Cartesianism and Pietism

The Cartesian ideas planted by Apáczai and his circle were carried forward by the next generation. In the 1660s, György Martonfalvi Tóth entrenched Cartesianism in Debrecen, while János Nadányi, Sámuel Enyedi, Pál Hunyadi, and Márton Dézsi did the same at the college in Nagyenyed. Under their tutelage, there arose a third generation of Cartesian scholars.

To enlighten his students, Ferenc Pápai Páriz summed up Descartes' metaphysics and physics in a textbook that became available in the 1690s. His Latin work Tyrocinium philosophiae verae (The Beginning of True Philosophy), the manuscript of which survives, offered a definition of philosophy freed from theology: the knowledge of naturally perceptible and practically applicable truths. Having drawn a clear distinction between philosophy and theology, Pápai affirmed the fundamental validity of Descartes' first principle, 'I think, therefore I am'.[161]161. 'Tyrocinium philosophiae verae' (Nagyenyed, before 1705), in Pápai Páriz, Békességet, p. 315. He adopted Descartes' scientific system and considered genuine philosophy to {2-463.} be the best key to understanding the world. He urged his students to engage in free enquiry: 'The searcher for truth will, at least once in his life, doubt of everything'.[162]162. Ibid., p. 317.

Perhaps the most enthusiastic proponent of Cartesianism was a former student of Martonfalvi, Miklós Apáti (1662–1724). This Debrecen theologian was a follower of Pierre Poiret, the master of modern European psychology and irrational rationalism. Like Descartes, Apáti believed that man's cognitive ability was limitless; he adopted Descartes' terminology and methodology in arguing that free will was the keystone of self-knowledge, and that the principal instrument for understanding man's environment was mathematics. The publication in Amsterdam of Apáti's main work, Vita triumphans civilis (1686), was facilitated by moral and financial support from Debrecen's municipal council and, perhaps, from Transylvania's prince as well.

Forced to leave Eperjes, Izsák Czabán went on to teach atomistic philosophy at the Saxon school in Nagyszeben. András Teutsch, and outstanding Saxon scholar and Cartesian, published Poiret's principal philosophical works, prefaced by his own methodological essay, in 1696 and 1708. Mihail Halici, a Calvinist Romanian writer with wide-ranging interests, became acquainted with Cartesian philosophy at Enyed.

Pál Régeni Mihály attracted international attention with his contribution to the great debate on Descartes' philosophy. In Specimen logicae Cartesianae (Leipzig, 1689), Régeni rose to the defence of the most prominent German Cartesian, E. W. Tschirn-hausen; that independent-minded precursor of Newton had affirmed the infallibility of the mathematical method, and thereby earned harsh criticism from Thomasius, who rejected both Aristotle and Descartes. After his return to Kolozsvár, Régeni published two further textbooks on Cartesianism (1689, 1700), and applied the highest European standards in his teaching of physics and logic at the Unitarian college, but he was unable to fulfil all of his scholarly {2-464.} ambitions. These champions of the new philosophy were engaged in a fierce and protracted debate with the defenders of orthodox thought, the best of whom included Mihály Tofeus and János Pósaházi. The defeat of Cartesianism in Transylvania was due less to the power of ideas than to the social hierarchy and indifference that prevailed in the 1690s and early 1700s; meanwhile, in Western Europe, Newton became the most powerful influence in the development of the new philosophy.

Pósaházi, who had left Sárospatak because of religious persecution, was rector of the school at Gyulafehérvár. His motives in challenging the reformers were not only theological and philosophical, but political as well: he believed that the defence of the Hungarian nation and of Protestantism demanded total unity in religion and thought. He and the prince's chaplain, Mihály Tofeus, criticized both Cocceian theologians and Cartesian philosophers. At the same time, Pósaházi felt free to follow Descartes' teachings in physics. In 1673, a synod was convened at Radnót to condemn philosophical reformers who argued that the right to free enquiry transcended the strictures of theology. The defendants — Pál Csernátoni, Mihály Dési, Pál Hunyadi, and István Pataki, teachers at the colleges of Nagyenyed and Kolozsvár — nominally acknowledged the primacy of theology but remained true to the principles of Cartesianism. Apafi ruled in favour of freedom in philosophical debate; although he cautioned the reformers, the controversy raged on and, in 1690, even provoked some reactions abroad.

One of the youngest members of the third generation of Cartesians was the Segesvár-born Andreas Teutsch. After obtaining a medical doctor's diploma at Utrecht, he went on to study under Jakob Spener at Leipzig, and thus became acquainted with the Lutheran reform movement known as Pietism. The implications of Pietism for cultural policy were elaborated by A. H. Francke, a professor at the University of Halle. Pietism fell on fertile ground in Transylvania, where the Puritans and Cocceians had already propagated {2-465.} the notion of dissociating faith from science. Pietism rooted religious faith in deep feeling, and its stress on religious experience pointed in the direction of mysticism. At the same time, Pietism opened the way to self-realization by promoting active participation in the rational world, notably through support of the sciences and schools and help for the ill, the needy, and the fallen. This spiritual movement nurtured a self-critical assessment of society as well a tolerant outlook opposed to inter-denominational quarrels.

Another great contribution to the individual's emotional development, still within the framework of religion, was the contemporary practice of choral singing. Protestants had a hundred years' experience with the unifying force of communal singing, and they had published hundreds of hymnals. Albert Szenczi Molnár's book of psalms became an indispensable aid, and remained so in the 18th century. The Catholic book of hymns, which included many Protestant and Unitarian hymns, was collated by the Franciscan provincial, János Kájoni, and issued by a printing house — Transylvania's first and only Catholic press — that the latter had founded at Csíksomlyó in 1676.