Translating and revising Dutch Cartesianism: Dirk Santvoort and the fortune of the Curiositates Philosophicae (1714)

Abstract

Dirk Santvoort's Curiositates philosophicae (1713) is an example of the complex ways of reading, receiving, and revising of late 17th and early 18th century Dutch Cartesianism. The text was a Latin re-edition of a book first printed in 1704, under the title of Dissertatio philosophica de Causa Motus et principiis solidorum Corporum, which translated in its turn a Dutch text partially printed in 1703. The Curiositates philosophicae had an unexpected fortune in the early eighteenth century French philosophy: it was reviewed in the 1713 volume of the Journal des Sfavans, and translated in a French clandestine manuscript, entitled Recherches curieuses de philosophic (1714), by Henri de Boulainvilliers. During the twentieth century, this manuscript drew the attention of many scholars of French clandestine literature, who were unaware of the Dutch source of Boulainvilliers' translation. The Curiositates philosophicae took their inspiration from Descartes' natural philosophy. Santvoort's philosophy revisited Descartes' mechanism and cosmology to create a new system of nature, governed by a thermic theory. By this, Santvoort hoped to solve some empas5es of Descartes' Principia philosophiae. Santvoort's interest in generation and corruption of bodies, as well as his ideas about the eternity and infinity of the world, led him towards reviving some vitalistic and palingenetic suggestions from Renaissance and seventeenth-century naturalism. This resulted in an 'eclectic' system of natural philosophy, what may partly explain the work's fortune in French clandestine literature.