer only to his philosophy, but also to his writing. Associated especially with a fragment from Seneca’s Letters to Lucilius (LXXXIV), the metaphor of the bee that produces honey from different flowers has been related to the reflection on the manner in which an author is supposed to make use of the passages that he extracts from other authors.14 Taken up by humanists like Petrarca or Erasmus, the metaphor of the bee is also used by La Mothe Le Vayer in order to refer to the use of the quotations. While mentioning the way in which an author is supposed to use his readings, our writer argues that “We should not imitate so much the florists who make flower bouquets and who content themselves with the fact of putting together the flowers that they find; as the bees, which take from these same flowers the matter that they turn into an agreeable food” (“Il ne faut pas tant imiter les bouquetières, qui se contentent de joindre ensemble les fleurs qu’elles trouvent; que les abeilles, qui prennent dessus ces mêmes fleurs la matière dont elles composent leur agréable nourriture”).15 A great supporter of passages extracted from other authors, La Mothe Le Vayer holds, nevertheless, that their use must firstly rely on their assimilation. In other words, an author has to fill out his works with quotations only after having taken possession of them, following a work which, reminiscent of Montaigne’s innutrition,16 allows him to provide them a new meaning. The “rhetoric of quotations”17 is the expression of philosophical eclecticism, which results from the flexibility cultivated by a thought that, while keeping the suspension of judgement in the background, satisfies itself with the plausible.