Here, we examine the narrativity of Cartesian discourse in an hermeneutic exercise. Highlighting some features of Cartesian narratives will show that, far from being a simple literary device, Cartesian narratives serve as a “shifter” in conceptualization and argumentation. Cartesian narrativity follows Descartes’s ontological distinction between thought and extension, subjectivity and the material world, and involves a double mimèsis that is retrospective in the metaphysical texts and prospective in the scientific texts. These two directions of mimesis fulfill different epistemological functions.