Hakluyt
04-10-2006, 02:45 PM
http://www.wpunj.edu/newpol/issue40/Onfray40.htm
Jean Meslier and
"The Gentle Inclination of Nature"
Michel Onfray
translated by Marvin Mandell
I. Of a Certain Jean Meslier
HOW ASTONISHING that the prevailing historiography finds no place for an atheist priest in the reign of Louis XIV. More than that, he was a revolutionary communist and internationalist, an avowed materialist, a convinced hedonist, an authentically passionate and vindictively, anti-Christian prophet, but also, and above all, a philosopher in every sense of the word, a philosopher proposing a vision of the world that is coherent, articulated, and defended step by step before the tribunal of the world, without any obligation to conventional Western reasoning.
Jean Meslier under his cassock contained all the dynamite at the core of the 18th century. This priest with no reputation and without any memorial furnishes an ideological arsenal of the thought of the Enlightenment's radical faction, that of the ultras, all of whom, drinking from his fountain, innocently pretend to be ignorant of his very name. A number of his theses earn for his borrowers a reputation only won by usurping his work. Suppressed references prevent the reverence due to him.
His work? Just a single book, but what a book! A monster of more than a thousand manuscript pages, written with a goose quill pen under the glimmer of the fireplace and candles in an Ardennes vicarage between the so-called Great Century and the one following, called the Enlightenment, which he endorsed, by frequent use of the word, the sealed fate of the 18th century. A handwritten book, never published during the lifetime of its author, probably read by no one other than by its conceiver. A book put out of shape, pillaged, travestied, mutilated after his death. A doomed book of a doomed author; a brilliant book by a brilliant thinker....
Jean Meslier was born January 15, 1664, in Mazerny in the Ardennes. This same year Louis XIV is giving fetes at Versailles in the chateau and the gardens. Marvelous and grandiose fetes with sumptuous expenditures, royal arrogance, a European demonstration of power and self-sufficiency. Moliere produces the first three acts of Tartuffe there. The father (Louis XIV), has at his disposal a secure wealth: cultivation of the lands and domestic textile industry.
In 1678 a priest in his neighborhood teaches him Latin and, with his parents' agreement, anticipates, by leading the child right up to the seminary, that he might one day take the orders. Jean performs his studies adequately, without much passion, and without allying himself with his fellow students, while finding his true interest in reading Descartes. Unsurprisingly, he climbs the rungs of ecclesiastical ranks: sub-deacon March 29, 1687, deacon April 10, 1688, rural vicar, then priest January 7, 1689, at Etrépigny in the Ardennes; he spends forty years in this rectory, in a village of 165 inhabitants.
His superiors note him well. Without too much zeal, he performs the duties of his job, not without distinguishing himself by some unexpected behavior: often he asks no fee for the celebration of a marriage or for a funeral. At the end of the year, once his books were balanced, he distributes the rest to the poor of the commune. He lives, it seems, reasonably well on the revenue of two parishes and, perhaps, the rent for some plot of soil. Immersed in local life, he does not behave excessively. He likes his parishioners' kind of people -- modest peasants, workers worn out by work -- but without being unduly demonstrative. Outside the duties of his vicarage, he meditates, thinks, writes, works at his great work and passes a large part of his time studying the great masters in his library: Montaigne, whom he often cites in great detail, (Lucilio) Vanini, (Jean de) La Bruyère, (Etienne) La Boétie, still the major influences, but also other, more recent thinkers with whom he clashes : (Francois) Fénelon, (Blaise) Pascal, (Nicolas) Malebranche. Indeed, he gives equal time to the classic ancients: Seneca, Tacitus, Titus Livius (Livy), Flavius Josephus. And then the literature relevant to his job: the Bible. The Latin patrology [later published as a multi- volume edition by Jacques Migne -- tr], the settled decisions of the Church Councils.
[continued]
Jean Meslier and
"The Gentle Inclination of Nature"
Michel Onfray
translated by Marvin Mandell
I. Of a Certain Jean Meslier
HOW ASTONISHING that the prevailing historiography finds no place for an atheist priest in the reign of Louis XIV. More than that, he was a revolutionary communist and internationalist, an avowed materialist, a convinced hedonist, an authentically passionate and vindictively, anti-Christian prophet, but also, and above all, a philosopher in every sense of the word, a philosopher proposing a vision of the world that is coherent, articulated, and defended step by step before the tribunal of the world, without any obligation to conventional Western reasoning.
Jean Meslier under his cassock contained all the dynamite at the core of the 18th century. This priest with no reputation and without any memorial furnishes an ideological arsenal of the thought of the Enlightenment's radical faction, that of the ultras, all of whom, drinking from his fountain, innocently pretend to be ignorant of his very name. A number of his theses earn for his borrowers a reputation only won by usurping his work. Suppressed references prevent the reverence due to him.
His work? Just a single book, but what a book! A monster of more than a thousand manuscript pages, written with a goose quill pen under the glimmer of the fireplace and candles in an Ardennes vicarage between the so-called Great Century and the one following, called the Enlightenment, which he endorsed, by frequent use of the word, the sealed fate of the 18th century. A handwritten book, never published during the lifetime of its author, probably read by no one other than by its conceiver. A book put out of shape, pillaged, travestied, mutilated after his death. A doomed book of a doomed author; a brilliant book by a brilliant thinker....
Jean Meslier was born January 15, 1664, in Mazerny in the Ardennes. This same year Louis XIV is giving fetes at Versailles in the chateau and the gardens. Marvelous and grandiose fetes with sumptuous expenditures, royal arrogance, a European demonstration of power and self-sufficiency. Moliere produces the first three acts of Tartuffe there. The father (Louis XIV), has at his disposal a secure wealth: cultivation of the lands and domestic textile industry.
In 1678 a priest in his neighborhood teaches him Latin and, with his parents' agreement, anticipates, by leading the child right up to the seminary, that he might one day take the orders. Jean performs his studies adequately, without much passion, and without allying himself with his fellow students, while finding his true interest in reading Descartes. Unsurprisingly, he climbs the rungs of ecclesiastical ranks: sub-deacon March 29, 1687, deacon April 10, 1688, rural vicar, then priest January 7, 1689, at Etrépigny in the Ardennes; he spends forty years in this rectory, in a village of 165 inhabitants.
His superiors note him well. Without too much zeal, he performs the duties of his job, not without distinguishing himself by some unexpected behavior: often he asks no fee for the celebration of a marriage or for a funeral. At the end of the year, once his books were balanced, he distributes the rest to the poor of the commune. He lives, it seems, reasonably well on the revenue of two parishes and, perhaps, the rent for some plot of soil. Immersed in local life, he does not behave excessively. He likes his parishioners' kind of people -- modest peasants, workers worn out by work -- but without being unduly demonstrative. Outside the duties of his vicarage, he meditates, thinks, writes, works at his great work and passes a large part of his time studying the great masters in his library: Montaigne, whom he often cites in great detail, (Lucilio) Vanini, (Jean de) La Bruyère, (Etienne) La Boétie, still the major influences, but also other, more recent thinkers with whom he clashes : (Francois) Fénelon, (Blaise) Pascal, (Nicolas) Malebranche. Indeed, he gives equal time to the classic ancients: Seneca, Tacitus, Titus Livius (Livy), Flavius Josephus. And then the literature relevant to his job: the Bible. The Latin patrology [later published as a multi- volume edition by Jacques Migne -- tr], the settled decisions of the Church Councils.
[continued]