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Bulletin of Spanish Studies

Hispanic Studies and Researches on Spain, Portugal and Latin America
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Neostoicism, value judgement and moral perception

Jeremy Robbins Online Publication Date: 01 December 2005 To cite this Article: Robbins, Jeremy (2005) 'Neostoicism, value judgement and moral perception', Bulletin of Spanish Studies, 82:8, 39 - 63 To link to this article: DOI: 10.1080/1475382052000345911 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1475382052000345911

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Bulletin of Spanish Studies, Volume LXXXII, Number 8, 2005

CHAPTER TWO

Neostoicism, Value Judgement and Moral Perception The rediscovery of scepticism in seventeenth-century Spain occurred at the same time as the far more visible, because intellectually and socially acceptable, intensification of the countrys long-standing interest in Stoicism.1 Across the century, Neostoicism and scepticism are intimately linked and creatively joined in a variety of ways. The result of this creative interaction is that it is impossible fully to study the one without the other, or to study moral and political philosophy without a consideration of both of these rediscovered Classical philosophies, for the thought of even those who are most positively engaged with scepticism like Saavedra, Gracin and Lpez de Vega is shaped by the ethos and conceptual language of Neostoicism. As the first step in the analysis of the complex interaction of Neostoicism and scepticism in early modern epistemological thought in Spain, I propose in the present chapter to focus on the body of writers most indebted to Neostoicism, a group I shall refer to as the doctrinaire moralists, in order to highlight the primary ways Neostoicism informed Spanish thinking on perception and, thereby, decisively shaped moral philosophy and literature throughout the seventeenth century. Drawing on the positive view of reason fostered by Neostoicism, the doctrinaire moralists held a firm belief in the accessibility of certainty and truth sufficient to enable correct action as a moral agent. At the heart of their thinking lies a concern with what might be termed moral perception rather than with perception per se. Knowledge equates with moral knowledge, and so value judgement, the discernment of good from bad, is made a prerequisite of a correct understanding and interpretation of the external world. This means that the essence of an object or concept is held to be its moral value, and this is understood purely in terms of whether it is good or bad for the salvation of the soul. The epistemological assumption underlying this is, obviously, that we possess the ability to ascertain correctly what an object is, and all writers influenced by Neostoicism, whether doctrinaire moralists or not, believe to some extent in the possibility of distinguishing appearance from reality. The difference between the writers I am loosely referring to as doctrinaire moralists and others who are as informed in their own way by Neostoicism lies largely in
1 On Spanish Stoicism, see the fundamental works by Karl Alfred Blher, Sneca en Espaa. Investigaciones sobre la recepcin de Sneca en Espaa desde el siglo XIII hasta el siglo XVII, trans. Juan Conde (Madrid: Gredos, 1983) and Henry Ettinghausen, Francisco de Quevedo and the Neostoic Movement (Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1972). On its literary impact, see Krabbenhoft, Neoestoicismo y gnero popular. ISSN 1475-3820 print/ISSN 1478-3428 online/05/08/00039-25 Bulletin of Spanish Studies. DOI 10.1080/1475382052000345911

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their respective engagements with scepticism. As we shall see in future chapters, the more influenced by scepticism a writer is, the more arduous this process of discernment is held to be, and the more certainty itself is held to be elusive and, even, only a theoretical possibility, with the result that the nature of knowledge is gradually redefined. In such writers, perception per se is a central issue, not simply the type of moral perception which is absolutely central to doctrinaire moralists. This said, the latter are not untouched by scepticism, but they tend to deploy it in Humanist fashion simply as a means to emphasize the vanity of learning.2 The Neostoic movement in Spain was at its height in the opening decades of the century, but its formative influence continued throughout the period and was such that it is possible to identify the doctrinaire moralists as a distinct body of writers shaped both conceptually and stylistically by its influence. In a period of intellectual change, their distinctive attitude towards perception and knowledge remains virtually unchanged in its basic assumptions throughout the whole of the early modern period. They are, in fact, the only identifiable group of writers who lack any real intellectual development in either their epistemology or their morality, and who can consequently be treated synchronically. This lack of development is, in large part, due to the fact that they seek an emotional, rather than an intellectual, response from the reader, and as such the vast majority of doctrinaire moralists do not themselves rise intellectually to the epistemological challenge of scepticism, nor to the further challenge this poses for morality. In the present chapter, therefore, whilst I shall focus on the epistemological debts of such moralists to the Neostoic revival in the 1610s and 20s, and thereby continue the broad chronological approach of this study begun in the last chapter, I shall also refer to writers from the second half of the century given the fundamental lack of stylistic and intellectual development of the writers whom, from an epistemological
2 In describing such a group, I wish above all to draw attention to a particular epistemological position, with its attendant moral assumptions, influenced by Neostoicism and omnipresent in Baroque Spain. Although in some respects an obvious oversimplification, then, my use of the term doctrinaire moralists simply serves to highlight a group with a common epistemology rooted in one contemporary understanding of Neostoicism. In many respects, this epistemology, and its attendant expression by means of an overuse of antithesis, becomes almost the default position of run-of-the-mill Baroque moralistsi.e. the majority. Not surprisingly, the better the writer, the more aesthetic qualities can be used to discriminate between individuals whose common epistemological and moral attitude otherwise serves to unify them. For a discussion of some such possible distinctions, see R. D. F. Pring-Mill, Some Techniques of Representation in the Sueos and the Criticn, BHS, XLV (1968), 27084 (pp. 27577); and Stephen Gilman, Introduction to the Ideology of the Baroque in Spain, Symposium, 1 (1946), 82107 (pp. 9293). The intellectual and aesthetic high point represented by Quevedo is achieved by no other doctrinaire moralist. Quevedos example influences writers throughout the century but, in the process, tends to be reduced to a series of mechanical juxtapositions between worldly appearances and inner reality.

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perspective, I am considering as one group. The major figure in the diffusion of Neostoic ideas in Spain was Justus Lipsius (15471606). His two most influential works in this respect were De constantia (1584) and Politicorum sive civilis doctrinae libri sex (1589). Both were translated into Spanish, the first in 1616 as the Libro de la constancia by Juan Bautista de Mesa (though it is possible that the translation was actually by Toms Tamayo de Vargas), 3 the second by Bernardino de Mendoza in 1604 as Los seis libros de las polticas o doctrina civil. In the De constantia Lipsius presents, in dialogue form, the central tenets of his Christian version of Stoicism. The work was a phenomenal success, with more than eighty editions between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries.4 Such success arose from the fact that, as one modern historian has commented, Lipsian writing [...] presented a Christian version of stoicism which (in effect if not in intention) issued in a flexibly secular pragmatism.5 As we shall see, whilst focused principally on the virtue of constancy, advocated as the virtue par excellence for the modern individual in turbulent times, the De constantia does also offer a clear statement of Neostoic epistemological principles. Two further works by Lipsius published in 1604, the Manuductio ad stoicam philosophiam and the Physiologia Stoicorum, offer the fullest version of his Stoic philosophy, and these were immediately read in Spain.6 His editions of Tacitus (1574) and Seneca (1605) lead furthermore to an intensification of Spanish interest in these two authors. Interest in Seneca, who became synonymous with Stoicism, was particularly strong in the 1610s and 1620s. This is evident in the spate of translations of his philosophical works: Juan Melio de Sande, Doctrina moral de las epstolas que Lucio Aeneo Sneca escribi a Lucilo (1612); Alonso de Revenga y Proao, Los dos libros de clemencia (1626); and Pedro Fernndez Navarrete, Siete libros (1627), and Los libros de beneficiis (1629).7 The 1620s also saw a full-scale biography of Seneca in Spanish by an original, if minor, political theorist, Juan Pablo Mrtir Rizo. His Historia de la vida de Lucio Anneo Sneca espaol (1625) treats Seneca as an example of the valido or favourite and Nero as a prince who becomes a tyrant through failing to restrain his base passions and desires. Lipsius works were instrumental in making Neostoicism the most influential political and moral philosophy in Baroque Spain. It has been suggested that it was in Spain that his version of Neostoic philosophy
3 See Ettinghausen, Francisco de Quevedo, 13. 4 See Bireley, The Counter-Reformation Prince, 74. 5 See R. A. Stradling, Philip IV and the Government of Spain, 16211665 (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 1988), 60. 6 See Epistolario de Justo Lipsio y los espaoles, 15771606, ed. Alejandro Ramrez (Madrid: Castalia, 1966), 42327. 7 See also Luis Carrillo y Sotomayor, Obras (Madrid: Luis Snchez, 1613) for a further translation with notes on De brevitate vitae.

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flourished most. 8 Both Madrid and Seville were active centres of Neostoicism, with the latter being especially receptive to his writings.9 As Corbett has commented, the peak of Lipsiuss political influence was reached in the area of foreign affairs, by the conversion of three Spanish diplomats: Juan de Vera, Bernardino de Mendoza, and Baltasar de Ziga.10 Juan Antonio de Vera y Ziga was the author of El embajador (1620), a hugely influential work much indebted to Lipsian Neostoicism and, like other political treatises of the time, much concerned with the question of the availability and epistemic status of knowledge, as we shall see in Chapter Three. The diplomat Mendoza was, as already mentioned, the Spanish translator of Lipsius Politicorum libri sex, and hence a key figure in the dissemination of knowledge of Lipsius Neostoicism in Spain. Indeed, in the introduction to his translation, he states that he translated the work so that those nobles who possessed no Latin could still benefit from the political sagacity of its author.11 It is, however, the third of the figures mentioned by Corbett, Baltasar de Ziga, who was perhaps most influential in spreading Neostoicism amongst Spains ruling elite. Zigas importance arises from the position he occupied at the centre of political life in the courts of Philip III and, albeit very briefly, of Philip IV. A figure of major political importance, ambassador to the Netherlands (15991603) and to France (160308), his knowledge of and interest in European intellectual developments is evident from the fact that he translated Montaigne into Spanish, as mentioned in the previous chapter. Around Ziga, at the very centre of court life, there was clearly a circle of Neostoic devotees and intellectually curious individuals. Zigas nephew, the Count-Duke of Olivares, who had spent formative years in Seville, was in turn heavily influenced by Neostoicism in general and Lipsius in particular, to the extent that Elliott refers to Lipsius as the intellectual father of the Olivares generation.12 Of course, the major writer associated with Neostoicism in seventeenthcentury Spain is Francisco de Quevedo who translated various Stoic works and wrote a range of treatises expounding and defending aspects of
8 See Gerhard Oestreich, Neostoicism and the Early Modern State (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 1982), 102. 9 On this point, see Theodore G. Corbett, The Cult of Lipsius: A Leading Source of Early Modern Spanish Statecraft, JHI, 36 (1975), 13952 (pp. 14345); Stradling, Philip IV, 62; and J. H. Elliott, The Count-Duke of Olivares: The Statesman in an Age of Decline (New Haven/London: Yale U. P., 1986), 22. Arias Montanos 1593 letter to Lipsius says that Lipsius enjoyed a good reputation in Seville, mentioning several names, amongst which Pedro de Valencia is particularly singled out (see Ramrez, Epistolario, 7073). 10 See Corbett, The Cult of Lipsius, 144. 11 See Lipsius, Los seis libros de las polticas o doctrina civil, trans. Bernardino de Mendoza (Madrid: Imprenta Real, 1604), unpaginated introduction. 12 See Elliott, Count-Duke, 454. See also Elliott, Lengua e imperio en la Espaa de Felipe IV (Salamanca: Ediciones Univ. de Salamanca, 1994), 4657. Lipsius Latin works were in the Count-Dukes library (Lengua e imperio, 50).

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Stoicism. Quevedo signals his allegiance to, and reliance on, the Stoa in one of his key Stoic works where he declares that hame asistido su doctrina por gua en las dudas, por consuelo en los trabajos, por defensa en las persecuciones.13 Quevedos interest in Neostoicism spans his entire career, but is particularly marked in two periods: the 1610s, when he wrote a variety of Stoic works, and the 1630s, when these were eventually published, and when several further Stoic-inspired works were written.14 In 1635 Quevedo published a work which was a compendium of Stoic treatises and translations: Epicteto y Phoclides en espaol con consonantes. Con el origen de los estoicos y su defensa contra Plutarco, y la defensa de Epicuro contra la comn opinin. Of the works contained in this voulume, the translation of Phoclides dates from around 1610, whilst that of Epictetus Encheiridion from 163335. The Nombre, origen, intento, recomendacin y descendencia de la doctrina estoica (better known as the Doctrina estoica, its running title in the volume) was written around 1612, probably the time when the 1635 volumes Defensa de Epicuro was also composed. The Doctrina estoica is perhaps the most interesting and philosophically focused of Quevedos Neostoic works, and is heavily indebted to Lipsius Manuductio ad stoicam philosophiam, a volume probably sent to Quevedo by Lipsius himself. 15 With the exception of Lipsius own expansive and popular introduction to Stoic thought contained in the De constantia, and available to Spaniards in the 1616 translation mentioned above, the Doctrina estoica was the first full-scale Spanish introduction to Neostoicism.16 Quevedos other Neostoic works cluster around the 1630s and 1640s, with several being worked upon during his imprisonment in San Marcos in Len between 1639 and 1641.17 The first five chapters of La cuna y la sepultura para el conocimiento propio y desengao de las cosas ajenas (1634), for example, were written by 1628 and published separately in Barcelona and Zaragoza in 1630 as the Doctrina moral del conocimiento propio y del desengao de las cosas ajenas.18 The Virtud militante contra las cuatro pestes del mundo was written around 1636 and published posthumously in 1651; De los remedios de cualquier fortuna was finished in
13 See Doctrina estoica, in Obras en prosa, ed. Felicidad Buenda (Madrid: Aguilar, 1961), 978. For the attractions of the Stoa to Quevedo, see Pablo Jauralde Pou, Francisco de Quevedo (15801645) (Madrid: Castalia, 1998), 28288. 14 Information regarding the dates of composition of the Stoic works by Quevedo is taken from the appendix, Ensayo de un catlogo de las obras de Quevedo, of Jauralde Pous Francisco de Quevedo (15801645). This appendix gives bibliographic references to other works treating the question of dates of composition. 15 See Oestreich, Neostoicism, 103. 16 See Ettinghausen, Francisco de Quevedo, 26. 17 On this period, see Jauralde Pou, Quevedo, 759820. 18 See Ettinghausen, Francisco de Quevedo, 73. Compare Luisa Lpez Grigeras comments in her edition of Quevedo, La cuna y la sepultura para el conocimiento propio y desengao de las cosas ajenas (Madrid: Real Academia Espaola, 1969), xvxvii.

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1633 and published in 1638; La constancia y paciencia del Santo Job, written around 1640 and only published in the early eighteenth century; whilst the Providencia de Dios, unpublished in Quevedos lifetime, was written some time between 1613-35, and its dedication signed 1641. Neostoicism and Value Judgement The influence of Neostoicism in general, and of Seneca in particular, was primarily moral and ascetic. This remained the case throughout the century. Consequently, the emphasis on constancy, patience, indifference to suffering and hardship, and the correct attitude to wealth, honours, and death, all of which were associated with Seneca, can be found well into the second half of the century, with titles such as Toms Francs de Urrutigoytis ponderous Idea de la prudencia, alivio contra la fortuna. Sentencias de Sneca ponderadas. Acuerdos de la paciencia. Dictmenes para la resignacin (1661), Juan Baos de Velasco y Azebedos El sabio en la pobreza, comentarios estoicos e histricos a Sneca (1671), and Francisco de Amayas Desengaos de los bienes humanos (1681) revealing the way in which Seneca was primarily perceived and deployed in Spain as a moralist.19 Indeed, it is the strong emphasis on moral evaluation central to such works that is the most notable feature of the doctrinaire moralists. This feature is most clearly articulated in Spanish translations of and commentaries on Epictetus Encheiridion which elucidate the conceptual thinking at work behind the distinctive use of ser and parecer in such Neostoic-influenced works in Spain.20 The Encheiridion was translated in 1600 by Francisco Snchez, El Brocense, and this work, the Doctrina del estoico filsofo Epitecto, had further editions in Madrid, Barcelona and Pamplona in 1612. This was followed by Gonzalo Correas less florid translation of 1630, El Enkiridion de Epikteto y la Tabla de Kebes, filsofos estoikos (a work printed in conformity with Correas own orthographic conventions), and Quevedos verse translation, which draws heavily on El Brocenses, and which was published in 1635 in the Epicteto y Phoclides en espaol volume of Stoic works. 21 Epictetus, like Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, and consequently like the vast majority of Spaniards who follow their version of popular or practical Stoicism, offers no technical or philosophical argument in support of his epistemological position.
19 Baos de Velascos seemingly boundless enthusiasm for Seneca led to other works centred on the Roman: see his L. Anneo Sneca, ilustrado en blasones polticos y morales (Madrid: Mateo de Espinosa y Arteaga, 1670) and El ayo y maestro de prncipes Sneca en su vida (Madrid: Francisco Sanz, 1674). 20 On the influence of Epictetus on Spain, see Blher, Sneca en Espaa, 387. 21 On these translations, see the various studies by Donald G. Castanien, Three Spanish Translations of Epictetus, Studies in Philology, 61 (1964), 61626, and Quevedos Version of Epictetus Encheiridion, Symposium, 18 (1964), 6878. See also his Quevedos Translation of the Pseudo-Phocylides, PQ, 40 (1961), 4452.

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Technical matters concerning such issues as the cognitive impression (phantasia kataleptike), for example, play no real role in their more morally-focused works. The translations of and commentaries on Epictetus by El Brocense, Correas, and Quevedo, however, do make clear the epistemological attitude implicit in the works of the many doctrinaire moralists. In the Encheiridion Epictetus draws a distinction between those things which depend on our will and those which do not, a distinction which was taken as the cornerstone of Neostoic doctrine by Spaniards: both El Brocense and Quevedo, for example, place a heavy emphasis on this part of the Encheiridion and make it synonymous with Stoicism itself.22 One of the things that falls within our control, and which plays a fundamental role in Spanish Neostoic-influenced thought, is assumption or estimation (hypolepsis), translated by El Brocense in the opening section of the Encheiridion as la opinin y juicio de las cosas: De todas cuantas cosas hay y se pueden considerar, unas son en nuestra mano, y a otras no se extiende este poder. Estn en nuestra mano la opinin y juicio de las cosas y el apetecerlas y procurarlas, o el aborrecerlas y huirlas. [...] No penden de nuestra voluntad el cuerpo, la hacienda, ni las honras y dignidades. Y en suma aquellas obras que no proceden de nosotros mismos.23 As Pierre Hadots comments make clear, this emphasis on judgement is central to the moral outlook of the Stoics: [T]he only value judgments which are authentic and true are those which recognize that the good is moral good, that evil is moral evil, and that that which is neither morally good nor bad is indifferent, and therefore valueless. In other words, the Stoic definition of good and bad has as its consequence the total transformation of ones vision of the world, as it strips objects and events of the false values which people
22 See Francisco Snchez de las Broces, Doctrina del estoico filsofo Epitecto que se llama comunmente Enchiridion, o manual, traducida de griego (Madrid: Juan de la Cuesta, 1612), fol.6r; and Quevedo, Epicteto y Phoclides en espaol con consonantes. Con el origen de ellos y su defensa contra Plutarco, y la defensa de Epicuro contra la comn opinin (Madrid: Mara de Quiones, 1635), fol.86v. 23 See El Brocense, Doctrina, fols 1rv. See Epictetus, Discourses Books IIIIV. Fragments. Encheiridion, trans. W. A. Oldfather (Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard U. P., 1996), 483. Both Seneca and Marcus Aurelius make similar points to those quoted by Epictetus in the Encheiridion. Compare, for example, Seneca, Epistles, 6692, trans. Richard M. Gummere (Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard U. P., 1991), 78.14, 18991; and Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations, trans. A. S. L. Farquharson (Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1990), 12.3, pp. 11112. Blher suggests that El Brocense may be influenced by Vives in his translation of hypolepsis as la opinin y juicio de las cosas (see Sneca en Espaa, 37576). Wolfs sixteenth-century translation had simply in nostra potestate est, opinio, appetitio, desiderium, auersatio (ibid., 374).

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have the habit of attributing to them, and which prevent them from seeing reality in its nudity.24 It is just this goal of the total transformation of ones vision of the world that the Spanish doctrinaire moralists desire, and the key to arriving at a true picture of the world is the exercise of judgement according to reason. Thus, El Brocense glosses the first section of the Encheiridion as follows: La verdadera sapiencia consiste en juzgar incorruptamente de las cosas, no confundiendo el ser que a cada cosa es debido. Todo cuanto piensa el vulgo es opinin contra la verdad. Por tanto conviene quitar esta niebla y tiniebla que todas las cosas nos encubre y hace que parezcan verdaderas, buenas, propias y eternas, como todo sea al contrario, si se mira ms adentro con ojos claros de entendimiento y conocimiento verdadero.25 The use of opinin here as something negative, contrasting starkly with truth, and its use in the opening lines of El Brocenses translation of the Encheiridion to translate hypolepsis (la opinin y juicio de las cosas) in a neutral sense merits some elucidation both to avoid terminological confusion and to highlight the type of moral perception at the heart of Spanish Neostoicism. The Stoics themselves drew a distinction between knowledge (episteme) and opinion (doxa), which they defined as weak and false assent, a distinction which finds expression in El Brocenses contrast between opinin and verdad. 26 Saavedra neatly summarizes this standard Spanish expression of the Stoic distinction when, commenting on how se engaan los sentidos en el examen de las acciones exteriores, obrando por las primeras apariencias de las cosas, sin penetrar lo que est dentro de ellas, he states that No pende la verdad de la opinin.27 Opinion
24 See Hadot, The Inner Citadel: The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, trans. Michael Close (Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard U. P., 1998), 109. Hadot (52, 8283, 10910, 125) offers a valuable discussion of the notion of hypolepsis in Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. 25 See El Brocense, Doctrina, fol.3r. 26 On this point, see Sextus Empiricus: The Stoics say there are three things which are linked together, scientific knowledge [episteme], opinion [doxa], and cognition [katalepsis] stationed between them. Scientific knowledge is cognition which is secure and firm and unchangeable by reason. Opinion is weak and false assent. Cognition in between these is assent belonging to a cognitive impression; and a cognitive impression, so they claim, is one which is true and of such a kind that it could not turn out false. See Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Mathematicos, 7.15152, as cited in A. A. Long, and D. N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 2 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 1992), Vol. 1, Translations of the Principal Sources, with Philosophical Commentary, 254. See also the commentary by Long and Sedley, 25759. 27 See Empresas polticas, ed. Sagrario Lpez (Madrid: Ctedra, 1999), 32, 445. Future references will be given by essay and page-number, as here. The Empresas polticas is the running title used throughout the original text. This title is frequently used by critics to refer to the volume rather than the longer title given on the actual title-page, the Idea de un prncipe poltico-cristiano. As such, I shall normally refer to the Idea as the Empresas polticas.

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in the sense in which Spaniards use the term to translate Epictetus hypolepsis, however, means rather estimation or value judgement, which lies within our control and which may be right or wrong depending on whether such judgement is made according to reason. Hence to avoid confusion with the key Stoic term opinio, the standard Latin translation of doxa, El Brocense and Quevedo do not simply translate hypolepsis as opinin, as Correas does, but offer rather a short paraphrase, opinin y juicio de las cosas, thereby emphasizing the notion of judgement central to Spanish Neostoic morality.28 Lipsius De constantia clarifies further the relationship between such value judgement and the central Neostoic antithesis between opinio and ratio. If such judgements are made following our reason, then a correct judgement will be made, recta razn being defined by Lipsius as un verdadero juzgar y sentir de las cosas humanas y as mismo de las divinas, en cuanto stas nos tocan. 29 In contrast, if we eschew reason and base judgements purely on the basis of our passions, we arrive at la opinin su contraria, defined as un juicio vano y engaoso de aquellas mismas cosas (12, Lipsius emphasis). Thus opinio constitutes a false judgement as to what constitutes our true good since it incorrectly evaluates things, assuming the bad is good, and vice versa. Following a broadly Neoplatonic view of the relationship between body and soul, Lipsius continues by arguing that reason is rooted in the soul, whilst opinion is grounded in the flesh and is therefore false and corrupted, amounting to nothing more than una vana imagen y sombra de la razn which is vana, incierta, y engaosa, que aconseja y juzga mal, y ante todas cosas despoja el nimo de la constancia y de la verdad.30 Opinion in this sense tends to arise for the seventeenth century primarily from the effects of the passions. Saavedra, no doctrinaire moralist himself though equally heavily indebted to Neostoicism, devotes three essays (Nos 79) of his Empresas polticas to the passions, emphasizing the fact that they keep reason from the truth and commenting significantly that tienen los prncipes muchos Galenos para el cuerpo, y
28 See El Brocense, Doctrina, fol.1v; and Quevedo, Epicteto y Phoclides, fol.15r, la opinin y el juicio de las cosas. For Correas translation of hypolepsis in the first section of the Encheiridion simply as opinin, see Correas, El Enkiridion de Epikteto y la Tabla de Kebes, filsofos estoikos. Traducidas de griego en kastellano por el M. Gonzalo Korreas, Katedratiko de propiedad de lenguas en la Universidad de Salamanka, konforma al orixinal ke el mesmo sak Greko-Latino, korrexido, i enmendado, kon unas breves deklaraziones i notas (Salamanca: Jacinto Tabernier, 1630), 30. The use of opinio to translate doxa is found frequently in Seneca. On this point, see Blher, Sneca en Espaa, 380. 29 See Lipsius, Libro de la constancia, 12, original emphasis. On the implicit link here between the Stoic ratio and the scholastic ratio recta, see A. H. T. Levi, The Relationship of Stoicism and Scepticism: Justus Lipsius, in Humanism and Early Modern Philosophy, ed. Jill Kraye and M. W. F. Stone (London/New York: Routledge, 2000), 91106 (p. 94). 30 See Lipsius, Libro de la constancia, 16.

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apenas un Epitecto para el nimo.31 The passions were widely held to have a negative epistemic effect. As Gracin comments, la pasin siempre destierra la razn, and to be seor, prncipe, rey y monarca de s mismo one must overcome the tyranny of the passions.32 The result is that the individual in the grip of one of the passions never obtains the essential truth, for passion talks rather than reason, presenting things differently from how they actually are.33 Errors occur, then, because of the distortions occasioned by the projection of value according to our passions onto an object, making it desirable, fearful, attractive, repulsive, etc. 34 As El Brocense, citing Epictetus, says, las cosas siempre son las mismas en s, mas nuestras opiniones las hacen diferentes. 35 Thus it is not things themselves, but rather our false opinions of them which trouble us;36 as a later anonymous translator comments, employing the terms ser and parecer explicitly: La mayor parte de las cosas que nos molestan y afligen, no es por lo que ellas son, sino por lo que a nosotros nos parecen.37 Correct opinion leads to peace of mind, and correct opinion, as El Brocenses comments make clear, is synonymous with truth.38

31 See Empresas, 7, 243. 32 See Baltasar Gracin, Orculo manual y arte de prudencia, in El Hroe. Orculo manual y arte de prudencia, ed. Antonio Bernat Vistarini and Abraham Madroal (Madrid: Castalia, 2003), 287, 327, and El Criticn, II.13, 41920. See also the allegory at the start of El Criticn (I.5) concerning Reason and our propensity for bad. Unless otherwise stated, references to the Orculo will be to this edition by aphorism and page-number. 33 See Gracin, Orculo manual, 273, 319. Compare Nos 155 (252) and 207 (28283). See also Quevedo, La cuna y la sepultura, 5778. 34 On this point, see James, Passion and Action, 16366. 35 See El Brocense, Doctrina, fol.14v. Compare Correas, El Enkiridion, 11. 36 See El Brocense, Doctrina, fol.18rv. El Brocense here translates Epictetus dogmata as opiniones y decretos (fol.18r). On this point, see Blher, Sneca en Espaa, 38081. 37 See Teatro moral de toda la filosofa de los antiguos y modernos, con el Enchiridion de Epicteto etc. Obra propia para enseanza de reyes y prncipes (Brussels: Francisco Foppens, 1669), in which the Encheiridion is separately paginated with its own title-page as Enchiridion de Epicteto gentil, con ensayos de cristiano (Brussels: Francisco Foppens, 1669), 7. The anonymous translator mentions the translations by El Brocense, Correas and Quevedo, and comments that Quevedo follows El Brocenses very closely (Motivo de esta versin, unpaginated). The Teatro moral part of the work is a loose translation of the emblems contained in the Quinti Horatii Flacci Emblemata by Otto Vaenius (1556 1629). On this point, see Pedro F. Campa, Emblemata Hispanica: An Annotated Bibliography of Spanish Emblem Literature to the Year 1700 (Durham NC/London: Duke U. P., 1990), 10506. 38 See El Brocense, Doctrina, fol.3r. The linking of truth with the correct knowledge of things and both with the detection and hence destruction of the worlds lies and deceptions is found in many ascetic writers. See, for example, Juan Eusebio Nieremberg, Epistolario, ed. Narciso Alonso Corts, 4th ed. (Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 1957), 3132. Nieremberg attributes sin to our misevaluation of things and to our deviant passions, and says that we value the world due to the deception of our understanding, the distortion of our will, the falsity of our opinions, and the abuse of our emotions (2930).

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From El Brocenses comments on the sixth section of the Encheiridion when he defines true wisdom as not erring and as giving each thing its true value (la verdadera sapiencia es no errar y dar a cada cosa su valor), it is clear that the judgement in question is, for Spaniards, emphatically moral judgement.39 What saves us from incorrect opinions about things is thus knowledge of both their true value, and of the truly valuable things in life: la ciencia de los verdaderos bienes reprime los malos deseos y quita las maraas de las falsas opiniones. 40 The constant emphasis placed on evaluation and judgement by Neostoic writers makes it clear that, in seventeenth-century Spanish terms, opinion (opinin engaosa as the term is often glossed) equates with parecer, the false assessment of a thing or persons worth, and ser with a things true moral value or worth. Desengao is thus the correct perception of the ultimate moral value of everything, such perception depending on the use of reason. This emphasis on correct moral perception was the feature of Stoicism most frequently singled out for praise. Melio de Sande, for example, eulogized Senecas writings for containing, among other things, excellent moral doctrine, an outline of true wisdom, disenchantment concerning all human things, knowledge of false opinions and the correct estimation of every thing.41 Further, since misinterpreting the value of things caused error and sin, and thus anguish and distress, the ability to evaluate correctly everything encountered in life was a prerequisite to the achievement of the tranquillity, equanimity and constancy which the Neostoics so ardently sought. We can see here, then, one of the reasons why scepticism was seen as a threat, for if we cannot distinguish securely between appearance and reality in terms of what a thing is, we will not be able to distinguish between whether it is good or bad. Moral knowledge will not therefore be possible and not only will perceptual and evaluative errors then occur, errors that may lead to sin, but we will be in the grip of precisely the anxieties Christian Neostoics saw as a consequence of incorrect opinion, of not being able to evaluate correctly the true significance and worth of death, wealth, illness, honours, fame and the like. Consequently, we will be miserable both in this world and the next. A primary attraction of Neostoicism was thus precisely the epistemic optimism attendant on the belief that value judgement made according to reason yields true and secure knowledge of the world. Whilst it might be
39 See El Brocense, Doctrina, fol.14v. Precisely this aspect of perception and judgement is made central to Gracins description of the hombre juicioso y notante which employs the same notion of dar a cada cosa su valor. See El Discreto, ed. Aurora Egido (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1997), xix, 311. Future references will be to this edition and, as here, to chapter (or realce) and page-number. 40 See El Brocense, Doctrina, fol.40r. 41 See Juan Melio de Sande, Doctrina moral de las epstolas que Lucio Aeneo Sneca escribi a Lucilo, repartida en setenta captulos por el mismo estilo de ellas (Madrid: Alonso Martn, 1612), unpaginated prologue.

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argued that such knowledge is primarily moral knowledge, many Spaniards, as we shall see, were prepared to equate precisely such knowledge with knowledge per se, given that salvation was held by most as the primary objective of human agency. It is clear that for those Spanish moralists who apply the Neostoic position just outlined above ser is not equated with a things essence, as in scepticism, but rather with its correct moral value. The question, then, is not whether what appears to be A is A. It is, rather, what the true value of A is. As I commented in the previous chapter, whilst contemporary scepticism tended to focus on purely epistemological matters, Sextus Empiricus does extend the notion of equipollency to moral questions, and indeed in the sixteenth century Montaignes Apologie relativizes morality by contrasting different customs and traditions. A sceptic would argue, then, that he or she is unable to decide between two conflicting moral appearances, or in Montaignes case that a decision is reached not objectively but as a result of the individuals cultural formation and expectations. A Spanish Neostoic would argue in contrast that if reason is applied against the passions and emotions, then it is possible to judge between two conflicting interpretative or moral opinions. The moral truth which results is wrestled therefore from a conflict within the self between reason, on the one hand, and desires and passions, on the other, the assumption being that the rational moral code which reason will employ in its value judgements is objective and true, which for a sceptic, of course, is to beg the question. The distinction between the Neostoic use of ser and parecer and the sceptics use of the same terms can be seen by considering two passages from Gracin and Quevedo. Gracin is no doctrinaire moralist, yet as a consequence of the Neostoic attitude, he also has a tendency to treat ser as, essentially, the moral value of a given object or person, at least in El Criticn. In this allegorical and didactic novel, in sharp contrast to what happens with the optical illusions cited by sceptics such as the tower which appears round from a distance and square from nearby, or with a character such as Don Quijote who mistakes windmills for giants and sheep for armies, Andrenio (the works representative of the Stoics stulti) normally perceives correctly what an object is, but dismally fails to evaluate the moral worth of what he sees. 42 Andrenios failure of perception in this sense can be seen in his reactions to the palace of Virtelia (the figure representing Virtue). Both Andrenio and Critilo are described as surprised at the appearance of Virtelias palace, which is the opposite of their expectations:

42 For a reading of Don Quijote in the context of Spanish responses to scepticism, see my Challenges of Uncertainty, Chapter Two, and Maureen Ihrie, Skepticism in Cervantes (London: Tamesis, 1982).

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Cuando le imaginaron fabricado de preciosos jaspes embutidos de rubes y esmeraldas, cambiando visos y centelleando a rayos, sus puertas de zafir con clavazn de estrellas, vieron se compona de unas piedras pardas y cenicientas, nada vistosas, antes muy melanclicas.43 However, it is Andrenio who precipitously voices his disappointment: Qu cosa y qu casa es sta! [...] Qu triste apariencia tiene! Qu ser all dentro? Cunto mejor exterior ostentaba la de los monstruos! Engaados venimos. Andrenio has seen the palace correctlyit is a dull, lack-lustre and impoverished palacebut he has not correctly evaluated the worth of the poor outer appearance he sees and, therefore, having not correctly evaluated the palace before him, he has failed to grasp its essence. The guide at this point steps in and explains that inner ser is always the opposite of outward parecer: juzgis vosotros el fruto por la corteza. Aqu todo va al revs del mundo: si por fuera est la fealdad, por dentro la belleza, la pobreza en lo exterior, la riqueza en lo interior; lejos la tristeza, la alegra en el centro, que eso es entrar en el gozo del Seor. Gracin, of course, shares this principle of antithetical reversal with many other moralists of the period. The Jesuit Lorenzo Ortiz, for example, makes the rationale behind Gracins stance explicit in his Memoria, entendimiento y voluntad when he writes that todas las cosas de este mundo tienen dos valores: uno es el intrnseco y verdadero, y otro el que le han sobrepuesto los hombres.44 As an example he cites the diamond which is coveted by the world as a great treasure, but which understanding can see is merely a shining piece of stone (fol. 62r). It is the intrinsic value of what he sees, the palaces essence or ser in the Neostoic sense outlined above, that Andrenio fails to grasp, and thus he reveals that he lacks the true wisdom which, as El Brocense had explained in his translation of Epictetus, consists in giving a cada cosa su valor.45 An emphasis on a priori moral evaluation can also be seen in El mundo por de dentro, the most epistemologically focused of Quevedos five satirical Sueos and the one most concerned with scepticism, as we shall see below. The episodic structure of El mundo por de dentro (written and disseminated in the 1600s and 1610s) centres on a series of encounters in which essences are juxtaposed with appearances, with the allegorical figure Desengao declaring his intentions to show Quevedo the protagonist the world as it is, not as it seems to him to be.46 A grieving widow, for example, provokes a sympathetic response from Quevedo until Desengao disabuses him: she
43 See El Criticn, II.10, 380. 44 See Ortiz, Memoria, entendimiento y voluntad. Empresas que ensean y persuaden su buen uso en lo moral y lo poltico (Seville: Juan Francisco de Blas, 1677), fols 61v62r. 45 See El Brocense, Doctrina, fol.14v. 46 See Quevedo, Los sueos, ed. Ignacio Arellano (Madrid: Ctedra, 1991), 276.

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seems grief-stricken, but is not (28893). Importantly, it is again not so much that it is impossible to discern the truth of such situations, but that Quevedos judgement is superficial and precipitate: as Price mentions, when the pair first enter the widows house, Quevedo fails to notice a telling detail that might have alerted him to the disjunction between appearances and reality, namely that the official mourners only start to wail once they are aware that they have an audience.47 The moral intention behind these sceptical lessons is made clear by Desengao who identifies hypocrisy as the root cause of all sin. Hypocrisy clearly is the vice most centred on deceit, and the hypocrite is said to be the worst sinner of all (283). The episode in which Quevedo and Desengao see a beautiful woman is presented as a lesson in perception and evaluation in a more complex manner than Andrenios and Critilos encounter with the palace of Virtelia, precisely because here the senses are fooled, leading to Quevedo seeing the woman as beautiful. The link between senses and error is emphasized in Quevedos exclamation on seeing the woman where it is clear that his judgement of her beauty excludes his reason: Quien no ama con todos sus cinco sentidos una mujer hermosa, no estima a la naturaleza su mayor cuidado y su mayor obra. 48 The senses, unchecked by reason and uncritically followed, have been fooled by the womans outer appearance. In fact, as we learn, her beauty is not real, but cosmetic (30205). Precisely because what is at stake is whether the woman is beautiful or ugly, the lesson is thus initially couched in contemporary sceptical terms, being concerned with establishing what something is rather than evaluating its moral worth. The latter, Neostoic-derived emphasis, however, rapidly impinges on the episode as Desengao explains Quevedos error. It becomes clear that even if the woman had been genuinely beautiful, Quevedo would have made a false judgement based on his sexual desire in assuming that such beauty was good and thus to be valued. Desengao begins by outlining the epistemic dangers of following the senses, alone and unchecked by reason: Ellos [los ojos] han de ver y la razn ha de juzgar y elegir; al revs lo haces, o nada haces, que es peor. Si te andas a creerlos padecers mil confusiones: tendrs las sierras por azules y lo grande por pequeo, que la longitud y la proximidad engaan la vista.49 Here we see Quevedo through the figure of Desengao accept the fundamental fallibility of the senses using standard sceptical examples, but refuse, unlike the Pyrrhonists, to refrain from pronouncing on the intrinsic value of what he sees. The senses must, rather, submit to the
47 See Quevedo, Los sueos, ed. Arellano, 288. See R. M. Price, Quevedo: Los sueos (London: Grant and Cutler, 1983), 38. 48 See Quevedo, Los sueos, ed. Arellano, 301. 49 Ibid., 302.

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interpretative power of reason. The distorting factor for Quevedo is the lack of rational control, rather than an innate incapacity to obtain secure knowledge. Desengaos subsequent comments further reveal that scepticism is not the message here, for sidestepping the question of the fallibility of the senses after stating that reason can correct sensory errors, Desengao simply states that all women are repugnant. Moving rapidly from this particular woman, his opening comments focus on women in general (302). What is at stake here, then, is what we might term a priori knowledge: in this case, namely that all women are repugnant because they are women. This is clear in Desengaos final misogynous comment to Quevedo that if he only thinks of a womans period, then he will immediately be always disillusioned with what he at first loved (306). Consequently, had this a priori value judgement been applied by Quevedo the protagonist, he would have correctly valued the seemingly beautiful woman, not so much realizing thereby that she is in fact ugly, an issue which is consequently presented as the less important of the two perceptual lessons here, but that female beauty per se is worthless. The question of evaluating appearances, of deciding if the appearance of beauty is real or cosmetic (literally), what we might term the sceptical issue, is irrelevant, because the deeper issue for Quevedo is the value of women per se. The important point then is not that one needs to be able to discriminate between ser and parecer in order to evaluate something morally, but that morality itself is the means by which that discrimination is made possible. Morality for the Christian Neostoic constitutes an a priori criterion of truth. Correct moral perspective (desengao) which enables correct value judgement (ser) is the precondition of Quevedos, and the doctrinaire moralists, epistemological discrimination. That the moral perspective at the heart of Christian Neostoicism in Spain might not be absolute and certain is not a question that will be raised until the middle of the century, and then not by the doctrinaire moralists, who continue to be defined as a group not so much by their Christian Neostoicism as by their moral certainty. And it is this certainty, grounded above all in an unquestioning faith in God and Christian truth, which secures certain knowledge. Neostoicism and Scepticism The subordination of epistemological issues to moral ones, and thus broadly of scepticism to Neostoicism, briefly illustrated above in Quevedos El mundo por de dentro, is one that will remain a feature of Spanish art and literature throughout the century. It is found, for example, in Antonio de Peredas painting the Dream of the Knight (c.1650) which offers a similar juxtaposition of a Neostoic lesson in value and a sceptical conceit regarding essence or reality. Here the ambivalence of the ontological status of the objects depicted on the table to the right of the sleeping knight brings to

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mind Descartes sceptical doubt: are the objects real or mere figments of the knights dream? Though there is a clear initial assumption on looking at the painting that the objects are real and that the knight has simply fallen asleep on the table next to them, the problematic lack of realism this entails (why would a courtier have such things as a papal tiara and mitres to hand?) raises a degree of ambiguity over what is being represented: the dream itself (in which case the objects lack true ser and thereby are symbols twice-over of the transience of earthly things) or a knight sleeping. Either way, this sceptical conceit is clearly subordinate to the symbolic value of the objects themselves, all clearly emblematic of the transience and vanity of all things human, a typical vanitas message enforced by the angels banner: Aeterne pungit, cito volat et occidit.50 In similar fashion, in Calderns La vida es sueo (c.1630) Segismundo spends most of the three acts of the play expressing severe doubts concerning the nature and essence of sensory experience. 51 Gradually, though, the titular metaphor moves from expressing this epistemological crisis regarding the validity and certainty of the senses to a moral message concerning the transience of all earthly things. Segismundos scepticism is eventually overcome by such desengao and by the fideism awakened in him by Clotaldo (ll. 214347) and acted upon in Act Three when he finally flees temptation in the figure of Rosaura on reasoning that quin por vanagloria humana / pierde una divina gloria? (ll. 297071). This leads directly to a Neostoic assertion of rational, personal control which involves him embracing his moral and political responsibilities. 52 In all three of these works, the emphasis on transience and on the consequent need to re-evaluate our attitudes towards worldly goods and values is apparent in their common use of the dream motif. Indeed, the centrality of such a motif in the Baroque is itself testimony to the centrality of the Neostoic values encapsulated in the concept of desengao.53 Quevedos work, though, has a far more complex and sustained engagement with scepticism than my reading of El mundo por de dentro has just sketched. Certainly his work reveals clear and detailed knowledge of scepticism, both ancient and contemporary, Academic and Pyrrhonist,
50 On this painting, whose attribution to Pereda is now questioned, see William B. Jordan and Peter Cherry, Spanish Still Life from Velzquez to Goya (London: National Gallery, 1995), 7984. What is striking about the painting in comparison with Peredas other famous vanitas now in Vienna is that, unlike the Viennese canvas, the Dream of the Knight includes the sleeping figure, thereby raising the type of issues I outline above. 51 See Pedro Caldern de la Barca, La vida es sueo, ed. Jos M. Ruano de la Haza (Madrid: Castalia, 1994), ll. 214887, 230785, and 292297. 52 For a detailed reading of the works Neostoicism, see Krabbenhoft, Neoestoicismo y gnero popular, 13848. See also Antonio Regalado, Caldern: Los orgenes de la modernidad en la Espaa del siglo de oro, 2 vols (Barcelona: Destino, 1995), I, 597631. 53 On dream literature, see Teresa Gmez Trueba, El sueo literario en Espaa: consolidacin y desarrollo del gnero (Madrid: Ctedra, 1999).

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and he is as familiar with individuals like Sanches and Montaigne as he is with Sextus Empiricus, the latter in all probability from Hervets translations. 54 Clearly, Quevedos firm belief in the power of reason to correct the senses and so avoid errors of both the evaluative and the ontological kind separates him from scepticism proper. In a passage from the Providencia de Dios Quevedo elaborates the principle outlined more concisely in the passage from El mundo quoted above concerning the mil confusiones (302) which result from sense data being unchecked by reason. He discusses a list of classic, indeed clichd examples of optical illusions: the size of the sun, the square tower, the colour of distant mountains, the different sizes of similar objects placed at different distances from the viewer. However, such examples are not employed by Quevedo in support of scepticism, as they had been used in, for example, Ciceros Academica.55 Rather, they illustrate Quevedos faith in the power of the rational faculties of the mind to discern truth, for reason is capable of teaching us the truth concerning the lies our eyes transmit and is therefore to be trusted above our senses.56 The conclusion he draws from this is ultimately turned, by analogy, into an argument for fideism: Pues si la razn te ensea la verdad de la mentira de tus ojos, y te desengaa del engao que ves, no puedes negar que se ve mejor lo que se cree a persuasin de la razn, que lo que se mira con los ojos. Pues si la razn del hombre asegura ms lo que por ella se cree que lo que se mira, con cunto mayores ventajas y prendas se asegura lo que se cree de Dios por la fe con l, que todo lo que se ve sin ella? (1393). In such overtly didactic treatises as the Providencia de Dios or the La cuna y la sepultura, the notion of el mundo al revs which is found also in the Sueos is rooted firmly in Quevedos blend of Christian Neostoicism. Such a position, where the erring individual interprets reality in a way which is the exact opposite of the truth, often fuses with Quevedos absolutist politics. Both morality and politics depending upon, and being rooted in, an immutable hierarchy: Todo lo haces al revs, hombre: al cuerpo, sombra de muerte, tratas como a imagen de vida, y al alma eterna dejas como sombra de muerte. Y sucdete de esto lo que a la repblica donde reina esclavo, que se pierde y asuela.57
54 On this point, see Quevedo, Defensa de Epicuro contra la comn opinin, ed. Eduardo Acosta Mndez (Madrid: Tecnos, 1986), 4550, 47 n. 135. 55 For the use of such examples in support of scepticism, see Cicero, Academica, in De natura deorum. Academica, trans. H. Rackham (London: Heinemann/Cambridge, MA: Harvard U. P., 1994), II.xxvi.82, 571. Future references will be to this edition. The dogmatists too cited such examples. See, for example, Aristotles use of the size of the sun: De anima, 428b2 (Complete Works, I, 681); and On Dreams, 460b18, (I, 732). 56 See Providencia de Dios, in Obras en prosa, 139293. Compare 1410 and 1445. For the reasons potential control over our afectos, see La cuna y la sepultura, 72. 57 See La cuna y la sepultura, 30; compare also 55, 65. See also Providencia de Dios, in Obras en prosa, 1431, 1450, and 1453.

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Quevedos scepticism, such as it is, is motivated by a desire to disabuse the individual of any claims to knowledge so as to return them to God: a correct reading of the world is one which reveals its insubstantial, transient and worthless nature, and apart from God, all is mere opinion.58 In this way, as we shall see, scepticism for Quevedo, as for many moralists of the period, is not so much a philosophy to be adhered to as a strategic position from which to argue for the vanity of learning, for the presumption of human knowledge claims, and thus for the importance of faith. The closest Quevedo comes to advocating scepticism in regards to securing knowledge is in the introduction to El mundo por de dentro. There Quevedo begins by citing both Metrodorus of Chios and Francisco Sanches to support a broadly Pyrrhonist stance, namely that no se sabe nada, y que todos son ignorantes, y aun esto no se sabe de cierto, que a saberse ya se supiera algo.59 He then proceeds to explain his flat support for such a stance: En el mundo hay algunos que no saben nada y estudian para saber, y estos tienen buenos deseos y vano ejercicio, porque al cabo solo les sirve el estudio de conocer cmo toda la verdad la quedan ignorando. Otros hay que no saben nada y no estudian porque piensan que lo saben todo; son de estos muchos irremediables; a estos se les ha de invidiar el ocio y la satisfaccin y llorarles el seso. Otros hay que no saben nada y dicen que no saben nada porque piensan que saben algo de verdad, pues lo es que no saben nada, y a estos se les haba de castigar la hipocresa con creerles la confesin. Otros hay, y en estos, que son los peores, entro yo, que no saben nada, ni quieren saber nada, ni creen que se sepa nada y dicen de todos que no saben nada y todos dicen de ellos lo mismo y nadie miente. Y como gente que en cosas de letras y ciencias no tiene que perder tampoco, se atreven a imprimir y sacar a luz todo cuanto suean.60 James Crosby has recently argued that the scepticism voiced here in the prologue serves to undermine Desengaos certainty regarding his point of view in the ensuing Sueo.61 The suggestion that this introduces the notion of (moral) relativism seems to me to be fundamentally incorrect, in so far as it ignores the manner in which ser and parecer, and the way in which we should distinguish between them, operates not only in this satirical text but also in Quevedos serious moral treatises. Furthermore, it seems to be contradicted by the fundamentally different tone of El mundo por de dentro, far more serious or unequivocal in its presentation of reality, and far more
58 See La cuna y la sepultura, 83; compare 86. 59 See Quevedo, Los sueos, ed. Arellano, 271. On Metrodorus of Chios, see Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers, II, 471. 60 See Quevedo, Los sueos, ed. Arellano, 27172. Compare Huarte de San Juan, Examen, 545, for almost identical divisions of ignorance. 61 See Quevedo, Sueos y discursos, ed. James O. Crosby (Madrid: Castalia, 1993), Introduction, 6869.

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overtly didactic, than the other four Sueos. All the introduction seems to show is Quevedos awareness of differences between Academic scepticism (and its innate hypocrisy) and Pyrrhonism, and his ridiculing of both. All positions along this sceptical spectrum are castigated; all found implicitly wanting. Quevedos solution is desengao. That is, a realization as to the fundamentally flawed nature of all intellectual enquiry other than that which has God as its goal. As such Quevedo here seems very close to the fideistic note struck at the close of Pedro de Valencias Academica,62 and in fact the introduction as cited lays far more emphasis on the vanity of human learning than on scepticism per se.63 In line with this, university learning in El mundo itself is scornfully dismissed by Desengao (292). Fundamental human ignorance, the emptiness of learning, rather than the total lack of certainty, seems Quevedos target. This approach is found too in the fourth chapter of La cuna y la sepultura. Here, as Ettinghausen comments, [Quevedos] critique of human knowledge is, like those of Seneca and Epictetus, an attack on academic curricula; but he goes further than either Stoic in actually putting in doubt the very possibility of knowing.64 Stating as his aim a desire to disabuse the reader concerning the vanity of study and science, Quevedo argues that the greatest and most harmful type of hypocrisy is wisdom, since wisdom does not actually exist.65 Part of this assault on knowledge is directed at the university curriculum, particularly rhetoric, dialectic, and logic, with the suggestion that these only teach how to speak well, and that Aristotles and Platos ideas are defended not because we know them to be true, but because of their authority as philosophers (88). This attack, to be found in many contemporary sceptics and/or anti-Aristotelians, is founded on an initial assertion, again following Sanches, that nadie sabe nada (81). Yet in practice Quevedo means by this apparently sceptical statement that all claims to human learning are nothing more than vanity resting on the ignorance of others (82). Ultimately Quevedo is unable and unwilling to commit himself wholesale to scepticism. 66 Consequently whilst Quevedo adopts the sceptical strategy of pitting Classical authorities like Socrates, Plato and Aristotle against one another to prove that there is only confusion rather than agreement where knowledge is concerned, even including the Stoics as one of the competing and conflicting schools in this
62 See Valencia, Academica, 24143, cited above in Chapter One. 63 As Blher briefly discusses, El Brocense too shows a marked scepticism towards the possibility of human knowledge, a stance which Blher sees as placing him within what he calls the corrientes escptico-fidestas prevalent at the close of the sixteenth century. See Sneca en Espaa, 376, and compare his comments on 381. 64 See Ettinghausen, Francisco de Quevedo, 83. Compare Blher (Sneca en Espaa, 43031) who argues that Quevedos Stoicism springs, like El Brocenses, from a fundamentally sceptical base. 65 See La cuna y la sepultura, 79, 81. 66 See Ettinghausen, Francisco de Quevedo, 83.

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moment of sceptical relativity (8485), what he concludes from this is not the need to suspend judgement, for his interest is not so much epistemological as moral.67 Rather, his entire premise in the chapter is a mixture of fideism and Stoicism. The first can be seen in his categorical assertion that la sabidura verdadera est en la verdad, y la verdad es una sola, y esa verdad una es Dios solo, que por eso le llaman Dios verdadero; y fuera de El todo es opinin y los ms cuerdos sospechan. (83) The second in his insistence that the reader must learn that no puedes saber nada bueno para ti, sino fuere lo que aprendieres del desengao y de la verdad, y que entonces empezars a ser sabio cuando no temieres las miserias, ni codiciares las honras, ni te admirares de nada y t mismo estudiares en ti; que leyndote est tu naturaleza introducciones de la verdad. (89) There is truth and it is accessible, but it resides in God and is realized through desengao. His fideist scepticism is thus a means to a specific end and consequently is formulated with none of the relentless rigour and allencompassing scope which serves in a writer like Montaigne to emphasize the universal validity of such scepticisms claims about the total lack of certainty. Quevedos scepticism rapidly resolves itself in Stoical fashion, as Ettinghausen notes.68 Human intellectual presumption and the vanity of learning remain a key note of the Baroque critique of knowledge. These assumptions rest on the supposition that, as Saavedra notes, God is the source of all wisdom, and what seems human knowledge is mere ignorance.69 The presence of terms such as presuncin, ignorancia and sabidura almost invariably indicates that a writer is stressing more the vanity of learning than the impossibility of certain knowledge, even though scepticisms central tenet that we know nothing is almost always cited in support of the condemnation of intellectual vanity. A typical example of this is Sandoval Quijanos aphorism, Es tan grande nuestra presuncin humana que dentro de la ignorancia forma su sabidura, y todo lo conocemos, sino el saber que ignoramos.70 The combined emphasis on correct value judgement and on the vanity of learning is to be found especially in works from the opening decades of the century. Both elements are combined in the c.1612 version of Saavedra Fajardos Repblica literaria. This work, which circulated in manuscript at the same time as Quevedos El mundo por de dentro, is based on the vanity of the arts and sciences in the direct tradition of Agrippas De
67 68 69 70 Compare Blher, Sneca en Espaa, 431. See Ettinghausen, Francisco de Quevedo, 86. See Empresas, 4, 227. See Sandoval Quijano, El prudente aconsejado, 48, and compare 5253, 5354.

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incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum atque artium declamatio (1526) to which it is indebted and constitutes an attack on Humanist philology and methodology. 71 In it Democritus undertakes a systematic critique of all areas of intellectual enquiry. He says of philosophy, medicine, mathematics and jurisprudence that, in our fallen world, they are vain and fallacious and, given this fact, he wonders both at the vanity of those who study these subjects and at the esteem in which the populace holds such knowledge given that it will never lead to true wisdom which has no need of such university learning. The only wise man is he who conoce la verdad de las cosas y la falsedad de las opiniones del vulgo y desestima los que l tiene por bienes, las riquezas, el honor, la gloria y la salud. 72 Here, then, a Neostoic emphasis on correct value judgement, on the distinction between internals and externals, and on the real possibility of true knowledge (wisdom) is combined with a condemnation of university learning in general. It is this emphasis, rather than the works notions of relativity, the diversity of opinion, and the unattainability of knowledge of causes, which reveals that, just as with Quevedo, the Repblicas intellectual allegiance rests more with Neostoicism and its more morally positive epistemology than with scepticism. Scepticism, where overtly present in the doctrinaire moralists, is thus aimed primarily at weakening confidence in learning. In the eighth chapter on literature and science of his posthumous Desengaos de los bienes humanos (1681), for example, a work whose Neostoic lineage is apparent in the very title, Francisco de Amaya, whom Andrs Mendo in his aprobacin calls a nuevo Sneca cristiano, begins by praising the power of literature and sciences to confer fame and longevity, and to offer succour in good times and bad.73 He then offers a whole series of clichs concerning knowledge and learning which, for all that they recall Quevedos comments in La cuna y la sepultura, owe more to the long-standing Christian tradition of censure of intellectual presumption. Knowledge, for example, is only a virtue if it is acquired to serve and to know God better (135). Amaya then approvingly repeats Socrates dictum that the only thing he knows is that he knows nothing, doing so in a context, however, which unusually
71 The anti-humanism of this version of Saavedras text is argued for strongly by Blecua who comments that this version might justifiably be retitled Contra philologos. See Alberto Blecua Perdices, Las Repblicas literarias y Saavedra Fajardo (Barcelona: Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona, 1984), 15. 72 See Obras completas, ed. ngel Gonzlez Palencia (Madrid: Aguilar, 1946), 1182 n. 53. The sceptical element of Saavedras text will be discussed in Chapter Three. Suffice it to say here that what is apparent in the c.1612 version is a sceptical attitude towards learning in general, not the endorsement of the epistemological claims of Classical scepticism which is found in the c.1640 version. 73 See Francisco de Amaya, Desengaos de los bienes humanos. Obra pstuma [...] Divdese en dieciocho captulos de mucha enseanza y erudicin para todo gnero de personas (Madrid: Melchor lvarez, 1681), 13034.

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takes the theologian as an example of someone who, for all his knowledge, still knows little even of all that can be known by humans: La verdadera ciencia es conocerse a s mismo. [...] si eres grande letrado en una facultad, ignoras las dems. Si eres telogo, no sabes la jurisprudencia, ni la medicina, ni las matemticas, ni la astrologa, geometra, msica, pintura, arquitectura, cmo se hace un vestido, una casa, ignoras lo ms mecnico. Y al fin el que sabe ms, sabr lo que Scrates, que era saber que no saba nada.74 In seventeenth-century Spain, it is unusual indeed to exemplify the sceptical notion that we know nothing by taking as your example a theologian, and as proof to offer the fact that the theologian knows nothing about making clothes. Just how unusual can be seen by comparing Amayas example with the text of El mundo por de dentro offered by Quevedo in the version published in his Juguetes de la niez of 1631. Where the original version had stated simply that en el mundo hay algunos que no saben nada y estudian para saber, the later version, which was emended to counter censors objections, clarifies this so as explicitly to exclude certain categories of intellectuals from this blanket dismissal of learning, first among whom are the theologians: En el mundo, fuera de los telogos, filsofos y juristas, que atienden a la verdad y al verdadero estudio, hay algunos que no saben nada y estudian para saber. 75 It is testimony both to the inroads made by scepticism and to the general acceptance of at least some of its tenets that, by the 1680s, attacks on learning were no longer seen as such a threat to the established order and so could be made to encompass previously unmentionable areas of intellectual activity. This said, Amayas text is no evidence for a widespread scepticism per se, but rather part and parcel of the doctrinaire moralists campaign against human pride and intellectual presumption, as the authors emphasis on knowledge that we do not have, rather than that we cannot have, makes clear. Christian Neostoicism gives the doctrinaire moralists a firm belief in the power of reason to evaluate reality correctly and a conceptual vocabulary (desengao, ser, parecer) that for them is rooted fundamentally in moral evaluation, the correct result of which is, in turn, essentially equated with the truth. The result is a vision of humanity at once pessimistic in its portrayal of humans as mired in deceit and of the world as an ultimately worthless illusion, yet optimistic in the firm confidence asserted in an individuals ability to attain the certainty of moral perception that is desengao should they so choose. A moralist such as Francisco de Miranda y Paz is typical in presenting desengao as a state
74 See Amaya, Desengaos de los bienes humanos, 137. 75 See Quevedo, Los sueos, ed. Arellano, 483. This edition contains the printed texts of both the Sueos y discursos and the Juguetes de la niez.

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eminently achievable by all, so long as they desire and will it. 76 For Miranda y Paz there is indeed a clear and absolute right and wrong and the individual is capable of using reason and will to discern it. Moreover, Miranda presents the process of moral discernment as easy to those who wish it (fol. 2r). Since he conceives desengao primarily as a state necessary for the Christian soul to attain in order to avoid sin, epistemological quibbles are ignored and the individual urged instead simply to consider his or her own conscience as a clear means of avoiding deceit and thus of correctly interpreting the world (fol. 2r). The line between correct and incorrect perception, between ser and parecer, may be extremely fine, but it is there, and we can and should become aware of it. Conclusion Spanish Stoicism, even at its most pronounced, is shot through with a marked degree of scepticism which leaves its mark in the portrayal of the fraught nature of the pursuit of knowledge which must encounter, and counter, deceit, self-deception and illusion.77 Given the decisive influence of Neostoicism on the doctrinaire moralists it is not surprising that this group has many points of contact with contemporary scepticism: a belief in the deceptive and alluring appearances of external reality; a profound despair at the omnipresence of deceit; and a firm belief in the radical disjunction between appearance and reality, with a consequent deployment of the same limited conceptual vocabulary (ser/parecer, engao/desengao). Underlying such existential and moral pessimism, however, about the nature of humanity and its lack of will to exercise and act upon moral discrimination is precisely the possibility of true discrimination and secure perception of value. The Neostoic-influenced moralists have a commitment to human reason as a sufficient means of gaining knowledge of the world, a commitment based on contemporary Neostoicisms fusion of the moral teaching of the Stoa and Christianity. The perceptual problem for such moralists is not how to distinguish between conflicting appearances, as for the sceptic, but rather how to evaluate the moral worth of what is perceived. In this way, perception becomes primarily a moral problem rather than predominantly an epistemological one and this affects the way that conceptual terminology (ser/parecer, desengao/engao) is used. Appearance (parecer) is equated primarily with incorrect value judgement, with judgements made without rational thought and without reference to eternity. The result of only viewing reality from a temporal perspective is to deceive oneself as to its moral worth and thus its truth. Engao for such moralists refers to the false values of the world which are accepted as true
76 See Miranda y Paz, El desengaado, filosofa moral (Toledo: Francisco Calvo, 1663), fol. 1v. 77 On this point, compare Blhers comments in Sneca en Espaa, 381.

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by the majority of people. In the words of Miguel Maara in his Discurso de la verdad of 1671, the world es un engao con apariencia de verdad. 78 Consequently, disabusing the self of the worlds values and realigning ones perspective on reality, both expressed in the concept of desengao, lie at the heart of Spanish Neostoic morality.79 This use of the notion of desengao presupposes the possibility of detecting deception and correcting false judgements, a possibility either ruled out by sceptics or so problematized as to render it effectively impossible. Because of this, of all the terms used to express Baroque thought regarding knowledge and perception, desengao is the concept most fully rooted in Neostoicism. Furthermore, for the doctrinaire moralists desengao becomes a key religious concept because it expresses a state of minda fusion of the traditional contemptus mundi of Christian asceticism and the emphasis on the correct attitude towards earthly possessions associated in Spain with the Stoicism of Seneca and Epictetusdeemed essential to Christian salvation.80 The difference between the sceptical emphasis on deception, which will tend more to highlight epistemological issues, and a Neostoic one, which will emphasize more moral concerns, can be seen in Juan de Zabaletas deliberation as to why a coin placed in water appears to the eye to be larger than it is. As we shall see in the next chapter, the distorting effect of refraction was perhaps the most cited example used by sceptics in support of the contention that, since our senses deceive, there exists no firm criterion to enable us to choose between differing sense-data: Francisco Sanches, for example, had mentioned precisely this phenomenon in his sceptical treatise. 81 However Zabaleta treats this question simply as a pretext for moral reflection. After briefly giving an explanation as to why the coin appears larger than it is, Zabaleta launches into his moral application of this natural phenomenon emphasizing how we always judge

78 See Maara, Discurso de la verdad, dedicado a la alta imperial majestad de Dios (Seville: Viuda de Caro e Hijos, 1853), 20. 79 This moral use of engao and desengao is perfectly exemplified in Rodrigo Mndez Silvas Engaos y desengaos del mundo which offers right and wrong takes on the world and its values. For all its existential pessimism, a work like Mndezs typically exhibits total confidence in our potential to alter our misconceptions and realign our priorities. As its conclusion makes clear, it is also a work heavily indebted to Senecan Stoicism. See Engaos y desengaos del mundo, ramillete compuesto de varias y olorosas flores, divinas y humanas (n.pl., n.publ., 1655), fol. 59v. 80 The heavy debt to Neostoicism of contemporary works of asceticism is tellingly revealed in Maaras Discurso de la verdad. In a work bereft of quotations from nonChristian sources, and which begins with the words Memento homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris. Es la primera verdad que ha de reinar en nuestros corazones: polvo y ceniza, corrupcin y gusanos, sepulcro y olvido, Maaras reference to Epictetus stands as testimony to the close fusion of Christianity and Stoicism in much Spanish Baroque thought (see Maara, Discurso de la verdad, 5, 10). 81 See That Nothing Is Known, 247.

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the wealth of others to be greater than it actually is.82 It is precisely this simplistic tendency to moralize that characterizes the major strand of Baroque writers I have labelled the doctrinaire moralists. Not wrestling with the problem of how or if the individual can grasp certainty given the human fallibility they are at pains to emphasize, their mission is to disabuse the individual of his or her misinterpretations and incorrect evaluations of reality. Whilst emphatically pessimistic in their view as to the consequences resulting from our fallen nature, they nevertheless exhibit an underlying confidence as to both the absolute veracity of their conception of reality and the feasibility of their appeals to reverse human preconceptions and misconceptions, albeit that their profound misanthropy means that they believe most individuals will not use their will to activate the power of reason. It is only once a writer responds to scepticisms epistemological claimsrather than simply using scepticism to argue the case for human intellectual pride and/or to strengthen the argument for fideismthat this simplistic doctrinaire Neostoicism is challenged and adapted. However, this process of mutual interaction between Neostoicism and scepticism was only fully undertaken by writers in the 1640s and 1650s, and even after these decades the heuristic simplicity of the moral vision of the doctrinaire moralists was the dominant feature of Spanish intellectual life in the vernacular.

82 See Juan de Zabaleta, Obras histricas, polticas, filosficas y morales, 6th ed. (Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, 1728), 53.