The De vanitate scientiarum: Agrippa against all the sciences

In 1526, in Lyon, Agrippa wrote the work that more than any other astonished his contemporaries: the De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum atque artium declamatio invectiva, an invective declamation on the uncertainty and vanity of the sciences and arts. Printed in Antwerp in 1530, the book reviews in about a hundred chapters almost all the learning of its time in order to show its emptiness. That the author was the same man who was about to publish the occult philosophy made the work even more disconcerting.

A relentless review

The De vanitate proceeds like an encyclopaedia turned upside down. Grammar, poetry, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy and astrology are examined one after another, and for each Agrippa exposes the contradictions, the futile disputes and the abuses. Then come natural and moral philosophy, medicine, law and the theology of the schools. Not even magic, alchemy and Kabbalah are spared: these too are declared fallacious or dangerous.

The criticism concerns not only the disciplines but also institutions and trades. Agrippa attacks the courts of princes, nobles, merchants, monks and the curia, with a harshness that recalls the ancient satirists. Many pages spring from the personal experience of a man disappointed by his patrons, but the book also belongs to a learned tradition of paradoxical declamations dear to the humanists.

Scepticism and faith

The deeper meaning of the work is religious. For Agrippa human reason, left to itself, produces only uncertain and contested opinions. True wisdom comes from God and is found in Scripture, accessible even to the simple. This is why the book closes with an ironic digression in praise of the ass, the humble and patient animal that, in the Gospels, carries Christ into Jerusalem: better a docile ass than a proud scholar.

This position has been called fideism: distrust of reason serves to put faith back at the centre. Scholars still debate how to reconcile the De vanitate with the De occulta philosophia. Some see a genuine conversion, others a prudent strategy, others again two coherent faces of a thought that always placed revelation above the human sciences.

Condemnations and fortune

The book provoked violent reactions at once. In 1531 the Louvain theologians identified many propositions to be condemned, and the theological faculty of Paris also censured it. Agrippa replied with an Apologia, in which he accused the censors of failing to grasp the rhetorical and paradoxical character of the declamation. In 1559 his name was placed on the Index of Prohibited Books promulgated by Pope Paul IV. Nevertheless the De vanitate enjoyed enormous success, with numerous editions and translations into the main European languages.

In England James Sanford's translation appeared in 1569, while in France the work was read by Montaigne, who according to many scholars drew on it in his Apology for Raymond Sebond. The De vanitate thus became one of the foundational texts of modern scepticism. Its author, celebrated as a magician, was for many readers above all a master of doubt, able to call into question every claim to definitive knowledge.