Commentators have neglected a tension in Descartes’s virtue theory. In some texts, Descartes seems to argue that there are distinct virtues. In other texts, Descartes seems to argue that there is only a single virtue—the firm and constant resolution to use the will well. In this paper, I reconcile this tension. I argue that Descartes endorses a specific version of the unity of the virtues thesis, namely, the identity of the virtues. Nonetheless, Descartes has the resources to draw conceptual distinctions (...) between various virtues. Distinct virtues are conceptually generated when we regard the firm and constant resolution to use the will well in different ways, that is, based on the different ways this resolution manifests in moral situations. (shrink)

Descartes y Leibniz figuran como pensadores opuestos en el ámbito de la filosofía moderna. Tras un período de influencia inicial, el pensador alemán habría sido un crítico severo de las tesis filosóficas del filósofo francés. Sin embargo, una lectura cuidadosa de las dispersas declaraciones leibnizianas a propósito de los afectos y su dimensión moral nos permitirán hacernos cargo de la distancia y cercanía entre el pensamiento de ambos. Para Descartes la felicidad está ligada a la voluntad, mientras que Leibniz será (...) más fiel a la tradición intelectualista aristotélica, aunque su concepción de las emociones es, en muchos sentidos, asombrosamente similar. (shrink)

This article examines Elisabeth of Bohemia's account of the emotions. I argue that Elisabeth's objections against Descartes' ethics, which is often characterized as ‘Neo-Stoic’, show striking similarities to the arguments that the ancient Peripatetics made against classical Stoic approaches. Like the Peripatetics, she challenges the feasibility as well as the desirability of Descartes' ethical injunctions regarding emotional control. In particular, Elisabeth joins the Peripatetics in holding that certain external goods are essential for happiness and that the emotions are necessary for (...) motivating, guiding and correcting action. In aligning Elisabeth's thinking about the emotions with the Aristotelian tradition, I depart from various other interpretations, especially from those who see her position as a precursor of later feminist accounts, or as embodying a distinctively female perspective. (shrink)

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...