Les aveugles dans l’œuvre de Descartes Contestation ou perpétuation des représentations sociales de la cécité ?

Abstract

This paper examines Descartes's conception of the blind and blindness in the light of the social representations that the philosopher both distanced and requalified. It first shows that Descartes rationalises the representation of the 'blind seer': the philosopher attributes to people who cannot see a form of vision which, unlike the power of divination that the ancient Greeks attributed to certain people, but also the 'inner gaze' typical of the mysticism of the Classical Age, is not in any way supernatural. Descartes thus helps to undo some of the main prejudices that plague blind people. The article goes on to establish that this rationalisation excludes these people from the knowledge that Descartes places in them: the paradoxical knowledge of the process of vision. Finally, it points out that by valuing the sense of sight in a way that perhaps no philosopher had done before him, Descartes also rationalises the predominantly medieval representation of the 'blind ignorant'. The conclusion of the paper is as follows: this double rationalisation produces the ambivalent idea that many people still have of blindness, namely a deficiency that is very poorly compensated for by an ability to see other than with the eyes. By rehabilitating touch, the Enlightenment produced a conception of it that was both rational and in no way deprived.