Essays on Descartes

295 Pages·2009·2.15 MB·English

by  Paul Hoffman

Essays on Descartes
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Essays on Descartes
Paul Hoffman
1
2009
1
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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