Walter Charleton’s often overlooked treatise, The Natural History of the Passions (1674), offers an eclectic and unique engagement in the seventeenth-century debate about the nature and purpose of...

The recent scholarly promotion of Pierre Gassendi to a key position in the formative modern period raises doubts about the portrayal of Descartes as “the father” of the post-Scholastic philosophical conceptualization. I defend the Cartesio-centric account against Thomas M. Lennon’s elliptical alternative. The defense necessitates a reassessment of the root nature of Descartes’s contribution—specifically of the interplay between philosophy and science, the latter being the crucial extraphilosophical component of the new practico-cognitive ensemble. This raises questions about the “philosophically” of Descartes’s (...) activity, and with that questions about the quality of modernity. By way of explaining Gassendis nonoriginative position, his attitude toward the post-Scholastic Humanist thought that Descartes simply repudiated is examined. (shrink)

I argue that Descartes intended the so-called ontological "argument" as a self-validating intuition, rather than as a formal proof. The textual evidence for this view is highly compelling, but the strongest support comes from understanding Descartes's diagnosis for why God's existence is not 'immediately' self-evident to everyone and the method of analysis that he develops for making it self-evident. The larger aim of the paper is to use the ontological argument as a case study of Descartes's nonformalist theory of deduction (...) and his method of analysis, showing how he conceives the latter as a form of philosophical therapy. (shrink)

Es una tesis admitida y común la que sostiene que Descartes introdujo la forma moderna del método y del quehacer filosófico, caracterizados ambos por su desconexión del terreno de la espiritualidad, del cuidado de sí, de la ascesis y de toda una forma de vida. Se considera que Foucault compartía esa tesis, lo que en su momento criticaría Pierre Hadot. En el presente trabajo tratamos de mostrar que la forma en que Descartes elaboró su método y su propuesta no se (...) ajusta a aquella tesis recibida. En él se mantiene la relación antigua entre filosofía y espiritualidad, método y paideía. Una vez mostrado esto, apuntamos finalmente cómo en él, sin embargo, se abrió la vía para que se diera la ruptura que él no practicó. (shrink)

This journal article has been superseded by a revised version, published in the collection _Essays on the Philosophy and Science of Rene Descartes_, ed. by Stephen Voss (Oxford University Press, 1993), 259–287.

I defend one leading strand of Descartes's thought against feminist criticism. I will show that Descartes's “first-person” approach to our knowledge of minds, which has been criticized on feminist grounds, is at least compatible with key feminist views. My argument suggests that this strand of Cartesianism may even bolster some central feminist positions.

After resolving the dreaming doubt at the end of the Sixth Meditation, Descartes concedes to Hobbes that one could apply the criterion for waking experience in a dream and thus be deceived, but he no longer considers this possibility to have skeptical force. I argue that this is a legitimate response by Descartes since 1) the dreaming doubt in the Sixth Meditation is no longer a global skeptical hypothesis as it is in the First, and 2) the level of certainty (...) that sensory experience must meet in the Sixth Meditation is lower than it must meet in the First. (shrink)

La posición de Foucault acerca de la ruptura que Descartes había representado respecto de la relación entre acceso a la verdad y transformación de sí, entre método y espiritualidad no fue unívoca. Sus formulaciones variaron, a veces de manera sorprendente. Foucault veía que el autor de las Meditaciones metafísicas mantenía una compleja relación con la tradición de la espiritualidad, lo que exigía precisar en más de un aspecto la conocida tesis de la ruptura. Aquí trataremos de examinar esa dificultad en (...) la que se encontró Foucault. (shrink)

Although Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy seems to be an especially theoretical work, this essay argues that reading the Meditations as a work of pure theory conceals an important dimensi...

In this essay I argue that one of the things that matters most to Descartes' account of mind is that we use our minds actively. This is because for him only an active mind is able to re-organize its passionate experiences in such a way that a genuinely human, self-governed life of virtue and true contentment becomes possible. To bring out this connection, I will read the Meditations against the backdrop of Descartes' correspondence with Elisabeth. This will reveal that in (...) Descartes' writings there is a crucial connection between the conception of ourselves as dreamers and the idea that we fail to realize our true potential as self-determined, active agents. Dreams, as Descartes conceives them, are passively received mental states that inhibit our freedom to use reason at will. To awaken here takes the form of activating our thoughts, which holds the key to freeing ourselves from the stimulus-response patterns that Descartes takes to be at work in animal conduct. Applied to the Meditations, these insights suggest that this work engages in questions far beyond the epistemological agenda. By activating the mind, the Meditations teach us how to realize our true human potential as virtuous thinkers and passionate agents. (shrink)