13 results
Cavendish, William (Marquess of Newcastle) (1592–1676)
- from ENTRIES
-
- By Fred Ablondi, Hendrix College
- Edited by Lawrence Nolan, California State University, Long Beach
-
- Book:
- The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon
- Published online:
- 05 January 2016
- Print publication:
- 01 January 2015, pp 99-100
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Born December 6 in Yorkshire, William Cavendish was a man of many interests and talents. He fought as a military leader for the royalists, served as adviser to Charles I and Charles II, wrote plays and poems, and founded a riding school. During the interregnum, William and his brother Charles spent several years in Paris, where they met Hobbes, Gassendi, and Descartes, among others. While in France, William married his second wife, Margaret (1623–73), a writer and philosopher who published works critical of mechanical philosophy in general and of Descartes (among others) in particular. Both Cavendish brothers corresponded with Descartes, and three letters from Descartes to the marquess have survived (AT IV 188–92, 325–30, and 568–77; CSMK 274–76, 302–4). In the second of these, Descartes remarks that the chief goal of his studies is the preservation of health, and he seconds Tiberius's claim that anyone over thirty is qualified to be his or her own physician, inasmuch as good health depends upon being attentive to one's experience of what harms or benefits one's body (AT IV 329–30, CSMK 275–76). In the third letter, Descartes repeats his claim from the Discourse on Method that animals are nothing more than unthinking, self-moving machines. He bases this on the grounds that because (according to him) language use is the surest sign of a thinking mind, and no animals use language, while even the slowest human beings do, animals must be without thoughts. It is interesting that in the Discourse (AT VI 59–60, CSM I 141) Descartes concluded that if we grant that animals think just as we do, then we have no more hope of an afterlife than does a fly or an ant (i.e., none); because we do have such a hope, it must be that they do not have minds. In his letter to Newcastle, on the other hand, he claims that if we attribute thought to animals, we must thereby attribute immortal souls to them (see soul, immortality of the). Given (Descartes says) that the idea that oysters and sponges might have immortal souls is clearly false, it must be that they do not have minds (AT IV 576, CSMK 304). Thus, Descartes arrives at the same conclusion via two similar, but distinct, lines of implication. William Cavendish died December 25, 1676, at Welbeck Abbey.
See also Animal; Body; Cavendish, Margaret; Discourse on Method; Language; Mind; Soul, Immortality of the; Thought
Lamy, Bernard (1640-1715)
- from ENTRIES
-
- By Fred Ablondi, Hendrix College
- Edited by Lawrence Nolan, California State University, Long Beach
-
- Book:
- The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon
- Published online:
- 05 January 2016
- Print publication:
- 01 January 2015, pp 432-433
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Born June 15 in Le Mans, Lamy entered the Oratorianmaison d'Institution in Paris at age eighteen. After attending the Oratorian seminary in Saumur (1659-61), he taught at the Collège de César at Vendôme (1661–63), the collèges at Juilly (1663–68) and at Le Mans. He left there in 1669 for further study, after which he taught philosophy at Saumur (1671–73) and then Angers (1673–75). In 1675 he was expelled from the faculty at Angers for teaching Cartesianism. The report of his censure shows it to be imposed for holding, among other Cartesian ideas, that the principal attribute of body is extension (AT VIIIA 42–43, CSM I 224), that infants think in utero (AT III 424, CSMK 190; AT IV 605, CSMK 307–8), and that God is both the primary cause of motion and preserver of the quantity of motion in the world (AT VIIIA 61–62, CSM I 240). Two years after his expulsion, Lamy was awarded a chair at the seminary in Grenoble, where he remained for several years. Following three years in Paris, Lamy was sent in 1689 to Rouen. He died there on January 29, 1715. Lamy was the author of many books on a wide array of subjects, including mathematics, rhetoric, and theology. His most important philosophical work is Entretiens sur les sciences (1683). It is first a study of pedagogy, but Lamy's view that the mind contains innate ideas (and that it is the teacher's role to draw these out) is very Cartesian, as is his claim that reason can discover truths that are beyond the powers of sensation to reach. Lamy praises Descartes’ mechanical understanding of the natural order (including the human body), and he argues that genuine scientific explanations must be in mechanical terms. He also accepts the view that the cogito provides us with certainty.
See also Attribute, Body, Certainty, Cogito Ergo Sum, Extension, God, Idea, Mind, Motion, Oratorian, Reason, Sensation
Poisson, Nicolas-Joseph (1637–1710)
- from ENTRIES
-
- By Fred Ablondi, Hendrix College
- Edited by Lawrence Nolan, California State University, Long Beach
-
- Book:
- The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon
- Published online:
- 05 January 2016
- Print publication:
- 01 January 2015, pp 603-603
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Born in 1637 in Paris, Nicolas-Joseph Poisson was an Oratorian priest who, like others in the Congregation of the Oratory, championed Cartesian philosophy. In 1668 he published a French translation of Descartes’ Compendium of Music, together with his translation of and commentary upon a letter from Descartes to Constantijn Huygens that was given the title Traité des méchaniques. Poisson assisted Baillet in gathering information for his biography of Descartes and wrote a commentary on the Discourse on Method (1670). He corresponded with Clerselier and Desgabets, arguing with them over the Cartesian account of transubstantiation, which Poisson concluded was not compatible with the Catholic faith. As Cartesianism continued to generate controversy, Poisson was ordered by his superiors in the Oratory to abandon his plan to write commentaries on all of Descartes’ works. He died in Lyon in 1710.
See also Baillet, Adrien; Clerselier, Claude; Desgabets, Robert; Discourse on Method; Huygens, Constantijn; Oratorian; Transubstantiation
Du Hamel (or Duhamel), Jean (?–1705)
- from ENTRIES
-
- By Fred Ablondi, Hendrix College
- Edited by Lawrence Nolan, California State University, Long Beach
-
- Book:
- The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon
- Published online:
- 05 January 2016
- Print publication:
- 01 January 2015, pp 225-226
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
The date and location of his birth unknown, Jean Du Hamel (not to be confused with Jean-Baptiste Du Hamel [1624–1706], the first secretary of the Académie des sciences) is connected to Cartesianism by his critical response to the Cartesian elements of Pierre-Sylvain Régis's Système de philosophie (1690; title changed in later editions to Cours entier de philosophie). In his Réflexions critiques sur le système cartésien de Mr Regis (1692), he attacks the Cartesian method of doubt, charges that the cogito argument begs the question, and argues against the Cartesian conception of the objective being of ideas (see AT VII 92–93, CSM II 66–67 for a similar complaint). Du Hamel also criticizes Régis in particular for his (nonstandard, from a Cartesian perspective) views that our ideas of bodies are sufficient to entail that bodies in fact exist and that matter, once created, cannot be destroyed, even by God. Régis responded to these attacks in his Réponse aux Réflexions critique du M. Du Hamel (1692). Du Hamel's reply to this response came several years later in his brief (sixteen-page) Lettre de Monsieur Du Hamel, ancien professor de philosophie de l'Université de Paris, pour server de replique à Monsieur Régis (1699). He was also the author of a Scholastic, and decidedly anti-Cartesian, course of philosophy, Philosophia universalis (1705). Du Hamel died in Paris in 1705.
See also Being, Formal versus Objective; Cogito Ergo Sum; Doubt; God; Régis, Pierre-Sylvain
Cordemoy, Géraud de (1626–1684)
- from ENTRIES
-
- By Fred Ablondi, Hendrix College
- Edited by Lawrence Nolan, California State University, Long Beach
-
- Book:
- The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon
- Published online:
- 05 January 2016
- Print publication:
- 01 January 2015, pp 157-158
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Born in Paris, Cordemoy served as a lawyer in the Parlement of Paris, but he was also active in the philosophical conferences of the French capital, including those of Emmanuel Maignan (1601–76) and Jacques Rohault (1618–72). His major works are Le discernement du corps et de l’âme en six discours pour servir à l'eclaircissement de la physique (1666) and Discours physique de la parole (1668). In 1673 he was appointed tutor to the dauphin, and in 1683 he became director of the Académie française, having been elected a member eight years earlier. He died October 15, 1684. Cordemoy's importance to Cartesianism in particular and to seventeenth-century thought in general results chiefly from three factors. First, he is the only Cartesian atomist. Cordemoy arrives at atomism from what he takes to be the logical consequence of a Cartesian understanding of substance (see AT VIIIA 24–25, CSM I 210). Substances, he claims, are essentially metaphysically simple, and for extended substance, this implies atomism. So for him, it is not merely a contingent physical fact that the corporeal world is at root composed of atoms, or bodies (les corps, assemblages of which constitute matter); it is a metaphysical requirement, given a clear and distinct understanding of the concept of substance. Second, Cordemoy is one of the first, if not the first, of Cartesian philosophers to argue that Descartes’ metaphysics demands an occasionalist understanding of causation. Beginning with “interaction” between bodies, and then extending his analysis to body-mind and mind-body “interaction,” Cordemoy argues that only God could be the cause of the effects generated in such instances. He begins his argument by taking as axiomatic that nothing can lose something essential to it without ceasing to be what it is. As bodies can lose their motion, motion cannot be for them an essential property. Further, as motion is a mode of bodies, and because Cartesian metaphysics does not permit a particular token mode to be transferred to another substance, bodies cannot give each other motion. Only something that itself is not a body could be the cause of motion in bodies. Cartesian ontology contains only minds and bodies, and so the cause in question must be a mind. Reflection shows that our own finite minds are not the cause of motion in bodies.
Oratorian
- from ENTRIES
-
- By Fred Ablondi, Hendrix College
- Edited by Lawrence Nolan, California State University, Long Beach
-
- Book:
- The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon
- Published online:
- 05 January 2016
- Print publication:
- 01 January 2015, pp 560-561
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
The name refers to any member of the Society of the Oratory of Jesus, also called the French Congregation of the Oratory, founded by Pierre de Bérulle (1579–1629) in 1611 and officially instituted by Pope Paul V in 1613. He modeled it in part after the Oratory of Saint Phillip Neri (members of which are also called Oratorians) and adopted some of its practices, but aside from this there is no further connection between the two. Bérulle was motivated to form the congregation by a desire to reform the priesthood in France. His aim was to establish a society of theologically educated and morally upstanding priests capable of instructing the laity on the truths of the Catholic faith, in his mind a much needed response to the Protestant threat. With regard to theology, Bérulle was influenced by Neoplatonism in general and Saint Augustine in particular, and the society would grow to include many Augustinian theologians. As for philosophy, though it would be too strong to call Bérulle a Cartesian – he was more concerned with matters religious and political – he was favorably disposed to the work of Descartes. Over the course of the seventeenth century, however, the congregation would include philosophers properly considered Cartesian, such as Bernard Lamy (1640–1715) and Nicolas-Joseph Poisson (1637–1710), as well as those whose thought is heavily indebted to Descartes, such as Nicolas Malebranche (1638–1715). On the other hand, Jean-Baptiste de la Grange, a fierce opponent of Cartesianism, was also an Oratorian, as was Jean-Baptiste Duhamel (1624–1706), who sought to blend the best elements of ancient philosophy and Cartesianism. While its primary mission was the spiritual formation of priests, the society also committed itself to educating the young, running many colleges in France, including those at Saumur, Mans, Vendôme, Juilly, and Angers. Though Bérulle himself held the Jesuit order in high regard and counted several Jesuits among his friends, friction quickly developed between the Oratory and the Society of Jesus, in part because the latter viewed the former as a rival regarding education of the youth. In 1792 the chaos caused by the French Revolution led to the disbanding of the congregation, though the society was re-formed sixty years later, in 1852, by Joseph Gratry. Today there are approximately fifty French Oratorians.
Silhon, Jean de (1596–1667)
- from ENTRIES
-
- By Fred Ablondi, Hendrix College
- Edited by Lawrence Nolan, California State University, Long Beach
-
- Book:
- The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon
- Published online:
- 05 January 2016
- Print publication:
- 01 January 2015, pp 682-682
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Born 1596 at Sos, Silhon was secretary to Cardinal Richelieu (1585–1642) and was appointed by him in 1634 to l‘Académie française, established by Louis XIII the following year. He served for many years as a state councilor and was also secretary to Richelieu's successor as chief minister, Cardinal Mazarin (1602–61). He died in Paris, February 1667. Silhon was a close friend of Descartes, though little, if any, of their correspondence has survived (see Descartes’ letters at AT I 352–54, CSMK 55–56; AT V 134–39, CSMK 330–32, which may have been to Silhon). His two most important works are Les deux vérités (1626) and L'immortalité de l’âme (1634). The former begins with arguments against skepticism, for according to Silhon it is only once skepticism has been refuted that reason can be reliably employed to prove God's existence (the first truth), which is itself necessary for the proof that the soul is immortal (the second truth) (see doubt and soul, immortality of). The latter is of interest for Silhon's argument, directed against the skeptics of his day, that even though a man's senses may deceive him, and even though he cannot know with certainty whether he is asleep or awake, nonetheless, when he judges that he exists, he cannot at that moment be mistaken. Thus, there is something he knows to be true (cf. AT VI 31–32, CSM I 127). However, unlike Descartes, for whom the cogito is not the result of a deduction but stands on its own as a clear and immediate intuition (see AT VI 32, CSM I 127; AT VII 140, CSM II 100), Silhon argues that the certainty attained by his argument rests upon the prior truth that whatever acts must have being. By making “I exist” the conclusion of a deduction, he leaves the door open to the skeptic to doubt the premise from which it is said to follow. Descartes mentions no debt to Silhon for his own cogito argument, nor does Silhon claim any priority in the matter.
See also Certainty, Clarity and Distinctness, Cogito Ergo Sum, Deduction, Mind, Reason, Truth
Bérulle, Pierre de (1575–1629)
- from ENTRIES
-
- By Fred Ablondi, Hendrix College
- Edited by Lawrence Nolan, California State University, Long Beach
-
- Book:
- The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon
- Published online:
- 05 January 2016
- Print publication:
- 01 January 2015, pp 65-67
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Born in the Champagne region, Bérulle was one of the leading religious figures in early seventeenth-century France. He is known primarily for his mysticism and his intolerance of Protestants. Ordained in 1599, Bérulle founded (1611) the Society of the Oratory of Jesus, also referred to as the Congregation of the French Oratory, a congregation of priests (known as Oratorians) dedicated to the reformation of the clergy. The society quickly flourished, and within a few decades was running dozens of colleges and seminaries throughout France. While Bérulle spoke approvingly of Descartes’ philosophy, his own interests were in theology – where he was heavily influenced by the Neoplatonism of both pseudo-Dionysius and Augustine – and politics. His most popular work was Discours de l’état et des grandeurs de Jésus (1623). Bérulle was made a cardinal by Pope Urban VIII in 1627.
As for his links to Descartes and Cartesianism, Bérulle's Augustinianism was transmitted both directly, through personal relations he had with men who would later have connections of their own with Descartes, such as Charles de Condren and Guillaume Gibieuf, and indirectly, via the Oratorian seminaries to others who would later become Cartesians themselves, such as André Martin and Nicolas Malebranche. Of particular note is Gibieuf. It was through Bérulle's influence that he rejected Molinism, to which he had shown some leanings, and through Bérulle's encouragement that he wrote his anti-Molinist book De libertate Dei et creaturae (1630), which argued that free will is essentially a matter of spontaneity. Years later, Descartes would make a point to tell Mersenne that he “wrote nothing [in the Meditations] which is not in accord with what [Gibieuf] said in his book De Libertate” (AT III 360, CSMK 179).
A second link between Bérulle and Descartes comes from a story told by Baillet, one that is often repeated although is unlikely to be entirely true. According to the story, in the fall of 1628 both Descartes and Bérulle attended a talk given by a Monsieur Chandoux. When the talk concluded, Bérulle noticed that Descartes alone did not applaud. Asked about this, Descartes replied that while he shared Chandoux's anti-Scholasticism, he did not think skepticism could be avoided if one did not begin with premises that were known with absolute certainty.
Lamy, François (1636–1711)
- from ENTRIES
-
- By Fred Ablondi, Hendrix College
- Edited by Lawrence Nolan, California State University, Long Beach
-
- Book:
- The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon
- Published online:
- 05 January 2016
- Print publication:
- 01 January 2015, pp 433-434
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Born at Montireau in the region of Beauce, Lamy was a soldier before joining the Maurists, a congregation of French Benedictines, in 1658. While in Paris he studied mathematics with the Cartesian Jacques Rohault (1618–72) and subsequently became one of the first of the Maurists to teach Cartesianism. His published works display the strong influence of Nicolas Malebranche (1638–1715). In particular, Lamy holds the two positions that are most often associated with Malebranche, namely, that there is a universal, uncreated Reason to which we have access via a vision in God, and that God is the sole efficient cause in the world. His works include Le nouvel athéisme renversé, ou Réfutation du sistème de Spinosa (1696), Lettres philosophiques sur divers sujets importans (1703), and Les premiers élémens des sciences (1706). But his magnum opus is his five-volume De la connoissance de soi-mesme (1694–98). While many of the positions he defends there are taken from Malebranche, an exception is his main argument for occasionalism, which is one not found in the other major French occasionalists. It is based on the need for God's causal power to account for what appears to be interaction between the mind and body, understood in Cartesian terms as an immaterial thinking thing and an unthinking extended thing, respectively, given the fact that they are radically distinct substances. This argument led to a dispute with Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716), who felt that his own doctrine of preestablished harmony was a better way to explain such “interaction.” The second edition of De la connoissance de soi-mesme (1699, in six volumes) contains Lamy's response to Leibniz, in which he argues that preestablished harmony is not compatible with human freedom (see free will). Lamy also engaged in disputes on various philosophical and theological matters with Bossuet, Nicole, Arnauld, Fontenelle, Régis, and even Malebranche. He died April 11, 1711, at the Abbey of Saint-Denis.
See also Body; Cause; God; Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm; Malebranche, Nicolas; Mind; Reason; Rohault, Jacques
Philosophy
- from ENTRIES
-
- By Fred Ablondi, Hendrix College
- Edited by Lawrence Nolan, California State University, Long Beach
-
- Book:
- The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon
- Published online:
- 05 January 2016
- Print publication:
- 01 January 2015, pp 582-585
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Descartes’ conception of the scope of philosophy is decidedly more far-reaching than what is today considered to constitute the proper subject matter of the discipline. Many areas of study that we now classify as distinct from philosophy were thought by Descartes and his contemporaries to fall under the broad heading of natural philosophy. Indeed, a quick look at the subjects covered by Descartes in his Principles of Philosophy (1644) reveals the wide range of phenomena that he believed to be the proper purview of the philosopher. While part I discusses the sorts of matters contemporary philosophers associate with Descartes and see as distinctly philosophical, part II would today be classified as a work in physics. Part III deals with questions concerning the moon, sun, planets, comets, and other topics that today we see as part of astronomy; and the final division, part IV, takes up all sorts of matters, none of which would be thought of as a matter for philosophical investigation today. In it, Descartes treats such diverse topics as the nature of air, the tides, the interior of the earth, qualities of various salts, and why earthquakes occur, as well as answers to several dozen questions about fire and even more about magnets (see magnetism).
In the preface of the 1647 French edition of the Principles, Descartes famously compares philosophy to a tree in order to show the internal divisions of, and the relations between, the subdisciplines of the field. In the metaphor, the “roots are metaphysics, the trunk is physics, and the branches emerging from the trunk are all the other sciences, which may be reduced to three principled ones, namely medicine, mechanics, and morals” (AT IXB 14, CSM I 186). There is, thus, a dependence relation among the subdisciples: just as the trunk depends upon the roots for support, for example, physics relies on the principles of metaphysics. But the tree metaphor also suggests that there is an order in which philosophy ought to proceed – the roots must come before the trunk and the branches. This point comes out later in the preface, where we are given an explicit statement of Descartes’ understanding of philosophy.
EPISTEMIC VAGUENESS?
- Fred Ablondi
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
The barn/barn façade thought experiment is familiar to most epistemologists. It is intended to present a counterexample to certain causal theories of knowledge; in it, a father driving through the countryside with his son says, ‘That's a barn’ while pointing to a barn. Unbeknownst to the father, however, a film crew is working in the area, and it has constructed several barn façades. While the father did correctly point to a barn when he made his assertion, he could have just as easily pointed to a barn façade, and so, many hold, he does not know that the structure at which he is pointing is in fact a barn. If this is so, then it follows that true beliefs formed from reliable causal processes (in this case, vision by a competent observer under normal conditions) may still not qualify as knowledge.
RETROACTIVE IDENTITY ASCRIPTIONS, EMPTY QUESTIONS, AND INTRINSIC RELATIONS
- Fred Ablondi
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
If a statue and lump of clay have the same life-histories, are they numerically identical?
Almog's Descartes
- Fred Ablondi
-
- Journal:
- Philosophy / Volume 80 / Issue 3 / July 2005
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 13 October 2005, pp. 423-431
- Print publication:
- July 2005
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
The answer which Joseph Almog gives to the question which serves as the title of his recent book What Am I? (subtitled: Descartes and the Mind-Body Problem) is based upon his interpretation of (1) and objection to Descartes' argument for the distinction of the mind and the body raised by Antoine Arnauld, as well as Descartes' response to it, and (2) Descartes' letters of 9 February 1645 to Denis Mesland. I will argue that both of these interpretations are incorrect, and as such do not support the conclusions which Almog claims to draw from them. The answer, then to the question of what I am which Almog provides is, I believe, not one Descartes would have held, nor one which his writings support.