Conversation with Burman

Summary

Discovered in 1895 in Göttingen and published the following year by Charles Adam, the manuscript entitled Descartes’ Conversation with Burman – a report of an interview with Descartes by Frans Burman – is a text whose status and legitimacy have always been subjected to debates among commentators. The manuscript is a copy made by an anonymous hand of a text by Johannes Clauberg to whom the first notes, taken probably by Burman, were sent four days after the interview on April 16, 1648. It is likely that between Clauberg's copy and the Göttingen manuscript at least one other copy was made. The Duisburg teacher also reproduced some passages from the Conversation in his own works (Defensio cartesiana adversus Jacobum Revium, Initiatio philosophi sive Dubitatio cartesiana, and De cognitione Dei et nostri). Christoph Wittich (1625–87) also alludes to a passage from the conversation in his Annotationes Renati Des-Cartes Meditationes.

The mystery surrounding the drafting and the transmission of the text, and the suspicions of corruption that are normally associated with the very conditions of the interview, which may have taken place while the philosopher was at table (AT V 148, CSMK 335), have stimulated doubts concerning the reliability and authenticity of a text in which the different voices (Burman's and Descartes’) cannot always be clearly distinguished. Adam (1910, 484) first stressed that we should not take Descartes’ statements too “literally.” Ferdinand Alquié (1973, 766–67) did not include the Conversation in his edition of Descartes’ Œuvres philosophiques because in his view it consisted of “table chats” and at times was inconsistent with the philosopher's thought.

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, three types of work concerning the Conversation followed one another, sometimes overlapping. The first efforts were directed at reconstructing dialogue (Adam 1910). Then attention turned to the relation between the statements attributed to Descartes and the rest of his work (Cottingham 1976 and Beyssade 1981). Finally, Adam's reading of the manuscript was checked and compared with the excerpts found in the works of Dutch Cartesians (Arndt 1982 and Savini 2004). The question remains whether the text can be used only to confirm statements made in other works written by Descartes’ hand or whether it constitutes an original work in its own right (Beyssade 1981, 158).