Reviewed by: TraitĂ© des premiĂšres vĂ©ritĂ©sby Claude G. Buffier Jeffrey D. Burson Claude G. Buffier. TraitĂ© des premiĂšres vĂ©ritĂ©s. Ădition, prĂ©sentation et notes par Louis Rouquayrol. Textes cartĂ©siens en langue française. Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 2020. Pp. 379. Paperback, âŹ32.00. Born in Poland to French parents, Claude G. Buffier, SJ (1661â1737) emerged as one of the most influential of the Parisian scriptores librorumin the first decades of the eighteenth century. Buffier is perhaps best known as one of the founding editors of, and contributors to, the influential French Jesuit periodical MĂ©moires de TrĂ©voux, but his works on general grammar, metaphysics, moral philosophy, and logic earned him widespread renown. His Grammaire françaiseachieved translation into Spanish, German, Italian, and English, and his Cours de sciences sur des principes nouveaux et simples pour former le langage, l'esprit, et le cĆur dans l'usage ordinaire de la vie(1715) was widely adopted in France and Spain throughout the eighteenth century. Buffier's eclectic approach to philosophy, science, moral philosophy, and practical theology developed across several significant works: Principes du raisonnement(1714), TraitĂ© des premiĂšres vĂ©ritĂ©s(1724), ĂlĂ©ments de mĂ©taphysique(1725), and Exposition des preuves les plus sensibles de la vĂ©ritable religion(1732). In these works, Buffier was prescient in selectively adopting perspectives from Descartes, Malebranche, and Locke, evincing thereby his avid interest and participation in early Enlightenment discussions. Many of Buffier's texts proved to be influential on contributors to the EncyclopĂ©die, on Voltaire, and perhaps later, as harbingers of Scottish Common Sense philosophy. Given the growing recognition of Buffier's importance thanks to the work of Kathleen Wilkins, Catherine Northeast, Jeffrey Burson, Katharine Hammerton, and others, Louis Rouquayrol's new critical edition of Buffier's most influential work, TraitĂ© des premiĂšres vĂ©ritĂ©s( Treatise of First Truths) is most welcome. Rouquayrol's critical edition of the TraitĂ©is replete with helpful [End Page 156]intertextual explanatory notes to the texts and debates that Buffier addressed, and it includes an insightful synthetic introduction, which summarizes the TraitĂ©and addresses aspects of its philosophical and historical significance. The editor also helpfully includes a detailed chronology of Buffier's life and works, a note about the textual bases for the edition, several instructive appendices to later editions and related works by Buffier, and a profoundly helpful bibliography that includes existing editions, copies, and translations of the TraitĂ©, in addition to scholarly studies of Buffier's life and work. Rouquayrol's critical edition is, in short, the best one currently available, and it is likely to remain the standard published edition for some time. In the editor's view, Buffier's primary significance is as the inaugural eighteenth-century figure who attempted to redress the weaknesses at the heart of Cartesian "innate ideas" in ways that might have avoided Berkeley's or Malebranche's immaterialism or Hume's skepticism: "pour lutter contre les 'consĂ©quences idĂ©alistes du cartĂ©sianisme,'" Buffier "avait eu plutĂŽt recours au sens commun comme Ă un 'complĂ©ment nĂ©cessaire du sense intime, qui garantit l'existence du monde extĂ©rieur'" (13n2, quoting Ătienne Gilson). This "solution mitigĂ©e" allowed for a certain reconciliation between Descartes and the "empirisme tempĂ©rĂ©" of Locke, and more broadly, a way of moderating "les principes des Modernes" with "les poncifs des Anciens" (13). This conciliation of Lockean empiricism and certain strands of Cartesianism found in Buffier was in fact a central point made by my earlier work on Buffier's contribution to eighteenth-century Enlightenment Catholicism (see Rise and Fall of Theological Enlightenment[South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010]; also "Claude G. Buffier and the Maturation of the Jesuit Synthesis in the Age of Enlightenment," Intellectual History Review21 [2011]: 449â72). Rouquayrol's effort to revisit the complexities of this conciliation in his introduction is a welcome development. He explicitly reminds us that while Jesuits such as Buffier were prohibited from teaching particular theses associated with Descartes after 1706, they were nevertheless increasingly influenced by aspects of Cartesianism (15â17). In many...