Dissertation sur la formation du monde (1738); Dissertation sur la résurrection de la chair (1743): manuscrits du recueil 1168 de la Bibliothèque Mazarine de Paris ed. with commentary by Claudia Stancati (review)

Abstract

200 Reviews it up until a month before her death in February 2000. This volume contains eighty letters, written during the years which Bayle spent in Rouen, Paris, and then Sedan, where he had found a teaching post at the Academie. As in Volume 1,the vast majority of the letters are to members of his family (his parents, brothers, and cousins), with a slightly smaller number addressed to friends he had made during his years in Geneva (Basnage, Minutoli, Tronchin). Very personal letters (e.g. letter 87 to his mother) sit alongside discussions of his recent reading (letter 105 to his brother Jacob) and long exchanges of ideas (letter 89 to Minutoli). However, as Antony McKenna points out in the introduction, it is clear from references in the remaining letters that many others (he estimates 166 for this period alone, and they are listed in an appendix) have been lost, pointing to a much more complex network of correspondents than the current volume indicates. McKenna underlines the important work which has been done or remains to be done on the correspondence of several notable seventeenth-century figures and the links which will doubtless become apparent once more research has been completed. Information technology has already started to play an important role in this ongoing work and, under McKenna's direction, electronic versions of Bayle's correspondence have been produced which make it possible, with the click of a mouse, to highlight particular words, indicate which words were added or deleted, obtain statistics, or extract specific information. These electronic databases, which have the added advantage of making it possible to include supplementary information which would overload the page unnecessarily for the reader of the paper version, should become available from 2002, when Volume m ofthe correspondence is due to be published. Like Volume 1, this volume is highly informative without ever becoming overloaded or difficult to follow. Footnotes provide extra clarification as needed and a simple system of notation indicates words scored out by Bayle as well as signalling the end of each page in the manuscript. Photographs, a glossary, index, and biblio? graphy complete the volume, making it a publication which will be of great interest and usefulness to all Bayle scholars. University of Strathclyde Joy Charnley Dissertation sur la formation du monde (1J38); Dissertation sur la resurrection de la chair (1743): manuscrits du recueil 1168 de la Bibliotheque Mazarine de Paris. Ed. with commentary by Claudia Stancati. Paris: Champion. 2001. 231 pp. ISBN 2-7453-0428-3. Claudia Stancati shows that there is no way of knowing with any certainty when the two Dissertations she has edited were composed, but she believes?from internal echoes?that they are possibly by the same author, who may well also have composed the Jordanus Brunus redivivus. Stancati speculates that the dates of 1738 and 1743 found on the Mazarine manuscripts may not be far out. Like all similar clandestine literature, the Dissertations both directly reproduce passages from other works and betray the philosophical influences that marked their author(s). Part of Stancati's long and useful introduction is devoted to identifying these influences, though she could have avoided quoting such large chunks (see especially pp. 40-43, 68-72, 73-75). The Dissertation sur la formation du monde represents an eclectic viewpoint, draw? ing on many differentsources and inspirations, from Descartes and Bayle to Spinoza and beyond. For its author, the idea that an infinite God created the world is a logical impossibility, since the matter thus produced would signify an addition to infinity.In this mechanistic and materialistic vision of the universe, God's existence is excluded forthe additional reason that it is impossible to reconcile his omnipotence and the ex- MLRy 98.1, 2003 201 istence of evil: he cannot have created movement and endowed matter with it, since? ultimately?evil came about through the action of movement. Matter has always existed, but its form has evolved as its various potentialities?including movement? came into play over the course of time. The author follows Descartes in believing the uni verse to be a plenum, since extension is the basic quality of matter: without matter, there would be no extension...