The Impoverishment of Metaphysics in Pontus de Tyard's Premier and Second Curieux
Abstract
Pontus de Tyard is well known as a poet of la Pleiade, possibly as the bishop of Chalon sur Saône at the end of his life, but in the min time, he was a philosopher. One of the first to write in French, he plaid an important part in the Royal Academy to promote philosophy in this language. His metaphysics are a good example of the poverty of this discipline in the Renaissance. His first philosophical works were devoted to arts : Solitaire premier (1552) Solitaire second (1555). Metaphysics appear for the first time as such in the Second Curieux in 1578. It results of the division in two parts of a book published twenty years ago : De l’Univers ou Discours de la nature du Monde et de ses parties. So we assist to the laborious parturition of one of the first Metaphysics in French, out of physics and astronomy. Another poverty of these two volumes is the proximity to their Italian sources, with not much care for intellectual property. Of course, all poverty becomes richness. There are three characters : the Curieux gathering all opinions he can find, Hieromnime expressing an orthodox theology and the Solitaire proposing in first person philosophic conclusions generally sceptic. The metaphysics of the future-bishop sometimes resemble a cabinet of curiosity, but with a theological guardrail. For metaphysic reasons, Tyard overpasses geocentrism and infinite universe to correspond to the universe in expansion of modern sciences.