Most critiques of modernity rest on an inadequate understanding of its complexity. Modernity should be seen in terms of the question that guides modern thought. 77ns is the question of divine omnipotence that arises out of the nominalist destruction of Scholasticism. Humanism, Reformation Christianity, empiricsim, and rationalism are different responses to this question.

Philosophers today have largely given up on the project of categorizing being. Aristotle’s ten categories now strike us as quaint, and no attempt to improve on that effort meets with much interest. Still, no one supposes that reality is smoothly distributed over space. The world at large comes in chunks, and there remains a widespread intuition, even among philosophers, that some of these chunks have a special sort of unity and persistence. These, we tend to suppose, are most truly agents (...) and subjects, and are what exist in the most proper sense of the term. We believe, in other words, in substances. (shrink)

A translation by Thomas Steele Hall, an historian of physiology, of the 1664 edition of Descartes' L'Homme (ed. Claude Clerselier). Includes an introduction, review of Descartes' physiology, a synopsis of the first French edition, bibliographical materials (editions and sources of L'Homme), and extensive interpretive notes. Also incorporates the French text of 1664 of L'Homme. Forward by I. B. Cohen.

In recent years philosophers of science have turned away from positivist programs for explicating scientific rationality through detailed accounts of scientific procedure and turned toward large-scale accounts of scientific change. One important motivation for this was better fit with the history of science. Paying particular attention to the large-scale theories of Lakatos and Laudan I argue that the history of science is no better accommodated by the new large-scale theories than it was by the earlier positivist philosophies of science; both (...) are, in their different ways, parochial to our conception of rationality. I further argue that the goal of scientific methodology is not explaining the past but promoting good scientific practice, and on this the large-scale methodologies have no obvious a priori advantages over the positivist methodologies they have tried to replace. (shrink)

There is an interesting historical detour in the dissemination of one of the seventeenth century’s most praised discoveries: the reception of Harvey’s account of the circulation of the blood is closely intertwined, especially in the Low Countries, with Descartes’ account of the origin of the heartbeat. Descartes was one of the first figures to support the circulation of the blood and to give credit to Harvey for it, although he presumably arrived at the same conclusion independently through his own anatomical (...) experiments. He did so while vocally rejecting Harvey’s views on the muscular nature of the heart and his explanation of cardiac motion, to promote his own mechanistic solutions instead. Although Descartes’ .. (shrink)

This article offers an interpretation of Descartes’s method of doubt. It wields an examination of Descartes’s pedagogy—as exemplified by The Search for Truth as well as the Meditations—to make the case for the sincerity (as opposed to artificiality) of the doubts engendered by the First Meditation. Descartes was vigilant about balancing the need to use his method of doubt to achieve absolute certainty with the need to compensate for the various foibles of his scholastic and unschooled readers. Nevertheless, Descartes endeavored (...) to instill willful, context-independent, universal doubt across his readership. If all goes well, readers of the Meditations are like method actors; the Meditator is the character they are meant to bring to life, via the method of meditating on reasons for doubt. The article concludes with the suggestion that Descartes was the same kind of skeptic as the early Academic skeptics Arcesilaus and Carneades. (shrink)

Spinoza rarely refers to art. However, there are extensive resources for a Spinozist aesthetics in his discussion of health in the Ethics and of social affects in his political works. There have been recently been a few essays linking Spinoza and art, but this essay additionally fuses Spinoza’s politics to an affective aesthetics. Spinoza’s statements that art makes us healthier (Ethics 4p54Sch; Emendation section 17) form the foundation of an aesthetics. In Spinoza’s definition, “health” is caused by external objects that (...) maintain our power to act in a variety of ways. Humans need such objects because our complex bodies constantly lose or consume many parts necessary to our overall functioning. Notably, Spinoza defines humans’ bodies through this complexity (2p13Sch), so health as maintenance of complexity is a distinctly human endeavor. Further, while art is not the only healthy activity, I argue that art is a particularly potent cure, which explains Spinoza’s otherwise opaque comment that music can cure melancholy (by which he meant a near-total inability to act, akin to death). Rather than only causing frivolous pleasures, art may be as essential to human flourishing as are other human beings in general; other people are “most useful” because of the variety of actions they make possible (4p35Cor & Sch1). Art’s production of a dizzying variety of affects is likewise most useful for health. -/- Having established how art in general affects the individual, I then explain the role of artists in shaping social groups. Artists use vivid and highly charged affective techniques, as do political sovereigns and religious prophets (TTP chapters 1-2 & 15-16). However, sovereigns and prophets are concerned exclusively with “morality,” defined by Spinoza as the use of affects (primarily based on fear and hope) to produce “obedience” in the generic multitude or people at large. An artist, however, rarely causes affects in the whole nation, affecting instead only a smaller niche or “sub-genre” of people. The affects produced in this group are also not identical to those used by sovereigns, since artists do not primarily deploy sad affects of hope and fear but instead use a wide variety of joyful affects. Further, in Spinoza’s analysis of ceremonies (TTP chapter 5), we see how small groups exposed to repeated ceremonies or social practices eventually develop new strengths which they lacked before. Repeated exposure to shared aesthetic “ceremonies” (e.g., live music performances) of the same sub-genre will over time create the capacity of new powers in the sub-genre of people, which distinguishes them from the masses. Spinoza says sovereigns forge a “second nature” for the generic people through affects; we can then affirm that smaller groups exposed to a distinct sub-genre of art can acquire a new “third nature” which will contain unique powers extending beyond healthy maintenance of their existing bodies. That is, art in general is necessary to flourish and remain whole (maintaining health), but it can also occasionally expand what one is to unforeseen heights (through specific artistic sub-genres). (shrink)

In this paper, I join the so-called voluntarism debate on Descartes’s theory of will and judgment, arguing for an indirect doxastic voluntarism reading of Descartes, as opposed to a classic, or direct doxastic voluntarism. More specifically, I examine the question whether Descartes thinks the will can have a direct and full control over one’s suspension of judgment. Descartes was a doxastic voluntarist, maintaining that the will has some kind of control over one’s doxastic states, such as belief and doubt. According (...) to a long-held reading, the control that the will has over doxastic states in Descartes’s theory is direct; the doxastic states are affected by the mere act of will. This reading is called direct doxastic voluntarism (DDV), or direct voluntarism (DV) for short, and it states that we are capable of assenting, rejecting and suspending a judgment based only on our will to do so. Thus, these actions would be utterly and merely volitional. DV can be divided into two further positions, direct positive voluntarism (+DV) and direct negative voluntarism (-DV). Direct positive voluntarism deals with the act of forming judgments, maintaining that one can accept or deny a proposition wilfully and either merely believe or not believe something voluntarily. Direct negative voluntarism deals with the suspension of judgment, maintaining that it can likewise be accomplished by a simple act of will. However, I support an alternate account of Descartes’s voluntarism, which is called indirect doxastic voluntarism (IDV), or indirect voluntarism (IV) for short. By this account, the will is capable of affecting a doxastic state indirectly by making one concentrate on essential tasks for forming that state, such as gathering up and paying attention to strong reasons and evidence. IV is also possible to divide into indirect positive voluntarism (+IV) and indirect negative voluntarism (-IV). Per indirect positive voluntarism the will needs to pay attention to reasons for accepting or denying some proposition. Likewise, by indirect negative voluntarism, in order to suspend judgment the will needs to direct this attention to the reasons for doubt. By attending to these reasons, the will also comes face-to-face with its own freedom. This feeling of freedom can be described as affectivity of the reasons for belief (assent) and doubt (suspension). (shrink)

In this paper, I aim to address a specific issue underpinning Cartesian metaphysics since its first public appearance in the Discourse right up until the Meditations, but which definitely came to the surface in the Second and Fifth Replies. It involves the possibility that to be thinking and to be extended do not actually contrast as two entirely different properties; hence, these two essences cannot serve as the basis for a disjunctive, real distinction between two corresponding substances, the mind and (...) the body. I dub this problem the ‘thinking matter issue.’ I suggest that Descartes’s concerns about the ‘thinking matter issue’ characterizes and structures the entirety of Meditation Two and its connection with Meditation Six, especially in the attempt to covertly implement what I refer to as Descartes’s ‘prejudice strategy.’ The core of the ‘prejudice strategy’ lies in the idea that the ‘thinking matter issue’ is just a false problem, one raised by the inadequate notions of the mind and the body that we apply to this problem. In section 1, I set out the way in which the ‘thinking matter issue’ emerged in Descartes’s philosophy after the first exposition of his metaphysics in the Discourse. Section 2 deals with the new argumentative path Descartes draws for the Meditations and with the new role that he assigns to the inference about the mind’s non-physical nature after the cogito. In section 3, I contend that the ‘prejudice strategy’ structures Meditation Two and, partially, Six. Section 4 shows that Descartes himself reveals this in his Replies to the Second and the Fifth Set of Objections. In section 5, I delve into Descartes’s foundational theory of the ‘prejudice strategy,’ i.e. his theory of infancy as set out especially in the Replies to the Sixth Set of Objections. -/- . (shrink)

The “problem of voluntary actions”, traditionally known asthe “problem of substantial union”, is one of the most controversialissues in the Cartesian doctrine. It is about seeking to understand howthe soul, being just an immaterial substance, whose nature consists onlyin thinking, could determine the animal spirits to carry out voluntary actions.The modus operandi, from which Descartes intended to explain howthe thinking substance would determine the movements of the pinealgland, is what greatly botheredElisabeth of Bohemia. In this article, we will present the (...) central aspectsof Descartes’ responses to the problem raised by the princess, especiallywhen trying to show that he is insoluble, because, according to the philosopher,it is a poorly formulated question. Thus, in his correspondencewith Elisabeth, the role of the philosopher is limited to identifying and clarifying mistakes, which certainly did not satisfy Elisabeth’s philosophicalgenius. (shrink)

Sartre’s memoir Words turns on his mid-life realisation that, although he had abandoned belief in God, he had hitherto based his work on a religious model. From this point God no longer appears as a primary reference in his writings. This is in sharp contrast with the pervasive presence of God in earlier works, especially in his ontology and related reflections on ethics. In ontology Sartre was particularly concerned with the Cartesian idea of the creator God as ens causa sui. (...) Adapting this to his own system, he uses the idea of causa sui to mark the absolute (but non-substantial) existence of for-itself being (consciousness) as separate from the uncreated plenitude of in-itself being. He then argues that the idea of God as a consciousness that founds its own being is an impossible synthesis of the for-itself and the in-itself. The idea nonetheless remains fundamental for consciousness, for desire, which arises in response to lack, ultimately the lack of in-itself being, reflects an original choice that leads to constant striving towards the impossible goal of being God. This theme haunts the ontology from beginning to end. Sartre offers a system to rival Descartes or Leibniz, but adopts a quasi-religious framework of salvation in which, apart from the promise of a possible escape from ontological destiny, human beings are condemned to futility. In ethics he explores the idea of conversion from original choice to an authentic choice of freedom, but fails to break out of the closed framework set by the ontology. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show to what extent Descartes can be situated within the Augustinian metaphysical tradition and to what extent he has departed from it. To this end, we will argue that Descartes has borrowed his main Meditations’ arguments from Augustine’s philosophy. However, in spite of all factual and textual evidence we will provide against the originality of Descartes’ metaphysical discussions, it will be stressed, on the other hand, that in borrowing not only the cogito argument, (...) but also some general features of his philosophy from Augustine’s works, Descartes intends to frame a metaphysics which will be the ground on his new mechanistic physics. Having this in mind, we will hold that no claim can be put forward against the originality and far-reaching scope of Descartes’ philosophical intentions. Indeed, Descartes’ purpose is to build a new science under a metaphysics, even though this metaphysics is the Augustianian one. (shrink)

I analyze the complex relations between Pascal and the three figures of Montaigne, Descartes, and St. Augustine, and the relations the first two figures bear to St. Augustine. For Pascal's philosophy, one is in effect a resource , another a way of thinking that he makes his own , and yet another serves as a model . I further investigate Pascal's anti-Augustinism, that is, some of the points of resistance in Pascal against the thought of St. Augustine. Central to this (...) investigation is the famous rapprochement between the cogitos of Augustine and Descartes, which requires a consideration of what, for Pascal, it means "to say the same thing." This analysis leads us to two conclusions: first, Augustine's The City of God should be placed among the number of works that Pascal did not read; second, there are fundamental philosophical reasons for Pascal to reject certain theses central to that work. Above all, there should no longer be any need to assume a merely abstract conception of an unproblematic Augustinianism in Pascal. (shrink)

In this paper, I reflect on Descartes' employment of the meditational genre in the weaving of the text of the Meditations. In the first part, the possible influences behind Descartes' choice of the meditational genre are examined. The second part of the paper attempts to spell out the significance of Descartes' use of the meditational form. The claim advanced here is that Descartes adopted this unique genre ultimately to further his radical philosophical project of a subject-centred theory of knowledge and (...) a new metaphysical Weltbild, with the self catapulted to the central stage and the physical world reduced to an object of the subject's act of representation. (shrink)

Collection of papers presented at the First Budapest Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy.

This book collects six unpublished and published academic studies on the thought of Francisco Suárez, which is addressed through accurate textual analyses and meticulous contextualization of his doctrines in the Scholastic debate. The present essays aim to portray two complementary aspects coexisting in the work of the Uncommon Doctor: his innovative approach and his adherence to the tradition. To this scope, they focus on some pivotal, but often neglected, topics in Suárez’s metaphysics and psychology – such as his theories of (...) cognition and truth, angelology, continuous quantity – thereby developing an original inquiry into a crucial moment in the development of Western philosophy. (shrink)

Some philosophers of science suggest that philosophical assumptions must influence historical scholarship, because history (like science) has no neutral data and because the treatment of any particular historical episode is going to be influenced to some degree by one's prior philosophical conceptions of what is important in science. However, if the history of science must be laden with philosophical assumptions, then how can the history of science be evidence for the philosophy of science? Would not an inductivist history of science (...) confirm an inductivist philosophy of science and a conventionalist history of science confirm a conventionalist philosophy of science? I attempt to resolve this problem; essentially, I deny the claim that the history of science must be influenced by one's conception of what is important in science — one's general philosophy of science. To accomplish the task I look at a specific historical episode, together with its history, and draw some metamethodological conclusions from it. The specific historical episode I examine is Descartes' critique of Galileo's scientific methodology. (shrink)

The mind-body problem in philosophy is typically understood as a discourse concerning the relation of mental states to physical states, and the experience of sensation. On this level it seems to transcend issues of race and racism, but Another Mind-Body Problem demonstrates that racial distinctions have been an integral part of the discourse since the Modern period in philosophy. Reading figures such as Descartes, Leibniz, and Kant in their historical contexts, John Harfouch uncovers discussions of mind and body that engaged (...) closely with philosophical and scientific notions of race in metaphysics and the philosophy of mind, in particular in understanding how the mind unites with the body at birth and is then passed on through sexual reproduction. Kant argued that a person’s exterior body and interior psyche are bound together, that non-White people lacked reason, and that this lack of reason was carried on through reproduction such that non-Whites were an example of a union of mind and body without full being. Charting the development of this phenomenon from sixteenth-century medical literature to modern-day race discourse, Harfouch argues for new understandings of Descartes’s mind-body problem, Fanon’s experience of being ‘not-yet human,’ and the place of racism in relation to one of philosophy’s most enduring and canonical problems. -/- “Harfouch has written an important book on the intersection of race and the Western construction of the mind-body problem … This book is a significant resource for theorists dealing with race and decolonization issues, but it is more significant for the critique of philosophy itself and the continued teaching of mind-body issues. Readers will need some knowledge of philosophy, but the volume is in general accessible. It should be required reading for scholars of philosophy. Harfouch establishes a logically strong argument and makes a unique contribution to the field.” — CHOICE. (shrink)

Pretendo discorrer sobre a análise que Foucault fez da obediência no contexto da experiência da carne, tratado por ele no último volume então publicado de sua História da sexualidade, As confissões da carne, e buscar considerar se tal análise pode ser viável a fornecer elementos críticos para pensar a governamentalidade biopolítica neoliberal. Para tanto, considero inicialmente a relação entre soberania e liberdade de modo a mostrar que a estrutura da liberdade é sustentada desde a noção de soberania, quer em ruptura (...) ou em identificação a ela. Essa relação entre liberdade e soberania atravessa todo o liberalismo e reflete na noção neoliberal do indivíduo como empreendedor de si mesmo. A seguir, passo a apresentar como o tema da obediência asceta introduz uma experiência de si dessubjetivada que, por sua vez, pode ser um contraponto ao neoliberalismo e sua noção de liberdade. (shrink)

Descartes is well known for his employment of the method of doubt. His most famous work, the Meditations, begins by exhorting us to doubt all our opinions, including our belief in the existence of the external world. But critics have charged that this universal doubt is impossible for us to achieve because it runs counter to human nature. If this is so, Descartes must be either misguided or hypocritical in proposing it. Hume writes:There is a species of scepticism, antecedent to (...) all study and philosophy, which is much inculcated by Des Cartes and others, as a sovereign preservative against error and precipitate judgement. It recommends an universal doubt, not only of all our former opinions and principles, but also of our very faculties… The Cartesian doubt, …were it ever possible to be attained by any human creature would be entirely incurable; and no reasoning could ever bring us to a state of assurance and conviction upon any subject. (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)

Es ya un tópico, aquél que establece una relación entre la obra de Montaigne y la de Descartes, bien como adversarios, bien como precedente el uno del otro o como alternativas por relación al concepto de sujeto, que no llegaron a formular plenamente con sus características actuales. Sin embargo, al hilo del estudio del papel del cuerpo en ambos pensadores trataremos de mostrar, primero, su cercanía contextual y, luego, sus filiaciones conceptuales. Ambos autores están mucho más cerca de lo que (...) suele creerse y las deudas intelectuales de Descartes con Montaigne se resumen, además, en una noción de individuo realmente existente y una concepción de la “vida” como alternativa a la filosofía tradicional, que pueden ser de gran interés para el pensamiento actual. There is a cliché that establishes a relationship between the works of Montaigne and the writings of Descartes, either as adversaries, either as a precedent one of the other or as alternatives in relation to a concept that they did not fully draw up with its contemporary characteristics, that is, the subject. However, in connection with the study of the role of the body in both thinkers we will try to show first its contextual closeness and then its conceptual affiliations. Both authors are much closer to what we usually believe and the intellectual debts of Descartes to Montaigne are also summarized in a notion of an existing individual and a conception of “life” as an alternative to traditional philosophy, which can be of great interest for current thinkers. (shrink)

This paper deals with the so-called Cartesian ‘epistemological turn’. Taking the old term ‘idea’ to be the core of his metaphysics, Descartes deployed it in a new way. In fact, Descartes broke with the traditional Platonic-Augustian conception of ‘ideas’ as ontological beings. In his view, ideas are mental or psychological entities. Descartes advances this position in accordance with a revolutionary theory of perception and a new conception of mind, both outcomes of his denial of scholastic empiricism. What emerges from this (...) is a revival of the doctrine of innate ideas, which shapes the philosophical debates in the second half of the seventeenth-century and is responsible for the rise of epistemology or theory of knowledge as an autonomous discipline. (shrink)

In this contribution I discuss Hannah Arendt's philosophy of culture in three rounds. First I give an account of my view on Hannah Arendt's main work The Human Condition. In this frame of reference I distance myself from the importance attached to Hannah Arendt as a political philosopher and hold a warm plea for her as a philosopher of culture (I and II). Second I pay attention to her view on science and technology in their cultural meaning, expressed in the (...) last chapter of The Human Condition. This part consists in a summary of her thoughts as I read them (III, IV, and V). After these two rounds I make some critical remarks on Hannah Arendt's interpretation of science and technology. The viewpoint of ?eccentricity? will be discussed as a frame of reference for her philosophy of culture (VI). (shrink)

Descartes afirma que el cogito se "experimenta en uno" (apud se experiatur)o se "siente en uno mismo" ("il sent in lui-même"), pero también ha señalado que uno no siente sino a través del cuerpo. El problema es que, en las Meditaciones, el cogito fue caracterizado cuando todavía no se había demostrado la existencia del cuerpo. Pese a esto, Descartes parece haberse dejado influir por ciertas sensaciones internas de duda y certeza. En el trabajo se sostiene que esto fue posible porque (...) esas sensaciones internas son efecto de una ratio implícita: la existencia de un Dios no engañador. (shrink)

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the role that the imagination plays in the later philosophy of René Descartes. The thesis will look at two related questions: the status of the imagination as a mode of thought dependent on the body; the role of the imagination in object-perception. Throughout, the traditional view of Descartes as a Cartesian Dualist is rejected and a more holistic approach is taken towards the relationship between mind and body, in which Descartes’ claims that (...) the two make up a “substantial union” are taken seriously. Part One deals with the relationship between mind and body. I argue that Cartesian Dualism cannot account for the faculties of sensation and imagination, because they have a corporeal basis. However, the ‘union of mind and body’, Descartes’ device for explaining their interaction, can. I end Part One by identifying a problem with the paradigm case of mind-body interaction, object-perception. To determine the object of an idea there needs to be a mechanism to marry the two ingredients of perception: the innate ideas of geometry in the intellect, and ‘adventitious’ ideas of the object delivered by the senses. Otherwise we have no explanation for how the essentially ‘inward-looking’ intellect can apply its ideas to the essentially passive sensations. Part Two focuses on the imagination and the question of object-perception raised in Part One. I argue against the largely-held view in the secondary literature that, with the advent of the cogito, the imagination’s cognitive profile declined sharply. I argue that, in fact, the corporeal basis of the imagination places it beautifully to bridge the gap in object-perception, and that this is part of its role in all Descartes’ discussions on the topic. The other, related, role of the imagination is to conjure fictions and hypotheses, suiting it for scientific and epistemological endeavours. The fact that the imagination is not tied to what is present to the senses, even though it receives its original content from them, means that it can manipulate ideas of corporeal things; including the innate notions of extension, shape and motion so key to gaining a clear and distinct idea of matter. (shrink)

A revolução atribuída à filosofia cartesiana tem méritos que, talvez, são emprestados de outras filosofias. Decisivo é o princípio, estima Descartes. Contudo, a dúvida metódica, ela é uma reorganização de velhos problemas céticos? Como ter um critério de julgamento, uma primeira verdade, antes que a pesquisa ela mesma? Este artigo, por conseguinte, ele trata da relação entre Descartes e a tradição cética.