Descartes’ Doxastic Voluntarism

Abstract

: Descartes is commonly described as a doxastic voluntarist, although his approach differs from modern ones to direct doxastic voluntarism. Descartes embraced both indirect voluntarism as well as direct voluntarism of passing or withholding judgment. This paper shows that Descartes’ judgment voluntarism applied not only to less than clear and distinct ideas, but in principle also to clear and distinct ideas. This becomes apparent when analyzing remarks Descartes made in letters to Mesland against the background of contemporary Jesuit variants of doxastic voluntarism – a context that is applied here for the interpretation of Descartes for the first time.