Providence guides the empires: the Discourse on Universal History

Bossuet's universal history

Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet 1627 · 1704Bishop and orator, he reads universal history as the work of Providence guiding the empires.

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What it claims

The history of the world is guided by Providence: the succession of empires has a meaning, which the historian can read and the prince must learn.

Why

Rulers do more or less than they think: each empire serves a design beyond it, and God alone brings all to his will.

The same idea through history

Augustine of Hippo420Bossuet stands in the line of The City of God: empires serve a divine design that men do not control. He goes further than Augustine: he reads Providence in the precise succession of empires, from Assyria to Rome, and shows it to the prince as a lesson in politics.

In short

"Providence guides the empires: the Discourse on Universal History" is an argument by Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (Discourse on Universal History, part III "The Empires" (1681)) on the question "Does history have a direction?" (answer: a divine plan). Its claim: The history of the world is guided by Providence: the succession of empires has a meaning, which the historian can read and the prince must learn. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P4). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 2 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Discourse on Universal History, part III "The Empires" (1681)

Valid with an implicit premise

Bossuet wrote this book for his pupil, the Dauphin, son of Louis XIV. He follows world history in three parts: the epochs, the succession of religion, the succession of empires. His thesis: empires do not rise and fall by chance. They have natural causes, which the good historian must look for in the customs and character of peoples. But these causes themselves are ruled by God, who uses empires to punish, restore, protect or test his people. The powerful do not know it: they think they are serving their own plans. Note: quotations keep the spelling of the 1681 edition.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.

Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P4, the computer finds a world where empires have causes, rulers misjudge the reach of their acts, and no design exceeds them: a history full of unintended consequences, but without meaning.

Valid with P4. P4 links two things Bossuet holds together: natural causes (P2) and a divine design (P3). Without P4, one can grant that empires have causes and that their leaders do not see everything, without concluding that a design governs the whole. This is also where critics strike: does the divine cause really add to the natural explanation?

Analogy. A conductor whose musicians see only their own part. Each plays his line and thinks he plays for himself; the whole work appears only to the one who holds the baton. For Bossuet, the prince and the historian must learn to read the full score.

Objections

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Voltaire 1756 · attacks the conclusion

Bossuet writes "universal" history for only a small part of the world, and seems to have written only to show that everything was done for the Jewish nation. He says only a word about the Arabs and leaves out India and China. The greatness of Cyrus or of the Romans also has other causes, and Voltaire grants that Bossuet mentions them when he describes the spirit of nations.

Bossuet replies

No reply possible: objection raised in 1756, after the author's death (1704).

Bossuet Passage by Bossuet, written before the objection

Bossuet announces that the Arabs, Muhammad and his successors will have their place in a second discourse, along with France and Charlemagne. He thus ends this first part at Charlemagne, deliberately leaving what follows outside the plan. The silence on the Arabs would be a deferral, not an oversight.

The debate goes on (our summary) Bossuet says himself why he chooses these empires: "they have for the most part a necessary connection with the history of the people of God" (III, 1). The choice follows from the thesis, which is exactly what Voltaire objects to: a religious guiding thread decides what counts. Voltaire himself notes that the book stops at Charlemagne, but judges that the word on the Arabs reduces them to a "deluge of barbarians". The disagreement is about whether a history ordered by a thesis is legitimate. (Our summary.)

Where the debate stands (our summary)Partly granted on both sides: Bossuet's history is centred on the Near East, Greece and Rome, and he says so. Core disagreement: is a providential thread a key to understanding or a filter that excludes? Voltaire proposes instead a history of customs and minds of all peoples.

Montesquieu 1734 · attacks premise 3

It is not Fortune that rules the world: there are general causes, moral or physical, that raise, maintain or overthrow each monarchy. All accidents are subject to these causes. No design is needed to explain Rome: its run of successes and reverses is explained by the way it governed itself.

Bossuet replies

Bossuet Passage by Bossuet, written before the objection

Bossuet already accepts natural causes: the same God who made the chain of the universe willed that the course of human affairs have its sequence, and no great changes happen that do not have causes in earlier ages, apart from rare extraordinary strokes. The true science of history is to notice their secret dispositions.

The debate goes on (our summary) Both authors agree on general causes. Montesquieu concludes they suffice to explain Rome's history; Bossuet that they fit within a design. One removes God from the explanation, the other keeps him above it. Montesquieu's text does not deny God: it rejects Fortune, and history as a game of chance. (Our summary.)

Where the debate stands (our summary)Core disagreement: if natural causes already explain every event, does the divine design add anything that can be shown? Both authors agree against pure chance. Open question, taken up by Hegel, Ibn Khaldun and Marx.

Spinoza 1670 · attacks premise 1

The election of the Hebrews does not show that history revolves around them. Their "election" concerned only their social life and security, which depend on external causes: they were neither wiser nor more pious than others. Their blessedness would have been no less had God called all men to salvation.

no reply

We have not yet found a direct reply by Bossuet in the texts.

The debate goes on (our summary) The Treatise predates the Discourse: this is an objection drawn from Spinoza, and we have found no direct answer by Bossuet to this passage. Bossuet does not limit the benefit of empires to the chosen people, however: he also sees in them, "more humanly", a lesson on "the vanity of human greatness" for princes (III, 1). Spinoza, for his part, holds that Providence is known through the fixed and immutable order of nature, not through particular choices of God within history (ch. 6). (Our summary.)

Where the debate stands (our summary)Core disagreement: is Providence a choice of God within history (Bossuet) or the name given to the order of nature itself (Spinoza)? Open point.