PFSCL XLVIII, 95 (2021) DOI 10.2357/ PFSCL-2021-0023 From Libido Dominandi in Disguise to an Apologetic Device? Invention and reinvention of Sweetness (Douceur) in La Rochefoucauld’s and Pascal’s works J IANI F AN P RINCETON U NIVERSITY Introduction Guez de Balzac’s textbook-like depiction of sweetness (douceur) set a model for many secular moralists and Christian humanists: “A certain gentleness and ease of manners which knows how to be accommodating without being servile... It still requires a naive frankness and a custom of telling the truth, to things even indifferent, without vain ostentation, without affected restraint.” Because of the rise of humanism in the Renaissance, through the civilized art of conversation with douceur, Ciceronian humanitas was restored and magnified to dignitas hominis, signifying a transition from the homo to the cultivated homo humanus (well-educated human). Contrarily, for La Rochefoucauld and Pascal, persuasion through sweetness is an insidious way of psychological tyranny of deception enslaving others and making others love us in a conversation. Ironically, the self-deception of mutual parties, leads to mutual deception and constitutes a vicious circle, due to the “disordered love of self” embodied by the Augustinian libido dominandi deep-rooted in pride. The rhetoric of douceur is a deceptive flattery and tyranny, since it caters to our concupiscence instead of persuading the reason by truth, which is the proper domain to be persuaded. As Pascal claims, “Eloquence which persuades by sweetness, not by empire, as a tyrant, not as a king.” Douceur is a critical point, where Augustinianism and noble morality converge and differ. For La Rochefoucauld, natural human virtues, could persist in this-worldly world: “Only people with some strength of character can be truly sweet.” Sweetness seems to conflict with the strength of character and to verge on weakness. While in a conversation, Jiani Fan PFSCL XLVIII, 95 (2021) DOI 10.2357/ PFSCL-2021-0023 320 the aim is persuasion through charisma, enchantment and hitting the bullseye of the pleasure of the interlocutor. The moral qualities constitute the authoritative criterion of the access to truth. Henri Bremond maintains that the absence of douceur caused the excess of theological and moral rigorism, which leads to the psychological terrorism of Jansenism and existential despair in this-worldly society. For Pascal, the sugar-coated douceur facilitates conveying the bitter apologetic Christian doctrines and hard-toswallow misanthropic moral observation in the case of La Rochefoucauld. *** In any profession each person puts on a pretended look and outward appearance to make him seem what he wants people to think him. So we may say that the world is composed only of appearances. 1 The self, according to Pascal, is actually a construction. 2 The “I” wears a mask. It seeks to gain self-esteem from others but instead of true selfaffirmation, wins only anxious self-regard; the other fellows also create an appearance through competitive and even condescending regard in relation to the “I.” In consequence, although striving for acknowledgement in worldly society, the self constantly oscillates between a feeling of greatness and one of wretchedness, either because the other one tries to humiliate “I” through the former’s appearance or the “I” attempts to elevate itself through an inauthentic mask. This oscillation testifies to Pascal’s diagnosis of the dual anthropological property, that human beings waver between the status of angel and beast, but never achieve an adequate evaluation of themselves due to the double masks. Consequently, living under the double masks is “inauthentic,” literally, “unowned” (uneigentlich) 3 of one’s own initiated property, which drifts in the madding crowd. The self-deception of both parties, the viewer and the viewed, leads to mutual deception, and vice versa: this joint venture of mutual deception conduces to self-deception, which constitutes a vicious circle, due to the “disordered love of self” 4 embodied by the lust to dominate (the Augusti- 1 V: 256, « Dans toutes les professions chacun affecte une mine et un extérieur pour paraître ce qu’il veut qu’on le croie. Ainsi on peut dire que le monde n’est composé que de mines. » François de La Rochefoucauld, Collected maxims and other reflections. ed. E. H. and A. M. Blackmore and Francine Giguère, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 73. 2 William Wood, Blaise Pascal on Duplicity, Sin, and the Fall: The Secret Instinct, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013, p. 94. 3 Charles Guignon, “Authenticity.” Philosophy Compass 3.2 (2008), p. 283. 4 William Wood, Blaise Pascal on Duplicity, Sin, and the Fall: The Secret Instinct, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013, p. 102. Invention and reinvention of Sweetness (Douceur) PFSCL XLVIII, 95 (2021) DOI 10.2357/ PFSCL-2021-0023 321 nian libido dominandi) deep-rooted in pride. According to Augustine, this lust to dominate was one of the human vices most concentrated among the Roman people and pervasive in other early cities. The desire to yoke one another in slavery “perverts all human relations from family to city,” 5 because this lust alienates oneself from other individuals and from the community and constitutes a disruptive force of the society. For La Rochefoucauld and Pascal, douceur as a rhetorical device, on the one hand, could cater to the treacherous human intentions of self-deception and mutual deception as an insidious bait to self-love; on the other hand, douceur is an effective apologetical instrument, once directing humans to the love of God. The role of douceur in theology mainly lies in Augustine’s criticism of concupiscence and self-love. In his In Iohannis Evangelium Tractatus XXVI, 4, he writes, Moreover, if it was allowed to a poet to say, “His own pleasure draws each man,” not need, but pleasure, not obligation but delight, how much more forcefully ought we to say that a man is drawn to Christ who delights in truth, delights in happiness, delights in justice, delights in eternal life - and all this is Christ? 6 Here, douceur, as a strand of pleasure, could be used to flatter one’s interlocutor through catering to his or her self-love, and the speaker is also a sinful creature, because he or she also wins the interlocutor’s love through douceur. The mutual deception lies in flattering each other's postlapsarian nature of loving oneself through douceur, disguising ugly, self-interested human nature and diverting each other from the love of God. Douceur should only be used to direct love towards God, which is the only legitimate way, according to Pascal and La Rochefoucauld. Wearing masks to seduce and dominate others makes the self detestable, since everyone desires to make himself or herself the center of everything and everybody as well as to subjugate everybody else. For Pascal, 7 this tyrannical desire causes many conflicts among the self-centered selves, since 5 Saint Augustine, The City of God Against the Pagans. Translated by George E. McCracken. Vol. 411, Harvard University Press, 1957, pp. 126-127, see also Jean B. Elshtain, “Why Augustine? Why Now? .” Catholic University Law Review 52.2 (2003), p. 294 and also Robert Austin Markus Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of St Augustine, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2010, p. xviii. 6 Translations are taken from Tractates on the Gospel of John, translated by J. W. Rettig. 7 “The self is hateful.… It is unjust in itself for making itself centre of everything: it is a nuisance to others in that it tries to subjugate them, for each self is the enemy of all the others and would like to tyrannize them.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées. Translated with an Introduction by A. J. Krailsheimer, Penguin, 1995, p. 518. Jiani Fan PFSCL XLVIII, 95 (2021) DOI 10.2357/ PFSCL-2021-0023 322 when everyone wants to be the center of all, multiple centers cannot resolve the idea of each being the unique center of all. Nevertheless, there is an insidious way of psychological and rhetorical tyranny of deception enslaving others through pleasure and douceur and making others admire and even love us in a conversation. The speaker expresses himself or herself with douceur as “a fishing for good will” (captatio benevolentiae in Cicero Inv. Rhet. 1.22) in the exordium of a dialogue or a speech through “modesty and good manners,” in order to render the interlocutors as “attentive, teachable, and well disposed.” 8 Although the captatio benevolentiae persuades the listener through “put(ting) him into a benevolent frame of mind” (Rhet. Her. 1,6; 11; Cic. Inv. 1,20; De or. 2,322; Quint. Inst. 4,1,5), the ground of this successful persuasion lies in the “the ethical qualities” 9 of the speaker and the listener. Guez de Balzac’s textbook-like depiction and stipulation of the rules concerning douceur set a model for many secular moralists and Christian humanists, such as La Rochefoucauld: A certain sweetness and ease of manners which knows how to be accommodating without being servile... It still requires a naive frankness/ sincerity (une franchise naïve) and a custom of telling the truth, to things even indifferent, without vain ostentation, without affected restraint. 10 It is an equivocal and demanding requirement to demonstrate the douceur accommodating the interlocutor’s desires and interests and to be accustomed to speaking the truth, as well as at the same time, subtly, measuredly and appropriately avoid being servile or showing affected ostentation. What Guez de Balzac depicts is not a purely innate naturalism 8 Donald Russell, Tobias Reinhardt, “Captatio benevolentiae.” Oxford Classical Dictionary, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2015. Jean-Pierre Landry has recently rehabilitated this notion of captatio benevolentiae in Pascal’s writing. (“Pascal et la douceur. Une rêverie herméneutique sur les Pensées”, in Le Doux aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles. Écriture, esthétique, politique, spiritualité, textes réunis par Marie-Hélène Prat et Pierre Servet, Cahiers du Gadge, 1, 2004, pp. 117-127. 9 Lucia Calboli Montefusco, “Captatio benevolentiae”, in Brill’s New Pauly, Antiquity, volumes edited by Hubert Cancik and Helmuth Schneider, English Edition by Christine F. Salazar, Classical Tradition volumes edited by Manfred Landfester, English Edition by Francis G. Gentry. 10 « Une certaine douceur et facilité de mœurs qui sait être accommodante sans être servile… Il exige encore une franchise naïve et une coutume de dire vrai, aux choses même indifférentes, sans vaine ostentation, sans retenue affectée. » Jean- Louis Guez de Balzac, Œuvres diverses (1644), éd. Roger Zuber, Paris, Champion, 1995, p. 79. Invention and reinvention of Sweetness (Douceur) PFSCL XLVIII, 95 (2021) DOI 10.2357/ PFSCL-2021-0023 323 beyond social bonds and moral constraints, but l’honnêteté 11 after a longterm acculturation and embodied training. By virtue of the rise of humanism in the Renaissance, through the civilized art of conversation with the key features such as douceur, Ciceronian humanitas (humanity or politeness) was restored and magnified to dignitas hominis (human dignity), signifying a transition from the homo (human being) to the cultivated homo humanus (gentleman/ gentlewoman or well-educated human) 12 for the sake of enhancing the sublimity of human dignity and harmonizing worldly society. Douceur is the fruit of insidious internalization and taming of “the vital pulsion” of domination, which constitutes “the synonym of humanity in opposition to inhumanity.” 13 Ease of manners (facilité de mœurs), a naïve frankness/ sincerity (une franchise naïve) and a custom of telling the truth (coutume de dire vrai) are the codes of behavior of l’honnêteté, in terms of constant habituation and compliance with virtue and respecting the civility of a society as well as embodying integrity, frankness and concerned not to deceive in the sense of “honnêteté” defined in the entry of Dictionnaire de L’Académie Française (Dictionary of The French Academy). A naive frankness/ sincerity (une franchise naïve) embodies the qualities of sincerity and honesty as being “natural and inartificial” and “retracing simply the truth and imitating the nature without artifice.” 14 This open-minded ease of manners (facilité de mœurs), seemingly characterized by naturalness and spontaneity, paradoxically, are acquired through long-term adaptation of “a tendency to bend with good grace to circumstances, to be accommodating” 15 and the upshot of constant habitude of speaking truth (une coutume de dire vrai). Since ease (facilité) and naiveté (naïve) both swing back and forth in the grey zone between naturalness and cultural refinement, douceur, as an ambiguous concept, oscillates between authenticity and spontaneity of the speaker and the contrived artificiality in the sense of long-term and constant training by custom: “Nothing prevents us from being natural as much as the 11 Which can mean honorableness and honesty at the same time. 12 Laurence Boulègue et al., La Douceur dans la pensée moderne. Esthétique et philosophie d’une notion, Paris, Classiques Garnier, 2017, p. 8. 13 Boulègue et al., La Douceur dans la pensée moderne, 2017, p. 7. 14 The entry “naïve” in Dictionnaire de L’Académie Française, https: / / www.diction naireacademie.fr/ article/ A9F1535. 15 The entry “facilité” in Dictionnaire de L’Académie Française, https: / / www.diction naire-academie.fr/ article/ A9F0037. Jiani Fan PFSCL XLVIII, 95 (2021) DOI 10.2357/ PFSCL-2021-0023 324 wish to look natural.” 16 After the constant process of integrating oneself into worldly society, we achieve douceur without contrivance only when we finally manage to transfer second nature into nature and meanwhile to reconcile accommodating and speaking the truth to the interlocutor; thus, the second nature insinuates into one’s nature as ostensible authenticity without any artifice. Nevertheless, this quality of being honnête through acculturation and paideia of the worldly society cannot always be compatible with the authenticity of the self, characterised by being natural, as the Dictionnaire de L’Académie Française designates l’honnête homme as “someone who joins the distinction of the culture and spirit with politeness of manner”. 17 Politeness already suggests a kind of refinement and sophistication of morality and intellectuality after polishing one’s crude natural character or even concealing one’s true intention by observance of the rule of courtesy and the rule of the mundane world. This “mimesis” of the politeness of each other, even of eminent exemplars such as Cicero, Cato and Seneca, is detrimental to “the natural” or our own original property, by arbitrarily concocting their virtues and concealing their vices: 18 How many cadging philosophers have been produced by Diogenes, chatterboxes by Cicero, lazy fence-sitters by Pomponius Atticus, avengers by Marius and Sulla, voluptuaries by Lucullus, debauchees by Alcibiades and Antony, stubborn diehards by Cato! All those great originals have produced infinite numbers of bad copies. The virtues are bordered by vices; examples are guides that often lead us astray, and we are so full of falsehood that we use them as much to depart from the path of virtue as to follow it. 19 But more profoundly, from the point of view of Augustinian anthropology, the virtues are replete with vices, in the sense of the human blunder or misstep in the dimension of the natural human virtues. Nevertheless, these eminent heroes, as postlapsarian self-centered human beings, have already created and circulated a false consciousness based on self-interest and self-love among each other. That is the reason why more intriguingly, these originals, as ostensibly great in the this-worldly anthropological view, “have produced infinite numbers of bad copies” through the mimesis of civility and social acculturation deviating oneself from the imago dei. 16 V: 431 « Rien n’empêche tant d’être naturel, que l’envie de le paraître ». François de La Rochefoucauld, Collected maxims and other reflections, ed. E. H. and A. M. Blackmore and Francine Giguère, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 35. 17 https: / / www.dictionnaire-academie.fr/ article/ A9H0902. 18 Emmanuel Bury, Littérature et politesse: l’invention de l’honnête homme (1580-1750), Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1996, pp.133-134. 19 La Rochefoucauld, Collected Maxims and other Reflections, 2008, p. 213. Invention and reinvention of Sweetness (Douceur) PFSCL XLVIII, 95 (2021) DOI 10.2357/ PFSCL-2021-0023 325 An ease of manners (facilité de mœurs) and a naive frankness/ sincerity (une franchise naïve) demonstrate an impression of spontaneity and naturalness to appeal to the general public, such as the libertins—freethinkers in matters of religion and morality—in the worldly society. This sugar-coated spontaneity also facilitates conveying the bitter apologetic Christian doctrines in the case of Pascal and hard-to-swallow misanthropic moral observation in the case of La Rochefoucauld. In consequence, the honnêteté is subsumed to Christian virtues through the convergence of an oral delivery characterized by agreeable styles adapted to an apologetic purpose. 20 As Gérard Ferreyrolles maintains: “A Christian is an accomplished honest man (l’honnête homme) and not the denial of the honest man (l’honnête homme).” 21 Although the qualities of ease of manners (facilité de mœurs), and naïve frankness/ sincerity (une franchise naïve) both have some slightly pejorative connotations, such as overt simplicity and credulity or lack of firmness (fermeté) in the character of a person due to an excessive tendency of accommodating others, 22 the douceur is not necessarily contaminated with these negative traits: Only people with some strength of character can be truly sweet: usually, what seems like sweetness is mere weakness, which readily turns to bitterness. [V] (p. 129) 23 The strength of character is usually attributed to Stoic sages. Although sometimes caricatured and exaggerated, this character trait depicts Stoics’ indifference towards the vicissitudes of their destiny and pleasure as well as their constancy, sangfroid and impassibility before suffering and death. Douceur ostensibly seems to conflict with the qualities of the strength of character (la fermeté) 24 and to verge on weakness (faiblesse) with respect to the appearance of a lack of vigor and force as well as softness. The true 20 Laurent Susini, “La ‘vraie éloquence’ en question dans les Pensées de Pascal”, Revue d’histoire littéraire de la France, vol. 103, no. 1, 2003, pp. 23-24. 21 Gérard Ferreyrolles, « le Chrétien, c’est l’honnête homme achevé et non pas la négation de l’honnête homme » quoted by Laurent Susini, “La ‘vraie éloquence’ en question dans les Pensées de Pascal”, Revue d’histoire littéraire de la France, vol. 103, no. 1, 2003, p. 24. 22 See the entry “naïve” and “facilité” in Dictionnaire de L’Académie Française. https: / / www.dictionnaire-academie.fr/ 23 V: 479 « Il n’y a que les personnes qui ont de la fermeté qui puissent avoir une véritable douceur; celles qui paraissent douces n’ont d’ordinaire que de la faiblesse qui se convertit aisément en aigreur. » 24 Isabelle Chariatte, La Rochefoucauld et la culture mondaine. Portraits du cœur de l’homme, Paris, Classiques Garnier, 2011, p. 202. Jiani Fan PFSCL XLVIII, 95 (2021) DOI 10.2357/ PFSCL-2021-0023 326 sweetness lies not in articulation of the acquired truth in an apathetic and impersonal manner. While one is in a dialogical way of conversation with another, the aim is persuasion through charisma, enchantment and hitting the bullseye of the pleasure of the interlocutor. Since truth speaking is an indispensable property of douceur, which is the preliminary condition of this successful persuasion through sweetness and which at the same time possesses and conveys the truth, lies in one of the truth-teller’s (parrhesiastes) character traits: “the possession of certain moral qualities” guarantees “the access to truth.” The moral qualities constitute the authoritative criterion of the access to truth. That is the reason why the strength of character (la fermeté) as an important component of the greatness of soul this moral superiority embodies the truth, in contrast to the weakness (faiblesse) on the lowest part of the hierarchy of the moral evaluation system. Being comparable to honey, the douceur coalesces the two processes of the transformation: the hero mitigates and internalizes his violent instinct and transfigures himself into an amiable gentleman by accommodating himself to the social mores and the desires of his interlocutors and concurrently, the interlocutors are transformed by his douceur as truth disguised in sweetness, 25 which might also have a pejorative connotation as subjugating and coercing the interlocutors in insidious tyranny of persuasion through a soft, enchanting, sugary and indiscernible violence. When the interlocutor unmasks the deep-seated motivation behind this sweetness, they only discover a kind of sweet bitterness. Nonetheless, although an honnête homme and a truth-teller hold frankness and truth in high regard, as well as saying “what he believes is” as truth, a truth-teller (parrhesiastes) might speak the truth bluntly to the extent of risking his life and hurting his interlocutors, while an honnête homme tries to consolidate the community bond and instill the truth artfully and furtively like honey. A truth-teller also creates and relentlessly maintains an authentic relationship to himself because of telling the truth in spite of risking the security of his life in the same section on “parrhesia and danger”: “he prefers himself as a truth-teller rather than as a living being who is false to himself.” In this light, it is dubious whether an honnête homme, accommodating his interlocutors’ desire and cajoling them with the sugar-coated cannonball of bitter truth, instead of risking his life, gains 25 Hélène Baby, Josiane Rieu, éd., La Douceur en littérature de l’Antiquité au XVII e siècle, Paris, Classiques Garnier, 2012, p. 11. 26 Michel Foucault, “Discourse and Truth: the Problematization of Parrhesia”, 6 lectures at the University of California at Berkeley, CA, Oct-Nov., 1983. See https: / / foucault.info/ parrhesia/ . 27 Foucault, “Discourse and Truth”, 1983. Invention and reinvention of Sweetness (Douceur) PFSCL XLVIII, 95 (2021) DOI 10.2357/ PFSCL-2021-0023 327 mutual affection between him and his interlocutors. Does the honnête homme retain a self-deceptive relationship to himself and also distort the truth through douceur—a kind of deceptive flattery in his relation to the others? But this view of douceur contradicts Guez de Balzac’s depiction of douceur, which reconciles the harmonious community ambience with conveying the truth. In contrast to the aristocratic appreciation of douceur as an embodiment of strength of character and greatness of soul for the nobility accommodating themselves to civility and sociability, the Port-Royalists condemn douceur as the laxity of Augustinian morality. Henri Bremond even maintains that the absence of douceur, which is usually a social lubricant and a source of euphoria in a community, caused the excess of Augustinianism and theological and moral rigorism, which leads to the psychological terrorism of Jansenism and the heart of darkness of the heresy and existential despair in this-worldly society. 28 One of the most eminent scholars on the Port-Royalists, Philippe Sellier relentlessly accuses a dearth of douceur and its aftermath in Pascal’s Pensées, “in this work without women, without colors, without happy intimacy, there is little chance of discovering the slightest inclination to soften the distressing aspects of the world.” 29 We will inquire into whether this relentless accusation of Pascal’s harshness is valid with regard to his art of persuasion, moral transformation and religious apology having recourse to douceur as an indispensable instrument. The authority for delivering religious messages and for converting the interlocutor is established initially through being recognized by the relevant social participants. Although the authority in the institutionalized interaction could easily be established and maintained as formal institutional roles, in an informal context, such as a salon or a private dialogue, the interlocutors could take the initiative of listening to and obeying or defying 28 Henri Bremond, Histoire littéraire du sentiment religieux en France, T. IV, La Conquête mystique, L’École de Port-Royal, [1923], Paris, Librairie Armand Colin, 1967, p. 24. And also Tony Gheeraert. “Ineffables douceurs : suavité de Port-Royal”, in H. Baby, J. Rieu, éd., La Douceur en littérature, op. cit., p. 247-265, p. 247: « c’est précisément l’absence de cette douceur propre à modérer les excès de l’augustinisme qui constitue à ses yeux toute la spécificité et l’horreur du ‘jansénisme’, et précipitera les Solitaires et les religieuses dans les ténèbres de l’hérésie et de la désespérance. » 29 Blaise Pascal, Pensées, éd. Philippe Sellier, Paris, Bordas, “Classiques Garnier”, 1991, p. 63 : « Dans cette œuvre sans femmes, sans couleurs, sans intimité heureuse, on n’a guère de chance de découvrir la moindre pente à adoucir les aspects angoissants du monde. » See also Tony Gheeraert, “Ineffables douceurs”, op. cit., p. 248. Jiani Fan PFSCL XLVIII, 95 (2021) DOI 10.2357/ PFSCL-2021-0023 328 the sentence indicating implicitly or explicitly some imperative orders. 30 In the art of persuasion, douceur is an indispensable sugar-coated preliminary or even “preparatory condition” for the simultaneous or later delivery of the message concerning hardcore religious conversion, without which the dialogue or other kinds of speech act might misfire. They may suffer from misfire, which is not judged by the criteria of true or false, but effective or noneffective. This kind of preparatory circumstance or condition assisted by douceur facilitates the “the smooth functioning of a performative,” 31 to provoke appropriate thoughts, feelings or intentions in the mind of the interlocutors. Although this device of captatio benevolentiae (fishing for good will) through douceur is an indispensable precondition for an effective persuasion, Pascal chastises the persuasion by eloquence and sweetness as tyranny. This form of tyranny of deception directed towards the other and the self, is paradoxically a kind of deceptive flattery, and also rhetorical tyranny condemned by Pascal and La Rochefoucauld, which persuades and psychologically manipulates the interlocutors through pleasure and douceur based on the force of imagination instead of reasoning through comprehension. Persuasion through sweetness is not a legitimate method of persuasion in Pascal’s view, and even falls into the category of tyranny, Montaigne is wrong in declaring that custom ought to be followed simply because it is custom, and not because it is reasonable or just. But people follow it for the sole reason that they think it just… Without that, custom would be seen as tyranny, but the rule of reason and justice is no more tyrannical than that of pleasure. These are naturally human principles. 32 The rhetoric of sweetness is an illegitimate method of persuasion, because it causes the confusion of three orders—charm’s claim to love, force for its claim to fear, science's claim to belief 33 —and transgresses into the 30 Marina Sbisà, “Speech acts in context”, Language & Communication 22.4 (2002), pp. 430-431. 31 Jürgen Streeck, “Speech acts in interaction: A critique of Searle”, Discourse Processes 3.2 (1980), pp. 138-139 and also Federica Berdini and Claudia Bianchi, “John Langshaw Austin (1911-1960)”, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2018). 32 Pascal, Pensées and other writings, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 110: « Montaigne a tort. La coutume ne doit être suivie que parce qu’elle est coutume, et non parce qu’elle soit raisonnable ou juste, mais le peuple la suit par cette seule raison qu’il la croit juste… La coutume sans cela passerait pour tyrannie, mais l’empire de la raison et de la justice n’est non plus tyrannique que celui de la délectation. Ce sont les principes naturels à l’homme. » 33 Pascal distinguished between three orders: “devoir d’amour à l’agrément, devoir de crainte à la force, devoir de créance à la science (recognizing charm’s claim to Invention and reinvention of Sweetness (Douceur) PFSCL XLVIII, 95 (2021) DOI 10.2357/ PFSCL-2021-0023 329 domains of pleasure and desire which are not appropriate to persuasion as understanding and reason are. 34 Tyranny… So it is false and tyrannical to say: “I am handsome therefore I must be feared. I am strong therefore I must be loved. I am… And it is equally false and tyrannical to say: he is not strong, therefore I will not admire him. He is not skillful, therefore I will not fear him.” The rhetoric of douceur is a deceptive flattery and tyranny, since it caters to our concupiscence towards pleasure instead of persuading the reason by truth, which is the proper domain to be persuaded. In the example quoted by Pascal, to be feared because of being handsome or to be loved because of being strong is out of the proper order of cause and effect, just like persuasion by sweetness, which tries to generalize and universalize the force of sweetness in order to govern all things. Eloquence which persuades by sweetness, not by empire, as a tyrant, not as a king. It is bewildering and counterintuitive for a modern French or an English reader that Pascal creates a parallel between persuasion through sweetness and tyrant and equates persuasion by empire (empire) to a kingly method. “Empire” in modern French and English has a connotation of supremacy and absolutist reign based on arbitrary enforcement of power instead of justice. By contrast, in Pascal’s time, equivalent to a legal power of a king, “empire” indicates a kind of legitimate authority and power, to which one must be subjugated. It is far more confusing that Pascal relates douceur to tyranny, while La Rochefoucauld considers douceur as embodiment of the character trait of declined aristocrat’s magnanimity. In the vein of Pascalian anthropology, human desires and appetites disguise themselves under the cover of douceur as a vehicle for transmitting original sin, which caters to the postlapsarian corrupted human nature always driven by flattering pleasure as the basic premises of the consent about any proposition. Douceur corrupts human understanding and misleads judgment through manipulove, force for its claim to fear, science’s claim to belief)” and different duties should correspond to different merits. Pascal, Pensées and other writings, op. cit., pp. 22-23. 34 http: / / www.penseesdepascal.fr/ General/ Latyrannie.php . 35 Pascal, Pensées and other writings, op. cit., pp. 22-23. See also Laurent Susini, “Rois et tyrans au royaume d’éloquence : du gouvernement des âmes selon Pascal”, 49 (2016): 597-611. 36 Lafuma 583 et 584 (série XXIII) / Sellier 485, « Éloquence qui persuade par douceur, non par empire, en tyran non en roi. » Blaise Pascal, Pensees, Translated with an Introduction by Alban John Krailsheimer, Penguin, 2013, p. 510. Jiani Fan PFSCL XLVIII, 95 (2021) DOI 10.2357/ PFSCL-2021-0023 330 lating free will, which is at the disposal of humans to believe or not believe and can potentially lead to human laxism, 37 because free will is the headquarters of concupiscence. Pascal penetratingly demonstrates the corrosive effects caused by the rhetoric of douceur to human will: 38 opinions are received into the soul through two ways of access, either through understanding (entendement) or through will (volonté). Demonstration of truth through understanding is the most natural and reasonable way, corresponding to the above-quoted aphorism of Pascal, as a king, by empire, but this way of persuasion is not accessible for ordinary conversation and deters many ordinary men, since most people do not have the training in syllogism or abstract scientific demonstration; on the contrary, persuasion aiming at human will is the most ordinary but also most adapted to corrupted human nature, since this douceur coaxes human beings to believe, not through providing proofs, but through deluding by pleasure and insidiously insinuating itself into the folds of heart (replis du coeur) as a dangerous venom manipulating the heart. Douceur, because it does not submit rationality to something reasonable and demonstrable, enslaves reason to pleasing flattery, unjustifiably deviates from its own territory and transgresses into the realm of reason, and this is why eloquence that persuades by sweetness is as a tyrant. Nevertheless, in his apologetic project of moral and religious persuasion, as an Augustinian, Pascal has learnt by heart douceur as a preliminary condition for conversion instead of violence, either verbal or physical, from the doctrines and cases of Saint Augustine through the parable of feast in the letter 185: “God first commands to bring the guests to his grand feast and then compel them.” 39 Thus, douceur is an attractive and effective bait to lure the interlocutor to enter the game of the dialogue in the complicated and unpredictable process of the rite of passages at the threshold of conversion where violence and constraint are the last resorts. 37 In the sixth letter of The Provincial Letters, Pascal attributes the Jesuits’ application of douceur in their casuistry to one of the symptoms of their laxism: « je pourrai bien vous parler, la première fois, des douceurs et des commodités de la vie que nos Pères permettent pour rendre le salut aisé et la dévotion facile… ». See the discussion of Jean-Pierre Landry, “Pascal et la douceur. Une rêverie herméneutique sur les Pensées”, in Le Doux aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles, éd. M. H. Prat, P. Servet, op. cit., p. 121. 38 De l’Esprit géométrique, 2, De l’art de persuader, § 1-2, OC III. 39 “Dominus ad magnam cœnam suam prius adduci jubet convivas, postea cogi”. See the important discussion in http: / / www.penseesdepascal.fr/ Soumission/ Soumission6approfondir.php . Invention and reinvention of Sweetness (Douceur) PFSCL XLVIII, 95 (2021) DOI 10.2357/ PFSCL-2021-0023 331 The way of God, who disposes all things with sweetness (douceur), is to instil religion into our minds with reasoned arguments and into our hearts with grace but attempting to instil it into hearts and minds with force and threats is to instil not religion but terror. Terror rather than religion [terrorem potius religionem]. 40 Against the backdrop of the tumultuous Wars of Religion between the Protestants and the Catholics, many theologians and Stoics such as Guillaume du Vair made an analogy between fighting against the tyranny of passion in the soul and striving to avoid religious wars in the kingdom. Pascal condemns this feverish symptom of religious wars instigated through the Church’s persecution and different religious and political institutions’ usage of violence, which manifests a terror rather than religion. Contrarily, he deems that the best therapy of this religious and political fever is douceur, because douceur is the cornerstone and the fundamental way of conversion for Christianity. Paradoxically, when he adopts douceur as a tyrannical way of converting the libertines to Christianity through accommodating their self-love and concupiscence, Pascal capitalizes on the douceur as a purge of postlapsarian concupiscence that eliminates the concupiscence elements in itself as vehicle of transmitting original sin as well as everything containing original sin and as an effective antidote detoxifying its own poisonousness. God voluntarily humbled Himself to endow his only divine Son with Humanity as a Savior, 41 which is the sweetest (doux) Verb (Word) of God. In virtue of the divine mercy, douceur is rebaptized and transformed into a gift of Grace, since the Incarnation of Christ demonstrates douceur of God to human beings. And God Himself is characterized with mercy, consolation and love. Moreover, in the Holy Scripture, the Heavenly Kingdom is also defined as a blissful citadel of douceur, as depicted in the Genesis, “a land flowing with milk and honey.” Through providing this locus amoenus of God’s abode, endowing humans with his Son and His own sweetness, douceur as a herald of the hidden God, so as to help humans to “surmount the concupiscence located in flesh” and “find his own rapture on the side of 40 Lafuma 172 / Sellier 203 : “La conduite de Dieu, qui dispose toutes choses avec douceur, est de mettre la religion dans l’esprit par les raisons et dans le cœur par la grâce. Mais de la vouloir mettre dans l’esprit et dans le cœur par la force et par les menaces, ce n’est pas y mettre la religion mais la terreur. Terrorem potius quam religionem”. Pascal, Pensees, transl. A. J. Krailsheimer, op. cit., p. 188. 41 Landry, “Pascal et la douceur”, in Le Doux aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles, éd. M. H. Prat, P. Servet, op. cit., p. 125. Jérôme Lagouanère, Terrorem potius quam religionem. Douceur, grâce et conversion: sur une citation augustinienne chez Pascal, Paris, Classiques Garnier, 2017. Jiani Fan PFSCL XLVIII, 95 (2021) DOI 10.2357/ PFSCL-2021-0023 332 God.” 42 The textual evidence from the Church Fathers that indicates that God disposes everything with his sweetness can be mainly derived from Psalm 134: 3: “Praise the Lord, for He is good [bonus]; sing to his name because it is sweet [suavis].” For Pascal’s apologetic project, another art of persuasion through douceur is the ad hominem way of argumentation. Meanwhile, it is also a technique of tyrannic domination through catering to the interlocutor’s initial interest, pleasure and hermeneutic horizon, and then furtively subverting and diverting the direction of the argumentation to the intention of the speaker. And finally, in the specific case of Pascal’ section Lafuma 201 / Sellier 233, this ad hominem way of argumentation leads the interlocutor to another kind of celestial douceur, Divina voluptas ac horror as a long process of the therapy of desire and spiritual direction, through ways of persuasion of douceur. Pascal’s sections in his Pensées seem to be enigmatic and heterogeneous in their subjects, rhetorical devices and ways of argumentation. Nevertheless, the central thread of his seemingly eclectic arguments is apologetics. Apologetics, whose etymology is defense (apologia), entails the defense of Christianity in a patristic context. Originally as a technical term, it is a written or oral legal advocacy to persuade the Roman emperors of the legitimate existence of Christianity in an officially pagan empire. The apologists usually resorted to the demonstration of the Christian doctrines in order to justify their own beliefs in front of the Greek philosophers. 43 However, this apologetic approach adopted by the Church Fathers from the Roman period until the 17 th century in France was not always effective due to the bitterness to be swallowed or digested, not to mention the clumsiness in other aspects of their mode of argumentation. Their recourse to Christian doctrine instead of Greek or Roman philosophical arguments, made the Church Fathers unintelligible for the pagans, because they did not share the same discourses and epistemological schemes. Even worse, the Church Fathers’ aggressive critique of paganism and other branches of ancient philosophy usually irritated and alienated their pagan interlocutors as well as creating an unbridgeable distance between Christians and their Pagan interlocu- 42 Blaise Pascal, Les Lettres provinciales, éd. Michel le Guern, Paris, Gallimard, 1987, pp. 800-801. 43 See Étienne Gilson, La philosophie au Moyen Age, I, p. 15 and Marcel Simon, Benoît André, Le judaïsme et le christianisme antique, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, coll. “Nouvelle Clio”, 1968, pp. 118 sq. Invention and reinvention of Sweetness (Douceur) PFSCL XLVIII, 95 (2021) DOI 10.2357/ PFSCL-2021-0023 333 tors. 44 Being aware of these disadvantages, Pascal brought several innovations into this style. Two of his most ingenious innovations are: (1) He resorts to the psychological conversion instead of rational persuasion, based on his fundamental belief on the most efficient way of converting pagans, in particular the libertines, freethinkers in matters of religion and morality: “It is the heart that senses God, and not reason: this is what faith is. God sensible to the. heart, and not the reason.” 45 (2) His ad hominem way of argumentation: instead of attacking one’s interlocutor’s character or motivations (ad personam), through the ad hominem argument, the proponent of his own argument pretends to espouse the theses of his interlocutor so as to better overturn the latter’s argument: namely, the proponent purports to endorse his interlocutor’s premise, which encourages his interlocutor to continue their debate and furtively overthrows the interlocutor’s premise within or violates the argumentative framework of his interlocutor in the process of argumentation. 46 One of the most cogent pieces of evidence for Pascal’s spiritual direction being targeted at pagan interlocutors through ad hominem argumentation is his address to or parody of the libertines, one of the most pervasive types of the pagans in 17 th century France. To Pascal, the libertines in 17 th century France are a mutated species of the Epicureans. Because they held the conviction that the human incapacity to know God is irremediable and were quite desperate about this conviction, they negated salvation, resorted to a kind of atheism and even indulged themselves in the pleasure (voluptas) of this moment, namely, carnal concupiscence. 47 Confronted by psychological turbulence due to God’s absence as well as psychological complacency about the same absence, as characterized by the Epicurean voluptas, Pascal applied the therapy of desire instead of rational argumentation to 17 th century French Epicureans, especially addressing the Lucretian divina volup- 44 Marcel Simon, André Benoît, Le judaïsme et le christianisme antique: D’Antiochus Epiphane à Constantin, 2 e éd. mise à jour, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 1985, pp. 118 sq. 45 Laf. 418/ Sel.680 : « C’est le cœur qui sent Dieu, et non la raison : voilà ce que c’est que la foi. Dieu sensible au cœur, non à la raison », translated by Christopher Braider in The Matter of Mind: Reason and Experience in the Age of Descartes, University of Toronto Press, 2017, p. 188. 46 Gilles Declercq, “Avatars de l’argument ad hominem: éristique, sophistique, dialectique”, in La parole polémique, études réunies par Gilles Declercq, Michel Murat, Jacqueline Dangel, Paris, Champion, 2003, pp. 327-376. 47 See note 6 of Philippe Sellier in Blaise Pascal, Pensées, édition établie d’après la copie de référence de Gilberte Pascal par Philippe Sellier, Paris, Classiques Garnier, 1999, p. 224. Jiani Fan PFSCL XLVIII, 95 (2021) DOI 10.2357/ PFSCL-2021-0023 334 tas ac horror (divine pleasure and horror). One of the eminent examples is: “The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.” 48 Some interpretations argue that the scientific revolution of the 17 th Century and Bruno’s discovery of an infinite number of universes cannot fully explain this blatant anguish among Christians, since Christians considered nature as imago dei, which could be undeniably infinite, while some atheists felt distressed in front of the infinite world. 49 I contend that Pascal is describing the symptom of the atheist disease of the Epicureans and its aftermath. When we analyze the syntax of this quote of Pascal, we discern that the subject of this sentence “The eternal silence of these infinite spaces (le silence éternel de ces espaces infinis)” is too long to articulate a spontaneous cry of anguish. Furthermore, this sentence cannot express “a sincere feeling of terror,” but offers instead a carefully crafted pastiche of the Epicurean anguish in front of the silence vocalized by Pascal. 50 For the Epicureans, of whom the libertines are a variant, atoms are constituents of and the creative substrata of an infinite number of worlds. Among the infinite numbers of worlds, according to Cicero’s doxography, Epicurus asserted that gods dwell in the intermundane spaces. 51 This assertion was further advocated by Lucretius that “wherefore their abodes also must needs be different from our abodes, being thin in accord with their bodies”. 52 In this marvelous conception of the cohabitation between the infinite universes and gods, Epicureans also attribute “marvelous appearance and prodigious size” and “sensation” to the gods in human beings’ 48 « Le silence éternel de ces espaces infinis m’effraie. » in Lafuma 201 / Sellier 233. The English translation is mine. 49 Victor Cousin, however, attributed this existential anguish to Pascal himself. See his Rapport à l’Académie, 1843, p. 175 avec le commentaire suivant : « Quand on pousse le scepticisme jusque-là, on court bien [le] risque de le retrouver jusque dans le sein de la foi, et il échappe à Pascal, au milieu des accès de sa dévotion convulsive, des cris de misère et de désespoir que Port-Royal ni Desmolets ni Bossut n’ont osé répéter. » 50 Paul Valéry in Revue hebdomadaire, special issue (1932): 161-172. See also David Wetsel, Pascal and Disbelief: Catechesis and Conversion in the Pensées, Washington, D.C., Catholic University of America Press, 1994, pp. 300-301. 51 The gods live in these intermundia, “so as to be sheltered from the eroding effect of atoms hurtling through space and thus remain indestructible,” is “oddly, referred to by Cicero only here in ND; it plays no part in Velleius’ presentation of Epicurean theology or in Cotta’s refutation,” although Cicero asserted that this doctrine could be referred back to Epicurus. See the note 18 in Marcus Tullius Cicero, and Andrew R. Dyck, ed., De Natura Deorum: Liber I. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 77. 52 See Cicero, ND 1.8.18 and Lucretius, DRN 5.147-55. Invention and reinvention of Sweetness (Douceur) PFSCL XLVIII, 95 (2021) DOI 10.2357/ PFSCL-2021-0023 335 “waking mind” or “in their dreams”, and these gods even “give utterance with voices of a dignity to match their splendid appearance and great strength” in human beings’ perception, although living in tranquility, these gods keep a detached distance from the sublunary world. 53 Lucretius says: “The walls of the world open out, I see action going on throughout the whole void… Thereupon from all these things a sort of divine delight (divina voluptas) gets hold upon me and a shuddering, because nature … has been so manifestly laid open and unveiled in every part.” 54 In the Letter to Herodotus, Epicurus confessed his method of spiritual exercise: “since a procedure of this sort is serviceable to all who are at home in natural philosophy and since I recommend the constant pursuit of natural philosophy and find serenity myself primarily in a life of this sort…” 55 Through seeing “the action going on throughout the whole void”, the Epicureans contemplated the majesty of gods and their peaceful residences as well as obtained serenity of mind themselves. The Epicurean spiritual exercises aimed at the therapy of desire in this-worldly life and expurgating any metaphysical anguish and consternation, “of being present to one’s own life” and “a practice of heightened awareness that gives us an acquaintance with ‘how things are with us’ at the present moment.” 56 However, new infinite numbers of spaces were discovered by Giordano Bruno, in which the infinite universes were created by the supersubstantial God, who is unknowable and could not be grasped directly through our senses (BOL I.1, 242-247). 57 Confronted with this super-substantial principal and cause of all things, the libertines were intimidated by the collapse of their cosmological system and anguished about the silence, as a symptom of the banishment of their own gods of ataraxia. The libertines felt disoriented in front of their own collapsed cosmology, experienced an existential fear and trembling due to the disorientation before the huge infinity. For Pascal, guiding his libertine interlocutors to the contemplation of the universe is a surreptitious step in his therapy of the Epicurean desire (voluptas). Through transforming this 53 Lucretius 5.1161-1225, in A. A. Long and D. N Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, Vol.1, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987, p. 139. 54 Lucretius, DRN, 3.16-50. 55 Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus, section 37 in Epicurus and Titus Lucretius Carus, The Philosophy of Epicurus: Letters, Doctrines, and Parallel Passages from Lucretius, George K. Strodach ed., [Evanston, Ill.], Northwestern University Press, 1963, p. 114. 56 Robert E. Innis, “Existential Goods of Living in the Instant: Life Lessons from the Ancients.” The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, vol. 30, no. 2, 2016, pp. 150-151. 57 Dilwyn Knox, “Giordano Bruno”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta, ed., URL=<https: / / plato.stanford.edu/ archives/ spr2019/ entries/ bruno/ >. Jiani Fan PFSCL XLVIII, 95 (2021) DOI 10.2357/ PFSCL-2021-0023 336 pleasure into anguish among the libertines, Pascal leads a furtive spiritual direction of the libertines towards the Christian hidden God (deus absconditus). 58 During this fear and trembling in front of the ruins of the Epicurean universe, the libertines are stuck in the mire of psychological standstill and could not make a breakthrough with Epicurean cosmology. This psychological dilemma facilitated the evacuation of the Epicurean theology from the minds of the libertines and prepared for Pascal’s apologetic inculcation with the doctrine about salvation through the Christian God. The Epicurean libertines are still eager to find some metaphysical consolation after the expulsion of their gods and the Christian God, since, for them, a competent surrogate could covertly insinuate itself into the restoration of their cosmology after the fear and trembling. 58 “Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” (Philippians 2: 12-13 in King James Bible)