Descartes Philosophical Revolution: A Reassessment
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Descartes Philosophical Revolution: A Reassessment Hanoch Ben-Yami Central European University, Budapest
Hanoch Ben-Yami 2015 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2015 978-1-137-51201-7 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6 10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2015 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-50628-6 ISBN 978-1-137-51202-4 (ebook) DOI 10.1057/9781137512024 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ben-Yami, Hanoch, 1962 Descartes philosophical revolution : a reassessment / Hanoch Ben-Yami, Central European University, Budapest. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978 1 137 51201 7 1. Descartes, René, 1596 1650. I. Title. B1875.B378 2015 194 dc23 2015002994
To Vered Who helped wind up the mechanism that set this work a-going
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Contents List of Figures Preface ix x 1 Introduction 1 2 Descartes Theory of Perception 11 2.1 Descartes theory of perception, from The World on 11 2.2 Descartes justification of his theory 24 2.3 The innovation in Descartes theory of perception 33 3 The Development of Descartes Theory of Perception 44 3.1 Descartes theory of perception in the Rules 44 3.2 Galileo s influence 51 3.3 Analytic geometry and representational perception 62 4 Soul and Physiology 75 4.1 The living body according to Descartes 75 4.2 Life without soul, soul without life 83 4.3 The physiologists reception of Descartes conception of life 106 5 Mind, Machine, Sensation 122 5.1 Mind and automaton 122 5.2 Animals without a mind 131 5.3 Painless pain, blind sight 138 6 Descartes and the Metaphysical Project 153 6.1 Bérulle and Descartes 153 6.2 Why was the Meditations written? 162 6.3 Augustine and Descartes: methodological preliminaries 175 vii
viii Contents 7 The Meditations : Borrowed Themes with Original Variations 181 7.1 The First Meditation and the dream argument 181 7.2 Cogito: ergo sum or ergo vivo? 206 7.3 The essence of the wax, and of bodies generally 217 Epilogue 225 Notes 228 Bibliography 264 Index 277
List of Figures 3.1 Descartes geometrical representation of colours, taken from Rules, AT X 413 48 3.2 Cartesian coordinates 65 3.3 Cartesian coordinates with a point 65 3.4 Cartesian coordinates with two lines 66 3.5 Ellipse CE with line CP at a right angle, taken from Geometry, page 343 67 4.1 Descartes physiology of vision, taken from Man, AT XI 747 79 4.2 Salomon de Caus, Les raisons des forces mouvantes, illustration to problem 27 82 4.3 A sixteenth century automaton, attributed to della Torre, now at the Division of Work & Industry, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution 94 4.4 A sixteen century automaton, attributed to Schlottheim (image copyright akg-images) 95 ix
Preface This book developed out of three areas of research, initially rather independent of each other. First, my interest in the philosophy of perception and the attention I pay to the history of the issues I work on led to research into Descartes theory of perception. Secondly, my wife, Vered Glickman, investigated the emergence of the mind body problem, and this led her to work on Descartes understanding of life and soul and on the influence of automata on his thought. And lastly, we both have taught and struggled with the Meditations over the years. When significant interconnections between these different areas of research began to emerge, the project of the book was born. As is clear from the above, the book was initially conceived as a joint project. However, other occupations kept creeping in and gradually demanded more and more of Vered s attention, and the time she could devote to the book project shrunk accordingly, ultimately disappearing altogether some years ago. Since then I have been working on the book virtually on my own. Still, some of the research leading to Chapters 4, 5 and 7 is Vered s. But as we have been sharing and discussing our ideas and results from the very earliest stages of this work, it is practically impossible to separate our respective contributions. The book is intended not only for scholars but also for graduate students and advanced undergraduates. I have thus had to balance between the varied interests and needs of these different readerships. I made the main text self-standing, assuming only the kind of familiarity with the history of philosophy and with contemporary philosophy that an advanced undergraduate would have. In order to arrive at new areas of interest, I often had to travel over familiar ground that has been well-covered in recent secondary literature: Descartes physiology, some aspects of his view of animals as natural automata, and more. I allowed myself to be concise in my presentations of these issues, mentioning only what is necessary for later discussions and for the comprehensibility of Descartes position. In such cases I give, in footnotes, references to sources in which the subject is expounded in more detail. x
Preface xi Wherever available, which meant almost always, I used existing translations of Descartes writings, primarily the translation of the extensive selections from his philosophical works and correspondence made by Cottingham, Stoothoff, Murdoch and Kenny and published by Cambridge University Press (1984 1991). References to the three volumes of this translation are abbreviated CSM I, CSM II and CSMK, respectively. I allowed myself, however, to change the translation where I thought necessary, for reasons of accuracy or uniformity. These changes are infrequent, but they are occasionally significant; usually they are not noted in the text. The same applies to other translations from works by Descartes or other authors. Peter Hacker read most of the manuscript while Ivan Milić and Judit Szalai parts of it: all of them provided many helpful comments. György Geréby helped me with some Latin texts, as did Gábor Betegh, István Bodnár and Paul Scade with Greek ones, also suggesting references to primary and secondary literature on ancient philosophy. Hywel Griffiths made valuable suggestions and comments on Galileo. I have taught courses covering material from this book from the late 1990s on, first at Tel-Aviv University and then at Central European University, and these contributed considerably to the book. One of these courses was a seminar on Descartes given together with Mike Griffin, whose comments were of great help. I have delivered talks and seminars on parts of my work at several universities, too many to be listed here. The discussions on these occasions contributed not only to the accuracy and to the presentation of my work, but also to my confidence that philosophers may find it interesting. Authors often conclude their acknowledgments by thanking their husband or wife, without whose support, they write, their work would never have come into being. For the reasons mentioned in the opening paragraphs of this preface, this book owes its existence to Vered, to whom it is dedicated, in an even more significant way.