0:22

Hi, I'm Peter Adamson and you're listening to the

0:24

History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with the

0:26

support of the Philosophy Department at King's College London

0:28

and the LMU in Munich, online

0:31

at historyofphilosophy.net. Today's

0:33

episode, Band of Brothers,

0:35

the Jesuits. Trivia

0:39

question time. What do the philosophers

0:42

René Descartes, Voltaire, Le Marquis de

0:44

Condorcet, Denis Diderot, Jean-Baptiste Wickeau

0:47

and Michel Foucault all have in

0:49

common? It would

0:51

be a hard question if you didn't already

0:53

know the title of this episode, but thanks

0:55

to that hint, perhaps you've already guessed the

0:57

right answer, namely that they all attended educational

0:59

institutions run by the Jesuits. The

1:02

founding of schools was not part of the

1:04

initial plan when Ignatius of Loyola and a

1:06

handful of followers started the order, but it

1:08

soon became central to their mission. The

1:11

first college was founded in Messina in 1548,

1:14

with the Roman College following soon

1:16

after. Over the next couple of

1:18

centuries, more than 800 schools would be

1:20

founded all over the world, especially in Europe,

1:22

of course, but also in the Americas and

1:24

Asia. One of them

1:27

was the Collège of La Flèche, where Descartes

1:29

began his studies at the tender age of

1:31

ten and remained for almost a decade. In

1:34

other words, his most formative years were spent studying

1:36

with the Jesuits. He cut

1:38

his teeth on Jesuit authors of the

1:41

Counter-Reformation period, like Francisco de Toledo, Pedro

1:43

de Fonseca, and the Aristotelian commentators of

1:45

the Portuguese city of Coimbra. We

1:48

think of Descartes as a pivotal figure who

1:51

broke with the philosophy of the past and

1:53

in his Discourse on the Method, he did

1:55

complain about the conservative education he had received

1:57

from the Jesuits. Yet in a

1:59

letter, he recommended La Flesche as the best

2:01

place on Earth to study philosophy. He

2:04

also asserted the compatibility of his own

2:06

thought with the theological commitments of the

2:08

Jesuits, stating that his own philosophy was,

2:10

not new, but the oldest and most

2:12

common of all, and in agreement with

2:14

the principle of Aristotle. Which sounds

2:16

pretty Jesuit to me. In

2:18

fact, I can't help being struck by a

2:21

parallel between Ignatius of Loyola's writings and the

2:23

most famous work of Descartes, which is of

2:25

course his Meditations. That treatise

2:27

is a paradigm of rationalist philosophy, in which

2:30

even our most basic assumptions and beliefs are

2:32

subjected to radical doubt, only to be restored

2:34

through a sequence of arguments that begins with,

2:36

I think therefore I am, and ends by

2:39

confirming our confidence in the reality of the

2:41

external world. Loyola never

2:43

wrote anything like this, but his writings

2:46

do encourage an inward turn, an

2:48

attempt to discover truth in the private recesses

2:50

of the individual mind. Since

2:53

then, Jesuit intellectual culture links Descartes not

2:55

only to the Scholastics of 16th century

2:58

Iberia, but also to the religious literature

3:00

of that period, and the interiority that

3:03

characterized the writings of Teresa of Avila,

3:05

John of the Cross, and Loyola himself.

3:09

Like John, Loyola drew on both

3:11

scholasticism and spiritualism. He

3:13

had a thorough education in Aristotonian

3:15

philosophy, attending universities at Alcalá, Salamanca,

3:17

and Paris, from 1526 to 1535.

3:22

But a heartfelt spirituality was already part of

3:24

his thought too, going back to 1521, when

3:28

he read chivalric romances and religious texts

3:30

while recuperating from a war wound. This

3:33

turned him away from his previous path

3:35

as an aristocratic knight and towards becoming

3:37

a so-called soldier of Christ. If

3:40

that phrasing calls to mind Erasmus' Handbook

3:43

of the Christian Soldier, Loyola's

3:45

conversion experience has even more striking

3:47

parallels with Teresa of Avila, who

3:49

had a similar brush with death and

3:51

similar reading habits. The

3:53

results were similar too. Like

3:55

her, Loyola had mystical or at

3:57

least intense contemplative experiences. He

4:00

once told a colleague, I was a moment

4:02

ago higher than the sky, and

4:04

would claim that he had enjoyed visions that conveyed

4:06

to him directly all the truths about God to

4:08

be found in Scripture. As

4:11

Teresa would do, Loyola wrote about his

4:13

own life and offered detailed recommendations for

4:15

the religious life. Most

4:17

significant here are the spiritual exercises, the kind

4:20

of how to guide for those who want

4:22

to make progress in the faith. It's

4:24

more a text to be used than one to

4:27

be read, as it lays out steps for private

4:29

meditation and inward reflection, for example when

4:31

facing difficult choices like whether to commit to

4:33

a religious life over a world I want. In

4:37

fact, it may better be seen as

4:39

a teacher's manual insofar as the advice

4:41

would be useful for someone offering a

4:43

spiritual direction to someone else, as Teresa's

4:45

various confessors did with her. If

4:47

all goes well, the process will turn the

4:50

believer away from the created world and towards

4:52

God. Loyola goes

4:54

so far as to pray for the gift of hatred

4:56

against the world. Even in

4:58

more moderate moments, he sounds more

5:00

like an ancient Stoic, recommending that

5:02

we treat worldly things like wealth,

5:04

honor, or longevity as matters of

5:06

indifference. In other words, none

5:08

of these things should be desired more than others. All

5:11

that matters is obedience to the will of God.

5:15

Obedience was indeed one of the Jesuits' favorite words.

5:17

They were ostentatious in obeying not only

5:20

God, but also his representative on earth,

5:22

the Pope. All members

5:24

of the Order took a vow of obedience

5:26

to him and were enjoined to show as

5:28

little resistance to his instructions as a corpse

5:30

would. If the Church were

5:32

to say that what seems white is in fact

5:34

black, then a Jesuit should agree. This

5:37

attitude of deference justifies the traditional

5:40

association between the Jesuits and the

5:42

Counter-Reformation. As modern-day scholar

5:44

Silvia Mustaccio has put it, the

5:47

entire project of the Society as

5:49

Ignatius and his first companions envisioned

5:51

it is built around the constitutive

5:53

tension between construction of the individual

5:55

conscience and obedience to superiors. Not

5:59

long after Loyola's death in 1556, he

6:02

was already being held as Catholicism's answer

6:04

to Martin Luther, and the

6:06

Jesuits were indeed furious opponents of the

6:08

Protestant movement. As the

6:10

Jesuit Diego Laines proclaimed, they would

6:12

fervently embrace all that the Lutherans

6:14

rejected, praying in the rosary, confessing their

6:17

sins, saying prayers for the dead,

6:19

and even respecting the indulgences issued

6:21

by the church. But

6:23

it would be an exaggeration to say that

6:25

the Jesuits were founded specifically to combat the

6:27

Reformation. Another historian of

6:29

the order, John O'Malley, has pointed out that

6:31

when the early group around Loyola took an

6:33

oath to undertake a ministry abroad in 1534,

6:35

they set their eyes on

6:39

Jerusalem, not Wittenberg. Actually,

6:42

the church hierarchy was at first suspicious

6:44

of Loyola. His mystical,

6:46

individualist, and interior approach to

6:48

spirituality reminded them uncomfortably of

6:50

the excesses of the alumbrados,

6:52

an association that Loyola vigorously

6:54

denied. Gradually, though, they

6:56

did receive the papacy's support. After

6:59

the order was approved in 1540, an initial restriction

7:02

was placed on a number of members, but this was

7:04

lifted in 1543. Two years later, they

7:08

were freed from local oversight by bishops and put

7:10

directly under the authority of the pope.

7:12

By the time of Loyola's death, there were about 1,000 members.

7:14

By the end of the 16th

7:17

century, this would reach 5,000 and 22,000 at the height of the order

7:19

in 1640. The low point

7:23

would come in 1773, when

7:25

the papacy would ban the order in

7:28

response to widespread opposition to their political

7:30

influence, among other factors. But

7:32

you can't keep a good religious order down. The

7:35

Jesuits would be restored in 1814 and

7:37

get back to their worldwide program of

7:39

educating Christian youth. If

7:42

Loyola was, more or less literally, the

7:44

patron saint of this movement as a

7:46

whole, then the man who epitomized its

7:48

global aspect was Francis Xavier. He

7:51

opened up new territories for the order,

7:53

especially in Asia, setting the stage for

7:55

other Jesuit missionaries, like Mateo Ricci. Xavier

7:58

arrived in India in the U.S. In 1542, he

8:00

stopped in Kenya and Mozambique on the

8:02

way, but the Jesuits really got going

8:05

in Africa only later that decade. In

8:08

India, Xavier extracted permission for the building of

8:10

a church from the great Mughal emperor Akbar.

8:13

He then moved on to Japan and was

8:15

mightily impressed by what he found there, famously

8:17

remarking that these were the best of the

8:19

peoples yet discovered as the Europeans spread out

8:22

across the globe. A

8:24

similar assessment was provided by Jose de

8:26

Acosta, another intrepid Jesuit who crossed

8:28

the seas in the other direction. After

8:31

years of asking to be sent to the Americas, he

8:33

was finally allowed to go on mission there in 1571.

8:37

Like Bartolome de las Casas, he was convinced

8:39

that the Amerindians could be won over to

8:41

the true faith. Those

8:43

who had found them mentally inadequate were

8:46

themselves to blame since, for a bad

8:48

teacher, all disciples are stupid. Still,

8:50

he happily conceded that the stage of civilization

8:52

found in the Americas was far inferior to

8:54

that in Europe with the cultures of Asia

8:57

in the middle. He offered

8:59

an ingenious explanation for this supposed fact in

9:01

the context of trying to explain how human

9:03

beings had wound up living in the Americas

9:05

in the first place, given that all humans,

9:07

apart from the descendants of Noah, should have

9:09

been wiped out in the biblical flood. They

9:12

must, proposed Acosta, have come across a

9:15

land bridge from Asia. The

9:17

more advanced societies are those closer to

9:19

the cradle of humanity, with civilization having

9:21

degraded as it traveled from Europe and

9:24

the Middle East, across Asia and finally

9:26

to the Americas. But

9:28

for Acosta, this was good news when it came to

9:30

the Amerindians. Their inferiority was

9:32

simply a matter of socialization, not

9:35

an irreversible feature of their bodies or the

9:37

places where they live. As

9:39

Acosta put it, the incapacity of their

9:41

minds, the ferocity of their customs, does

9:43

not derive from natural inclination or from

9:45

the effect of climate so much as

9:47

from a prolonged education and customs like

9:50

those of the beast. After

9:53

the objectionable hierarchical thinking, this account

9:56

is remarkable for its naturalistic, one

9:58

might say scientific strategies. strategy of

10:00

explanation. And that fits

10:02

with Acosta's output more generally. He

10:05

wrote a natural and moral history of the

10:07

Indies, which we already discussed in episode 440.

10:09

There we

10:11

looked at him in the context of the

10:14

empirical research that went along with global exploration.

10:17

He is certainly part of that story, but no less

10:19

does he fit into the story of the Jesuits. His

10:22

history was intended to accompany his writings

10:24

on missionary work, and his approach to

10:26

nature came with pious caveats. It

10:29

is God who allows humankind to make

10:32

new discoveries when the time comes, the

10:34

prime example being the development of compass

10:36

technology, when it was foreordained that European

10:38

Christians should begin to spread their religion

10:40

to the new world. Reflecting

10:43

on contemporary attempts to explain the behavior of

10:45

the compass needle, which we looked at in

10:47

episode 435 on

10:49

magnetism, Acosta was skeptical. There

10:52

is not a philosopher or cosmographer who knows

10:54

it. As we saw,

10:57

Acosta did hope to find causal explanations,

10:59

and even criticized authors who didn't make

11:01

the effort to do so, but he

11:03

believed that human knowledge is severely limited

11:05

and achieved only when God sees fit.

11:09

More generally, it would be fair to say that

11:11

the Jesuits tended to be conservative when it came

11:13

to updating Aristotelian science in the light of new

11:16

findings. The Order's regulations

11:18

stipulated that at the colleges, the doctrine

11:20

of Aristotle should be followed in logic,

11:22

natural, and moral philosophy and metaphysics, as

11:25

also the other liberal arts. Though,

11:27

constructors should also warn students about Aristotelian teachings

11:29

that conflicted with those of the Church. One

11:33

member of the Order put the general policy this way,

11:36

one should not be drawn to new opinions,

11:38

that is, those which one has discovered, but

11:40

one should adhere to the old and generally

11:42

accepted opinions. Particularly

11:44

well known is the Order's rejection of

11:47

the new Copernican astronomy, which seems

11:49

to go hand in hand with the Church's condemnation of

11:51

that theory in 1616. But, before

11:54

we give the Jesuits too hard a time about this,

11:57

we should bear in mind that it took a long

11:59

while for astronomer around Europe, of all

12:01

religious denominations, to warm up to

12:03

the heliocentric system. Nor

12:06

were Jesuits simply uninterested in heliocentrism

12:08

or incapable of engaging with it

12:10

scientifically. Exploiting their far-flung

12:12

network of missions, they made astronomical

12:15

observations on a global scale, for

12:17

example when they recorded the sighting of the same comet in

12:19

1618 all over the

12:21

world, including in India, Vietnam, and

12:24

China. Rather than adhering

12:26

to the ancient system of Aristotle and Ptolemy,

12:28

with the Earth in the center being orbited

12:30

by the visible heavenly bodies, some Jesuits agreed

12:33

with the theory of Tycho Brahe. As

12:35

you'll remember, Brahe had the Earth unmoving and

12:38

the Sun going around it, with some planets

12:40

then moving around the Sun. The

12:43

Jesuit, Gistroforo Borgi, even accepted the

12:45

idea of fluid heaven, which

12:47

as we saw was postulated to explain how

12:49

comets could move unimpeded through the realm of

12:52

the planets. Here,

12:54

though, he was the exception that proved

12:56

the Jesuits' conservative roles, since

12:58

after this daring assertion, he was disciplined by

13:00

the order and sent packing to Asia. When

13:04

it came to pure mathematics, the Jesuits were

13:06

somewhat more innovative. The leading

13:09

figure here is Christopher Clavius, who

13:11

established his name by working on

13:13

reform of the calendar, something that

13:15

of course involved considerable astronomical competence.

13:18

Clavius taught at Rome and set up an

13:20

academy there for the study of mathematics. In

13:23

the usual mode of humanizing scholasticism,

13:25

they commented on classical texts but

13:28

also produced textbooks for the various

13:30

mathematical sub-disciplines. What Clavius

13:32

did not do, or not much

13:34

at least, was to investigate applied

13:36

mathematical arts like mechanics. This

13:39

may have been due to methodological

13:41

scruples, he saw mathematics as a

13:43

study of purely abstract quantities, not

13:45

of quantities as realized in concrete

13:47

things like falling bodies or projectiles.

13:51

This makes for an obvious contrast with

13:53

Galileo, who did such pioneering work on

13:55

floating and falling bodies. Yet

13:57

it has also been argued that Galileo's early

14:00

writings, especially some notebooks which were not

14:02

published at the time, show the

14:04

impact of lectures he attended in Pisa,

14:06

which were given by Jesuits. So

14:09

the Jesuits were unlike the posture of your

14:11

average teenage boy, no slouches when it came

14:13

to science. But it was in

14:16

ethics that they made their most indelible mark on

14:18

the history of philosophy. I

14:20

have in mind the controversial doctrine called

14:22

mental reservation. It was

14:24

an idea they developed while pursuing the

14:26

practice you may associate with the Jesuits

14:28

more than anything else, namely, casuistry. As

14:31

the name implies, casuistry is moral reasoning

14:33

about specific cases, which might often be

14:36

hypothetical but could have direct application as

14:38

when facing the moral quandaries that could

14:40

arise in the context of taking confession.

14:44

Books were written to offer guidance in

14:46

such matters, like Francisco de Toledo's instruction

14:48

for priests, and Jesuit Confessors

14:50

were advised to spend an hour a

14:52

day considering different cases and how they

14:55

should be handled. Before

14:57

we get to mental reservation, we should notice

14:59

that the development of casuistry marks an interesting

15:01

moment in the history of ethics. Certainly,

15:04

earlier moral philosophers had occasionally considered

15:06

difficult cases, genuine ethical dilemmas where

15:09

it was simply unclear what was

15:11

right. But Aristotle and

15:13

many subsequent authors were mostly interested in

15:15

topics like the nature of virtue, or

15:17

the question of how political regimes could

15:20

encourage virtue. Indeed, Aristotle

15:22

himself has almost nothing to say about

15:24

moral dilemmas. He seems to have

15:26

thought that there is little the moral philosopher can

15:28

say about hard cases, but that this is not

15:30

a problem because the virtuous person will simply know

15:32

what to do. It's

15:35

arguably only with the Jesuits and

15:37

their science of casuistry that dilemmas

15:39

take center stage as a central

15:41

topic for moral theorizing. They

15:43

saw that even trained moral reasoners with

15:46

good intentions may be genuinely torn when

15:48

they are faced with clashing ethical imperatives.

15:51

Today's moral philosophers are in this respect

15:54

heirs to the Jesuits. They

15:56

like to think about things like whether you should divert

15:58

a trolley to a different track save 50

16:00

people who were about to be run over at the

16:02

cost of killing the ten people in the trolley.

16:06

The clash that led the Jesuits to devise

16:08

the idea of mental reservation was more realistic

16:10

than that. They were worried about

16:12

situations where there's a good moral reason not

16:14

to tell the truth. Of

16:17

course, the dilemma arises because there's also a

16:19

general moral rule against the name. Imagine

16:22

for instance that a priest has learned in

16:24

Confessional that a parishioner committed murder and

16:27

is then asked about it by the police. He's

16:29

bound by the seal of the confession, so he cannot

16:31

say that the man is guilty, but neither would he

16:34

want to say that the man is innocent, since that

16:36

would be a lie. You might

16:38

wonder, can't he just refuse to speak at all? Well,

16:41

yes, but we can assume that the police

16:43

would take this to mean that the parishioner

16:45

confessed the crime to the priest, making the

16:47

dilemma inescapable. So what to do?

16:50

The advice some Jesuits gave was to say

16:52

aloud, he did not tell me, and then

16:55

continue the sentence but only in the mind, at least

16:57

not in such a way that I could report it

16:59

to you. Another

17:01

all too real context in which mental

17:03

reservation became relevant was in Protestant countries,

17:06

especially England, where Jesuits were infiltrating to

17:08

support the cause of Catholics.

17:11

This was a covert operation, something that required

17:13

a good deal of deception, and here the

17:15

strategy of mental reservation came in handy. For

17:18

instance, the Jesuit propagandist Robert Persons said

17:20

that a Catholic hiding a priest might

17:22

say to the authorities, there is no

17:24

priest in my house, and then

17:27

add in thought, who I am bound to report

17:29

to you. A similar real

17:31

life case was that of an English Catholic who

17:33

was interrogated and said he was not a priest,

17:35

and then thought to himself, of Apollo.

17:39

When Jesuits were put on trial in

17:41

England, were found to have used this

17:43

technique, which was also called dissimulation, it

17:45

became infamous. It helped the

17:47

word casuistry itself to acquire the

17:49

connotation of sneaky moral reasoning used

17:52

to rationalize wicked actions. At

17:55

the time, mental reservation was subjected to

17:57

the inevitable result that it seemed rather

17:59

Machiavellian. But philosophically speaking, mental

18:01

reservation is well worth our attention.

18:04

It is clearly not just lying and pretending to

18:06

yourself that you're not lying, nor should

18:09

it be confused with the idea that we

18:11

are allowed to lie in some circumstances, committing

18:13

a smaller evil to avoid a larger one.

18:16

That solution was actually proposed at the time

18:18

as an alternative to mental reservation, as

18:20

was the equally straightforward idea that if an

18:23

evil inquisitor is questioning you, you are under

18:25

no obligation to tell the truth anyway. Mental

18:28

reservation is more sophisticated and more interesting.

18:32

The proposal is that an assertion is normally

18:34

just whatever one says out loud, but

18:36

it can be made up of more than one

18:38

part, and not every part has to be spoken.

18:41

A nice example that was given was this. A

18:44

dying man is saying who should inherit his

18:46

property, and says, and to the

18:49

church I leave one thousand, and then

18:51

his voice gives out, such is his

18:53

weakened state. So he points

18:55

to some gold coins, completing the intended

18:57

meaning. In the same way,

18:59

a mental reservation or caveat can be part of

19:01

what is stated. Now according

19:04

to a standard definition given by the

19:06

Jesuit Francisco de Toledo, a lie

19:08

is a false statement intended to deceive,

19:11

or better a statement intended to deceive that

19:13

the speaker believes to be false. When

19:16

the Catholic said he was not a priest,

19:18

and then thought of Apollo, that second part

19:20

makes the statement true. He wasn't a priest

19:22

of Apollo. It may be

19:24

intended to deceive, but it's not a lie. This

19:27

is frightfully clever, but it raises obvious worries.

19:30

After all, with truths like this, who needs lies?

19:34

Suppose you and I are making a business agreement,

19:36

and I say, I will pay you on time,

19:38

with the mental caveat, if I feel like it,

19:40

or if I happen to win the lottery. If

19:43

people started to do this regularly, then the whole

19:45

practice of making contracts would collapse. For

19:48

this reason, some defenders of mental reservations

19:50

stipulated that it should not be used

19:52

in contexts where utterances are binding, as

19:54

in promises, but that seems rather ad

19:57

hoc. More generally,

19:59

the doctrine was over. at the charge that it

20:01

would undermine the very purpose of language, which is

20:03

to communicate. Pointing at a

20:05

coin is a public act, and suffices

20:08

for communication, but mental additions are private

20:10

and communicate nothing, so they cannot be

20:12

part of language. That

20:14

seems to me a good criticism, but it

20:16

should be borne in mind that the Jesuits

20:19

who defended dissimulation were not saying that anyone

20:21

can add mental reservations to anything they say.

20:24

The intent is still to deceive, and deception

20:26

can be sinful or not, depending on whether

20:28

the victim has it coming to them. Perhaps

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we could think of using mental reservations

20:33

to deceive an unjust interrogator as being

20:35

akin to committing an act of violence

20:37

and self-defense. In light

20:39

of this, mental reservations could be sinful,

20:41

but it depends on the situation. Whereas

20:43

lying is always sinful. The

20:47

way the Jesuits approached this issue is characteristic

20:49

in that they treated it fundamentally as a

20:51

question about the philosophy of language. As

20:54

you'll remember from our series on medieval

20:56

philosophy, technical issues of logic and language

20:58

had long been a mainstay of scholastic

21:00

philosophy, and the Jesuits were thoroughly trained

21:02

in that tradition. They

21:04

look back to one scholastic thinker in

21:06

particular, Thomas Aquinas. While it

21:09

was not absolutely forbidden to depart from

21:11

his teachings, he was considered a special

21:13

teacher, already picked out for a

21:15

special reverence by Loyola himself. In

21:18

due course, the order would declare that

21:20

instructors of the Jesuit schools must follow

21:22

absolutely the doctrine of St. Thomas in

21:24

scholastic theology, and they must consider him

21:26

one of us. And that

21:28

one is never to talk of St.

21:30

Thomas without honoring him, following him willingly

21:32

whenever possible. One is to depart

21:34

from him with reverence and reluctance. Nor

21:38

were the Jesuits the only Catholic intellectuals looking

21:40

to Aquinas in this period. While nevertheless

21:42

than a major figure, he was now

21:44

coming to occupy the central role among

21:46

medieval philosophers that he still has today.

21:49

How and why did this happen? Well,

21:51

why not make a mental reservation to find

21:53

out by joining me next

21:55

time on the History of

21:58

Philosophy without any guess. ood

22:00

day the

22:15

mom