Franciscus Patricius and Historical Pyrrhonism
Part of a Series on the Philosophy of History
Thursday 25 April 2024 is the 495th anniversary of the birth of Franciscus Patricius (25 April 1529–6 February 1597), who was born on this day in 1529. Patricius is known in Italian as Francesco Patrizi of Cherso (sometimes spelled with one “z” and sometimes with two), and known in Croatian as Franjo Petriš or Frane Petrić (he came from the island of Cres).
It’s difficult to find translations of Patricius’ works into English; he wrote a number of works relevant to philosophy of history that I know only through the secondary literature. One of these is his Peripatetic Discussions, a critique of Aristotle. Patricius was part of the renaissance reaction against Aristotle. Aristotle had dominated Scholastic philosophy for hundreds of years, and one way for renaissance philosophers to distance themselves from this tradition was to attack the authority and the theories of Aristotle. In my episode on Philosophy of History before Augustine I discussed some of Aristotle’s views on time, and how these imply a philosophy of history.
There is a 2005 paper by Eugene E. Ryan, “Reflections on Light and Time in the Philosophy of Franciscus Patricius and in the 1905 Paper of Albert Einstein ‘The Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies’,” in which the author explicitly formulates a number of Aristotelian theses on time that Patricius rejected, citing both Patricius’ Aristotelian Dicussions and Nova de universis philosophia. While renaissance Platonism was a thing, especially in the works of Marsilio Ficino, a generation before Patricius, Paticius doesn’t seem to have taken the Platonic approach to time — which is the denial of the reality of time. In my episode on Simone Weil I touched on the possibility of a Platonic philosophy of history, so this is one alternative to Aristotle, but this wasn’t the alternative to Aristotelianism that Patricius pursued. According to Ryan, Patricius has an alternative conception of time, distinct from that of Aristotle. Given the rejection of Aristotle and the rejection of an Aristotelian conception of time, it is likely that a different implicit philosophy of history could be formulated on the basis of the alternative conception of time that Ryan hints at in his paper on Patricius.
If you think it’s strange that a renaissance philosopher should be mentioned in connection with Einstein, there is a paper by Paul Richard Blum, “Francesco Patrizi in the ‘Time-Sack’: History and Rhetorical Philosophy,” in which Blum not only discusses Patricius, but also H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine. (He even discusses a sequel to Wells’ The Time Machine by Egon Friedell, which I hadn’t previously heard of.) As unlikely as that sounds, it is highly relevant to philosophy of history. Blum attributes to Patricius the idea that history includes the future along with the past:
“Memory also includes the future, not only the past. This idea is elucidated via the concept of prophecy; for just as history is the discussion of past deeds and events, so prophecy treats of the same things, but in the future. But the essence of the argument is that history, as memory, suspends time.”
Blum also wrote a 2019 paper, “History and theory: the paradox in Francesco Patrizi,” which summarizes the content of Patricius’ Ten Dialogues on History (Della historia. Dieci dialoghi):
“The first dialogue establishes that history is narration, specifically narration of things done by humans; as such, it is subject to rhetorical structures like beginning, order, purpose, as well as judgments concerning what to say and what to omit or what to avoid and on what to elaborate. At the center is the persistent query: what is history? To this, the second dialogue responds with a survey of the variety of histories. The third dialogue raises in the title the main question regarding its essence. Dialogues four and five address the purpose and the truth of history; dialogues six and seven differentiate universal history from particular history, followed in the eighth dialogue by a consideration of biography; the book concludes with dialogues on the usefulness and the validity (dignità) of history.”
We get a hint of the character of the dialogues from a quote embedded in William Stenhouse’s 2012 paper “Panvinio and Descriptio: Renditions of History and Antiquity in the Late Renaissance”:
“In 1560, Francesco Patrizi da Cherso wrote Della historia diece dialoghi (Ten Dialogues on History), set in Venice, in which he investigated contemporary historical practice, including the media that historians could use. ‘What are carved on the columns of Trajan and Antoninus, and on the arches of Constantine and Severus, if not the histories of their victories and triumphs?’, he asked. ‘I would add that history may not only be written, but also sculpted and painted, and these are more properly istorie, for they are objects of sight’. He went on to add that they are also, ‘truly narrations of events’. Just as Patrizi knew of developments in antiquarianism, Panvinio certainly could have known Patrizi’s book, if not the author.”
This passage is remarkably modern in its recognition of the material culture as a source for history. There is a chapter on Patricius in Paul Oskar Kristeller’s Eight philosophers of the Italian Renaissance, which mentions his work on history:
“Patrizi’s treatises on poetics, rhetoric, and the art of history obviously belong together, for the three subjects were linked in the theoretical literature of the sixteenth century, and already before then in the program of the studia humanitatis, although the humanists did not produce many separate treatises on these subjects, with the exception of rhetoric. Patrizi’s ‘Art of History’ (Della historia, 1560) is interesting as a contribution to a genre that was still fairly new at the time, and that may be considered as the first beginning of later literature on the methodology and philosophy of history. The most famous and influential author to write on this subject in the sixteenth century was Jean Bodin, whose treatise was published several years after that of Patrizi (1566). Most important is Patrizi’s Poetics, of which he published only two sections (Della poetica, 1586), five more remaining in manuscript. This work, which is composed in dialogue form, occupies a special position in the voluminous literature on the subject that was produced in sixteenth-century Italy. For Patrizi carries his anti-Aristotelian bias into a field which had been dominated by Aristotle’s Poetics for several decades, and which was still to be dominated by it far into the seventeenth and eighteenth century, not to speak of the attempted revival in our own time, often referred to as the Chicago school of criticism. Patrizi’s aim was to dethrone Aristotle and to construct another poetics that was partly original and partly based on Plato, an attempt that has not yet been sufficiently studied.”
Julian H. Franklin discusses Praticius’ skepticism in his book Jean Bodin and the Sixteenth-Century Revolution in the Methodology of Law and History, which identifies the position of Patricius as “historical pyrrhonism,” which he defines as the position, “that historical knowledge is impossible.” Pyrrhonism is named for the 4th century BC Greek philosopher Pyrrho of Elis, who formulated a particularly thorough-going skepticism. Skepticism was common among renaissance humanists and Platonists, but Patricius seems to have been among the few philosophers to apply this skepticism to history. Here is a quote from Franklin:
“The historian, begins Patrizzi, was either contemporary with the action or was not. And in the latter case his veracity is hardly worth discussing. He may or may not have distorted what he learned. But even granting his integrity he is clearly dependent on the truthfulness of others. For whether the past be ‘recent or remote,’ ‘there is nothing that can be known of it but what our forbears have transmitted through their writings.’ In the first distinction, therefore, that between original and secondary authors, the issue of historical veracity is narrowed to the prime observer.
“But this original observer, notes Patrizzi, will either be a party to the action or a neutral. And in the former case he will have the strongest motives to distort. He will either vilify his enemies from hatred, glorify his party from affection, keep silent on his hidden interests, or perhaps do all of these together. The partisan observer, therefore, is so very likely to have lied that everything depends upon the neutral.
“The difficulty here, however, is that a neutral reporter is not very likely to be knowledgeable. Unattached to either party, he will not have been privy to their counsels and must depend on what the actors tell him. These, however, are not very likely to reveal themselves to neutrals, as is especially clear in the behavior of the prince who is in possession of the secrets of the state. The prudent ruler, holds Patrizzi, is a natural enemy to truth since the basis of his power is in cunning while his authority depends on reputation. If he communicates his secrets, it is normally to confidants and servants, who have every motive to preserve then in affection, interest, or fear. It is very likely, therefore, that the ‘honest neutral,’ even granting his existence, will know onl the outcome of an action and not the inner motivations on which the value of a history depends.”
This kind of skepticism of the very possibility of historical knowledge may be compared to Descartes’ well-known dismissive attitude to history expressed in his Discourse on Method. Patricius is, if anything, more explicit and more radical than Descartes, and his Ten Dialogues on History were written a generation before Descartes was born.
Jean Bodin (1530–1596), a close contemporary of Patricius, may have written his Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem (1566; Method for the Easy Comprehension of History) in response to Patricius’ historical skepticism. Here is the opening paragraph of Bodin’s Method:
“Of history, that is, the true narration of things, there are three kinds: human, natural, and divine. The first concerns man; the second, nature; the third, the Father of nature. One depicts the acts of man while leading his life in the midst of society. The second reveals causes hidden in nature and explains their development from earliest beginnings. The last records the strength and power of Almighty God and of the immortal souls, set apart from all else. In accordance with these divisions arise history’s three accepted manifestations — it is probable, inevitable, and holy — and the same number of virtues are associated with it, that is to say, prudence, knowledge, and faith. The first virtue distinguishes base from honorable; the second, true from false; the third, piety from impiety. The first, from the guidance of reason and the experience of practical affairs, they call the ‘arbiter of human life.’ The second, from inquiry into abstruse causes, they call the ‘revealer of all things.’ The last, due to love of the one God toward us, is known as the ‘destroyer of vice.’ From these three virtues together is created true wisdom, man’s supreme and final good. Men who in life share in this good are called blessed, and since we have come into the light of day to enjoy it, we should be ungrateful if we did not embrace the heaven-offered benefit, wretched if we abandon it. Moreover, in attaining it we derive great help from history in its three phases, but more especially from the divine form, which unaided can make mankind happy, even though they have no experience of practical affairs and no knowledge of secret physical causes. Yet if the two latter are added, I believe that they will bring about a great increase in human well-being.”
Chapter VIII of Bodin’s work, “A System of Universal Time” lays out the importance of chronology for history:
“Those who think they can understand histories without chronology are as much in error as those who wish to escape the windings of a labyrinth without a guide. The latter wander hither and thither and cannot find any end to the maze, while the former are carried among the many intricacies of the narrative with equal uncertainty and do not understand where to commence or where to turn back. But the principle of time, the guide for all histories, like another Ariadne tracing the hidden steps with a thread, not only prevents us from wandering, but also often makes it possible for us to lead back erring historians to the right path. So we see all very good writers have so much regard for time as to include not only the years, but even the separate parts of the year. Others do not omit even the very months and days, or the moments of the day, in which a thing has happened, because they understand that without a system of time hardly any advantage is culled from history.”
Bodin takes this chronological imperative in a suitably radical philosophical sense, and in this chapter inquires into the origins of the world and whether history has a beginning and an end, which is similar to the more philosophical sections on historical time in St. Augustine’s City of God. Radical skepticism must be answered by an equally radical philosophical response if this response is going to effectively address the source of the skepticism. Bodin had a rational response, radical in its own way, but his rationalism wasn’t a response to the specifically epistemic problems facing historical knowledge. Descartes, on the other hand, had a radical philosophical response, but he remained skepticism that this response was applicable to history.
It is emblematic of the problems that face a philosophy of history that the skeptical criticisms of historical knowledge have never been fully or satisfactorily answered, and this means that Patricius’ skepticism remains a live option even for us today, five hundred years later. However, the ancient Pyrrhonists held out as their ideal a state of skepticism a complete suspension of judgment, which had a moral correlate in the state of ataraxia, which was an ideal of tranquility, unperturbed by anything that happens. We can compare the Pyrrhonist’s ideal state of suspension of judgment to what phenomenologists attempt to do, which Husserl sometimes called “bracketing the world” so as to set it aside. This implies that there could still be a phenomenological philosophy of history even given a Pyrrhonic suspension of judgment, and this could be taken as a sufficiently radical epistemic response to historical skepticism.
