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Essays on Descartes PDF

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Essays on Descartes This page intentionally left blank Essays on Descartes Paul Hoffman 1 2009 1 Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offi ces in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Th ailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Copyright © 2009 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hoff man, Paul. Essays on Descartes / Paul Hoff man. p. cm. ISBN 978-0-19-532110-4 1. Descartes, René, 1596–1650. I. Title. B1875.H44 2009 194—dc22 2008012839 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper Acknowledgments I have been inspired, encouraged, and helped by many people. Although I was inter- ested in philosophy from my fi rst course at Brown University, I did not fi nd any sort of stride until my junior year at the University of Michigan when we discussed Spinoza in Allen Wood’s history of modern philosophy course. Mark Kulstad was the teaching assistant. I was very fortunate to take Jaegwon Kim’s class on the phi- losophy of mind my senior year. Th at course above all inspired me to pursue a career in philosophy. Lee Bowie encouraged me to go to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), by telling me that if he had not gone to California for gradu- ate school he never would have taken up skydiving. Not being that adventurous, I did take up ocean swimming. I had hoped also to take up surfi ng, but that got postponed until I moved back to California at age forty to teach at University of California, Riverside. Th e three proseminars for fi rst-year students at UCLA, taught my year by Th omas Hill Jr., Keith Donnellan, and Robert M. Yost, had a profound infl uence on my development. Yost planted the idea of my working on Descartes. Marilyn Adams got me interested in medieval philosophy, and her work, especially on composite unities, played a big role in shaping my own work. Robert Adams was a superb dissertation chair. I am grateful for the standards of scholarship he set with his own work, for his patience with me as a student, for his conscientious and always deeply insightful comments, and for his continuing support and helpful advice throughout my career. Rogers Albritton played an active role as a member of my dissertation committee. I had the impression that he understood my proj- ect better than I did and was always several steps ahead me. He was generous in discussing various passages at great length and thereby teaching me how to read a philosophical text. While a graduate student I benefi ted greatly from reading Margaret Wilson’s book on Descartes, and I am also grateful that, even though she was far away at Princeton and had not yet met me, in response to an inquiry from Robert Adams she gave her approval to my dissertation project. Ed McCann was a wonderful presence as vi Acknowledgments a visitor at UCLA. An offh and remark by Josh Cohen when he was visiting UCLA provided the inspiration for “Th e Unity of Descartes’s Man.” Having completed graduate school, it was my great privilege to serve as John Carriero’s dissertation supervisor. He was really the teacher and I the student. I have continued to learn from our philosophical conversations and friendship for twenty-fi ve years. Ken Winkler has also been a trusted friend and advisor. I have many intellectual and personal debts to Jennifer Whiting, my colleague at Harvard University, especially for the signifi cant role she played in my getting a postdoc- toral fellowship at Cornell University. At Cornell, Norman Kretzmann, who once referred to himself as my philosophical grandfather, was delightful. His course on Aquinas was inspiring, and his weekly Latin sight-reading sessions, a tradition I have continued since leaving Cornell, helped put my Latin on fi rmer footing. Carl Ginet, Sydney Shoemaker, Terry Irwin, and Gail Fine were also infl uential. My understanding of Descartes has been sharpened considerably by responding to the views of my primary opponents in interpreting him—Vere Chappell, Marleen Rozemond, and Larry Nolan—all of whom I feel honored to count as friends. My student Chris Gilbert also developed a challenging alternative interpretation of Descartes’s account of the will. Janet Broughton and Calvin Normore have been important role models and sources of encouragement over the years. Daniel Garber had a signifi cant infl uence on the direction of my research by suggesting that I work on Descartes’s account of the passions. Various discussion groups have been helpful—the early meetings of what became the New England Colloquium (whose founding is due largely to Stephen Voss), the California Workshop (to make up a name), and Alan Nelson’s Cartesian Circle. I am also grateful to Alan for inviting me to serve on the commit- tees of several of his students writing dissertations on Descartes. I would also like to thank my colleagues at the University of California, Riverside. It has been a very happy home for me for the past fi ft een years. It’s a blessing to be part of such a congenial department where the history of philosophy is taken seri- ously as philosophy. On a personal level I owe a tremendous debt to my late parents, especially to my mother, who never had the chance to go to college herself but had a deep love of learning. She always encouraged my academic pursuits and supported them and my family fi nancially well into my years as a professor. My undergraduate friend at the University of Michigan, Susan Williams, now professor and director of the Bodega Marine Laboratory at the University of California, Davis, encouraged me by both word and example to take academic risks and to keep other nonacademic interests alive. Th e death of our beloved sister Carol while I was in graduate school deepened both my brother Jack’s and my own sense of obligation to do something worthwhile. All but one of these essays were written during the nearly twenty-fi ve years that my wife Brooks and I were together. I opted enthusiastically for the daddy track, and together we raised two lovely and very philosophically minded daughters, Eva and Elaine, to whom this collection is dedicated. Permissions Th e following works are used with the permission of the publishers listed here. “Th e Unity of Descartes’s Man,” Th e Philosophical Review 95 (1986): 339–70, Duke University Press, on behalf of the Sage School of Philosophy of Cornell University, copyright 1986. All rights reserved. “Cartesian Composites,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 32 (1999): 251–70, Johns Hopkins University Press, copyright 1986. All rights reserved. “Descartes’s Th eory of Distinction,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 64 (2002): 57–78, Blackwell Publishing, copyright 2002. All rights reserved. “Descartes’s Watch Analogy,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 15 (2007): 561–67, Taylor and Francis Group, copyright 2007. All rights reserved. “Th e Union and Interaction of Mind and Body (Part I),” in A Companion to Descartes, ed. Janet Broughton and John Carriero (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), 390–99, Blackwell Publishing, copyright 2008. All rights reserved. “Th e Union and Interaction of Mind and Body (Part II),” in A Companion to Descartes, ed. Janet Broughton and John Carriero (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), 399–403, Blackwell Publishing, copyright 2008. All rights reserved. “Cartesian Passions and Cartesian Dualism,” Pacifi c Philosophical Quarterly 71 (1990): 310–33, Blackwell Publishing, copyright 1990. All rights reserved. “Descartes on Misrepresentation,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 34 (1996): 357–81, Johns Hopkins University Press, copyright 1986. All rights reserved. “Direct Realism, Intentionality, and the Objective Being of Ideas,” Pacifi c Philosophical Quarterly 83 (2002): 163–79, Blackwell Publishing, copyright 2002. All rights reserved. Excerpt from “Th ree Dualist Th eories of the Passions,” Philosophical Topics 19 (1991): 153–200, University of Arkansas Press, copyright 1991. All rights reserved. viii Permissions “Freedom and Strength of Will: Descartes and Albritton,” and excerpt from “Responses to Chappell and Watson,” Philosophical Studies 77 (1995): 241–60, 286–8, Kluwer Academic Publishers, copyright 1995. All rights reserved. “Th e Passions and Freedom of Will,” in Passion and Virtue in Descartes, ed. André Gombay and Byron Williston (New York: Humanity Books, 2003), 261–99, Humanity Books, copyright 2003. All rights reserved. Contents Abbreviations of Editions of Descartes’s Works xi Introduction 3 PART ONE Hylomorphism and the Th eory of Distinction One Th e Unity of Descartes’s Man 15 Two Cartesian Composites 33 Three Descartes’s Th eory of Distinction 51 Four Descartes’s Watch Analogy 71 Five Th e Union and Interaction of Mind and Body (Part 1) 77 Six Descartes and Aquinas on Per Se Subsistence and the Union of Soul and Body 88 PART TWO Causation Seven Th e Union and Interaction of Mind and Body (Part 2) 101 Eight Cartesian Passions and Cartesian Dualism 105 Nine Passion and Motion in the New Mechanics 125 PART THREE Cognition Ten Descartes on Misrepresentation 145 Eleven Direct Realism, Intentionality, and the Objective Being of Ideas 164 PART FOUR Moral Psychology Twelve Th ree Dualist Th eories of the Passions 179 Thirteen Freedom and Strength of Will: Descartes and Albritton 196 Fourteen Th e Passions and Freedom of Will 210 Notes 237 Index 271

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This is a collection of Paul Hoffman's wide-ranging essays on Descartes composed over the past twenty-five years. The essays in Part I include his celebrated "The Unity of Descartes' Man," in which he argues that Descartes accepts the Aristotelian view that soul and body are related as form to matte
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