The Great Arnauld and Some of His Philosophical Correspondents (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 461 Edwin Curley's "Notes on a Neglected Masterpiece: Spinoza and the Science of Hermeneutics" takes as its starting point Savan's claim that Spinoza is the "founder of scientific hermeneutics." Rejccting the most extreme interpretation of this claim--i.e., that Spinoza created scientific hermeneutics ex nihilo--Curlcy carefully compares Spinoza 's contributions to Biblical criticism with those of Hobbes and Isaac La Peyr~re, and concludes that Spinoza's work possesses, in addition to a generally higher level of hermeneutical rigor, something quite specific that they do not--namely, "a well worked-out theory of what is required for the interpretation of a text." This theory demands that we begin by applying to textual interpretation the Cartesian strategy of "removing all prejudices" and preconceptions; doing so allows us to interpret a text such as the Bible in the light of a "natural history," drawn from the resources of the text itself. Curley's essay is essential reading for anyone interested in hermencutics, Biblical criticism, Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus,or Spinoza's general philosophy of science. Manfred Walthcr's related essay focuses more narrowly on a case in which the Tractatus Theologico-Politicusappears to violate its own requirement that scripture be interpreted through scripture itself. That case is the treatment of miracles, the Biblical reports of which Spinoza seems to discount on external and rationalistic, rather than internal and hermeneutical, grounds. Walther argues convincingly that Spinoza recognized this potential problem, and that the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus provides a sophisticated defcnse against the charge of methodological inconsistency. It does so by arguing that a distinction between the intended messagc of scripture and the world-view through which it is reported is implicit in scripture itself. Curley's and Walther's essays taken alone arc more than enough to justify the volume. Curley and Savan have both, in different ways and to different extents, emphasized Spinoza's relative empiricism. Laura Byrne's essay opposes Winnifred Tomm's feminist reading of Spinoza's ethics as an ethics of receptivity, a reading that both Byrne and Savan see as related to Savan's empiricist interpretation of Spinoza's epistemology. Douglas Odegard rightly construes Spinoza as an "internalist" in epistemology--i.e., as holding that a true idea provides its own internal reason for accepting it, without any need to satisfy an external criterion of truth--and argues that Spinoza's internalist response to Cartesian scepticism ultimately fails nevertheless. Dan Nesher provides an elaborate "reconstruction" of Spinoza's theory of truth with the aim of showing that it is akin to Peirce's "pragmatist" theory of cognition and truth. The essays in this volume, taken together, constitute an enduring contribution to the interpretation of Spinoza and a fitting tribute to the enduring memory of David Savan. DON GARRETT Universityof Utah Elmar J. Kremer, editor. The GreatArnauld and Some of His PhilosophicalCorrespondents. University of Toronto Press, 1994. Pp. viii + ~49. Cloth, $65.oo. This collection of essays will be useful to those wishing an introduction to the philosophical thought of Antoine Arnauld, and it will be of considerable interest to experts 46~ JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 34:3 JULY 1996 in Cartesian philosophy. It is based on a conference held in 199o, but does not suffer from this circumstance since it is well produced and edited, and is for the most part still up to date. Arnauld is perhaps best known to philosophers as an incisive critic. Descartes especially valued his "fourth set" of objections to the Meditations, and the extensive correspondence between Leibniz and Arnauld is very important for understanding the former's thought during the years 1686-90. Arnauld also gets some notice for the Port-Royal Logic, which had considerable influence on the development of logic and the philosophy of language. These more familiar aspects of Arnauld's philosophy are covered in essays by Jill Vance Buroker ("Judgment and Prediction in the Port-Royal Logic"), Fred Wilson ("The Rationalist Response to Aristotle in Descartes and Arnauld"), Graeme Hunter ("The Phantom of Jansenism in the Arnauld-Leibniz Correspondence"), and JeanClaude Pariente ("The Problem of Pain: A Misunderstanding between Arnauld and Leibniz"). Arnauld's important contributions to the theory...