In the Discours de la méthode, Descartes presents himself as a heroic figure, standing up against the current Aristotelian orthodoxy in philosophy, and offering something new, a mechanist physics and the metaphysics to go along with it. But Descartes was by no means the only challenger to Aristotelian natural philosophy: by Descartes’s day, there were many. Descartes was read as one of this group, generally called the novatores (innovators) in Latin, and often severely criticized for their advocacy of the new. (...) Descartes himself wanted to separate his philosophy from that of the novatores, who were thought to seek novelty rather than truth. But it was not so easy to distance himself. Many contemporary commentators, like Charles Sorel, put Descartes squarely in their camp, but at exactly the moment when novelty and innovation in natural philosophy was changing from being worthy of scorn to being praiseworthy. (shrink)

This paper attempts to reconcile two apparently opposed ways of thinking about the imagination and its relationship to literature, one which casts it as essentially concerned with fiction-making and the other with culture-making. The literary imagination’s power to create fictions is what gives it its most obvious claim to “autonomy”, as Kant would have it: its freedom to venture out in often wild and spectacular excess of reality. The argument of this paper is that we can locate the literary imagination’s (...) complementary power of cultural articulation in this fictional activity. The suggestion is that we should conceive of the literary imagination as expressing its interests in culture not mimetically but by producing a certain kind of meaning. This meaning is irreducibly narratological, and understanding it helps us to see the role of narrative in bringing into harmony the literary imagination’s interests in both the imaginary and the real. (shrink)

Philosophical thinking is interrupted by the finitude of what cannot be named, on the one hand, and that within which it is subsumed as one of multiple modes of sense-making, on the other. Sense and Singularity elaborates Jean-Luc Nancy’s philosophical project as an inquiry into the limits or finitude of philosophy itself, where it is interrupted, and as a practice of critical intervention where philosophy serves to interrupt otherwise unquestioned ways of thinking. Nancy’s interruption of philosophy, Van Den Abbeele argues, (...) reveals the limits of what philosophy is and what it can do, its apocalyptic end and its endless renewal, its Sisyphean interruption between the bounds of infinitely replicating sense and the conceptual vanishing point that is singularity. In examinations of Nancy’s foundational rereading of Descartes's cogito as iterative, his formal experimentations with the genres of philosophical writing, the account of “retreat” in understanding the political, and the interruptive play of sense and singularity in writings on the body, sexuality, and aesthetics, Van Den Abbeele offers a fresh account of one of our major thinkers as well as a provocative inquiry into what philosophy can do. (shrink)

Tout au long des années 80, Derrida a exploré le thème de l’invention et étudié en particulier sa conception cartésienne. Derrida récuse avec force cette dernière pour montrer qu’elle dissimule une conception théologico-politique du sujet, accomplissant sur le plan politique la thèse métaphysique du logocentrisme. Mais, à partir de Psychè. Inventions de l’autre, cette vision est infléchie pour développer la signification positive de ce qu’il finit par appeler « l’invention du même » qui constitue l’un des courants majeurs de l’invention (...) techno-scientifique au sens moderne. Solidaire d’une certaine « politique de la recherche », Descartes voit l’une de ses inventions, la « langue universelle », être pour la première fois « contresignée » par Derrida. Cette reconnaissance ne doit pas toutefois cacher un désaccord où se révèle l’originalité de la pensée derridienne de l’invention : résolument anticartésienne, elle propose une inventio qui, en tant qu’elle confond avec le jeu même de la « différance », s’exclut de la cogitatio. Événement immanent à la res extensa qui, pour cette raison, ne saurait être entièrement rationalisé et qui, c’est significatif, en même temps qu’il s’ouvre à la chance, renvoie à une autre conception de l’être-ensemble. L’invention porte dans son excès, selon Derrida, l’annonce d’un temps nouveau. (shrink)

The paper contends that neoclassical ideology stems, to a great extent, from mathematical analysis. It is suggested that mainstream economic thought can be comprehensively revisited if both histories of mathematical and economic thought are to be taken collaboratively into account. Ideology is understood as a 'social construction of reality' that prevents us from evaluating our own standpoint, and impedes us from realising our value judgments as well as our theories of society and nature. However, the mid-19th century's intellectual controversies about (...) the validity of mathematical thought, truth and knowledge can procure new interesting insights concerning the ideological stance of the first marginalists. In this respect, the methodological categories of analysis and synthesis serve as the basis for the crucial distinction between old geometry and mathematical analysis, indicating that the discipline of mathematics has its own history of fundamentally unresolved disputes. Lastly, this may also shed some light on Alfred Marshall's peculiarly reluctant attitude towards the use of mathematical analysis in his work. (shrink)

The commonly accepted interpretations ofFermat's method of extreme values tell us that this is a curious method, based on an approximate equality and burdened with several contradictions withinFermat's writings. In this article, both a philological approach taking into account that there is only one manuscript written inFermat's own handwriting and a mathematical approach taking into account that brilliant mathematicians usually are not so very confused when talking about their own central mathematical ideas are combined. A new hypothesis is put forward (...) which renders the mathematics clear and coherent and which does not need the assumption thatFermat was confused. Probably a number of words have been added byCarcavy in two ofFermat's papers. (shrink)

Descartes and the fruits of mechanics: the conquest of the earthly good life Resumen: El proyecto de Descartes profesa un notable interés encaminado al dominio de la naturaleza que, en última instancia, debe conducir al sujeto a vivir la mejor vida posible. A este propósito se dirigen los distintos frutos, resultado de la ciencia cartesiana: Medicina, Moral y Mecánica. El presente artículo analiza los frutos de la mecánica a fin de determinar su papel respecto a la consecución de una buena (...) vida. Para ello se analizará el tipo de bien de que nos provee la mecánica, así como los distintos instrumentos que permiten su consecución. Palabras clave: artefactos, artesanos, bienes terrenales, buena vida, comodidad, Descartes, frutos de la mecánica.: The Cartesian project professes a remarkable interest in the mastery of nature which, ultimately, leads the subject to live the best possible life. The various fruits of the philosophical tree which result from the Cartesian science —Medicine, Moral and Mechanics— are directed to this purpose. This paper analyzes the fruits of mechanics in order to determine its role in the achievement of a good life. For this purpose, it will be analyzed the kind of good which mechanics provides us and the various instruments necessary to achieve it. Keywords: artifacts, craftsman, Descartes, comfort, earthly goods, fruits of mechanics, good life. (shrink)

Trata-se de uma coletânea de cartas em que Descartes e Elisabeth discutem as implicações da doença da princesa.

La experiencia común presenta los sueños como una sucesión de imágenes. Incluso quienes lo teorizaron vinculan lo onírico con lo visual: soñar es ver algo. No obstante, dado que los sueños están habitados por negatidades que se presentan bajo la forma de la ausencia, de la falta, de la frustración o, de manera más general, del deseo, el autor muestra que la ontología paradójica de éstas obliga a alejarnos del paradigma visual de la representación para pensarlo mediante el modelo discursivo (...) de la significación. Así, lejos de ser una imagen, los sueños son siempre ya un texto. (shrink)

RESUMENEl estudio se centra en la filosofía práctica cartesiana: la dimensión técnica y la moral. Una parte de su filosofía muchas veces poco estudiada. A lo largo del Discurso del Método, Descartes parece dialogar con Michel de Montaigne para superar su posición escéptica. Lo consigue desde el punto de vista teórico, pero no en relación a la acción moral. En ese ámbito, Descartes lejos de alejarse de las posiciones montañistas, las reproduce. Las reglas de la moral provisional ya están en (...) Montaigne y, como él, Descartes se tiene que conformar con lo probable en la acción moral.PALABRAS CLAVEDESCARTES, MONTAIGNE, ÁMBITO TEÓRICO, ÁMBITO PRÁCTICOABSTRACT This study is about Descartes’ philosophy: both its technical dimension and morality. Little attention has been paid to this part of his philosophy. Along the Discourse on Method, Descartes seems to speak with Michel de Montaigne with a view to overcome his sceptical position. He reaches this goal from the theoretical point of view, but not in the practical realm. In this area Descartes, far from moving away from Montaigne’s position, reproduces it. The rules of provisional morality are already in Montaigne and, like him, Descartes has to conform to a probabilistic approach in the moral action.KEY WORDSDESCARTES, MONTAIGNE, THEORETICAL REALM, PRACTICAL REALM. (shrink)

Descartes. An Intellectual Biography by Stephen Gaukroger, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1995. xx + 499pp. 25.00 ISBN 0-19-823994-7 Descartes. Biographie by Gen vieve Rodis-Lewis, Calmann-L vy, Paris, 1995. 371pp.

O artigo propõe, a partir de uma análise da célebre tese das “bestas-máquinas” de Descartes, uma discussão acerca da possibilidade de os animais, segundo esta doutrina, possuírem sensações, sendo assim capazes ou não de sentir dor; de sua recepção nos círculos científicos ingleses do século XVII em vista das práticas de vivissecção a sangue frio, correntes à época; de como os processos de mecanomorfose do pensamento afetam atualmente a vida dos animais.

The ArgumentMontaigne'sEssayswere an exercise in self-knowledge carried out for more than twenty years in Montaigne's private library located in his mansion near Bordeaux. The library was a place of solitude as well as a place of knowledge, a kind ofheterotopiain which two sets of spatial relations coexisted and interacted: the social and the epistemic. The spatial demarcation and arrangement of the site – in both the physical and the symbolic sense – were necessary elements of the constitution of Montaigne's self (...) as an object of knowledge and as a subject of discourse. The spatial setting of the library made possible and constrained certain discursive patterns through which words were systematically linked to things, authority was correlated with access and visibility, and the epistemological was coordinated with the social. In this sense, Montaigne's library resembled other places of empirical knowledge of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in which subjects of knowledge were constituted, objects were posited in their proper phenomenal fields and the entire structure of intellectual activity was reproduced through various cultural mechanisms. But the initial similarity is only apparent. The private library never became a culturally recognized place for knowledge of the self; its heterotopic structure could not have been reproduced without the concrete presence of an author and of a self, while Montaigne's skepticism systematically undermined the possibility of the author's position and of the identity of the self. (shrink)