Talk:Jean Hardouin

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Opposition to Descartes or more to church tradition as a valid source?

It seems odd to me to place Harduin’s style of enquiry as a response mainly to Descartes, since Harduin’s flaw seems to have emphasised physical remains over texts in his approach to history. I don’t think that this is clearly a counter to Descartes, seeing as they both relied heavily on their personal observations, but it would have been a serious challenge to the reliance of the Catholic Church’s on tradition as a source of orthodoxy and historical knowledge. In that sense, Harduin strikes me more as a critic in the vein of earlier Protestants, but where they had sought to counter church tradition with sola scriptura, Harduin seems to have gone even further, by attacking the validity of key church documents themselves. ScepticWombat (talk) 10:48, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

The Anthony Grafton article cited discusses how Descartes and the New Philosophy of the era challenged the idea that we could have any knowledge of the past:

The new scholarship on coins and inscriptions represented the scholars' response to what they perceived as the brutal challenge of the New Philosophy. Descartes de- fiantly told traditionalists that the study of the past could prove, at best, only that ideas and values differed in different times and places. One could learn as much, more agreeably, by travelling. Too much time spent in the past-like too much time spent on travel-could make one 'a stranger in one's own country'. And the traveller was perhaps less likely than the reader to be confused by the fables, errors and exagger- ations that necessarily clouded the historical record. These made the imitation of historical examples not a rational way to improve one's conduct but a path that led straight to the follies and fantasies of a Don Quixote. Many humanists sadly agreed, lamenting in their letters that the age of philology had ended, and one of philosophy had taken its place. But the philosophers did not see these gestures of submission as a reason to cease flagellating their victims. In the second half of the seventeenth century, La Mothe le Vayer and others attacked history even more aggressively than Descartes had. Rigorously considered, they argued, texts and documents could give no certain knowledge about the past. After all, historical narratives often contradicted public records such as inscriptions-as well as one another. The historical record was full of mistakes, many of them obviously caused by historians' fears or desires. But no historian could hope to write without fear or ambition: hence none could avoid error. In any event, it was impossible to prove that even an uncontradicted witness accurately de- scribed a time and place that no one could now visit. History based on ancient texts lacked verifiability.

It's a bit of a leap to go from "texts can't be trusted" to "only coins and inscriptions can be trusted", but Hardouin definitely reflects a more skeptical era. Grafton also discusses the Protestant influence on Hardouin, such as David Blondel, a French Protestant who was one of the first to question the Pope Joan myth and other traditions. I wrote that paragraph in a bit of a rush, not wanting to get into a long and detailed discussion of intellectual currents, but I'll add something about Protestant tradition and credit Grafton properly. --Annanoon (talk) 11:07, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

Nice work! I had a hunch that the Descartes stuff was from the cited source, but I was not entirely sure. Keep up the good work! ScepticWombat (talk) 11:24, 18 July 2019 (UTC)