HUET (HUETIUS), PIERRE-DANIEL

HUET (Huetius), PIERRE-DANIEL. - French philosopher, theologian, and scholar, b. in Caen on Feb. 8, 1630, d. in Paris on Feb. 26, 1721. Preceptor of the

Dauphin together with Bossuet, he oversaw the famous editions of the classics in usum Serenissimi Delphini. Ordained a priest in 1676 (he was the son of a Protestant father), he first received the abbey of Aulnay and subsequently that of Fontenay. From 1674 he was a member of the Académie Française.

H. was a polygraph: he dealt with literature (he also wrote elegant Latin and Greek verse), philosophy, religion, etc. A Cartesian in his youth, he subsequently criticized Descartes' philosophy in the Censura philosophiae Cartesianae (Paris 1689), pointing out a sort of vicious circle between the cogito and evidence. Fundamentally, H. fought against excessive Cartesian rationalism in the sense that, according to him, the human spirit is not capable, without divine Revelation, of attaining the truth (Demonstratio evangelica, ibidem 1679; Alnetanae [of Aulnay] quaestiones de concordia rationis et fidei, Caen 1690; Traité philosophique de la faiblesse de l'esprit humain [posthumous], Amsterdam 1772). Notable from a historical point of view are the writings: Nouveaux mémoires pour servir à l'histoire du cartésianisme (Paris 1692); P. D. Hueti commentarius de rebus ad eum pertinentibus (Amsterdam 1718), translated into French under the title of Mémoires de D. H. by C. Nisard (Paris 1854).