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Pierre Charron: Precursor to Hobbes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Paul F. Grendler
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Extract

The political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes is rightly considered as marking the end of one era in political theory and the beginning of a new one. Formerly, men had sought and found a guide to political conduct in a basic principle upon which the order of well-being of the state depended. Hobbes broke with the past by postulating the state as simply a rationalization of the needs of men. He analyzed man's psychology and relied on his own observation and ratiocination to establish the best possible state commensurate with mankind's situation, but his supreme emphasis on force and authority left no room for the older constitutional, religious, and traditional safeguards of the citizen. This was the price that Hobbes willingly paid to achieve a secure state during the English Civil War.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , April 1963 , pp. 212 - 224
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1963

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References

1 De la Sagesse, trois livres par Pierre Charron, Parisien, Chanoine theologal et Chantre en l'eglise de Codom (Paris, 1601)Google Scholar. Textual references in this paper are to Of Wisdom: Three Books, trans. Stanhope, George, 3rd ed. (London, 1729)Google Scholar.

2 Sabrié, J. B., De l'humanisme au rationalisme, Pierre Charron (1541–1603), l'homme, l'oeuvre, l'influence (Paris, 1913), pp. 258–261Google Scholar.

3 Cherel, Albert, La Pensée de Machiavel en France (Paris, 1935), pp. 105–106Google Scholar.

4 On sixteenth-century Neo-Stoicism, see Zanta, Léontine, La Renaissance du Stoicisme au XVIe siècle (Paris, 1914)Google Scholar; Saunders, Jason Lewis, Lipsius, Justus: The Philosophy of Renaissance Stoicism (New York, 1955)Google Scholar; Lipsius, Justus, Two Bookes of Constancie, trans. Stradling, John, ed. with introd. Kirk, Rudolf (New Brunswick, N.J., 1939)Google Scholar; Du Vair, Guillaume, The Moral Philosophic of the Stoicks, trans. James, Thomas, ed. Kirk, Rudolf (New Brunswick, N.J., 1951)Google Scholar.

5 For an opposing viewpoint, see Charron, Jean Daniel in The “Wisdom” of Pierre Charron: An Original and Orthodox Code of Morality, Univ. of North Carolina Stud, in the Romance Lang, and Lit., No. 34 (Chapel Hill, 1960), who argues that Charron was completely orthodox and misunderstoodGoogle Scholar.

6 Qu'il n'est permis au subiet, pour quelque cause et raison que ce soit, de se liguer, bander, et rebeller contre son roy in De la Sagesse, trois livres par Pierre Charron, ed. Duval, Amaury, 3 vols. (Paris, 1827), III, pp. 349–358Google Scholar.

7 For the relationship between Charron and Descartes, see Popkin, Richard H., The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Descartes (Assen, Neth., 1960)Google Scholar.

8 For a description of the contemporary attack on Charron, see Dagens, Jean, “Le Machiavelisme de Pierre Charron,” in Studies aangeboden aan Gerard Brom (Utrecht, 1952), pp. 56–64Google Scholar. However, Dagens does not consider Charron a “Machiavellian.” Cherel, pp. 105–106, does. Mosse, George L., The Holy Pretence: a study in Christianity and reason of state from William Perkins to John Winthrop (Oxford, 1957), pp. 20–21Google Scholar, treats Charron as a “casuist,” and comes very near to the judgment of Cherel.

9 Mosse, , op. cit., pp. 37, 52Google Scholar.

10 See Charron, J. D., op. cit., pp. 59–85Google Scholar, for an account of Charron's career in the Church, and his activities in the effort to implement the decrees of the Council of Trent in France.

11 These are the translations of Samson Lennard printed in 1606, 1612, 1630, and 1640.

12 Dreano, Matthew, “Charron,” Dictionnaire des lettres françaises. Le seizième siècle, ed. Grente, Georges et al. (Paris, 1951), pp. 172–174Google Scholar, counts 49 French editions in the years 1601–1672. Charron, J. D., op. cit., pp. 148–149, lists 28 editions in the years 1601–1646Google Scholar.

13 Peters, Richard, Hobbes (London, 1956), pp. 22ff.Google ScholarSabrié, , op. cit., pp. 444–447Google Scholar.

14 Mersenne, Marin, L'Impiété des déistes, athées et libertins de ce temps, combatue & renversée de point par reasons tirées de la Philosophie & de la Tháologie (Paris, 1624), pp. 182–183, 194Google Scholar.

15 Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan (New York, 1950), pp. 39–50Google Scholar.

16 Hobbes, Thomas, De Cive or The Citizen, ed. Lamprecht, Sterling P. (New York, 1949), pp. 27–32Google Scholar.

17 Hobbes, Thomas, Behemoth or The Long Parliament, ed. Tönnies, Ferdinand (London, 1889), p. 50Google Scholar. Hobbes, , De Cive, p. 81Google Scholar.