Inventaire de la correspondance d'André Rivet (1595-1650) (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 119 alienated, as a result of their doctrines, a large segment of the Islamic community. As a matter of fact the mu'tazilites were branded as infidels by the community. The remainder of the book, i.e. chapters 4, 5, and 6, are respectively devoted to the expected deliverer, the emphasis on struggle (jihad) and the friends of god. The essays concerning the expected deliverer and the friends of god are philosophically uninteresting, except I should add for some of the editor's commentaries. However the essays on struggle are illuminating, for they attempt to clear some of the standard misconceptions about the use of the term "jih~d," which is usually translated into English as "holy war." No doubt the early Muslims did engage in holy wars. The underlying justification for waging such a war was primarily for self-defense and secondarily for strengthening Islam. However the modern interpretation of fihad is in striking contrast to the traditional one. A modern writer expresses it as: It (jih~d) denotes a state of mind in which after undergoing sufferings, a man is forced to resort in self-defense to measures not necessarily warlike. In daily life we find people saying that they wish to carry on a ]ihad against drinking and smoking or against foreign goods. But this does not mean that they intend making a war on anybody.... It [i.e. fih~d] is an institution which enjoins on every Muslim to sacrifice his all for the protection of the weak and oppressed. He is duty bound to see that oppression and injustice, in whatever form, are stopped. (p. 300) As I indicated earlier this book is unlike many others dealing with Islamic civilization . What is needed now is for Western philosophers to start seriously entertaining some of the philosophical themes in the intellectual development of Islam. This is indeed a neglected area; hopefully then Themes o[ Islamic Civilization could be a starting point for some of us in philosophy. ROBERT ELIAS ABU SHANAB The Florida Stale University, Tallahassee Inventaire de la correspondance d'Andrd Rivet (1595-1650). By Paul Dibon. (La Haye: Nijhoff, 1971. xxiii and 406 pp., FI. 90) The French protestant A. Rivet (1572-1651), a confidant of La Tr6moille and of Duplessis-Mornay, was appointed professor of theology at Leyden University in 1620, immediately after the Dordrecht Synod. In 1632 he was appointed tutor to the Prince of Orange, the future William II, and was an advisor to the Stathouder FredericHenry . He maintained a lively correspondence with more than 450 personalities in the learned world, without regard to religion or nationality. Notable among his correspondents are Louis Cappel, Valentin Conrart, Jean Daille, Samuel Desmarets, Charles Drelincourt, Paul Ferry, Pierre Gouhier, J. F. Gronovius, C. Huygens, J.-M. de Langle, Antoine L~ger, Mersenne, Andr~ Pineau, Abraham Rambour, Guillaume Rivet (his brother), Claude de Saumaise, Philippe Vincent, G.-J. Vossius, David Willem. The correspondence, starting in 1595, includes about 4,350 letters, of which only 480 have hitherto been published. Topics of the correspondence are recently published books, diplomatic, political, and military events, ideological disputes, etc. Through his connections , Rivet received a considerable amount of qualified and, frequently confidential information, and this is an invaluable source for the study of the intellectual and political history of his time. Rivet published about sixty books, sermons, and pamphlets, in Latin and in French, mostly on theological subjects. The most important were collected in his 120 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Opera theologica quae latine edidit, 3 vols. (Roterodami, 1651-1660). His religious polemics with Amyrault and Grofius were famous. Paul Dibon, professor at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, is the most prominent contemporary historian of seventeenth-century Dutch philosophy and intellectual life; he is perfectly aware of the fact that genuine history can only be founded on solid erudition, and this inventory is a first-class contribution to it. Only those who ignore the difficulties of this kind of research will underestimate the enormous effort it involves--an effort which is, much more than a pedantic and mechanical listing of data, a kind of venatio, requiring a continuous alertness, a surprising amount of imagination and intelligence, a...