Self-examination, Understanding, Transmission: On Becoming a Teacher in Clauberg’s Logica vetus et nova

From Firenze University Press Book: Reading Descartes

Adi Efal-Lautenschläger, Tel Aviv University

This study aims to capture the late-Humanist conception of knowledge from the perspective of how knowledge is transmitted in a pedagogical framework. During the 17th century, philosophers were well aware of their pedagogical responsibility. Late-Humanists and Cartesian thinkers were carefully considering the manner in which the knowledge they had acquired could be transmitted in an educational or even instructional context. Recently, a scholarly volume addressed the pedagogical concerns of the Cartesians and shed new light on this highly influential aspect of 17th century philosophical production (Cellamare and Mantovani 2022). The volume highlights the integration of the scientific achievements of Descartes in pedagogical, mostly institutional practices of philosophers around Europe. One of those Cartesians, who were clearly addressing the transmission of knowledge in a pedagogical perspective, was Johannes Clauberg (1622–1665). In this framework and notably in Clauberg, “knowledge” does not mean exclusively scientific knowledge: the understandings of the Classics and Sacred Literature and the means to articulate them precisely also played an important role in the specific transmission of knowledge. This is the basis for the following inquiry concerning Clauberg’s Logica vetus et nova. Though the prima facie aim of this treatise is logic, from the first lines of the treatise, one learns that Clauberg considered logic as an approach to attain knowledge.1 In this context, knowledge is inherently connected to an activity of correctly understanding both one’s own thoughts and the works, words, and thoughts of others. This pertains to Clauberg’s engagement with hermeneutics, as discussed below. Because this hermeneutical framework is not overtly Cartesian, one of the questions that will be addressed below is the following: how does this hermeneutical knowledge stand in regard to Clauberg’s avowed Cartesianism? Clauberg’s Logica vetus et nova was published at least in two Latin forms in the Clauberg’s lifetime, first in 1654, and then in its final form in 1658.2 The second edition of the treatise is dedicated to Tobias Andreae (1604–1676), Clauberg’s mentor in Groningen and a fellow Cartesian.3 The present paper deploys the general framework of Clauberg’s Logica, while emphasizing the pedagogical principles that are to be found within its pages. The proposition of the present paper is more qualitative than argumentative: I try to pinpoint the character of Clauberg’s logic and demonstrate its differentiated position against the background of early 17th century treatises of logic written in the milieu in which Clauberg was working: the Calvinist philosophy of the first half of the 17th century. The important difference between the philosophical baggage of Clauberg and of his predecessors, is Clauberg’s close acquaintance with the philosophy of Descartes, an acquaintance which in the 1650ies was already well established.4 However, Clauberg’s adherence to the Cartesian creed cannot explain the overall structure, as well as some of the determining terminologies that one finds in this treatise, which is constructed as a handbook, a didactic guidebook to the art of logic. In order to adequately and qualitatively characterize Clauberg’s logic, one should acknowledge both its pedagogical and its hermeneutical motivations. According to the present reading, one should understand Clauberg’s procedure in his Logica as adhering in the first place to a hermeneutic motivation, which is not prominent in the logical treatises of his predecessors in Calvinist philosophy, but which is obviously not a consequence of his Cartesian convictions either. The pulsating hermeneutic motivation that one finds in Clauberg’s logic also provides the foundation of Clauberg’s pedagogical concerns. What is, or are, however, the source/s of Clauberg’s explicit engagement with hermeneutics? This question hides within itself another question, which in itself isn’t trivial: what are Clauberg’s actual sources in writing his Logica? The reasons that this question is not trivial, are two: first, Clauberg is not very generous in citing his immediate sources. One finds only a few of them throughout the Logica. Clauberg is more generous when he uses primary sources, from ancient Greek, Roman sources or the Old and New Testaments. The second reason why this question is not trivial is related to Clauberg’s Cartesianism. In order to pin down the distinctive character of Clauberg’s Cartesianism, one should chart his precise interlocutors. However, the text itself reveals very little about those interlocutors, at least in the framework of the Logica. In relation to the hermeneutical element of Clauberg’s logic, it is not that clear who is the main interlocutor, and whether this interlocutor is related or not to Cartesianism. One of the more evident influences on Clauberg’s hermeneutical occupations is Johann Conrad Dannhauer (1603–1666).5 Clauberg cites his Idea boni interpretis at least three times in the third part of the Logica, in which Clauberg begins to discuss the hermeneutical part of logic (Clauberg 1691, 845, 855, 870). Dannhauer, the Lutheran theologian from Strasbourg, revived the practice of hermeneutics as the determination of the true meaning of given documents and written or spoken discourses, mostly in the context of reading the Bible. In the case of Clauberg, however, there is no limitation of the art of interpretation to religious material. In general, Clauberg’s ideas refer to any kind of spoken, written or even cogitated discourse (the third is referred to by Clauberg as “internal discourse”). If, then, one wishes to see in Clauberg a follower of Dannhauer in matters of hermeneutics, then indeed, it appears that Clauberg opened the sense of hermeneutics and widened its objects beyond the borders of theological discourse. In any case, what is certain is that the influence of Dannhauer should be counted as an independent trope not necessarily related to Clauberg’s Cartesianism. What makes our task of qualification even more complicated, is that Clauberg’s hermeneutics is explicitly presented as a pedagogic endeavour. In other words, if the essence of logic is the understanding of discourses, then the framework of the logic shows the scope and principles of the realization of that task and the manner in which to transmit that true understanding to others. Hence, the pedagogical framework that one finds in Clauberg is double-layered: in the first stage, one should learn to read well (both oneself and others); at the second, necessary stage, one must learn to transmit the true sense of what is read to one’s students. In other words, Clauberg’s logic is intended to train teachers of logic, to train teachers for true interpretation or for true understanding (Verstehen).6 One should further note that the occupation with the art of logic cannot be considered as Cartesian and may even be understood as an un-Cartesian activity. Descartes’s position regarding logic was in general negative: he aspired, according to his own avowal, to replace the art of logic with his own method, which, instead of leaning on the pre-conceived instruments of syllogisms, will lean on the power of the natural light and its correct guidance.7 In this sense, the project itself of creating a new art of logic seems to be missing one of the central and most essential Cartesian moves, which is to make logic redundant altogether. Theo Verbeek also recently suggested that the pedagogical concern is quite strange to Descartes’s philosophy in itself (Verbeek 2022). Descartes’s grudge towards the pedants of the Schools is well known. Nonetheless, Descartes’s structural occupations with the method are seemingly well supported. In this view, Clauberg’s work as a teacher reflecting on one’s own art can also be viewed as trying to implement the more rigorous methodological aspects of the Cartesian method in the various domains he was professing. As just noted above, Clauberg’s logic proposes a theory of knowledge, and this is indeed its decisive character: logic, in the Claubergian sense, willingly drops its scholastic model of being a self-contained system of rules for the determination of the truthfulness or the falseness of propositions; instead, it assumes a wider task which is the establishment of the capacity for knowledge of the world at large. But this also must not be necessarily understood as a Cartesian trait. Instead, in this Clauberg presents a relation to a thread of thinking deriving from Francis Bacon (1561–1626), a line of influence which the historiography of German philosophy of the 17th century has not yet characterized clearly enough. However, the importance of Bacon’s philosophy to a more complete understanding of Clauberg’s philosophy is beginning to become consensual among scholars.8 Not only did Clauberg know Bacon’s writings (he refers to Bacon numerous times in his Opera omnia), he also borrowed from them some of his general principles. Clauberg’s education was pregnant with Baconism: his teacher in the Gymnasium of Bremen, Gerhard de Neufville (1590–1648), was engaged in the reading and application of Bacon’s conception of science (Verbeek 1999, 182; Strazzoni 2012, 259; Collacciani 2020). This Baconian thread moreover is also concomitant with the kind of hermeneutics that we find in Clauberg’s logic. The knowing of nature, in this framework, is understood as an interpretation of nature. However, at least in the framework of the logic, what is interpreted is explicitly discourse (sermo): discourse of one’s own or discourses of others. Francesco Trevisani emphasized the quasi-empiricist character of Clauberg’s philosophy in general and not only of his logic: if one scrutinizes the milieu of Calvinist metaphysics of the 17th century,9 according to Trevisani, one finds on the one side the tendency to approach a purification of the abstract set of categories and principles of reasoning, such as in Clemens Timpler (1563–1624), and on the other side one finds the experience-oriented tendency which is closer to the Aristotelian and the late Scholastic occupation with the apprehension of things (real beings), as in Bartholomäus Keckermann (1572–1609), whose epistemological positions Trevisani considers as closer to Clauberg’s epistemology (Trevisani 2006, 106–9). In this orientation the art of logic is presented as a general method for obtaining valid judgments of things in all existing domains, via a critic of sensual experience; in other words, logic, in the just mentioned framework, is the other name for early modern theory of knowledge, or epistemology. It is within the domain of logic that the theory of true knowledge about the world was developed. That experience-oriented logic that one finds in Keckermann and in Clauberg is less intended to the achievement of a purified, ordered language of valid propositions, but rather, it aims to supply a method for an adequate reference to things. We are talking here indeed about quite an innovative approach to logic which definitely deserves the name it received from Clauberg, the “new” logic. One should ask however whether this quasi-empiricist turn of logic should be attributed to a Cartesian influence. Paul Schuurman has identified such an empirically oriented logic in 17th- and 18th-century philosophy, the “logic of ideas,” beginning with Descartes, continuing with John Locke (1632–1704) and developed by philosophers as Jean Le Clerc (1657–1736) or Jean-Pierre de Crousaz (1663–1750). The “logic of ideas” which presented itself as a “new logic,” was motivated by Descartes’s occupation with method, and is characterized by Schuurman as no more rationalist than empiricist. The logic of ideas is furthermore conceived by Schuurman as a method to order and edify the “mental faculties.” Schuurman demonstrates the extensive influence that this new logic had in Holland and Germany, and indeed, this is also the context into which Clauberg’s work adequately fits (Schuurman 2004, 19–33).10 The theological context of inner splits within Calvinism, which Schuurman extensively addresses, also characterizes Clauberg’s own milieu. However, one should not forget that Clauberg’s life ended in 1665, a time when the last two mentioned philosophers were still very young. In this sense, if we follow Schuurman’s roadmap, Clauberg’s Logica must be placed at the very beginning of this dynasty of thinkers, as the aftermath of Descartes’s method.

DOI: 10.36253/979–12–215–0169–8.07

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