In the Fourth Meditation, Descartes famously treats the indifference of the will (roughly, ambivalence of reasons) as the source of error, which many read as oddly suggesting that the will judges arbitrarily. In his letter to Elisabeth dated 1st September 1645, however, he expressly takes passions to be the source of error, saying that passions move the will to judge erroneously by misrepresenting the value of objects. Although these two accounts focus on different kinds of error – theoretical and practical (...) error, respectively – I argue that Descartes is best understood as extending the second account also to the source of theoretical error. On my reading, the first account does not imply that erroneous judgements are simply arbitrary, but it leaves out an explanation why we judge at the time we do, when we could (and should) continue to inquire insofar as we have not yet gathered sufficient evidence. The second account fills in this lacuna by giving an explanation in terms of passions. I further argue that the schematic nature of the first account is due partly to the structure of the Meditations, but mainly to the fact that Descartes has not yet systematically examined the nature of passions there. (shrink)

I offer a novel reading in this dissertation of René Descartes’s (1596–1650) skepticism in his work Meditations on First Philosophy (1641–1642). I specifically aim to answer the following problem: How is Descartes’s skepticism to be read in accordance with the rest of his philosophy? This problem can be divided into two more general questions in Descartes scholarship: How is skepticism utilized in the Meditations, and what are its intentions and relation to the preceding philosophical tradition? -/- I approach the topic (...) from both a historical and a text-based analysis, combining textual and contextual research. I examine Descartes’s skepticism against two main traditions in the historical analysis: philosophical skepticism and Aristotelian Scholasticism. I argue that skepticism in the Meditations is intended to oppose and upheave both Scholasticism and skepticism. The intended results of the work are not merely epistemological but also metaphysical and even ethical. Furthermore, these ambitions cannot be neatly distinguished but merge into each other. -/- The third historical context against which the skeptical meditations are examined is the literary genre of meditative exercises, particularly from the 1500–1600’s, which, while religiously and spiritually oriented, likewise provided the practitioner with an enlightened understanding of self-knowledge and their cognitive place in the world on the way to closer spiritual proximity to God. I argue by this reading that the skepticism of the Meditations is an attentive, meditational cognitive exercise that is not merely instrumental and methodological but is to have a genuine and serious (psychologically real) effect on our thinking. The skeptical meditation is not simply a theoretical thought experiment but is to be seriously practiced as a transformative process of reorienting one’s cognitive framework to discover truth, certainty, and a way to a happy, tranquil, and virtuous life. -/- I offer a close reading in the textual analysis of the first three meditations of the Meditations. I argue that the meditative skepticism employed in the work does not reject the previous beliefs but suspends judgment on them, withdrawing assent until further evidence can be found. I introduce a new term into Descartes scholarship in this analysis, based on the terminology of ancient skepticism: Cartesian epochē (gr. epochē, suspension, withdrawal). Instead of rejecting previous beliefs or assenting to the probably false, the skeptical procedure of the Meditations is argued to emulate in important ways the suspension of judgment on equally balanced reasons in ancient Pyrrhonian skepticism. Novel interpretations are presented along the way of the will’s freedom, of the First Meditation’s skeptical scenarios, of the cogito, and of the vindication of metaphysical certainty, as well as a clarification of the Cartesian Circle problem. -/- Reinterpreting the relation of Descartes’s skepticism to the preceding historical and literary traditions leads to a new look at the skeptical method itself. Presenting a new interpretation of skepticism in the Meditations leads at the same time to a new look at its relation to the historical context. The two research questions are, then, intrinsically tied together. -/- My focus in the study is on the Meditations, but I also reference and discuss Descartes’s other philosophical works, as well as his correspondence, when necessary. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to bring an end to the interpretative dispute on Descartes’s cog­ito: is the cogito known by intuition or by inference? There have been several studies based on both analytical and historical approaches to the dispute, and it seems that we have exhausted all interpretations. Nevertheless, I wish to revisit this dispute, as it ap­pears that the previous studies have overlooked Descartes’s use of words and phrases, which is the most significant for understanding his various (...) discourses on the cogito con­sistently. In this paper, I focus on the terms which Descartes uses to indicate the varied status of the cogito, such as ‘haec cognitio, ego cogito, ergo sum’, ‘hanc propositionem, ego cogito, ergo sum’, ‘hanc conclusionem: cogito, ergo sum’, and so on; Descartes changes carefully the terms in each of the cogito arguments. By focusing on these terms, I try to interpret Descartes’s explanations consistently. (shrink)

Descartes claims that the passions of the soul are “all in their nature good” even though they exaggerate the value of their objects, have the potential to deceive us, and often mislead us. What, then, can he mean by this? In this paper, I argue that these effects of the passions are only problematic when we incorrectly take their goodness to consist in their informing us of harms and benefits to the mind-body composite. Instead, the passions are good in their (...) motivational function, which they carry out by representing objects and situations as having various properties and thereby appearing to be “reasons of goodness.” Further, I argue that the main way in which the passions are problematic is merely an occasional physiological byproduct of a well- functioning system. I show, therefore, that the passions’ motivational function, representationality, and accompanying physiology are all significant and interrelated aspects of their goodness. (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)

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

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)

Throughout their life Ibn Sînâ and Descartes firmly believed that the soul or mind of a human being was essentially incorporeal. In his ‘On the Soul’ (De anima), the psychological part of his vast...

This paper begins from the observation that in the Meditations, Descartes never achieves the 'pure', thoroughly decontextualized kind of thinking he famously promoted. Some commentators have used this observation to promote pure inquiry more diligently and to criticize Descartes for failing to achieve it. Other commentators have simply called for greater historical fairness and urged that we renew our efforts to understand how Descartes's inquiry actually does operate. This paper, although sympathetic with this second group of commentators, argues that in (...) revisiting the tensions between what Descartes actually accomplished and what he said he was trying to accomplish, we should see a contemporary lesson, not just better historical understanding. It is argued that in spite of the strong presence in his writings of the imagery of the 'Cartesian' ideal of a perfectly presuppositionless philosophical standpoint, not only does Descartes himself never become a Cartesian, but his own practice provides perhaps the best evidence against the very possibility of the Cartesian 'project of pure inquiry' to which he aspired. (shrink)