Gianluca Mori

Rédigé en 1659, le Theophrastus redivivus est l’un des ouvrages clandestins les plus étendus (environ mille pages de texte), les plus radicaux (athée et anticonformiste sous tous les angles), et les plus mystérieux de l’âge moderne : depuis presque quatre cent ans l’identité de son auteur est demeurée inconnue. Cette étude ouvre un jour nouveau sur la question en proposant d’attribuer le Theophrastus redivivus au médecin parisien Guy Patin, qui l’aurait rédigé dans le cadre d’un projet conçu en collaboration avec ses amis Gabriel Naudé et Pierre Gassendi. L’attribution se fonde sur un corpus substantiel d’indices textuels, biographiques, bibliographiques, qui s’agencent de façon cohérente avec l’analyse du contenu philosophique de l’ouvrage, comparé aux textes avoués de Patin et de ses compagnons de « débauches philosophiques ». Il en ressort une vision entièrement nouvelle de la libre pensée, et plus généralement de la philosophie, du XVIIe siècle, dont l’analyse doit se fonder désormais sur une catégorie – celle de la dissimulation – qui, seule, permet d’expliquer le contexte de la lutte des idées à l’âge de la « crise de la conscience européenne »

Examining the birth and development of early modern atheism from Spinoza’s Tractatus theologico-politicus (1670) to d’Holbach’s Système de la nature (1770), this study considers Spinoza, Hobbes, Cudworth, Bayle, Meslier, Boulainviller, Du Marsais, Fréret, Toland, Collins, Hume, Diderot, Voltaire, and d’Holbach, and positions them in a general interpretive scheme, based on the idea that early modern atheism is itself an unwanted fruit of early modern metaphysics and theology.

Hume scholarship has rarely questioned the internal-not necessarily explicit-process of Hume's thought that led him to "the most violent paradox" that it occurred to him to propose, i.e., the denial of any "efficacious" causal power in objects, including God. A reappraisal of Hume's early writings and testimonies suggests that this revolutionary move must be placed at the core of what he later called "a new scene of thought" and that the latter originated in a theological reflection based on a reading of Bayle's works which entailed the reversal of Malebranche's position on God and causality. Hume's thesis marks the definitive breaking of the umbilical cord between man and God and opens the way toward an entirely immanent "science of human nature". Hume's so-called "empiricism" is thus the consequence, and not the source, of the train of thought which would later lead him to write the Treatise.

Hume’s early memoranda continue to excite different and contradic- tory interpretations as to their dating, sources, and relation to the Treatise, the Essays and the Dialogues. Our interpretation is based on a double hypothesis: they are notes taken from other notes, rather than current reading notes, and many of them, as to their content, precede the composition of the Treatise. We compare Hume’s notes with their declared or hidden sources and we analyse Hume’s quotations from two of his favourite philosophical authors: Dubos and Bayle. The memoranda are revealed to be notes deemed worth transcribing, later to be put aside or to be developed. Most of them show the breadth of Hume’s youthful interests: history, politics and economics, as well as metaphysics and religion in the early eighteenth century.

Part XII of the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion offers to the reader a wide range of philosophical positions, depending also on the stratification of the text, which underwent various revisions by the author. Some of Hume’s manuscript interventions can be dated, as M.A. Stewart has shown, but their context has not been investigated yet. In particular, the revision of 1757 has a secret source (Bolingbroke) that allows Hume to discuss the possibility of a deistic alternative to atheism and Christian theism. But deism (or philosophical theism) could not represent a real solution for Hume: while defending himself under that cloak in Part XII, he actually arrives at far more radical conclusions. As for the revision of 1776, it bears the mark of the recent debates following the publication of Baron d’Holbach’s Système de la nature. Hume is here close to Voltaire in arguing that the division between atheism and deism (or philosophical theism) can be recomposed, but only if the concept of God is resolved into that of the mere existence of an eternal order of things – a point that most atheists would have admitted without any scruple.

The anonymous letter published in the 5 July 1740 issue of the Common The anonymous letter published in the 5 July 1740 issue of the Common sense (hereinafter: 1740 Letter) is not a review, but rather an “answer” – as its author dubs it – to Hume’s Treatise . It focuses on two main topics: human free-will (against Hume’s purported determinism, or even necessitarianism) and the infinite divisibility of space (against Hume’s psychological atomism).
Mossner, who discovered this text , acknowledges that its author has “the distinction of having written what is probably the first answer to David Hume's Treatise of Human Nature”. While not interested in identifying the unknown writer, Mossner rightly remarks that “it may very well have been the review of the Treatise in [the History of the Work of the Learned] that attracted [his] attention […]”. According to Mossner, “it is abundantly clear that the Treatise did not pass unnoticed, as has generally been thought – not even by the zealots, for the author of the letter to Common Sense is surely to be termed such”. As we shall see, the sender of the letter was not exactly a “zealot”, if by this term one indicates a bigot, or possibly a Christian fundamentalist fighting again free-thought. He is also less naïve than Mossner thought, notwithstanding his young age and limited experience as a philosopher. But everything will be clearer when his identity is revealed.

In what is presented as a wide-ranging and erudite fresco – in revisionist style – of early modern philosophical and theological culture, Dr Dmitri Levitin offers a new interpretation of Bayle’s thought, which goes even beyond the Protestant redécouverte of the early 1960s. The most important fallacy in Levitin’s interpretation lies in his failure to understand the incompatibility between Bayle’s moral rationalism and his conclusions on the relationship between reason and faith. This occurs because Levitin tries to bring Bayle back to the fold of Protestant orthodoxy, whereas Bayle’s position is much more radical. In other words, Levitin’s insistence on Bayle's «moral rationalism», far from giving him a good foundation for bringing Bayle back into the Protestant fold, should lead him straight to the conclusion that Bayle is an atheist. The only hope, and the only way out, for those who claim that Bayle is a faithful believer in the Reformed religion (or any other religion), would be to assert that Bayle is not a moral rationalist, but a follower of Jurieu’s theory of faith as a blind instinct devoid of any rational support. It follows that readers and critics of Bayle’s works must «necessarily choose»: between the Bayle/Erasmus of the Commentaire philosophique, intimately convinced of the minimum values of humanity, confident in the strength of rational reasoning at least on basic questions related to the common notions of morality and logic, critical of all sectarian violence and inquisition, and the Bayle/Jurieu of the later works against Le Clerc and Jaquelot, an irrationalist who, in the name of faith, denies the truth of the most important moral axioms. The two Bayles cannot fit together consistently.. If Levitin  believes that Bayle is a Reformed theologian,, he must – legitimately – choose the Bayle/Jurieu (as indeed he seems to do), but then he must also deny that Bayle is a moral rationalist, going against dozens of passages from the Sedan Cours onwards, and reducing the Commentaire philosophique to a momentary slip of reason, or, at most, an intermediate stage in Bayle’s thought.

In a article published in the JHI Thomas M. Lennon returns to the controversial question of Bayle’s attitude towards religion. The point he debates is the particular use that, in expounding his conception of the relation- ship between faith and reason, Bayle makes of a passage from Saint-Evremond. In Lennon’s view the correct interpretation of this point would show that Bayle’s fideism is to be “taken at face value” without any hint of irony and with no suspicion of dissimulation or insincerity. My aim here is to respond briefly to Lennon’s arguments and to clarify even more briefly what in my opinion is the right perspective in which to consider Bayle’s position on this topic.

The Theophrastus redivivus is perhaps the most important clandestine philosophical manuscript of the seventeenth century. Written in France around 1659, it is the first known example of an avowedly atheist philosophy. Yet the authorship of the text has always been considered an enigma. Writing in an era of persecution, the new Theophrastus adopts a whole series of measures to conceal his identity. But perhaps the solution to the riddle is less difficult than one might have expected: the writer, indeed, mentions himself in the text, nor does he refrain from praising himself under the cover of anonymity. A massive corpus of bibliographical and textual comparisons helps to break the secret and strengthens the conclusion: Guy Patin, one of the most famous «erudite libertines» of the seventeenth century, can now be considered the author of the Theophrastus redivivus.

The attribution to Guy Patin of Theophrastus redivivus, which we proposed in our previous paper, may help to clarify other aspects of this mysterious text. We discuss here the final section of the manuscript, entitled Peroratio operis ad sapientes saeculi, whose purported "fideist" stance has been variously interpreted in the last three decades. We will see that, far from being a personal and heartfelt piece of writing, this text does not escape the rules governing the genre of the pastiche, which is the typical feature of Patin's style. Moreover, the unveiling of its hidden sources will allow us a better understanding of Patin's rhetorical strategy in the Theophrastus and further confirm his authorship. 1. L'attribution à Guy Patin du Theophrastus redivivus, que nous avons proposée dans notre article précédent, devrait permettre de comprendre d'autres aspects de ce texte mystérieux. Mieux: la force de cette hypothèse d'attribution dépend aussi de sa capacité explicative, c'est-à-dire de sa fécondité par rapport aux nombreuses questions que pose ce manuscrit clandestin. Nous risquons ici un premier essai d'interprétation qui aborde l'une des sections les plus discutées du texte: celle qui en contient la conclusion et qui porte le titre (lui-même significatif, comme nous le verrons) de Peroratio operis ad sapientes saeculi. C'est sur la base de ce texte, en effet, que l'on a cru pouvoir remettre en question le caractère athée de la position soutenue dans le Theophrastus 1. Car la * Cet article a été conçu initialement comme une réplique aux objections de Loïc Capron contre l'attribution du Theophrastus redivivus à Patin: je tiens à le remercier ici de ses critiques, qui m'ont incité à approfondir quelques aspects de mon interprétation ; je répondrai bien volontiers à tous ses arguments lorsqu'il voudra les rendre publics. Je remercie encore une fois Antony McKenna pour ses remarques et corrections, mais aussi pour avoir bien voulu me signaler quelques passages significatifs des lettres de Patin qui peuvent renforcer mon analyse.

The Theophrastus redivivus is generally considered to be a pre-modern – or even anti-modern – philo-sophical text and this interpretation is barely questionable. But there is more to the picture: early-modern philosophers such as Hobbes, Gassendi or Descartes are not entirely ignored by the author (i.e. by Guy Patin, if our attribution is correct), and there are traces of them here and there in the text. Howev-er, Patin's treatment of early-modern philosophy is quite paradoxical: he turns Hobbism into a Platonic utopia; he extracts from Gassendi an interpretation of Aristotle's doctrine of the eternity of the world, and he let Descartes appear on the scene only to refute him and restore the ancient dogma of the soul as the organizing principle of the body.

Gabriel Naudé was Guy Patin's best friend and shared most of his views on religion: they were both (secret) atheists. It would be quite strange if the Theophrastus redivivus did not contain any trace of his thought. These traces are indeed to be found exactly where one would first look for them: in chapter 2 of Treatise III, where the Theophrastus addresses the issue of the political origin and function of religion. However, as the analysis of quotations taken from Campanella, Machiavelli, Cardano, and Bodin will show, Naudé's influence on the Theophrastus is not that of a "source" but requires a different, and more interesting, conclusion: that he collaborated with Patin in the composition of the text, or at least in the constitution of the corpus of quotations on which the Theophrastus is largely based.

Dans une note ajoutée à sa remarquable édition de la correspondance de Guy Patin, Loïc Capron avance quelques objections à l'égard de l'attribution du Theophrastus redivivus au médecin parisien, en regrettant qu'« à ce jour (12 juillet 2020), dans les deux autres articles où il a développé sa supposition sur l'auteur du Theophrastus redivivus, G. Mori [n'ait] pas pris la peine de réfuter systématiquement et catégoriquement mes quatre contre-arguments » (note 38 à la lettre de Patin à Charles Spon du 13 avril 1657). J'essaie de répondre brièvement ici aux «quatre contre-arguments» de Loïc Capron, qu'il a fina-lement rendus publics, en me permettant de leur répondre aussi publiquement. Les voici: 1. Fort absorbé par sa pratique et ses enseignements médicaux (au Collège de France et à la Fa-culté), et par sa correspondance, Patin n'avait ni le loisir ni la compétence requis pour écrite une telle somme théologique et philosophique (à laquelle il n'a jamais fait la moindre allusion, même oblique, dans ses écrits). 2. Même s'il a souvent montré ses inclinations vers le jansénisme et le calvinisme, Patin n'a jamais renié le christianisme et a toujours parlé de l'athéisme avec un mépris mêlé d'effroi. 3. Charles Spon, destinataire de la présente lettre du 13 avril 1657 [contenant une anecdote sur l'incrédulité de Richelieu à l'égard du Purgatoire, que raconte aussi l'auteur du Theophrastus], avait fort bien pu la faire lire au petit cercle de ses amis lyonnais, auquel appartenait notamment le R.P. Théophile Raynaud (v. note [8], lettre 71), théologien jésuite prolifique, volontiers fulmi-nant et hétérodoxe. J'ai particulièrement pensé à lui parce que le Theophrastus redivius se conclut sur cette profession de foi aussi bizarre que loyolitique, intitulée Ad fideles et vere sapientes reli-gionis christianae sectatores[Adresse aux fidèles et vraiment sages sectateurs de la religion chré-tienne] (page 1090) : Si qui forte nobis arma argumentorum quae in prooemio huiusce operis postulavimus, subministra-verit ; eiusmodi auxilio tuti adversùs impiorum conatus non firmiores quidem in fide erimus, cui nul-lum praeter divinum, necessarium est auxilium : sed fortiores et ad illos oppugnandos audaciores efficiemur ; ut pote fide et ratione naturali, id est, divino et humano subsidio, adversus solam natu-ralem et humanam rationem, decertaturi simus ad maiorem Dei gloriam et ad infidelium confusio-nem. Soli Deo laus, honor et gloria. Finis. [Si quelqu'un nous a peut-être fourni les armes des arguments, que nous avons demandés dans le Prooemium {a} de cet ouvrage, et si ce secours nous a protégés contre les entreprises des im-pies, nous serons certes plus solides dans la foi, qui n'a besoin d'aucun secours autre que celui de Dieu ; mais nous serons rendus plus forts et plus audacieux pour les attaquer puisque, bien sûr, par la foi et par la raison naturelle, c'est-à-dire par le soutien divin et humain, nous allons mener le combat décisif contre le raisonnement naturel et humain, pour la plus grande gloire de

A quite unexpected - but effective - confirmation of the attribution of Theophrastus redivivus to Guy Patin comes from the analysis of the scientific and literary production of his two sons, Robert and Charles. Their works are generally overlooked – and for good reasons – but deserve some attention. Indeed, they contain obvious and significant traces of Theophrastus redivivus, whose message Patin undoubtedly wanted to pass on from father to son, as a kind of spiritual and philosophical heritage which can now finally recover its true meaning after more than three centuries of oblivion.

Cette concordance rassemble toutes les correspondances entre le Theophrastus redivivus et les écrits de Guy Patin que nous avons pu découvrir. Les cent vingt et une comparaisons textuelles dont elle est constituée nous semblent confirmer de manière définitive qu'il est impliqué dans la production de cet ouvrage manuscrit, et même qu'il en est l'« auteur », en un sens pertinent de ce terme, et qu'il lui a donné sa configuration définitive.

Les Praeadamitae sont l’un des ouvrages les plus « réfutés » de l’histoire du livre : la théorie de l’existence d’hommes primitifs avant Adam, le refus du déluge universel et de la chronologie biblique, l’accent mis sur l’éternité ou, du moins, sur la grande ancienneté de l’universt, le rejet de l’attribution à Moïse du Pentateuque, toutes ces théories constituaient autant de coups donnés à l’autorité de la Bible, dont Spinoza saura bientôt tirer parti. Parmi tant de réfutations, il faudrait aussi signaler un ouvrage, et donc un auteur, qui se rallie immédiatement à la plupart des théories de Lapeyrère : cet ouvrage est le Theophrastus redivivus et cet auteur est Guy Patin.

There is a question concerning the Theophrastus redivivus which is even more difficult to resolve than that of its authorship: that of its material history, from Guy Patin's cabinet to the libraries and the private collection where the four existing copies are currently held. I will address here some philological issues concerning their genealogy and the status of two copies which are generally considered to be “lost”: the archetype, i.e. the common ancestor of the whole manuscript tradition, and the copy once owned by Prince Eugene of Savoy, who claimed he possessed the “original” of the Theophrastus. I believe I can demonstrate (1) that neither of the two copies is “lost”; (2) that these are not two different manuscripts but the same one; and above all (3) that this manuscript is already known and is currently to be found at the National Library of Vienna under the signature cod. 11451 (= W). In the last section, I will discuss the relationship between W, the “original” of the Theophrastus, and its author Guy Patin.

Despite the discovery of the “original” of Theophrastus redivivus – i.e. the first known copy written under the direction of the author – many questions are still open concerning the material history of the text. The Theophrastus is mentioned for the first time in some anonymous “Remarks” added to Louis Ferrand's posthumous work, De la connoissance de Dieu (1706). These “Remarks” are generally attributed to a certain “Mr. Ladvenant”, former secretary of Ferrand. We believe, rather, that they come from the pen of a much more learned author, well known to everyone as the éminence grise of the Jesuits over these years: Father René-Joseph de Tournemine. This attribution will allow us to better understand the diffusion of the Theophrastus before its acquisition, around 1710-1715, by Prince Eugene of Savoy.

Dans son « compte rendu » de mon ouvrage Athéisme et dissimulation en France au XVII e siècle : Guy Patin et le Theophrastus redivivus (Paris, H. Champion, 2022) 1 , Sylvain Matton présente quelques objections éparses contre l'attribution du Theophrastus à Patin (et à ses compagnons de « débauches philosophiques »). Certaines de ces objections viennent de sa part, mais ne touchent pas aux aspects les plus essentiels de mon argumentation, alors que d'autres ne sont que la reprise d'objections auxquelles j'ai déjà répondu (voir Athéisme et dissimulation, p. 241-262). Cependant, il se trouve que son argument le plus développé se fonde sur des affirmations qui sont démenties par des faits historiquement vérifiables, et il me semble indispensable de le signaler pour couper à la racine un débat qui resterait inévitablement stérile. Par ailleurs, la découverte de ces faits méconnus-ou plutôt oubliés-nous permettra de faire un petit pas en avant dans la recherche sur les origines intellectuelles du Theophrastus redivivus et sur son attribution à Patin, qui en sortira entièrement confirmée, voire renforcée.

Il n’y a pas grand-chose de neuf dans la réplique de Sylvain Matton sur le Theophrastus redivivus, mis à part un proverbe toscan mis en exergue et une version revue et corrigée de ses conjectures visant à remettre en question l’attribution à Guy Patin. Le tout est assaisonné d’autres hypothèses qui se heurtent encore une fois à la réalité des textes – voire au bon sens. Mais il me fournit une nouvelle occasion de mieux préciser le rapport du Theophrastus à ses sources et aux ouvrages de Patin, d’où les quelques réflexions qui suivent.

Libre Pensée et Littérature Clandestine. Collection dirigée par Antony McKenna. Réflexions morales et métaphysiques sur les religions et sur les connaissances des hommes. Manuscrit clandestin attribuable à Camille Falconet (1671-1762). Édition et notes par Antony McKenna et Gianluca Mori

Les Mémoires du comte de La Vieuville apportent plusieurs éléments nouveaux sur les activités clandestines de l'abbé Guillaume, cet obscur collègue et exact contemporain de Jean Meslier. Ce témoignage nous encourage notamment à réexaminer le statut d'un manuscrit de la Bibliothèque de l' Arsenal, "Préface du traité sur la religion de M. ***, que Gianluca Mori avait identifié, dès 1993, comme étant une collection de fragments du traité perdu de Guillaume, et à nous intéresser de nouveau au rapport de cette "Préface" avec deux autres traités manuscrits clandestins mieux connus, "L'Ame matérielle" et "De la conduite qu'un honnéte homme doit garder pendant sa vie" dont plusieurs chercheurs avaient déjà remarqué qu'ils présentaient quelques ressemblances troublantes avec la Préface.

A key theme in the classical debate between Hobbes and Descartes, in the Third objections and replies to the Meditations, is that of the status of ideas. But it is a debate that, officially, was soon over: Descartes did not enjoy this dialogue with a philosopher already suspected of heresy, and, in March 1641, he begged Mersenne to break off all relations with “the Englishman”. Thus Descartes, who trusted blindly in Mersenne, did not have the slightest suspicion when, barely a month later, the latter forwarded to him an anonymous letter in latin on the question of ideas, dated 19 May 1641. And yet it is this very letter—to which Descartes replied in two parts—that brought a secret tail-piece to the debate opened by Hobbes with his Third objections, and brusquely interrupted when it had barely started. The anonymous author, whose argumentative skill and philosophical acumen was initially appreciated, was indeed in all probability Hobbes himself, “the Englishman” whom Descartes so detested.