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PIERRE GASSENDI’S LIFE AND LETTERS

CARLA RITA PALMERINORadboud University Nijmegen

Sylvie Taussig. Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655). Introduction à la vie savante (Mo-nothéisme et philosophie) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), pp. 454 ¤60.00 ISBN2 503 52182 7.

Sylvie Taussig. Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655). Lettres latines. 2 vols. (Turnhout:Brepols, 2004), pp. xxxiv + 624; x + 612 ¤175.00 ISBN 2 503 51353 0.

Sylvie Taussig’s Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655). Introduction à la viesavante, and Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655). Lettres latines, althoughpublished as independent volumes, have been conceived as com-plementary works. The critical study on Pierre Gassendi, whichwe find in the Introduction à la vie savante, is in fact mainly basedon material drawn from Gassendi’s Latin correspondence, origi-nally published in the sixth volume of the Opera omnia (Lyon,1658) and now translated into French for the first time. As Taussigexplains, Gassendi personally selected and prepared his corre-spondence for publication, “de manière à construire dans l’espritdu lecteur l’unité d’une vie” (11). From the letters, which covera time span of 34 years (1621-1655), we are meant to obtain apicture of Gassendi’s ideal, rather than real, life—a life definedby philosophical, scientific, political and social engagements.

1.

In the first chapter of her Introduction à la vie savante, Taussigreconstructs this ideal biography. She divides Gassendi’s episto-lary and scholarly activity into three periods, the end of each ofwhich is marked by a death. The first period, which is character-ized by an eager desire to take part in international debates andto acquire a solid reputation, goes from 8 April 1621, the dateof a letter to Henri du Faur de Pibrac, which testifies to Gassendi’sencounter with Copernican astronomy and his admission intoFrench intellectual circles, to 1637, which marks the death of hisfirst mentor, Nicolas Fabri de Peiresc. Two years of mourningand silence separate the first period from the second (1639-

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1653), which is dominated by Gassendi’s epistolary exchangewith his new protector, the governor of Provence Louis-Emmanuelde Valois (who died in1653). The third period (1653-1655) co-incides with the last two years of Gassendi’s life, which werespent in Paris. The letters document well the intellectual andpersonal evolution of Gassendi, who with the evolution of hisscientific career became ever more frequently the addressee ofletters and ever less their sender.

In the second chapter Taussig analyses the network of Gassendi’scorrespondents, describes the conventions ruling the composi-tion and conservation of the letters in the seventeenth century,and reflects on the philosophical status of the epistolary genre aswell as on its practical utility. Taussig also stresses the differencebetween the correspondence of Mersenne, who distinguisheshimself by the width of his interests, and that of Gassendi, who“se montre au contraire remarquablement concentré sur les triossujets qui lui important vraiment, c’est à dire l’astronomie, Épicureet la diffusion du savoir” (82).

The third chapter is devoted to an examination of Gassendi’sbibliographical baggage. Taussig lists the authors most frequentlycited in the Lettres latines, describes the contexts in which theyare invoked, and provides an interesting analysis of Gassendi’shabit of juxtaposing different quotations, often merging the sacredwith the profane. Taussig looks with benevolent eyes uponGassendi’s eclectic style. The tendency to assemble bits and piecesof other people’s theories, which Koyré dismissively saw as theexpression of Gassendi’s “philosophical inferiority,” appears toTaussig legitimate for an atomist: just as the rearrangement ofpreexisting atoms can produce a new physical phenomenon, sothe rearrangement of preexisting thoughts can produce a newphilosophical discourse (93, 164).

In the fourth chapter, Taussig analyses the echo of some ofthe most important scientific debates in the Lettres latines. Al-though she repeatedly insists that Gassendi’s correspondencecannot be read independently from the other volumes of theOpera omnia, she makes too little of an effort to integrate thecontents of the letters with those of Gassendi’s scientific trea-tises. A reader who is not already acquainted with works such asthe Parhelia sive soles quatuor, the Mercurius in sole visus et Venusinvisa, or the De proportione qua gravia decidentia accelerantur, willprobably not learn much from the extremely short sections into

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which Taussig’s chapter is segmented. In some cases she evenfails to indicate where in the correspondence a particular topicis addressed (as, for example, in the sections on the comet of1618, or on the sun spots). This chapter contains moreover anumber of inaccuracies and factual mistakes: Taussig gives awrong account of Galileo’s explanation of the comets (116); sheerroneously attributes to Gassendi the merit of having been thefirst to perform the experiment of the ball dropped from thetop of mast of a moving ship, described by Galileo as a merethought experiment in the Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi (127);1

she writes that “l’affaire du vide […] occupe l’activité des savantsaprès que la cosmologie copernicienne est admise,” (135) as ifancient and medieval natural philosophers had not been end-lessly concerned with the topic. However, what is most surprisingis her interpretation of the lack of references to Galileo in theletters written by Gassendi during the last years of the life of theItalian scientist. The fact that the last of the eight letters ad-dressed by Gassendi to Galileo dates from 1637 is, in Taussig’sview, “un indice sûr de la prise de distance qu’il prend parrapport à l’astronome et à sa conception mathématique del’univers” (132, cf. also 41). An astonishing claim indeed, giventhat between 1640 and 1646 Gassendi wrote six letters in defenseof Galileo’s mechanics and cosmology, which were publishedunder the titles of Epistolae de motu impresso a motore translato andEpistolae de proportione qua gravia decidentia accelerantur.

The fifth chapter, which is devoted to Gassendi and Epicurus,is the longest and richest of the volume, and not surprisingly so,given that the Lettres latines bear witness to the totality of Gassendi’sEpicurean experience, which passed through the subsequent stagesof edition, reconstruction and rehabilitation, eventually to endwith the integration of the Epicurean legacy into a more per-sonal philosophical system. The letters thus document Gassendi’seditorial efforts, as when he wrote to some of the most promi-

1 On the many attempts to verify Galileo’s experiment of the ship’s mast, cf.Correspondance du P. Marin Mersenne, religieux minime, ed. C. de Waard, R. Pintard,B. Rochot, A. Beaulieu, 17 vols. (Paris, 1945-1988), 2: 74; 4: 169-170, 197; P.Ariotti, “From the Top to the Foot of a Mast on a Moving Ship,” Annals of Science,28 (1972), 191-203; G. Mormino, “L’immagine della nave nello sviluppo delconcetto di inerzia,” in S. Rossi (ed.), Science and Imagination in 18th Century BritishCulture (Milan, 1987), 253-265; A.G. Debus, “Pierre Gassendi and his ScientificExpedition of 1640,” Archives internationales d’histoire des sciences, 16 (1963), 129-142.

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nent philologists and humanists of his days with the double hopeof acquiring precious information concerning Epicurus’ life,thought and fortune, and of “établir sa virtuosité critique” (147)in the eyes of his contemporaries. The image we draw fromthese letters is that of a “cultural empiricist,” who practicesmethodical doubt in his examination of the ancient sources.This chapter also analyses in detail the philosophy course thatGassendi devised for Louis de Valois, which comprises 59 letterswritten between October 1641 and November 1642. Once againTaussig draws an analogy between Gassendi’s style and his physi-cal atomism:

la méthode d’exposition du corps entier de la doctrine épicurienne (…) partronçons présente une remarquable analogie avec l’atomisme en physiqueet renvoie au caractère finalment indivisible, c’est à dire à la discontinuitéde la matière (153).

The philosophy course for Valois follows the contents and thestructure of the De vita et doctrina Epicuri, the earliest extantmanuscript version of Gassendi’s Syntagma philosophiae Epicuri. Inboth cases Gassendi opens with an apology of Epicurus, which isconstructed as a “genealogy of calumnies”2; continues with anhistorical analysis of various philosophical traditions and with anexam of the different ways of classifying philosophical theories;then offers an history of dialectics; and finally proceeds to areconstruction of Epicurus’ thought, notably of his canonics andphysics. This chapter, which is particularly instructive if readalongside the letters to Valois, contains noteworthy considera-tions concerning Gassendi’s methodological convictions, his dis-taste for metaphors and illustrations, and his views regarding theuse of verbal language and the reliability of sense perception.

Gassendi’s personal relation with Louis de Valois and withother powerful figures of his time is scrutinized in the sixthchapter. Gassendi is here described as a loner, who abhors thecourtly life-style and is determined to safeguard his independ-

2 Taussig wrongly believes (p. 158) that the De vita et moribus Epicuri, written in1634 but only published in 1647, was from its inception structured into eightbooks. Thanks to a manuscript recently discovered at the British Museum weknow that Gassendi revised and corrected the manuscript of the De vita shortlybefore publication and on that occasion inserted into it an additional book II Demorte et successione Epicuri. Cf. C.R. Palmerino, “Pierre Gassendi’s De philosophiaEpicuri universe Rediscovered. New Perspectives on the Genesis of the SyntagmaPhilosophicum,” Nuncius 14.1 (1999), 263-294.

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ence. This attitude emerges not so much from Gassendi’s rela-tion with Peiresc, whom he considered a friend and a disinter-ested protector of the arts and sciences, as in that with de Valois,whom he treated with the distant respect due to a prince andthe benevolence due to an eager, but not particularly talentedstudent. Taussig argues that the failure of Valois’ political careermust have meant for Gassendi also the failure of his own peda-gogical enterprise. When in 1652 Christine of Sweden invitedhim to move to Stockholm to become her philosophical andpolitical counselor, Gassendi politely declined, preferring toconfine his engagement to the level of occasional epistles.

The last chapter of the volume is devoted to Gassendi’s rela-tion to history. Taussig begins by analyzing Gassendi’s viewsconcerning the value of history (which he defines as a lightilluminating our lives) and of the historian’s work (intendedboth as a method of investigation and as a mode of presenta-tion). She then describes Gassendi’s activity as a chronicler, notablyin the light of his letters from Paris to the Provence informingLouis de Valois of the major political, military and diplomaticevents. In his reports, Gassendi does not hesitate to narrate pic-turesque details, just as he likes to emphasize the role of heroesand the most spectacular aspects of politics, but he refrains fromexpressing his personal opinion on current affairs. His commentsremain mostly at the generic level of pacifism and patriotism. Inthe last pages of this chapter Taussig shows that, when writingabout history, Gassendi resorts to two different styles: he uses amore baroque and rich style (à la Polibe) to formulate his philo-sophical thoughts concerning the sense of history; whereas heemploys a more synthetic and terse style when reporting on recentevents. At the same time, he seems to rely on two rivaling concep-tions of history, of which one is linear and the other cyclical.

More than 150 pages are occupied by bio-bibliographicalmaterial: we first find a list of the most important dates ofGassendi’s life; then some short, but useful biographical sketchesof the persons mentioned in Gassendi’s correspondence; andfinally a bibliography subdivided into seven sections: 1) pub-lished works by Gassendi; 2) manuscript works by Gassendi; 3)works by Gassendi’s contemporaries; 4) ancient sources; 5) ref-erence works; 6) works about Gassendi; and 7) general works.

Taussig’s choice of titles for her bibliography calls for somecomments. It is surprising to see that in the first section Taussig

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lists, besides the Opera omnia, only French translations of Gassendi’sworks, and that she borrows all the items of her second sectionfrom the bibliography of René Pintard’s thesis, neglecting someimportant manuscripts listed in other bibliographies, like theones kept at the Bibliothèque Inguimbertine de Carpentras, atthe Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris, or at the British Library.Equally arbitrary is Taussig’s choice not to include, in the thirdsection of her bibliography, some of the works by Gassendi’scontemporaries that are discussed in the Lettres latines. I am thinkinghere, for example, of Giovanbattista Baliani’s De motu naturaligravium solidorum (Genoa, 1638), which Bardi sent to Gassendiin 1640, of Pierre Le Cazre’s Physica demonstratio (Paris, 1645)and Vindiciae demonstrationis physicae (Paris, 1645), in response towhich Gassendi wrote his own Epistolae de proportione qua graviadecidentia accelerantur (Paris, 1646), or of the works by Jean BaptisteMorin, Juan Caramuel de Lobkovitz, or Honoré Fabri. True,some of these titles are quoted by Taussig in the footnotes, butgiven that her volumes do not contain an index of names, itwould have been a good idea to include them also in the bibli-ography.

Readers will come away from this introductory volume with afairly clear picture of Gassendi, the man, of his life-style, histastes, and his idiosyncrasies. Taussig displays a great talent forintuiting from between the lines of the Lettres latines Gassendi’sambitions, his motivations, his fears and his hopes, and for com-posing a well-defined portrait out of different character traits. Bycontrast, it is much more difficult for the reader to judge what,if anything, is new about the picture Taussig’s book provides ofGassendi, the scholar. This difficulty is due to her conspicuousaversion to any engagement with the existing secondary litera-ture. The extended bibliography appended to her book remainsan autonomous body. In her text, she refrains from any refer-ence to the works of other scholars, the exception being thosefew times when she feels obliged to correct someone else’s mis-takes. But never in the book does Taussig say whether the con-tents of the Lettres latines add something to our knowledge ofGassendi’s thought and whether they invalidate existing inter-pretations of it. Another reproach that has to be made to Taussigregards her lack of interest in the point of view of Gassendi’sinterlocutors. Whereas Gassendi’s letters to Valois, which were

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conceived as philosophy lessons, don’t require us to know muchabout their addressee’s convictions, this is not the case in mostother exchanges where the peculiarity of Gassendi’s philosophi-cal and scientific viewpoints can only be assessed in comparisonto his interlocutors’.

2.

Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655). Lettres latines is composed of two vol-umes. In the first we find a French translation of all of Gassendi’sletters contained in the sixth volume of the Opera omnia, whereasthe second volume is taken up by explanatory and commentarynotes. Taussig’s aforementioned lack of interest in Gassendi’scorrespondents has resulted in her decision not to translate theletters addressed to him, although the sixth volume of the Operaomnia reproduces them in an appendix. Instead, she prefers tosummarize their contents, “whenever necessary,” in her com-mentary notes.

Those numerous scholars who are put off by Gassendi’s ba-roque Latin will be grateful to Taussig. Her translations are al-ways very faithful to the original, although they often exceed itin elegance. In her brief introduction Taussig warns the readerthat, due to the variety of themes Gassendi touches upon in hiscorrespondence, her notes cannot be exhaustive. As a matter offact, she manages to shed light on issues of philosophical, his-torical, scientific and philological import, and her comments areoften very informative. However, it appears to exceed the forcesof an individual representative of a single discipline to treatauthoritatively all aspects of Gassendi, the polymath. That Taussigis a philologist, not an historian of science, is everywhere evi-dent, though she can certainly not be blamed for her profes-sional bias. Less forgivable, by contrast, is her astonishing disregardfor the rich scholarship on Gassendi. Had Taussig relied on theavailable secondary literature, her commentary would withoutany doubt have been more informative, synthetic, and correct.Take, as an example, the case of the so called “problem of Poysson,”a logico-physico-mathematical puzzle which is discussed by Gassendiin three separate letters (#81, 82, 83). In her notes, Taussigneither gives a thorough account of the problem, nor refers tothe analyses of it provided by authors such as Kurd Lasswitz,

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Bernard Rochot, Lynn S. Joy, or by the editors of Mersenne’sCorrespondance.3

In some cases the neglect of the secondary literature has provendetrimental to Taussig’s explanatory efforts. Suffice it here tomention the following example: In commenting upon the post-script of a letter to Gabriel Naudé of 2 March 1632, where Gassendiasks his friend to communicate his greetings to Tommaso Cam-panella, Taussig writes: “Je ne sais pas interpréter la cause decette apostille et ne comprends pas pourquoi Gassendi n’écritpas cette demande de salut dans le corps même de sa lettre,avant de la dater et de la signer” (#89, n. 964). The answer toTaussig’s puzzling question can be found in one of the mostimportant and influential works on Gassendi, namely Olivier RenéBloch’s La philosophie de Gassendi, where it is explained that themanuscript version of the postscript was in fact much longer,containing Gassendi’s response to the anti-Epicurean argumentsput forward by Campanella in his Atheismus triumphatus.4 Blochquotes the entire unedited postscript (which is contained in amanuscript kept at the Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris) andalso explains why Gassendi decided to delete the substance of itfor the Opera omnia, allowing only the first, anodyne lines to beprinted.

That Taussig might have overlooked a piece of informationcontained in a recently published article would be understand-able. But it is more unforgivable and damaging for her enter-prise that she has relied so little on fundamental works such asBloch’s or Rochot’s. In the Introduction à la vie savante, Taussigobserves repeatedly that contrary to Descartes, Gassendi did notentertain the myth of the tabula rasa and was always ready toacknowledge his debt to ancient and contemporary authors.Unfortunately the same thing cannot be said of Taussig herself.

In her introduction Taussig expresses the hope that her workwill provide interesting material for scholars working in different

3 K. Lasswitz, Geschichte der Atomistik vom Mittelalter bis Newton, 2 vols. (Hamburg,1890), 2:129; B. Rochot, “Une discussion théorique au temps de Mersenne. Leproblème de Poysson (1635-1636),” Revue d’histoire des sciences et de leurs applica-tions, 2 (1948), 80-89; Id., Les travaux de Gassendi sur Epicure et sur l’atomisme (1619-1658) (Paris, 1944), 72-75; L. S. Joy, Gassendi the Atomist: Advocate of History in anAge of Science (Cambridge, 1987), 83-105; Correspondance du P. Marin Mersenne, vols.5 and 6, passim.

4 O.R. Bloch, La philosophie de Gassendi. Nominalisme, matérialisme et métaphysique(The Hague, 1971), 212.

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domains. She would have come closer to realizing that hope ifshe had supplied her volumes with an index of names and ofsubjects. What looks like the fruit of years of hard labor wouldhave become more useful if her translations and commentarieshad been presented in a more manageable and user-friendlymanner. Maybe the missing apparatus can be added in a secondedition.

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