The Theater of Man: J. L. Vives on Society.

Jose A. Fernandez Santamaria. The Theater of Man: J. L. Vives on Society. (Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 88.2.) Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1998. xi + 209 pp. ISBN: 0-87169-882-X.

To quote the author succinctly, "Vives's thought... is overwhelmingly social" (137). Building on his earlier Juan Luis Vives: Escepticismo y prudencia en el Renacimiento (Salamanca, 1992), and using Vives's youthful Fabula de homine this time as the starting point, Fernandez Santamaria undertakes an ambitious enterprise: to connect Vives's peculiar brand of skepticism with his ideas on the origins and workings of society. The result is not always easy reading, but this is a rich treatise to which a brief review cannot do full justice. Any scholar of Vives or of Renaissance intellectual history, especially the history of the philosophy of society; will profit by exposure to the challenge which The Theater of Man provides.

Fernandez Santamaria opens with the accurate observation that "a detailed understanding of [Vives's] mental world" is still a desideratum, and that hence now is the time for "monographic studies aimed at explaining narrow and well-defined aspects of his thought" (vii). The Theater of Man is such a study. It finds in the Fabula de homine a seminal version of the argument, to be elaborated over Vives's career, that "man moves on a stage, mandated by God but man-made" (viii), where he strives to restore what was lost in the Edenic fall from grace. Society is seen as a human construct which was unnecessary before the fall. It is the end product of an evolution in which man began as a solitary creature. In this respect, Vives is said to diverge from Saint Augustine, whose conviction of human beings' pilgrim status on earth otherwise accords well with Vives's outlook. Fernandez Santamaria goes on to hold that for Vives society is a creation that would have been unnecessary prior to the fall, and that it is the result of clear human consciousness "of both the shortcomings attendant to his new [post-lap-sarian] conditions and the weakness to which he had now become prey" (15).

Regeneration of society is possible through the use of the light of reason left by God after the fall. Thus Fernandez Santamaria in the second chapter ("God's First Provision") examines Vives's analysis of the rational tools at human disposal, including his assignment of the roles of sense impression, imagination, memory, and "fantasy" (which "elaborates and refines" impressions, 22). Though fantasy operates imperfectly owing to its "bondage to the flesh" (24), reason comes to the rescue and makes the formulation of universals possible. Reason, whose use is developed through education, is of two types: speculative, which presumes to examine the secrets of God and the universe; and practical, which acquaints itself with the disciplines for the purpose of applying them to the solution of the problems of living in society. As Fernandez Santamarfa and Carlos Norena before him acknowledge, Vives is seriously suspicious of speculative reasoning; both because of the severe limits on what it can accomplish, and because if pursued without check it will detract from involvement with the necessities of practical reasoning, to which it is decidedly inferior. In a word, actio wins the classic struggle with contempolatio, hands down. The ultimate bond of society is caritas, the ultimate of all the passions, whose preservation is impossible in the shadow of any attempts to do away with passions categorically.

The arts fall into three classes: those "that observe the external aspects of nature (empiricism)"; those "that aim at the intimate aspects of nature (scientia) and knowledge of the spirituality that finally leads to God (sapientia)"; and those "that man, compelled by his own sociability, invents and develops" (92). The ultimate societal skill arising from this last category of arts is prudentia, "practical wisdom," that is, "the skill of accommodating all things of which we make use in this life, to their proper place, times, persons, and functions" (134, quoting Watson's translation of Vives). Pursuit of these matters involves examination in particular of Vives's De censura veri, De disputatione, and De prima philosophia as well as the remainder of the massive De disciplinis, and De anima et vita, De subventione pauperum (for which see a lucid summary at 153-63), and De communione rerum (where the author focuses on Vives's arguments against the common holding of property in Christian communities). To encap sulate, following Fernandez Santamaria's words in an earlier study: introspection leads to education leads to societal reform.

The reader will find an analysis of ancient currents of skepticism and Vives's place among them, along with an examination of links to Montaigne and other Renaissance figures. Fernandez Santamaria may be seen as replying to Norena, for whom skepticism is too radical to be attributed to Vives, as well as incompatible with Christianity. Norena's Vives escapes total skepticism only because "knowledge... has been given to us by an infinitely reliable God." But the citation Norena uses from Vives's De prima philosophia in support of his point says that God provided not knowledge but the instruments necessary to reach human beings' end. This is the clue Fernandez Santamaria picks up on his path through Vives's thought, arguing in effect that reason, the divinely bestowed instrument, enables humans to achieve sufficient heuristic probability to lead to effective action. Simultaneously, Fernandez Santamaria offers an alternative to Norena's view that Vives is affected with "unconscious fideism"; "The moral value of reason is so important a cog in Vives' system," asserts Fernandez Santamaria, "that it brings him into conflict with contemporary skeptics who cast a vote of confidence for ignorance" (51). skepticism in Vives is affirmed, fideism denied.

Readers familiar with Vives are likely to find much in Theater that their experience confirms. For example, other Vivesian discussions of society which emphasize the importance of persuasive discourse support Fernandez Santamaria's emphasis on probability as a sufficient basis for action, in the absence of certain knowledge. Likewise, recent studies of the De veritate fidei Christianae have called attention to two qualities of that long, posthumous apologetic work that square with Fernandez Santamaria's argument: Vives's aversion toward the fideism of the Judaic tradition, and the fundamental role played by reason as useful common ground in conversation between believers and nonbelievers. At the same time, defining consistent themes that apply to Vives's thought as a whole can be a formidable task, as anyone -- including Fernandez Santamaria -- will acknowledge. For instance, the idea that society is a human creation -- and Fernandez Santamaria goes to considerable lengths to make it a human artifact rather than a feature of Providence's original plan -- will need further comprehensive study of Vives to be confirmed. At least one remark of Vives's is irreconcilable with the idea as Fernandez Santamaria flames it. In De ratione dicendi book 2 (Opera Omnia, Valencia [1782], 2:156), exploring the origins of rhetoric, Vives asserts that the gift of sermo, discourse, was originally designed before the fall to enable people to communicate their thoughts with one another in public (ut quisque per eum [i.e. sermonem] foras ad alios proferat quae mente apud semetipsum concepit). Speakers spoke, and listeners trusted them pure and simple. This passage makes no sense except on the assumption of a prelapsarian community. Vives continues: after the fall, mere exposition is not enough (tenebris animo inductis per delictum, sola explicato non sufficit), and this is where rhetoric comes in. In making his case, Fernandez Santamaria has done less than he might to assist the reader in verifying his assertions. He is not entirely c omfortable with Latin. Sources are normally cited in English only, and translations are usually accurate in spirit though sometimes loose. Norena's habit, in the landmark book Juan Luis Vives (1970), of providing the English in the main text and the Latin original in a footnote, is a generous and unobtrusive concession to efficient reading which deserves imitation.

One comes away from Fernandez Santamaria's book with a deepened respect for the breadth of Vives's horizon and the intensity of his drive to achieve a synthetic and practical understanding of society. Likewise, the reader will be impressed with the author's courage in undertaking such a difficult but worthy topic, and rewarded by the engagement with the theses of The Theater of Man.