Central to Descartes’ philosophy is a view about immutable essences and eternal truths. After mentioning a Platonist account of recollection in Meditation V, Descartes declares that the ideas we have of mathematical notions “are not my invention but have their own true and immutable natures” (AT VII, 64/CSM II, 44).Descartes claims that other important philosophical notions, such as God, mind, body, and human free will (AT VII, 68; AT VIII-2, 348; AT III, 383; AT VII, 433, respectively), also have immutable (...) natures or essences. Although Descartes says a good many things about this view, nowhere does he offer definitive doctrine on the matter, and in fact frequently confuses his reader with apparently inconsistent pronouncements about immutable natures and eternal truths. In this essay, I focus on the immutable natures and propose a solution to two of the main problems associated with Descartes’ position, the metaphysical status of immutable natures and the purported indivisibility of their existence as ideas in the mind. (shrink)

Roger Ariew's new book, Descartes and the First Cartesians, will not be a methodological surprise for those who already read his previous work, Descartes and the Last Scholastics, as well as its expanded version, Descartes Among the Scholastics. Right at the beginning of DAS, Ariew justified the title of this book in the following way: A philosophical system cannot be studied adequately apart from the intellectual context in which it is situated. Philosophers do not usually utter propositions in a vacuum, (...) but accept, modify or reject doctrines whose meaning and significance are given in a particular culture. Thus Cartesian philosophy should... (shrink)

This essay offers an interpretation of Descartes’ treatment of the concepts of place and space in the Principles of Philosophy. On the basis of that interpretation, I argue that his understanding and application of the concept of space supports a pluralist interpretation of Descartes on extended substance. I survey the Scholastic evolution of issues in the Aristotelian theory of place and clarify elements of Descartes’ appropriation and transformation thereof: the relationship between internal and external place, the precise content of the (...) claim that space and body are really identical, and the way we conceptually distinguish space from body. Descartes applies his concept of space in ways that illuminate the metaphysical structure of extension. In particular, he uses the concept to specify the degree to which finite parts of matter are independent of each other. I argue that for Descartes, conceiving extension as indivisible is an artifact of conceiving it as a space. That is, pace the monistic reading of Cartesian extended substance, regarding extension as indivisible is an artifact of conceiving it in a way more removed from its real nature. (shrink)

This article argues that early modern philosophy should be seen as an integrated enterprise of moral and natural philosophy. Consequently, early modern moral and natural philosophy should be taught as intellectual enterprises that developed hand in hand. Further, the article argues that the unity of these two fields can be best introduced through methodological ideas. It illustrates these theses through a case study on Scottish Newtonianism, starting with visions concerning the unity of philosophy and then turning to a discussion of (...) how methodological ideas figure in those visions. Finally, the article argues that methodological considerations can serve as good starting points to introduce and discuss central topics and canonical figures of the early modern period. (shrink)

The hermeneutical tradition represented by Yorck, Heidegger, and Gadamer has distrusted Dilthey as suffering from the two sins of modernism: scientific “positivism” and individualistic and aesthetic “romanticism.” On the one hand, Dilthey’s epistemology is deemed scientistic in accepting the priority of the empirical, the ontic, and consequently scientific inquiry into the physical, biological, and human worlds; on the other hand, his personalist ethos and Goethean humanism, and his pluralistic life- and worldview philosophy are considered excessively aesthetic, culturally liberal, relativistic, and (...) subjective. This essay involves two tasks in response to this negative evaluation of Dilthey that has shaped our current understanding of his philosophical project; first, an interpretation of the issues at stake in Heidegger’s reception of and struggles with Dilthey. These issues touch upon language, historicity, and the nature of hermeneutics. Second, by pursuing this task in light of Guignon’s interpretation of Dilthey and Heidegger, I hope to question and challenge the “overcoming” of Dilthey’s epistemic and life-philosophical hermeneutics in the “ontological” or “philosophical” hermeneutics of Heidegger. (shrink)

My dissertation has two main parts. In the first half, I draw out an underlying presupposition of Descartes' philosophy: what I term "atomism of thought." Descartes employs a radical procedure of doubt in order to show that the first principle of his philosophy, the cogito, is an unshakeable foundation of knowledge. In the dialogue that follows his dissemination of the Meditations, Descartes reveals that a whole set of concepts and rational principles innate in our minds are never doubted. These fundamental (...) units of thought are indivisible, distinct, and isolated, and enable the possibility of any rational demonstration. Atoms of thought are perfectly individuated because God has created them as such. Likewise, our minds have been fashioned such that we necessarily have a clear and distinct perception every time we alight upon these simple notions. In the second part of the dissertation, I take up critiques of Descartes' view given by Nietzsche and Heidegger. In the chapter on Nietzsche, I attempt to fill a lacuna in scholarship about Nietzsche's commentary on Descartes. More specifically, I argue that once the foundation of God is displaced, the basis for accepting atomism of thought dissolves. In the final chapter, I analyze Heidegger's critique of Cartesian atomism. I first look at Heidegger's critique of classical truth as correspondence from Being and Time, and show how it is relevant to a critique of atomism. Then I show how the early Heidegger's holistic philosophical framework can provide an alternative that avoids the pitfalls of atomism. While I limit the scope of my analysis to Descartes' particular formulation, atomism of thought was an influential doctrine throughout modern philosophy. This aspect of Cartesianism has persisted and continues to be a significant theoretical underpinning of many contemporary views. It is my contention that Nietzsche and Heidegger have important contributions to make to this area of thought, and the relative neglect of their work in recent scholarship is a detrimental oversight. (shrink)

The term “consciousness” is very often, though not always, interchangeable with the term “awareness,” which is more colloquial to many ears. We say things like “are you aware that ...” often. Sometimes we say “have you noticed that ... ?” to express similar thoughts, and this indicates a close connection between consciousness (awareness) and attention (noticing), which we will come back to later in this chapter. Ned Block, one of the key figures in this area, provides a useful characterization of (...) what he calls “phenomenal consciousness.” For him, phenomenal consciousness is experience. Experience covers perceptions, e.g., when we see, hear, touch, smell, and taste, we typically have experiences, such as seeing colors and smelling odors. It also covers bodily awareness, e.g., we typically have experiences of our own bodily temperature and positions of limbs. Consciousness is primarily about this experiential aspect of our mental lives. (shrink)

This version has been superseded by the one published in Spring, 2014.

The book Descartes and the First Cartesians published by Roger Ariew in 2014, like the revised and expanded version of Descartes and the Last Scholastics, published in 2011 under the title Descartes Among the Scholastics, contributes in an exemplary way to eliminating the mythologization of modernity in the history of Cartesianism, and more generally, in the history of early-modern philosophy. From one book to the next, and with the help of numerous articles in the background that develop the same critique (...) of the mythology of the modern philosopher maintained by many commentators, Ariew patiently demonstrates that what one calls "the system of the philosophy of Descartes" constitutes neither the absolute beginning... (shrink)

Tradicionalmente se le atribuye a Descartes la tesis del «animal-máquina». De acuerdo con ésta los animales carecen de capacidades cognitivas, emociones y, en general, de conciencia. Esta interpretación, que todavía sigue vigente, se apoya en los avances de la filosofía natural cartesiana, que rompió con la aristotélico-escolástica, de carácter cualitativo, proponiendo un modelo físico-matemático cuantitativo mucho más cercano al nuestro. Pero, la propuesta de Descartes en su vertiente fisiológica, que en el fondo supone una concepción del ser humano innovadora, dejaba (...) muchas cosas por fuera: como la vida, la salud, o los fines de la conducta. Sin embargo, tales elementos reaparecen en su tratamiento terapéutico y moral de las pasiones, al considerar al sujeto como unión primitiva de mente y cuerpo. Dicha solución cartesiana también puede alcanzar a los animales que, concluiremos, no necesariamente son frías y desapasionadas máquinas. (shrink)

Arnold Cusmariu ABSTRACT: The Cogito formulation in Discourse on Method attributes properties to one conceptual category that belong to another. Correcting the error ends up defeating Descartes’ response to skepticism. His own creation, the Evil Genius, is to blame. Download PDF.