I was nominated for this award by tuttacronaca on 28 January 2013. “Versatile” is a word people have often used to describe me. I have taught many subjects. I therefore became a “versatile” teacher. As for my students, if I mentioned Montaigne and Montesquieu when teaching Pascal, they thought I was “jumping around.” I wasn’t. All three wrote about the relativity of laws.
I thank tuttacronaca most sincerely. He is an extremely versatile blogger. In fact so are most of my readers. They read my posts despite the diversity of subjects. Diversity was Jean de La Fontaine‘s motto.
Choosing nominees is not easy. For instance, two of my nominees for the Versatile Blogger could have been Sunshine award nominees. And two of my Sunshine Award nominees could have been Versatile Blogger nominees. But most of my Sunshine award nominees are versatile bloggers and vice versa.
Nominating a WordPress colleague for an award is a way of telling that colleague that I enjoy his or her posts. I simply wish I could have nominated more of my WordPress colleagues.
There are rules
I apologize. I forgot to provide the rules.
First, you must link back to me. You may do this by writing a comment when you receive this post.
Second, You must reveal seven facts about yourself.
In my opinion, we should pay more attention to the education of little children.
Facts are essential, but my main goal as a teacher was to encourage students to widen their horizon and see the many facets of subjects we were discussing.
Living in France had a permanent influence on the manner I dress, cook, live and think.
I have had fine friendships with exceptional men.
I fear extremists.
I am a pianist and an artist, which may demonstrate versatility.
My chief cause is peace.
I love you all.
composer: Joseph Haydn (31 March 1732 – 31 May 1809)
piece: Serenade
I was nominated for this award by tuttacronaca on 28 January 2013. “Versatile” is a word people have often used to describe me. I have taught many subjects. I therefore became a “versatile” teacher. As for my students, if I mentioned Montaigne and Montesquieu when teaching Pascal, they thought I was “jumping around.” I wasn’t. All three wrote about the relativity of laws.
I thank tuttacronaca most sincerely. He is an extremely versatile blogger. In fact so are most of my readers. They read my posts despite the diversity of subjects. Diversity was Jean de La Fontaine motto.
Choosing nominees is not easy. For instance, two of my nominees for the Versatile Blogger could have been Sunshine award nominees. And two of my Sunshine Award nominees could have been Versatile Blogger nominees. But most of my Sunshine award nominees are versatile bloggers and vice versa.
Nominating a WordPress colleague for an award is a way of telling that colleague that I enjoy his or her posts. I simply wish I could have nominated more of my WordPress colleagues.
In my opinion, we should pay more attention to the education of little children.
Facts are essential, but my main goal as a teacher was to encourage students to widen their horizon and see the many facets of subjects we were discussing.
Living in France had a permanent influence on the manner I dress, cook, live and think.
I have had fine friendships with exceptional men.
I fear extremists.
I am a pianist and an artist, which may demonstrate versatility.
My chief cause is peace.
I love you all.
composer: Joseph Haydn (31 March 1732 – 31 May 1809)
piece: Serenade
I believe I should write more on Jean Racine‘s Phèdre (1677).
In 1955 Jewish Romanian scholar Lucien Goldmann(1913, Romania – 1970, Paris) published a study of Pascal and Racine he entitled Le dieu caché; étude sur la vision tragique dans les Pensées de Pascal et dans le théâtre de Racine, Paris : Gallimard, 1955. The Hidden God; a study of the Tragic Vision in Pascal’s Penséesand in Racine’s Theater. The notion of a “hidden god” is an insightful description of Pascal’s Pensées and also constitutes a bold depiction of Racine’s Phèdre inability to help herself.
Phaedra is at the mercy of an unkind destiny and her depravity stems largely from her mother’s, Pasiphaë, bestiality. Pasiphaë sinned by engaging in sexual intercourse with a bull. Consequently, Phaedra and Ariadne are half sisters to the Minotaur, a zoomorphic monster, a monster combining human and animal characteristics. It is as though they were stained.
Yet Phèdre is the granddaughter of Helios, the Sun, the daughter of Minos, king of Crete and son of Zeus. So, despite her mother’s bestiality, one hopes that Phaedra will be redeemed by other and nobler ancestors, but her sense of guilt turns them into judges.
Phèdre’s inability to fight destiny is linked with Jansenism. The theological doctrine of Jansenism is often associated with philosopher, theologian and scientist Blaise Pascal (19 June 1623 – 19 August 1662), the author of the masterful Lettres provinciales, eighteen letters written under the pseudonym Louis de Montalte. Pascal was motivated to write Les Provinciales (1656-1657) when fellow Jansenist and friend Antoine Arnauld, from Port-Royal-des-Champs, was condemned by the Sorbonne‘s Faculty of Theology for views that were considered heretical.
But, although Pascal, a Jansenist, wrote Les Provinciales, as explained below, we are looking at a seventeenth-century revival, by Cornelius Jansen, of a doctrine rooted in the theology of Augustine of Hippo and which had a location, the convent of Port-Royal-des-Champs, near Paris.
Racine, the author of Phèdre, was educated at Port-Royal-des-Champs and had therefore been exposed to Jansenism. Jansenists believed in predestination and emphasized original sin, human depravity, the necessity of divine grace. (Jansenism, Wikipedia). So Phèdre is helpless. She says that “Le crime d’une mère est un pesantfardeau” (A mother’s crime is a heavy burden), a burden she fears her children will also bear (III, 3, 364) as one bears the original sin and as she bears her own mother’s depravity. Moreover, she is not rescued by divine grace (or efficacious grace). Phèdre’s god is a “hidden god.”
Augustine of Hippo and Cornelius Jansen
Jansenistic theology is rooted in the theology of St Augustine (354 – 386) or Augustine of Hippo. However, as indicated above, its “modern” father is Cornelius Jansen or Jansenius, (28 October 1585–6 May 1638), the Dutch Bishop of Ypres (Belgium). It did not spread beyond France and, to a very large extent, it was a reaction against Jesuit casuistry which, quite literally, allowed one to sin without sinning. (see Related blogs, at the foot of this post)
Pelagianism: a Heresy
The debate centered on the matter of grace and, by extension, on the topic of free will. An extreme and heretical view was that of Pelagius (c. 350 – c. 420). Pelagius believed that all Christians could be saved using their free will. This doctrine, called pelagianism was condemned because it negated the need for divine grace and also negated the original sin. It therefore had affinities with the laxity of seventeenth-century Jesuits.
Pelagius was opposed to Augustine of Hippo’s conviction that salvation was not possible without divine grace (called grâce efficace). Inextricably linked with Augustine’s teaching is the concept of predestination which limits a Christian’s ability to save himself. Jansenism took this view to an extreme replicating Augustine’s insistance that Christian salvation depends on divine grace.[i]
I will go no further on the above, as the entire debate gets too complicated. Simply expressed and put in a nutshell, Jansenism conveys a very pessimistic view of a Christian’s ability to determine his or her fate, which is at the heart of Phèdre’s despair. She views herself as the worst of sinners in a universe filled with gods who are her ancestors and will not help her. Again, her god is a hidden god.
In The Aristocrat as Art,[i] Domna Stanton states that “the quintessential prototype of the honnête homme was the Greek philosopher, the incarnation of virtue, of the golden mean, and the source of such fundamental notions as human sociability. It was only as eminently social beings, devoid of pedantry, that Greek philosophers earned the label honnête: ‘People can only imagine Plato and Aristotle in the long robes of pedants,’ protested Pascal.”
The Music Party (1738)
Jacques-André Portail
J. Paul Getty Museum
In seventeenth-century France, l’honnête homme practiced sprezzatura, art that did not seem to have been learned or “art thatdoes not seem to be art.” For instance, as François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac (15 September 1613 – 17 March 1680) wrote « L’honnête homme ne se pique de rien. » Maximes 203 (L’honnête homme [the courtier] does not boast about anything).[ii] We can therefore assume that, conversely, l’honnête homme is also capable of containing his anger: un peu de retenue (take it easy).
In this respect, Molière‘s Philinthe (Le Misanthrope) is the embodiment of honnêteté. Atcourt or in one of the salons of seventeenth-century France, hewould not tell a woman that she has applied too much makeup. This would be the truth, or what Alceste the misanthrope calls sincerety, but it would also be offensive. In such cases, the honnête homme practices a morally acceptable form of mental reservation, so as not to hurt another human being, in which he is behaving according not only to the dictates of honnêteté, but also according to a moral or ethical code. « Le style c’est l’homme même. » (Georges-Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon)
There can therefore be communion between galant behaviour and the respect due every human being, whatever his or her place in society. It is called charity and there cannot be grace, grazia,sprezzatura, honnêté, where there is no charity or compassion. In seventeenth-century France, deceptive appearances, Pascal’s puissances trompeuses, were considered the greatest of ills and, perhaps, the greatest. It remains however that honnêteté, cannot be altogether superficial. One cannot play honnête homme no more than one can feign devotion.
In Molière’s Tartuffe, no one is fooled by the falsely devout Tartuffe, except Orgon, a pater familias who needs to be tyrannical with impunity and his mother. Everyone else knows that Tartuffe is a faux-dévot except Orgon who needs a casuiste under his roof so he can sin with impunity while Tartuffe eats heartily and coveits his wife. He tells her that he knows how to lift scruples; that if she fears offending God (le Ciel), this is an obstacle he can remove. (IV.5)
If every member of Orgon’s family, other than Orgon himself, can detect hypocrisy where hypocrisy there is, l’honnête homme will quickly see affectation in a would-be honnêtehomme, which would exclude this would-be honnête homme from the state of grace he would like to achieve. Grace has to be natural or internalized in the manner most of us internalize what we are taught as children. L’honnête homme is an honest man and among his virtues, we find a sense of justice and the realization that one has duties or obligations.
“In Book II, Quintilian sides with Plato’s assertion in the Phaedrus that the rhetorician must be just: ‘In the Phaedrus, Plato makes it even clearer that the complete attainment of this art is even impossible without the knowledge of justice,’ an opinion in which I heartily concur.” (Quintilian 2.15.29, quoted in Wikipedia)
Castiglione had also read Cicero‘s (January 3, 106 BC – December 7, 43 BC) recently translated (1511) De Officiis (On Duties or On Obligations). According to Cicero, our courtier has duties or obligations.
Noble Birth and sprezzatura: inneism (adjective: innate)
In Italy, the common belief was that the courtier had to be an aristocrat. Yet Castiglione notes that, at least to a degree, honnêteté could be innate, but that one could also be innately incapable of honnêteté:
Truth it is, whether it be through the favour of the starres or of nature, some there are borne endowed wyth suche graces, that they seeme not to have bene borne, but rather facioned with the verye hand of some God, and abounde in all goodnesse bothe of bodye and mynde. As againe we see some so unapte and dull, that a man wyl not beleve, but nature hath brought them into the worlde for a spite and mockerie. (First Book of The Book of the Courtier)[iii]
Consequently, noble birth did not guarantee sprezzatura. It is altogether possible to be “borne endowed wyth suche graces” just as it was entirely possible for nature to deny an individual the possibility to acquire sprezzatura. “As againe we see some so unapte and dull, that a man wyl not beleve, but nature hath brought them into the worlde for a spite and mockerie.” (quoted above)
Seventeenth-Century French salons
In this respect, it should be noted that one of the goals of French seventeenth-century salons, before and after runaway préciosité, consisted in teaching aristocrats good manners. One does not clean one’s teeth at table using a hunting knife as a toothpick. Many aristocrats were soldiers whose manners left a great deal to be desired.
In fact, when Catherine de Rambouillet, “l’incomparable Arthénice (an anagram of Catherine),” (1588 [Rome] – 2 December 1665), opened her salon, rue Saint-Thomas- du-Louvre (between the Louvre, the King’s castle before Versailles was built, and the Tuileries), she provided a meeting-place for individuals who wanted to be in refined surroundings and speak well. Court had yet to be courtly. For instance, Marie de’ Medici, Henri IV’s wife, was not the sort of person well-mannered individuals would invite to dinner. For one thing, she spoke atrocious French.
So both aristocrats and bourgeois found their way to la chambre blue d’Arthénice, Madame de Rambouillet’s blue room, and mingled with one another. Pascal, La Fontaine, Charles Perrault, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, etc. were honnêtes hommes, but notaristocrats. There is an aristocracy above aristocracy: an aristocracy of the mind and of the soul.
Speech: l’Âge de l’éloquence
Speaking well, éloquence, was central to honnêteté.[iv] Quintilian (c. 35 – c. 100) was the author of Institutio oratoria (95 CE) and Marcus Tullius Cicero(106 BC – 43 BC) De Oratore (55 BCE). L’honnête homme, practiced contenance, réserve, retenue, discrétion, sagesse, modération, but above all he spoke and wrote well. Buffon was elected to the Académie Française (1753) mostly one the basis of his Discours sur le style(“Discourse on Style”), which he had pronounced before the Académie Française. Let us hear him speak about writing: “Writing well consists of thinking, feeling and expressing well, of clarity of mind, soul and taste …. The style is the man himself” (“Le style c’est l’homme même”). Buffon had detractors, but if one cannot express a thought, does the thought exist… Thoughts have to be formulated.
Richelieu and the French Academy
It is in no way surprising that the first French academy was l’Académie française, established in 1635 by leCardinal Richelieu. The French Academy, the first of the five academies, ruled over matters pertaining to language. Richelieu could not let language be didacted by salonniers and salonnières, people who attended seventeenth-century Salons (see Catherine de Rambouillet), where Préciosité flourished. A calamity!
that sprezzatura went beneath the surface. If the courtier had put on an act, everyone would have known and he would have fallen from grace, so to speak.
I also wish to state that some people had the ability to learn grace, honnêteté, sprezzatura, while others didn’t: nature played a role);
that one’s aristocratic lineage did not guarantee the possibility of attaining elegance and sociability, i.e. some aristocrats were rotten apples from, perhaps, the moment of conception;
that, conversely, as the French believed, a bourgeois could become an honnête homme,honnêteté being independent of lineage;
that humanitas and virtus are linked to honnêteté;
that the good orator (language) was an honnête homme;
that nonchalance (the term is misleading) is a form of reserve, retenue and often appropriately-applied restriction mentale, as mentioned above;
that the idea of courtly behaviour evolved as it travelled from Italy to its various destinations, and, finally,
that courtly behaviour predates The Book of the Courtier. It belongs to a tradition. It is chevaleresque behaviour: chivalry and it dates back to Græco-Roman Antiquity.
I will therefore close quoting, once again, Wikipedia’s entry on Baldassare Castiglione.
[t]he perfect gentleman had to win the respect and friendship of his peers and of a ruler, i.e., be a courtier, so as to be able to offer valuable assistance and advice on how to rule the city. To do this, he must be accomplished—in sports, telling jokes, fighting, poetry, music, drawing, and dancing—but not too much. To his moral elegance (his personal goodness) must be added the spiritual elegance conferred by familiarity with good literature (i.e., the humanities, including history). He must excel in all without apparent effort and make everything look easy.
_________________________
[i]Domna C. Stanton, The Aristocrat as Art (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), p. 14.
People seek comfort in times of turmoil. The fine arts and music are refuges. So is literature, but in a less immediate manner.
As for Pascal, he knew that all was not well in seventeenth-century France, but he advocated remedial measures that would not cause a bloodshed. So he calls peace a « souverain bien », or sovereign good. Pascal’s Pensées, werepublished posthumeously from liasses: little bundles of paper neatly tied up. So there are different classifications: Léon Brunschvicg, Louis Lafuma, Philippe Sellier (probably the most accurate). They have been translated into English and they can be read online: a Project Gutenberg achievement. Click on Blaise Pascal. To read the Pensées in French, click on Blaise Pascal Pensées
Finally, the news report tells part of the story that generated my first two vignettes and it trivializes the demands of Quebec students who are mere pawns in these events. Obviously, the indépendantistes have little to criticize, not to mention that they are the ones who have created the current difficulties in order to rule and secede from the rest of Canada.
The Cost of Duplicating Services
In Quebec, citizens pay higher taxes: 15% of their taxable income. Outside Quebec, citizens pay 10% of their taxable income. The reason for this discrepancy is the duplication of services offered by the Government of Canada. This, I cannot understand.
Students have been on strike because of a small increase in tuition fees, which shows that someone is behind all this, Pauline Marois. This I know and so do others. She is the leader of the indépendantiste movement. Further negotiations will take place, but a small raise in tuition fees is not central to what is happening and it does not justify releasing harmful fumes into the Montreal subway system. Some students have been slightly injured.
I went to Pauline Marois‘s Facebook site. One woman reported that she had seen policemen entering a subway station with dogs. She used this as an example of police brutality. To my knowledge, it is customary to use dogs to tell the origin of a fire, but in this case, they were sniffing to determine where the fumes were released. This is normal police procedure. Dogs are the experts in such cases. I just hope the police is not pushed into brutal acts.
The indépendantistes are saying that they want to be masters in their own home, « maîtres chez nous, » where they would bea French-speaking majority and, at the moment, they are using the students. But many students, including anglophone students, think that they are opposing a raise in tuition fees. They cannot see that they are being used by a political party, the indépendantistes.
* * *
So, we will continue to examine the history of this country, but I also need to write posts about artists and thinkers who have left a permanent legacy. The internet is a good tool for diffusing knowledge.
Updates on the three-month old strike are available if you click on the links. The government is still negotiating with the students so figures keep changing.
The artist, Dutch artist Willem Roelofs, was Mesdag’s teacher, but he joined members of the Hague School. Very fine paintings were produced by members of the Hague School.
In hisPensées, Frenchmathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and CatholicphilosopherBlaise Pascal(1623 – 1662), noted that we were mere reeds but thinking reeds (le roseau pensant), which gave us nobility. Pascal also discussed society pointing out, especially, that humans were easily fooled by appearances and he stated that « Le plus grand des maux est les guerres civiles » or “Civil wars are the greatest of evils.”
Pascal, had witnessed the Fronde (1648 – 1653) which was a twofold revolt. On the one hand, we had the people who wanted a parliament, la Fronde parlementaire. But, on the other hand, the highest of aristocrats: dukes and princes, hungered for power they were denied. This was called la Fronde des princes (1651 – 1653).
This rebellion, the Fronde, occurred when Louis XIV (1638 – 1715) was a child. Louis XIV was five when Louis XIII died (1643). Louis XIV ascended the throne in 1661, when Mazarin died. Mazarin (1602 – 1661), was Richelieu‘s (1585 – 1642) successor. Both were chief ministers who, in fact, ruled France.
At any rate, Pascal had seen social unrest and it had been a painful experience.
So yesterday, when I wrote disapprovingly about fumes being released into Montreal’s subway system, I thought of Pascal and reflected that it would be lovely if people pursued a common purpose: creating a peaceful world where everyone would be treated with dignity.
iRREsPONSIBLE POLITICIANS using students
According to a CTV news report, tuition fees would be increased by $325.00 a year over the next five years. At the moment, in Quebec, full-time students pay $2,415.00 a year. Five years from now, in 2017, they will pay $3,793.00 if the premier, Monsieur Jean Charest, succeeds in increasing university tuition fees which, even if he succeeds, would still be the lowest in Canada. In Antigonish, Nova Scotia, at the university where I taught, StFX, tuition fees are currently $6,205.12 a year. It would seem that indépendantiste leader Pauline Marois needs martyrs and that they are difficult to find.
So these are my three little vignettes for the day.
In my last post, I quoted Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (26 April 121 – 17 March 180 CE) concerning the manner in which a text can take a life of its own. But I have since thought that the quotation I used might be one of many ways to depict the process of discovery. If a text takes a life of its own and will not remain inside your plan, this is perhaps what happens to discoverers, persons who, like Steve Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011), can change the world forever, as did the ‘ideas’ of other scientists.
Only a little while, and Nature, the universal disposer, will change everything you see, and out of their substance will make fresh things [ideas], and yet again others [ideas] from theirs, to the perpetual renewing of the world’s youthfullness.
No wonder Steve Jobs left college to start working on “inventions.” His thinking had led to unexpected ‘ideas’ that could lead to inventions. What happened to Steve Jobs may have happened or may happen to other creative minds. He had an ‘idea’ and he used it to create extraordinary inventions and products.
In his Reflections on Geometry in General: On the Geometrical Mind and on the Art of Persuading, section II De l’Esprit géométrique et de l’art de persuader, section II (1657-1658), Blaise Pascal (June 19, 1623 – August 19, 1662), states that there are two entrances to the soul, “deux entrées par où les opinions sont reçues dans l’âme.” These two entrances are reason, or l’esprit de géométrie, and instinct, or l’esprit de finesse. Now instinct could be the element which, in a brilliant mind, leads to the ‘idea’ that leads to the invention. Steve Jobs produced the first user-friendly personal computer: the Macintosh.
Pascal’s father was a tax-farmer (tax collector) and spent a lot of time counting. So his son had an ‘idea’ that led to the invention of a mechanical calculator he called the pascaline. As well, Blaise was the first person to come up with the idea of public transportation. Public transportation was the carrosses à cinq sols, the short-lived five-penny carriages.
So I believe that when Pascal insisted that reason, esprit de géométrie, alone was an inadequate investigative tool without the support of instinct, or esprit de finesse, he may have added a precious dimension to the scientific method devised by Descartes, and that element would be intuition, or finesse, or instinct, or the above-mentioned ‘idea.’ The ‘idea’ would be the fountainhead of creation and invention, including practical inventions. We use Steve Jobs’s gadgets.
In no way do I intend to marginalize Descartes’s essential contribution to science, the formulation of the scientific method. On the contrary! Until René Descartes (31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650), experiments were not conducted methodically and scientists had to work within the Catholic Church’s narrow view of the world and, particularly, the Catholic Church’s view of the cosmos. Before undertaking a scientific investigation, Descartes took everything off the table (tabula rasa), but he left aside any mention of the ‘idea,’ seminal ‘ideas.’
However, in the second century, Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, wrote about “fresh things” leading to other “things.” At first, the creative or inventive mind may be thinking within the box, but there comes a point when thoughts, an ‘idea,’ takes the investigative mind well outside the box.
Pascal always combines instinct and reason (Thoughts, 112-344). For Pascal, the human mind was divided into instinct and reason. There is constant symmetry. Instinct may well be the ‘idea,’ or ‘ideas,’ leading to a “perpetual renewing of the world’s youthfullness.”
So let this be my tribute to the human mind and, particularly, to the mind of Steve Jobs.
Other than polite and witty conversation, the main activity of salonniers and salonnières was writing. They had been influenced by Giovanni Battista Guarini’s (1538-1612) IlPastor Fido (1590), a pastoral tragicomedy, and Honoré d’Urfé’s L’Astrée (1607-1628), a lengthy novel featuring shepherds and shepherdesses living in bucolic settings resembling Il Pastor Fido’s Arcadia.
Salonniers and salonnières wrote abundantly and love was their favourite topic. Among the books they wrote, we know about La Guirlande de Julie. It was a gift to Julie d’Angennes, Madame de Rambouillet’s daughter, and contained sixty-two madrigals each of which compared Julie to a flower. According to the rules of Préciosité, a movement born in Salons, women looked upon themselves as precious or précieuses. Moreover, Préciosité had banished unrefined behaviour, in general, and unrefined courtship, in particular. So the Duc de Montausier courted Julie d’Angennes for fourteen years before she consented to marry him.
Moreover, as we will now see, love was subjected to various rules. For instance, Madeleine de Scudéry (1607-1701) described the towns, villages and rivers of her Arcadia, called Tendre. A map of the pays de Tendre was actually designed. It was probably drawn by François Chauveau (1613-1676).
Madeleine de Scudéry (1607-1701) had been a member of l’Hôtel deRambouillet, the first famous salon of seventeenth-century France. But as the Marquise de Rambouillet grew older, salonniers and salonnières started to gather every Saturday at the home of Madeleine de Scudéry whose pseudonym was Sapho. Thus was born the Société du samedi (Saturday Society). It flourished during the second half of the seventeenth century, called le Grand Siècle (the Great Century), the age of Louis XIV (1638-1715), the Sun-King.
Sapho was surprisingly well educated and a prolific writer. Madeleine de Scudéry’s longest work is Artamène, ou le Grand Cyrus (10 vols., 1648–53), but la Carte de Tendre was featured in Clélie (10 vols., 1654–61).
Clearly outlined on the Carte de Tendre are three forms of love each depicted as towns on the side of three rivers: Inclinaison (inclination), Estime (esteem) and Reconnaissance (gratitude). So love had three forms: inclinaison, estime, reconnaissance. There were villages along the way, all of which were allegorical: Jolis-vers (lovely poems), Billet-doux (love letter) and others.
If lovers allowed themselves to enter untamed passion, they sailed on a dangerous sea, called Mer dangeureuse. However, if passions were restrained, love could be a source of happiness. Interestingly, although she had a gentleman-friend, Paul Pelisson, Mademoiselle de Scudéry never married.
As may be expected, Mademoiselle de Scudéry’s Carte de Tendre was satirized. In fact, Molière (1622-1673) wrote his first Parisian play on the Précieuses : Les Précieuses ridicules. By 1659, the Précieuses had much too high an opinion of themselves. Molière’s comedy was a blow to the movement, but it was a great success and Molière went on to bigger and better things, including a friendship with Louis XIV.
Passions were abundantly discussed in seventeenth-century France. Both Descartes and Pascal contributed a treatise on passion. Descartes wrote a treatise on the Passions de l’âme(The Passions of the Soul) and Pascal, a Discourse on the Passion of Love.
However, passionate love was never so dangerous than in Madame de La Fayette’s La Princesse deClèves (1678), a psychological novel in which love is viewed as a source of endless pain. It feeds on jealousy as does Phèdre’s love for Hippolyte. Interestingly, dramatist Jean Racine‘s (1639-1699) Phèdre, a tragedy first performed in 1678, the year Madame de La Fayette (1634-1693) published, anonymously, La Princesse de Clèves.
In his writings about the human condition, LesPensées or Thoughts, French scientist, inventor and philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), positioned mankind between the infinitely large and the infinitely small (Pensées, 199-72*). He wrote that compared to the universe, humans are infinitely small. However, compared to a microscopic mite he called un ciron, humans are infinitely large.
Infinity is a central concept in Pascal’s Weltanschauung or world view. One of his Pensées, perhaps the most poetical, expresses fear of the infinite. He writes that “[he] fears the eternal silence of space infinite” (my translation): “Le silence éternel de ces espaces infinis m’effraie” (201-206).
That Pascal should have been in awe of space infinite is not altogether surprising. The main discovery of the Renaissance, the sixteenth century mainly, may well have been planet Earth’s place in the Universe. Until Copernicus (1473-1543), possibly earlier, planet Earth was looked upon as the centre of the Universe.
But Copernicus placed the Sun at the centre of the universe, a concept called heliocentrism. Later, Galileo Galilei (1564-1652) also observed that the Earth revolved around the Sun. Such was not the thinking of the Church, so Galileo had to recant on his observation for fear of facing an untimely and painful death.
Although Pascal was a scientist, the Pensées have little to do with science. They have a spiritual dimension. In this regard, Pascal’s thoughts on the two infinites resemble his definition of man’s duality. Although humans are mortals, misère, they can think and know, therefore, they are miserable. We are mere reeds, but we think: le roseau pensant (the thinking reed). Hence our grandeur or nobility.The fact that humans know they are mortals constitute a redeeming feature. We are neither beasts nor angels.
I have already spoken of Pascal’s symmetrical thinking: la misère/la grandeur and must note it again. Pascal discussed our duality, the humaine condition and also does it in his cosmology, thereby giving us, once again, a redeeming half. Without the infinitely small, the infinitely large would engulf humankind. So, as I used to tell my students, it was nice of Pascal to bring us back, and down, to Earth.
However, I regret the fact that we did not devote sufficient time to the infinites. We associate relativity with Einstein, but long before Einstein relativity was also a humanistic concept. Pascal’s two infinites are a most eloquent expression of relativity. For instance, not unlike Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), Pascal states that what is an error on one side of the Pyrenees, is truth on the other side of same Pyrenees: “Vérité au-deça [this side] des Pyrénées, erreur au-delà.”
This is the case with justice and jurisprudence. An act may legal in one land and illegal in another land. So there is arbitrariness about justice, a thought which led to Montesquieu’s (1689-1755) De l’Esprit des Lois (The Spirit [as opposed to the letter] of the Laws). Montesquieu will be discussed in a future blog.
For the time being, all I wish to reflect on is that as Christopher Colombus sailed towards India, Galileo and Pascal were exploring space and Montaigne and Pascal were pondering relativity
Seventeenth-century French writer and scientist Pascal (Blaise Pascal, 1623-1662) described the human condition as both misère (pitiful,vulnerable, weak, poor) and grandeur (dignity, nobility).
It was Pascal’s view that human beings were repeatedly being deceived by “puissances trompeuses” (deceitful, misleading powers), such as vanity, imagination, self-interest, and other influences that prevented self-scrutiny and, therefore, debased human beings. Those were the reasons why humans were misérables. Moreover, to make matters worse, humans sought frivolous entertainment instead of thinking and coming to terms with their dual condition.
Fortunately, although Pascal considered human beings not only as misérables but also as fragile, as fragile as fabulist La Fontaine’s (1621-1695) humble reed (“The Oak Tree and the Reed”), he granted them superiority over beasts by making his roseau“un roseau pensant,” or “a thinking reed”(Pensées [Thoughts] 113-348).
In this respect, he expressed himself beautifully. “La grandeur de l’homme est grande en ce qu’il se connaît misérable; unarbre ne se connaît pas misérable.” Humans have nobility, or grandeur, in that they at least “know they are miserable,” to which he added that “a tree does not know it is miserable,” (Pensées, 114-397) with the notable exception of La Fontaine’s previously-mentioned boastful but unbending oak tree, felled by a powerful wind.
Has anything changed in our contemporary society?
We still have “puissances trompeuses.” Given most of their recent statements, Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, Ann Coulter and Arianna Huffington might indeed be looked upon as “deceitful powers.” When Ann Coulter was not allowed to speak at the University of Ottawa, for security reasons, she commented that she “was guessing the scores to get into the University of Ottawa are not very challenging.” (Stephen Chase, The Globe and Mail, Tuesday March 23rd, 2010)
Civil libertarians protested, but there was a very real possibility of violence. “The move [to cancel the address] followed boisterous demonstrations outside that sponsors of the appearance feared could turn violent,” (Stephen Chase, TheGlobe and Mail), which justified Ann Coulter’s not being allowed to give an address. There is freedom of speech in Canada, but there exist inappropriate speeches. Responsible parents protect children from exposure to hateful discourse and to discrimination towards minorities, such as the disabled and homosexuals. Responsible parents also protect their children from discrimination against coloured individuals and from depictions of violence.
Besides, as French poet, novelist (Les Enfants terribles, 1946), illustrator, artist, playwright and filmmaker (Beauty and theBeast, 1929) Jean Cocteau (1889-1963) put it, “[t]ack in audacity is knowing just how far one can go too far.” “Le tact dansl’audace c’est de savoir jusqu’où on peut aller trop loin.” As the Greeks taught us, there are limits to everything, including freedom of speech. They spoke of moderation. We also know that the end does not, of necessity, always justify the means and that when means are unacceptable, they become an end in themselves, an unacceptable end.
In other words, since, in April 2008, Ann Coulter allowed herself to describe Barack Obama’s book Dreams From My Father as a “Dimestore Mein Kampf,” thereby comparing the future president with Hitler, it was quite legitimate on the part of University of Ottawa and Ottawa city officials to fear that Ann Coulter may create a violent disturbance. There are laws against violent disturbances in Canada and, I should think, the United States. As well, her above-mentioned statement about the
future President of the United States was needlessly provocative. Untruths and offensive speeches have no place on public podiums in Canada, which, I believe, is also the case in the United States.
There was hope for Pascal’s fragile roseau. He could think. He was “un roseau pensant.” However, is redemption a possibility for persons who speak and write like Ann Coulter? Unlike the fragile reed, le roseau, it is unlikely that she indulges in any form of serious contemplation.
When godliness was distributed, little was apparently bestowed on such persons as Ann Coulter, Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin and Arianna Huffington. The afore-named ladies and their followers and rich sponsors are not about to grant godliness to the disinherited. They do not seem to care for the common man. If they cared for the people, Americans would have long ago had access to universal health-care and Republicans and Tea Party members would be supporting the creation of more social programs as well as job creation projects. These individuals should cease whining about preserving their unnecessary and underserved tax cuts for the rich. And they should also rally behind people who are protecting the environment. As things stand, these people are eating their children’s bread.
Ann Coulter is seemingly an educated person, but it would appear her education was not put to good use. When disorder enters the debate, it is best to end it. Even in a world where relativity has gained considerable ground, there is still a right and wrong. Look at sports where we find an abundance of rules. All games have rules.
But let me reassure you. It could be that the afore-named persons’ private Hell will be in the here and now. As Sartre put it: “L’enfer, c’est les autres” (others are hell). Well, do consider that there are plenty of others. Moreover, we always stand a second away from catastrophes of all kinds and death, despite the grandeur granted us as Pascal’s roseau pensant. In this regard, all of us are the same. Humans are mortals who know they are mortals. This is the human condition. However, thinking does not preclude enjoying our journey into infinity.
P.S. Pascal’s Pensées were not assembled during his short lifetime. He bundled them up. They were in liasses (tied bundles). The numbers I have used correspond to two of three classifications. The first is Louis Lafuma’s and the second, Léon Brunschvicg (in italics).
I was nominated for this award by tuttacronaca on 28 January 2013. “Versatile” is a word people have often used to describe me. I have taught many subjects. I therefore became a “versatile” teacher. As for my students, if I mentioned Montaigne and Montesquieu when teaching Pascal, they thought I was “jumping around.” I wasn’t. All three wrote about the relativity of laws.
Sprezzatura
