Descartes and the Ingenium: The Embodied Soul in Cartesianism

252 Pages·2020·10.12 MB·English

by  Raphaële Garrod, Alexander Marr

Brill’s Studies in
Intellectual History
General Editor
Han van Ruler (Erasmus University Rotterdam)
Founded by
Aijo Vandeijagt
Editorial Board
I
C. S. Celenza (Georgetown University, Washington DC)
M. Colish (Yale University, New Haven)
J. I. Israel (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton)
A. Koba (University of Tokyo)
M. Mugnai (Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa)
W. Otten (University of Chicago)
VOLUME 323
I
!
The titles published in this series are listed at brilLcom/bsih
W
Descartes and the
I
Ingenium
The Embodied Soul in Cartesianism
Edited by
Raphaele Garrod with Alexander Marr
1 6 8 *
BRILL
I.Rinov 1------
Cover illustration: Simon Vbuet, 'Portrait of a Man Wearing a Collar [Rene Descartes?]’, ca. 1627-8. Chalks
and pastel on light brown paper, with traces of pen and ink. 27.4 x 21.1 cm. Paris, Mus6e du Louvre, Cabinet
des dessins, no. rf 54528 recto.
Photo © Mus6e du Louvre, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Harry Br£jat
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Garrod, Raphaele, editor. | Marr, Alexander, 1978- editor
Title: Descartes and the ingenium : the embodied soul in Cartesianism I
edited by Raphaele Garrod with Alexander Marr.
Description: Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2021. | Series: Brill’s studies in
intellectual history, 0920-8607 ; 323 | Includes bibliographical
i
references and index.
Identifiers: lccn 2020040639 (print) | lccn 2020040640 (ebook) |
isbn 9789004437616 (hardback: acid-free paper) | isbn 9789004437623 (ebook)
Subjects: lcsh: Descartes, Rene, 1596-1650. | Mind and body.
Classification: LCC B1878.M55 D47 2021 (print) | LCC B1878.M55 (ebook) |
DDC 128/.2—dc23
i LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020040639
lc ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.g0v/2020040640
■
Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill". See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface.
ISSN 0920-8607
ISBN 978-90-04-43761-6 (hardback)
ISBN 978-90-04-43762-3 (e-book)
Copyright 2021 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi,
Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schoningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without prior written permission from the publisher. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be
addressed to Koninklijke Brill nv via brill.com or copyright.com.
This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.
Contents
Acknowledgements vn
List of Illustrations and Diagrams vm
Abbreviations and Note on the Text x
Notes on Contributors xi
Introduction. Descartes Re-imagined
Ingenuity before and beyond Dualism 1
Raphaele Garrod
PART 1
Rethinking the Ingenium in the Cartesian Corpus:
Method, Mathematics, Medicine
1 Methodical Invention 19
The Cartesian Ingenium at Work
Denis Kambouchner
2 Descartes and Logic: Perfecting the Ingenium 31
Roger Ariew
3 Enumeratio in Descartes’s Regulae ad directionem ingenii
and Beyond 47
Theo Verbeek
4 Ingenium, Phantasia and Mathematics in Descartes’s
Regulae ad directionem ingenii 64
David Rabouin
5 The Post-Regulae Direction of Ingenium in Descartes
Toward a Pragmatic Psychological Anthropology 91
Dennis L. Sepper
6 Augustinian Souls and Epicurean Bodies?
Descartes's Corporeal Mind in Motion 113
HaroldJ. Cook
VI CONTENTS
PART 2
The Cartesian Ingenium in Context: Predecessors,
Contemporaries, Successors
7 Ingenium between Descartes and the Scholastics 139
Igor Agostini
8 Methods of Ingenuity 163
The Renaissance Tradition behind Descartes's Regulae
RichardJ. Oosterhoff
9 La Politesse de L'esprit
Cartesian Pedagogy and the Ethics of Scholarly Exchanges 184
Raphaele Garrod
10 Postface: The Face of Ingenium
Simon Vouet's Portrait of Descartes 204
Alexander Marr
I Bibliography 217
I
Index of Names 237
I
I
i
I
I
—
Acknowledgements
This volume stems from a conference that took place at Newnham College,
Cambridge, in June 2015, under the auspices of the ERC-funded project “Genius
Before Romanticism: Ingenuity in Early Modem Art and Science” led by
Alexander Marr and hosted by crassh (Cambridge). The conference and this
volume were funded by the European Research Council under the European
Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2OO7-2oi3)/erc grant agree­
ment no 617391.
I would like to thank Richard Serjeantson for making available to partic­
ipants the draft version of his forthcoming critical edition, with Michael
Edwards, of the Cambridge manuscript of Descartes’s Regulae ad directlonem
ingenii ahead of the conference, and for his help in outltining the aims of this
volume. I am also grateful to all conference participants: their scholarship,
enthusiasm and collegiality made it a truly memorable gathering of wits.
Dan Garber, Emma Gilby, Martine Pecharman, Lucian Petrescu, and Justin
Smith enriched our conversation by making us look at ingenuity from the van­
tage points of seventeenth-century French poetics, Hobbes, medieval scholas­
ticism, and Enlightenment philosophy. John Marenbon and Michael Moriarty
enlivened our exchanges as session chairs. Harold Cook agreed to join this pro­
ject at a later point. Steven Archer kindly helped source images in the middle
of a pandemic lockdown. I thank them all here.
My greatest debt goes to my Cambridge colleagues and members of the
project for their excellent remarks, fruitful conversations, and patience at my
editorial rants: Irene Cooper, Jos£ Ramon Marcaida, Richard Oosterhoff and
Andres Velez Posada. I wish to thank Alex Marr, the principal investigator of
the ‘Genius before Romanticism’ project who gave valuable time and effort in
getting this volume into publishable shape. I thank Tim Chesters for his careful
reading of several chapters of this book, and his cheerful support throughout
the editing of it.
Raphaele Garrod
June 2020
Illustrations and Diagrams
4-1 Representing differences in colour geometrically 69
From Rene Descartes, Regulae ad directionem ingenii in Les Oeuvres completes
de Rene Descartes, ed. Charles Adam and Paul Tannery, 12 vols (Paris: edition
Leopold Cerf, 1897-1913), vol 10 (1908), p. 413
4.2 Parallel representations: Dots and small squares in Clavius 76
From Christopher Clavius, Euclidis elementorum libri xv. Accessit liber xvi. De
solidorum regularium cuiuslibet intra quodlibet comparatione. Omnes perspicuis
demonstrationibus, accuratisque scholiis illustrati, 2 vols (Frankfurt, 1607), 1:165
Courtesy of The Governing Body of Christchurch, Oxford
4.3 A figure of size ‘3’... 77
4-4 ... and its attempted division by ‘2’ 77
4-5 How to transform a rectangle into a line and vice versa 80
4.6 How to transform the product ab into a simple line c, u being the unit, by using
the method of the Gnomon 81
47 Euclid’s Elements 11.14, edited by Clavius (1607) 82
From Christopher Clavius, Euclidis elementorum libri xv. Accessit liber xvi. De
solidorum regularium cuiuslibet intra quodlibet comparatione. Omnes perspicuis
demonstrationibus, accuratisque scholiis illustrati, 2 vols (Frankfurt, 1607), 1:211
Courtesy of The Governing Body of Christchurch, Oxford
4-8 Euclid’s Elements vi. 13, edited by Clavius (1607) 83
From Christopher Clavius, Euclidis elementorum libri xv. Accessit Uber xvi. De
solidorum regularium cuiuslibet intra quodlibet comparatione. Omnes perspicuis
demonstrationibus, accuratisque scholiis illustrati, 2 vols (Frankfurt, 1607), 1:564
Courtesy of The Governing Body of Christchurch, Oxford
4-9 Clavius’s construction and Descartes’s proportional compass 84
a From Christopher Clavius, Euclidis elementorum libri xv. Accessit liber
I
xvi. De solidorum regularium cuiuslibet intra quodlibet comparatione.
Omnes perspicuis demonstrationibus, accuratisque scholiis illustrati, 2 vols
(Frankfurt, 1607), 1:565
Courtesy of The Governing Body of Christchurch, Oxford
b From Rene Descartes, Regulae ad directionem ingenii in Les Oeuvres com­
pletes de Rene Descartes, ed. Charles Adam and Paul Tannery, 12 vols (Paris:
Edition Leopold Cerf, 1897-1913), vol 10 (1908), p. 234
10.1 Simon Vouet, ‘Portrait of a Man Wearing a Collar [Ren6 Descartes?]’, 1620s 205
Chalks and pastel on light brown paper, with traces of pen and ink. 27.4 x 21.1 cm
Paris, Musde du Louvre, Cabinet des dessins, no. rf 54528 recto
Photo © Musee du Louvre, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Harry Br£jat
ILLUSTRATIONS AND DIAGRAMS IX
10.2 Simon Vouet, ‘Portrait of Louis xm’, ca. 1632-35 207
Black and white chalks with touches of pastel on light brown paper. 27.3 x
21.1 cm
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, no. 2012.106. Public Domain
10.3 Simon Vouet, ‘Bust Portrait of a Young Man’, ca. 1620/25 208
Black and red chalks, with stumping, on tan laid paper. 14.2 x 11.9 cm
Chicago, Art Institute of Chicago, no. 2010.337. Public Domain
IO.4 Frans Hals, ‘Portrait of Rene Descartes’, ca. 1649 211
Oil on panel. 19 x 14 cm
Copenhagen, Statens Museum fur Kunst, no. DEP7. Public Domain
10.5 Jonas Suyderhoef after Frans Hals, ‘Portrait of Rene Descartes’, 1650 212
Copperplate engraving. 31.5 x 22.6 cm
Amsterdam, The Rijksmuseum, RP-p-OB-60.717. Public Domain
10.6 Frans van Schooten, ‘Portrait of Rene Descartes’, 1644 213
Copperplate engraving. 16.9 x 10.5 cm
Amsterdam, The Rijksmuseum, RP-P-1910-4461. Public Domain
10.7 Simon Vouet, ‘Satyrs Admiring the Anamorphosis of an Elephant’, ca. 1627 215
Red chalk and pencil on paper. 24 x 33.9 cm
Darmstadt, Hessisches Landesmuseum, no. H. 21.762
10.8 Claude Mellan after Simon Vouet, ‘Allegory of the Human Soul’, 1625 216
Copperplate engraving. 54.3 x 37 cm
Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, 2003.8.2.
Public Domain
Abbreviations and Note on the Text
Abbreviations
AT Rene Descartes, CEuvres, ed. C. Adam et P. Tannery, 13 vols (Paris: edi­
tion Leopold Cerf, 1897-1910), rev. J. Beaude, P. Costabel, A. Gabbey and
B. Rochot, 11 vols (Paris: Vrin, 1964-74)
Baillet Adrien Baillet, La vie de Monsieur Des-Cartes (Paris, 1691)
cov Rene Descartes, Etude du bons sens. La recherche de la verite. Et autres
ecrits dejeunesse (1616-1631), ed. Vincent Carraud and Gilles Olivo with
Corinna Vermeulen (Paris: puf, 2013)
csmiand 2 Ren£ Descartes, Selected Philosophical Writings and The Philosophical
Writings of Descartes, trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff and
Dugall Murdoch, 2 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984
and 1988)
CSMK Rene Descartes, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes—The Corre­
spondence, trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugall Murdoch,
and Anthony Kenny (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991)
B Rene Descartes, Tutte le lettere, 1619-1650, ed. Giulia Belgioioso, with
!
Igor Agostini et al.; 2nd edn (Milan: Bompiani, 2009)
BOp 1 Rene Descartes, Opere 1637-1649, ed. Giulia Belgioioso, with Igor Agostini,
Francesco Marrone, and Massimiliano Savini (Milan: Bompiani, 2009)
BOp 11 Ren£ Descartes, Opere postume 1650-2009, ed. Giulia Belgioioso, with
Igor Agostini, Francesco Marrone, and Massimiliano Savini (Milan:
Bompiani, 2009)
DM Francisco Suarez, Metaphysicoe disputationes, in Opera omnia, 28 vols
(Paris: Louis Vivds, 1856-1878), vols. xxv-xxvi
Note
All references to Descartes’s writings are to the at edition and the csm and
csmk translations in footnotes when these translations are available, unless
stated otherwise. We have favoured original Latin and French titles over their
English translations. Tngenium' without an article denotes the word, whereas
‘the ingenium’ denotes the concept.
3
I
I
J I
Notes on Contributors
Igor Agostini
is Professor of the History of Philosophy and Director of the Centro Dipar-
timentale diStudisu Descartes e ilSeicento—Ettore Lojacono at the Universita del
Salento. He was Visiting Fellow in 2013 and 2014 at the Philosophy Department
of Princeton University, invited professor at the Ecole Normale Superieure
of Paris in 2015 and at the Sorbonne in 2021. His main publications include:
L’infinita di Dio. Il dibattito da Suarez a Caterus. 1597-1641 (Rome, 2008); L’idea
di Dio in Descartes. Dalle Meditationes alle Responsiones (Milan, 2010); La
demonstration de [’existence de Dieu. Les conclusions des cinq voles de Thomas
d’Aquin et la preuve a priori dans le thomisme duXVHe siecle (Turnhout, 2016).
Roger Ariew
(Ph.D., University of Illinois, 1976) is at present, Distinguished University
Professor, University of South Florida. Ariew is the author of Descartes among
the Scholastics (Brill Academic, 2011), Descartes and the First Cartesians (Oxford
University Press, 2014), the coauthor of Historical Dictionary of Descartes and
Cartesian Philosophy (2nd ed., Rowman and Littlefield, 2015), and the editor
and translator of such works as Descartes, Philosophical Essays (Hackett, 2000)
and Pascal, Pensees (Hackett, 2005). He is currently working on a variety of
topics concerning the relations between philosophy, science, and society in
the early modem period, and in particular, he is editing and translating the
correspondence of Rene Descartes, with Erik-Jan Bos and Theo Verbeek.
Harold {Hal) J. Cook
(Ph.D., University of Michigan 1981) is the John F. Nickoil Professor of History
at Brown University. He is author of numerous articles and books, including
Matters of Exchange: Commerce, Medicine, and Science in the Dutch Golden Age
(Yale University Press, 2007), The Young Descartes: Nobility, Rumor, and War
(The University of Chicago Press, 2018), and editor of several others, most re­
cently Translation at Work: Chinese Medicine in the First Global Age (Brill, 2020).
His chief research interests are in the emergence of the new medicines and
sciences of early modem Europe; the co-production of science and commerce;
global knowledge exchanges; and processes of translation.
Raphaele Garrod
(Ph.D., Cantab. Trinity College, 2010) is associate professor and tutorial fellow in
early modern French at Magdalen College, Oxford. She wrote Cosmographical