The Uses of Thought and Will: Descartes’ Practical Philosophy of Freedom

Abstract

ABSTRACT I offer a reading of the role of freedom in Descartes’ Meditations and other writings that sees freedom’s role in “assenting to ideas” as a matter of psychological possibility, and its role in action as governed by epistemic norms. The will has two constitutive aspects, for Descartes: there are volitions that terminate in the soul, and volitions that terminate in the body. When these two aspects, the input and output sides (in Paul Hoffman’s phrase), harmonize, the result is an expression of free agency. I argue that Descartes holds that norms exist only where there is some responsibility to live up to (or fail by), rather than there being any normative standard antecedently given in nature, and that this makes the matter of governing our own freedom all the more pressing. Descartes’ central concern in this area is to locate a way of coping with inevitable ignorance and uncertainty, and I discuss the elements of how he proposes that we do so. I argue also that there is a great deal of continuity between Descartes’ counsel on how to believe and on how to act, and that Cartesian practical philosophy is a coherent continuation of the project of the Meditations.