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Comments on a Certain Broadsheet

from ENTRIES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2016

Theo Verbeek
Affiliation:
Universiteit Utrecht
Lawrence Nolan
Affiliation:
California State University, Long Beach
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Summary

Notae in Programma Quoddam is Descartes’ final word in his quarrel with Henricus Regius. Regius, who had earned his Utrecht professorship by giving private lessons in philosophy and theoretical medicine, thought of publishing a compendium of the new philosophy as early as 1641. At that point, Descartes, who obviously did not like that idea, could still dissuade him from doing so. In 1645, however, after Descartes had published the Principles of Philosophy (1644), Regius felt free to publish a book on physics. Descartes opposed that plan, in part because he did not agree with the views Regius expressed in his initial draft on the relation of mind and body, the nature of ideas, and the idea of God. Despite the fact that in the published version (Fundamenta physices [1646]), Regius made some alterations and in the preface declared that, although admiring Descartes and being inspired by him, he alone was responsible for the ideas expressed in the book, Descartes publicly dissociated from him in the preface to the French translation of the Principia (1647). He declared that, “as far as physics and medicine are concerned, it appears that everything [Regius] writes was taken from my writings.” However, because Regius “had copied inaccurately and changed the order and denied certain truths of metaphysics,” Descartes felt “obliged to disavow this work entirely” and “beg [his] readers never to attribute to [him] any opinion they do not find explicitly stated in [his] writings” (AT IXB 19–20, CSM I 189). In reaction to this one of Regius's students, Petrus Wassenaer (d. 1680), added twenty-one corollaries extracted from the Fundamenta Physices (ch. 12, “On Man”). These were to be publicly defended in October 1647 under the supervision of Regius. Moreover, in corollaries 2–3 and 14–15 he also restored the claims Regius had suppressed to humor Descartes concerning the relation between mind and body and the idea of God (AT IV 241–42; AT IV 248–50, CSMK 254–55). Two days before the public defense of Wassenaer's disputation, it was prohibited by the professors of Utrecht University, not only because twelve of the corollaries gave offense, but also because Wassenaer (whose family members were Remonstrants) dedicated his disputation to a Remonstrant preacher. After an unsuccessful protest, Wassenaer published his corollaries separately in December as a leaflet (Programma). Whether he acted entirely on his own or in collusion with Regius is unclear.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2015

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References

Regius, Henricus. 1648. Brevis explicatio mentis humanae sive animae rationalis. Utrecht: Ackersdyck.Google Scholar
Revius, Jacobus. 1648. Abstersio macularum. Leiden.Google Scholar
Steuart, Adam. 1648. Notae in Notas Nobilissimi cujusdam Viri in ipsius Theses de Deo. Theopolis (actually Leiden).
Verbeek, Theo, ed. 1993. Descartes et Regius: Autour de l'Explication de l'esprit humain. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar

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