Critique Of Descartes Research Articles

Princess Elisabeth and the Problem of Mind-Body Interaction

This paper focuses on Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia's philosophical views as exhibited in her early correspondence with Rene Descartes. Elisabeth's criticisms of Descartes's interactionism as well as her solution to the problem of mind-body interaction are examined in detail. The aim here is to develop a richer picture of Elisabeth as a philosophical thinker and to dispel the myth that she is simply a Cartesian muse.

Subjectivity in Descartes and Kant

Kant’s response to Cartesian scepticism is often characterized in the following way. Whereas Descartes drives a wedge between subjective experience and objective reality, Kant argues that there could be no such thing as experience at all if reality were not itself structured in just the way our thought about it is structured. This picture of Kant’s response to Descartes portrays him as succeeding, where Descartes fails, in arguing directly from the nature of experience to the nature of reality; as subscribing, therefore, to Descartes’ view that one is immediately aware only of one’s own mental states, but as seeing a way out of the subjective predicament. I maintain that this picture is deeply flawed. Kant’s transcendental argument is in fact a thoroughgoing critique of Descartes’ subjectivism, and destroys the Cartesian barrier to recognizing that our awareness of reality is unmediated and direct.

Descartes: An Analytical and Historical Introduction.

Preface to the Second Edition Preface to the First Edition Note on the References and Abbreviations 1. Meditation and the Method of Doubt 1. Descartes's Goal 2. Cartesian Doubt 3. Is the Cartesian Doubt Self-Refuting? 3.1 Deceptiveness of the Senses 3.2 Dream Argument 3.3 Deceiver Argument Notes 2. Meditation II: the Cogito and the Self51 1. Descartes's I am thinking, therefore exist. 2. Certainty of One's Own Thoughts 3. A Problem for the Cogito 4. Substance Theory 5. A Reconstruction of the Cogito based on the substance theory 6. Critical Discussion of the Reconstructed Cogito 6.1 Substance Theory and the Argument from Change 6.2 Corollary 6.3 Assumption That Thoughts Are Properties 6.4 Inference to I Exist 7. A defense of the unreconstructed cogito 8. Does the unreconstructed cogito require an additional premise? 9. Descartes's Conception of the Self 10. Cartesian Dualism Notes 3. Meditation III: Criterion of Truth and the Existence of God 1. Descartes's Criterion of Truth 2. Project of Meditation III 3. From the Idea of God to God 3.1 Nature of Ideas 3.2 Objective Reality and Formal Reality 3.3 Core Argument 3.4 Central Argument of Meditation III: the Subargument, the Core Argument, and the Sequel 4. Criticisms of Descartes's Central Argument in Meditation III 4.1 Subargument 4.1.1 precontainment principle 4.1.2 Degrees of reality 4.1.3 Justifying the causal maxim 4.2 Problem of the Cartesian Circle 4.2.1 restriction of the doubt to past clear and distinct perceptions defense 4.2.2 general rule defense 4.2.3 radical doubt of reason and the creation of the eternal truths 4.2.4 validation of reason 4.3 A Final Criticism of the Core Argument Notes 4. Meditation IV: Error, Freedom, and Evil 1. issues of the Fourth Meditation 2. Error and the will 3. Two possible objections 3.1 Assenting and deciding to believe 3.2 Irresistibility and freedom 4. coherence of Cartesian Freedom 5. Descartes's troubling letter to Mesland 6. Error and evil 6.1 problem of evil 6.2 Cartesian theodicy 6.3 Some critical Reflections Notes 5. Meditation V: Ontological Argument for the Existence of God 1. Descartes's Ontological Argument 2. Critique of the Ontological Argument 2.1 Gaunilo's Objection 2.2 Kant's Objection 2.3 Further Consideration of Kant's Objection 2.4 Caterus's Objection 3. Some Implications for Descartes's System Notes 6: Meditation VI: Dualism and the Material World 1. scope of Meditation VI 2. Descartes's Proof of The Real Distinction between Mind and Body 3. Descartes's Proof of the Material World 4. Descartes on the Nature of the Material World 4.1 Primary and Secondary Qualities 4.2 Matter, Space, and Solidity 4.3 Bodies as Substances versus Bodies as Modes of Substance 5. Dualism and the Problem of Interaction 6. An Assessment of Cartesian Dualism Notes Bibliography

Foucault: da Morte do Sujeito ao Sujeito da Morte

In the context of the Convention on Descartes, Leibniz and Modernity, our aim is to show how Foucault followed a course which, although devoid of teleological intention, led him from the criticism of the subject to the subject of criticism. Starting from the criticism of Descartes and of the thinking subject as the basis of knowledge, we aim to show how Foucault first explores the death of the subject as the death of the substantial subject and how he is then urged to move from subjection (ontological hetero-constitution) to subjectivation (ontological self-constitution), thus showing the danger of the separation proposed by Descartes between the subject of knowledge and the ethical subject. This means the constitution of a subject that is ethical instead of moral, the exploration by Foucault of a subject that constructs it self through the practice of liberty, which is made possible through the technologies of self-care. Melete thanatou, or meditatio non death, stands our among these technologies, as an exercise of detachment and practice of the self and the liberty.

Cartesian Method and the Problem of Reduction (review)

612 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 30:4 OCTOBER 199 2 October 1629; Castelli to Galileo, 6 April 163o.... But this is a small fault, an omission that (one hopes) will be remedied in a later edition. ERNAN McMuLLXN Universityof Notre Dame Emily R. Grosholz. Cartesian Method and the Problem of Reduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. Pp. viii + 161. Cloth, $4e.5 o. Philosophers write about other philosophers for a wide variety of reasons. One of them is the feeling that they have gone wrong and have caused philosophy to veer in the wrong direction. It is one of the virtues of Emily Grosholz's book that she does not disguise her "negative animus" towards Descartes and his baneful influence on twentieth-century philosophers. She sees the rot at work in the "eliminative reduction" prevalent among those who would replace philosophical discourse with the description of neural states. I say this is a virtue because we can learn much from Emily Grosholz if we realize that her target is not so much Descartes, the seventeenth-century recluse and sage, but the Churchlands and contemporaries of the same ilk. As far as the historical Descartes is concerned, I cannot help wondering whether he would not find that he has been greatly reduced, not only in stature and reputation, but in what he would take, if not for his philosophy, at least for his philosophical intent. Emily Grosholz writes her book as a critique of Descartes. Without taking up the cudgels for her opponent, I have the easier task of introducing her work to an audience that can make up its own mind about the merits of her indictment of Cartesian philosophy. The book opens with two interesting chapters on Descartes's Geometrywhere the relation of Descartes's mathematics to his method is scrutinized and shown to be at variance with the common belief that it is simple and straightforward. The limitations of Descartes's approach are stressed and the reader is reminded that the French philosopher was no Leibniz. Chapter 3 expounds some of Descartes's difficulties in formulating the basic notions of his cosmology as it appeared in the Principles ofPhilosophy of 1644. Chapter 4 discusses the infamous Cartesian laws of motion. Chapter 5 purports to provide the context of Cartesian physics but can more properly be said to address his treatment of freely falling bodies and projectile motion. Chapter 6 offers an analysis of Descartes's physiology where the scientific advantages are seen to have been purchased at an exorbitant epistemological price. The concluding chapter, which is in many ways the most interesting, is a re-examination of Descartes's Meditations in the light of Grosholz's interpretation of his method as intuitionist and reductionist. She initially follows Martial Gueroult's persuasive reconstruction of Descartes's "ordre des raisons," but she soon turns him into a sparring partner. He is obviously in her league, hut unable to fend off her trenchant arguments against the way Descartes reduces the idea of material extension to a property of the unextended mind. Faced with these difficulties, Gueroult changes tack and circumvents them like shoals in an otherwise placid sea. Emily Grosholz has produced a lively and persuasive account of the dangers that BOOK REVIEWS 613 beset reductionism. I am sorry, however, that she did not choose to quote one of the rare texts that I have come across where Descartes explicitly mentions reduction. The passage occurs in his notebook for the years i619-169I, and is a reference to the celebrated mnemonist Lambert Schenkel to whom Descartes paid the unusual compliment of reading his book on the art of memory. "I thought," writes Descartes, "of an easy way of making myself master of all I discovered through the imagination. This would be done through the reduction of things to their causes. Since all can be reducedto one it is obviously not necessary to remember all the sciences." Descartes then offers an interesting improvement of the way that images can be constructed to assist in the recollection of the causal chain. There are many kinds of reductions in Descartes, some are successful, like the one he performs with his compass...

An Introduction to Metaphysics of Knowledge by Yves R. Simon

154 BOOK REVIEWS Woznicki highlights his own interpretation of St. Thomas's view of being and order by comparing and contrasting it with the views of other thinkers, such as Duns Scotus and Ockham. Woznicki points out that Duns Scotus's insistance on the primacy of essence over exist· ence led to a metaphysics quite different from that of Saint Thomas, in which existence had priority over essence, Woznicki emphasizes that Ockham's denial of the validity of analogy has bequeathed to us an instrumentalistic understanding of being as being; the real unity of being is replaced by a unity that is the product of our minds. What actually happens in Ockham is that metaphysics is subordinated to the demands of logic. Ockham's metaphysics also resembles the Heraclitean philosophy of becoming, and Woznicki points to Nietzsche as evidence that such a philosophy of becoming necessarily leads to nihilism. In his criticism of Ockham as well as in his criticism of Descartes, Kant, and Whitehead, Woznicki not only makes Thomas seem more attrac· tive but also, at least implicitly, reveals the deleterious effect that influential false philosophies can have on the human adventure. Woznicki 's explanation of Thomas's doctrine of esse does involve abstract thinking, but the result, the rooting of order in esse, is anything but irrelevant. Metaphysics does bury its undertakers; bad metaphysics creates victims. Father Woznicki has produced a fine work as the author of this first volume in the series Catholic Thought from Lublin. I hope that in his role as editor he will be able to present in the near future other volumes as good as Being and Order. Saint John's University Jamaica, New York ROBERT E. LAUDER An Introduction to Metaphysics of Knowledge. By YVES R. SIMON. Translated by Vukan Kuic and Richard J. Thompson. New York: Fordham University Press, 1990. Pp. xii + 180. Almost sixty years have passed between the first appearance of Jn. troduction al'ontologie du connaitre and its English translation. But even though we have had to wait so long, we now have this treasure in hand. An Introduction to Metaphysics of Knowledge leaves no doubt that here is a thinker of the first water. Simon's writings never fail to exemplify the medieval fusion of the concepts " teacher " and " master " in the Latin " magister." As I observed when reviewing one of his posthumously published books, Work, Society, and Culture, BOOK REVIEWS 155 Simon had the knack for using concrete words and vivid imagery drawn from everyday life to carry the reader to the very heart of pro· found thoughts. That testifies to more than just a good prose style; the freedom from reliance on jargon and formalized academic language shows that Simon was neither a " scholastic" (in the pejorative sense of the word) nor a pedant or mere academician. His ready access to everyday language is simply one more indication that he was an independent philosophical thinker for whom reflective personal experience, not the text, was the ultimate court of appeal for arriving at the truth. A case in point is the book's structure. Flipping through its pages, one notices the frequent extended discussions in the footnotes and the abundant citation of classical texts, often leaving room for no more than three or four lines of Simon's own prose on a given page. This may well remind the reader of the musty pedantry of so many doctoral dissertations. But although Simon frequently cites the texts of Aristotle, St. Thomas, Cajetan, and John of St. Thomas, the arguments he advances clearly do not depend on any appeal to the authority of these authors. Although a Thomist, he assumes complete responsibility for his critique of knowledge; he is a thinker whose arguments stand on their own merit. All the references to the aforementioned authorities are truly footnotes; they are never an essential part of Simon's own text. (This bears mention for the benefit of the august members of "The Guardianship of the Undefiled Text of St. Thomas Aquinas," who can be counted upon to insist that commentators, such as John of St. Thomas, are unreliable interpreters of the master's texts.) The book sparkles as a...

The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy (review)

960 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY physics in scholastic form, and he gave exhibitions of experiments to the general public much as did the Cartesian Rohauit in Paris. Like Descartes, Chouet professed no concern with theology, but unlike Descartes he managed always to steer clear of theological disputes. Chouet's ability to remain neutral on theology certainly stemmed in part from his Calvinistic doctrine of accommodation. Matters of faith and religion were clearly separated from matters of empirical evidence and science. Neither the citizens of Geneva nor the pastors of the Academy viewed the new science as a threat to religion . Rather, they saw it as offering advantages in practical matters such as engineering for Iocat defense and construction, and in attracting non-local students to the Academy. Under J. A. Turrettini--another member of a local Genevan family--even the teaching of theology became practical, as Turrettini separated firmly the natural and supernatural spheres. Thus, if Heyd has a case that undercuts Hazard's thesis about the crisis of secularization in the seventeenth century, it is one that also goes some distance toward supporting Tawney's thesis about the favorable influence of Protestant religion on the rise of capitalism. Heyd's book is an excellent historical study, replete with much quantitative data in many graphs and charts. Heyd is successful in providing a detailed case study. It is, however, but one case, and Heyd claims too much when he implies that the introduction of the new science was in general gradual and non-revolutionary. What he shows is that Calvinism was very accommodating to such change. A similar study of a Catholic academy might show a different picture. This work in the history of philosophy and science is one of several to appear recently out of the Department of History at Princeton University. These works are raising the level of the historiography of the history of philosophy. Unfortunately, the price of the volume is prohibitive. The publisher is to be commended, however, for putting the footnotes at the foot of the pages. The author, however, has packed far too much substantive material into those footnotes, information that could and should have been incorporated into the main text, which would have made the book easier and even more of a pleasure to read than it now is. RICHARD A. WATSON Washington University Anne Conway, The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy, edited and Introduction by Peter Lopston, International Archives of the History of Ideas, vol. lOl. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 198~. Pp. 25~ Dfl. 85 (approx. $35.oo). Scholars of late seventeenth century thought are gradually coming to realize that Lady Anne Conway (t 631-x 679) was one of the ablest and most influential metaphysicians of the time. She disappeared from the historical scene, except for the many dedications of works to her by the Cambridge Platonist, Henry More. Her only published work, The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy (published BOOK REVIEWS 261 anonymously), was attributed by scholars to her doctor and editor, Francis Mercurius Van Helmont. The publication in 193o by Marjorie Hope Nicolson of the Conway Letters, began to alert scholars to her importance. Those interested in Cambridge Platonism could see that she played a vital role in the discussions that led to the composition and publication of most of Henry More's writings from the ~65o's until her death. Her home, Ragley Hall, was a place where philosophers and theologians, such as More, Ralph Cudworth, Joseph Glanvill, Benjamin Whichote, Van Helmont and others discussed and disputed many matters. It was also where More and Van Helmont and Rabbi Abendenda edited many of the treatises that later appeared in Knorr yon Rosenroth's Kabbala Denudata. Scholars of Cambridge Platonism, and of More in particular have had a growing interest in Lady Anne Conway's ideas. Carolyn Merchant published an important essay on Anne Conway in this journal in 1979, later revised as a chapter in her book, The Death of Nature, 198o. Nicolson and Merchant both pointed out not only the freshness, the carefulness and the significance of Conway's ideas and arguments as criticisms of Descartes, Hobbes, and Spinoza...

THE IDOL OF THE STOVE: THE BACKGROUND TO SWIFT'S CRITICISM OF DESCARTES

THE IDOL OF THE STOVE: THE BACKGROUND TO SWIFT'S CRITICISM OF DESCARTES Get access MICHAEL R G SPILLER MICHAEL R G SPILLER Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Review of English Studies, Volume XXV, Issue 97, 1974, Pages 15–24, https://doi.org/10.1093/res/XXV.97.15 Published: 01 January 1974

Giambattista Vico and "The Method of Studies in Our Times": A Criticism of Descartes' Influence on Modern Education

Giambattista Vico was born in 1668, at a time when Italy was just beginning to recover from the enervating effects of more than a century of clerical and foreign domination. In 1559, a century before Vico's birth, the long contest between France and Spain for supremacy in the peninsula had been decided in favor of Spain by the treaty of Cateau-Cambresia. Following this, hope for the independence of Italy had definitely been abandoned. The minor princes submitted to being Spanish vassals, and the Spanish rulers joined hands with the Roman Curia in a strict surveillance of the thought and action of the Italian people. The Church, fearful of the spread of Protestantism, drew more straight and narrow the way of orthodoxy, increasing at the same time the degree of punishment for those who strayed. The decadence and torpor that engulfed Italy during this period has come to be called secentismo or baroque.

Demonstration and Self-Evidence

DEMONSTRATION AND SELF-EVIDENCE . I. SCIENTIFIC METHODOLOGY IT can be forcefully argued that there is no place in phi- .losophy for an " epistemological critique " of knowledge, as though the integrity of the intellect stood in doubt till it was somehow philosophically "cleared." 1 Surely, for reason to attempt to establish the trustworthiness of reason is for it to try to pull itself up by its own epistemological boot straps. The history of thought gives ample evidence that critical attempts to justify the philosophical effort are in vain. No matter how honest the epistemological critique in intention, it results characteristically in an unnatural imposition of artificial limits placed upon our capacities to know. Witness the divergent streams of extreme rationalism and extreme empiricism which find their source in the critique of Descartes.2 Significantly, St. Thomas did not find it necessary to initiate his philosophical effort with a critique of knowledge. A Thomist speaks meaningfully of epistemology best in reference to a metaphysical inquiry into the character of intentional being. He takes epistemology as an attempt to understand what it is to know, not an attempt to defend the radical integrity of our 1 Cf., Gilson, Etienne, Realisme Thomiste et Critique de la Connaissance (Paris: J. Vrin, 1947); Realisme Methodique (Paris: P. Teque, 1935). • Gilson's frequently quoted remark on Berkeley and the Cartesian critique bears repetition here: " Everyone is free to decide whether he shall begin to philosophize as a pure mind; if he should elect to do so the difficulty will not be how to get into the mind, but how to get out of it. · Four great men have· tried it and failed. Berkeley's own achievement was to realize at last, that it was a useless and foolish thing even to try it. In this sense at least, it is true to say that Berkeley brought Descartes' ' noble experiment ' to a close, and for that reason his work should always remain as a landmark in the history of philosophy." The Unity of Philosophical Experience (New York: Chas. Scribner's Sons, 1937), pp. 196-197. 189 140 EDWARD D. SIMMONS capacities for knowledge. That we can know is evident. It is both futile and unnecessary to attempt to prove this.8 Although St. Thomas did not hamper his capacities for knowledge by imposing a priori restrictions upon them, he saw that, in a sense, they imposed restrictions upon him. There is no question, from the very start, as to the radical integrity of sense and intellect. Despite the fact that we are sometimes in error, it is evident that we can, and adequately, know what is. But our capacities for knowing are in no sense unlimited. Honest reflection upon the epistemological facts reveals that the human intellect is that lesser type of intellect which is at once a reason. For us all doctrine and discipline is from preexisting knowledge.4 We learn by moving from what is already known to what follows from this. The fact is clear that, as far as learning is concerned, the human intellect is naturally discursive. Moreover, the price of discursive advance in knowledge is the construction within the intellect of logical artifices such as definitions and argumentations. The method of construction which is called for by the demands of discourse is in no sense arbitrary. As always, the final cause is the cause of the causality of the other causes. The end of the logical construct requires certain determinate rules according to which the objects known are to be ordered in knowledge in reference to one another. Thus, there are definite rules of procedure which constrain the intellect in its discursive progress.5 These 8 Cf., Smith, Gerard, S. J., "A Date in the History of Epistemology," in The Maritain Volume of The Thomist (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1948), pp. 246-255. • In 1 Post. Anal., lect. 1, n. 9: " Omnis autem disciplinae acceptio ex praeexistenti cognitione fit." (The quotations from St. Thomas will be taken from the Leonine for the Summa, the Decker for the De Trinitate, the Lethielleux for the Sentences, and from the respective Marietti editions for each of the other works cited.) • The general rules of discursive...

Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry by Jacques Maritain

BOOK REVIEWS 588 writings, he deals at length with Peirce's theory of knowledge (the assault on Cartesianism, critical commonsensism, and the doctrine of ThoughtSigns ) in three chapters. The originality and value of Peirce's criticisms of Descartes are ascribed to his superior logical equipment, which enabled him to detect the uncriticized presuppositions of that thinker. Peirce's critical commonsensism is shown to imply a rejection of all absolutely first principles, in whose place he puts conjecture as suggested by an experience that is ever subject to change and development. The treatment of the theory of signs is reasonably full, and leads to a discussion of Pragmatism, understood by Peirce rather as a principle of logic than, as in James, as a principle of a metaphysic. Prof. Gallie devotes a chapter to an ambiguity in Peirce's Pragmatism, which claims to provide a general criterion of empirical meaningfulness, whereas it in fact is adapted only to determine the meaning of standard scientific expressions. Peirce's metaphysics is the object of the last two chapters, which consider his categories, and his cosmology; the ontology is considered to be of more importance than the cosmology, whose chief value is placed in its showing up of the defects of classical mechanicism. Prof. Gallic has succeeded in presenting us with a good, reliable and clear introduction to the philosophy of Peirce in its main outline. We may not agree with his own personal philosophic stand-point, and may feel that we would criticize where he often approves; but he does not und,;ly intrude his own views upon the reader (which cannot be said for some of the other similar books of this series) and is for the most part content with the humbler task of the objective historian. It is surely such who, in the long run, do the greatest service to those thinkers whom they admire so much. Collegia Angelicum Rome, Italy AMBROSE J. McNxcHOLL, 0. P. Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry. By Jacques Maritain. New York: Pantheon, 1953. Pp. 4~3 with index. $6.50. The purpose of this book is twofold: first, to make clear the distinct yet indissoluble relationship between art and poetry, and secondly, to reveal the essential part played by the intellect in both art and poetry, and especially to show that poetry has its source in the preconceptual life of the intellect. Art, in this context, is taken to mean " the creative or producing, work-making activity of the human mind," and poetry is not " the particular art which consists in writing verses but a process both more general and more primary: that intercommunication between the inner being of things and the inner being of the human Self which is a 584 BOOK REVIEWS kind of divination. Poetry, in this sense, is the secret life of all the arts." (p. 3) Many other aims are fulfilled, not least of which is the exhaustive revelation of the author's mind on all related subjects. The book has, we think, a threefold division. We may divide it: 1) Introduction to Creative Intuition, ~) Creative Intuition in the Artist, and 3) ,Creative Intuition in the Work. The Introduction comprises two chapters; the first carries out an inductive investigation of the world's art, the second considers art as a practical virtue, and lays some groundwork for the thesis of the work. Creative Intuition in the Artist is then studied through the four causes in the next four chapters. In Chapter Three the author considers the efficient cause; in Chapter Four the material and formal cause; in Chapters Five and Six the final cause. The third main division, Creative Intuition in the Work, considers the meaning of the work in three steps; in Chapter Seven, the essential meaning; in Chapter Eight the transmission of the meaning; and in the final Chapter, the full meaning. The author shows that all art has its roots in poetic intuition. Oriental art, though intent on things, nevertheless reveals obscurely the Self, or the subjectivity of the artist. Occidental art, though increasingly intent on the Self, nevertheless reveals obscurely the inner side of Things. Two arts, intent on opposite poles of interests, come out with...