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Notes
A bibliography up to 1973 is in P. Auvray,Richard Simon (1638–1712), Paris 1974, pp. 179ff; this text and that of J. Steinmann,Richard Simon et les origines de l'exégèse biblique, Bruges and Paris 1960, represent the two most recent comprehensive contributions. From the point of view from which I approach Simon in this paper, an old essay by Van Gennep is very important: cf. A. Van Gennep, ‘Nouvelles recherches sur l'histoire en France de la méthode ethnographique, Claude Guichard, Richard Simon, Claude Fleury’, inRevue de l'histoire des religions 82 (1920), pp. 138ff. For works subsequent to 1973, I would mention the essays by J. Le Brun, ‘Das Entstehen der historischen Kritik im Bereich der Religiösen Wissenschaften im 17. Jahrhundert’, inTrierer Theologische Zeitschrift 89 (1980), pp. 100ff, and ‘Sens et portée du retour aux origines dans l'oeuvre de Richard Simon’, inXVII siècle 33 (1981), pp. 185ff, and R. Simon,Additions aux Recherches curieuses sur la diversité des langues et religions d'Edward Brerewood, critical edition with introduction and notes by Jacques Le Brun and John D. Woodbridge, Paris 1983. The work of F. Laplanche,L'écriture, le sacré et l'histoire. Érudits et politiques protestants devant la Bible en France au XVII siècle, Amsterdam and Maarssen 1986, whose central theme is the school of Saumur, abounds in suggestions and indications for the problems treated here, not only in the parts directly relevant to Simon.
For the concept of writing in Derrida, see above all J. Derrida,De la grammatologie, Paris 1967, Engl. transl.Of Grammatology, Baltimore 1976; for the problems treated here it is also very important J. Derrida,Scribble pouvoir/ecrire, pref. to W. Warburton,Essai sur les hierogliphes des Egyptiens, Paris 1978, pp. 7ff; by M. MacLuhan seeUnderstanding Media, New York 1964; by J. Goody cf. above allThe Domestication of the Savage Mind, Cambridge 1977 andLa logique de l'écriture: Aux origines des sociétés humaines, Paris 1986; by W. J. Ong seeOrality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word, London and New York 1982; by E. A. Havelock cf.Preface to Plato, Cambridge (Mass.) 1963;Origins of Western Literacy, Toronto 1976, andThe Muse Learns to Write: Reflections on Orality and Literacy from Antiquity to the Present, New Haven and London 1986. On the opposition atheism/religion from a deconstructive point of view, there is a beautiful book by M. Taylor,Erring: A Postmodern A/theology, Chicago and London 1984.
Well known regarding this is Auvray's thesis which asserts Simon's independence from Spinoza (cf. Auvray,op. cit., pp. 40–41, pp. 64–65).
Cf. for example B. Spinoza,Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, in Spinoza,Opera, ed. Gebhardt, Heidelberg 1925, vol. III, chap. I, p. 28.
Ibid., chap., IV, pp. 64ff, chap. XI, pp. 151ff.
Ibid., pp. 64–65.
For Spinoza's position with respect to the “strong thought”/“weak thought” option, cf. A. M. Iacono, ‘Una nuova Etica. Spinoza, l'orologiaio piu' libero’, inIl Manifesto, 9/6/1988.
If history, as a collection of empirical data, has to do with matter, by shifting emphasis slightly it is easy to re-establish the connection between it andnatural history in the Baconian sense; that Spinoza's text resonates of Baconian themes is fairly obvious.
Spinoza,op. cit., chap. XII, p. 161.
On a deeper level, Spinoza's illusion is not so naive, and his settling of accounts with the problems of the finite, of precariousness, ofdifference is, deconstructively, far from trivial. No philosophical work, and certainly not Spinoza's, can be reduced to a single, linear thread; the thread I am following here is only one among many that we find in that complex aggregate to which we give the name of Spinoza.
Cf. R. Simon,De l'Inspiration des Livres Sacrés: Avec une Réponse au livre intitulé “Défense des sentimens de quelques Théologiens d'Hollande”, Rotterdam 1687, p. 20.
R. Simon,Histoire critique du Vieux Testament, Rotterdam 1685, B. I, chap. II, pp. 15ff.
And with this, I mention in passing, we are at the heart of that “power-knowledge” mechanism which Foucault called “classical reason.”
Cf. R. Simon,Réponse au Livre intitulé ‘Sentimens de quelques Théologiens de Hollande sur l'Histoire Critique du Vieux Testament’, Rotterdam 1686, p. 92; on the complex tasks of this bureaucratic organism cf. R. Mousnier,Les Institutions de la France sous la monarchie absolue, t. II, Paris 1980, pp. 184ff, pp. 275–76; I thank my friend Rolando Minuti for clarification and bibliographical suggestions in this regard.
Simon,Histoire critique du Vieux Testament, cit., B. I, chap. XIV, p. 85; chap. XV, p. 87.
On the “concept” of “supplement” see Derrida,Of Grammatology, pp. 141ff andpassim.
Simon,op. cit., B. III, chap. II, p. 361.
Ibid., B. I, chap. XIV, p. 85.
Cf., for example,ibid., p. 87, where Simon maintains a utilitarian theory of the evolution of languages from an original simplicity to an ever more growing complexity and differentiation; this is a classical eighteenth century-position.
Cf. Le Brun, ‘Sens et portée...’, pp. 197–98.
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Iofrida, M. The original lost: Writing and history in the works of Richard Simon. Topoi 7, 211–219 (1988). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02028421
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02028421