Hostname: page-component-74656f9884-npj9w Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-09T23:58:22.610Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Cartesian Corporeality and (Aesth)Ethics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Erec R. Koch
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the 'Save PDF' action button.

Founded on the dualism elaborated in Descartes's early metaphysical writings, such as the Discours de la méthode and the Méditations, most studies of corporeality in Descartes delimit the alienated body according to its mechanical functions. His later writings on ethics and the passions reappropriate the body for the subject and emphasize the sensible or “aesthetic” functions of corporeality. By analyzing Descartes's correspondence with Elisabeth of Bohemia during the last five years of his life and his late treatise Les passions de l'âme, this study examines the construction of the Cartesian aesthetic body and explores the ways in which that body, rather than the mechanical body, produces the ethical individual in society, a subject–body. Displacing the Aristotelian concept of sensus communis ‘common sense,’ Descartes turns the body into the source and target of affective ethical habit. I argue that Descartes's ethical doctrine is based on the cultivation, development, and deployment of that aesthetic body. (ERK)

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 121 , Issue 2 , March 2006 , pp. 405 - 420
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2006

References

Works Cited

Almog, Joseph. What Am I? Descartes and the Mind-Body Problem. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aristotle. De anima. Trans. and ed. Robert Drew Hicks. New York: Arno, 1976.Google Scholar
Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. The Basic Works of Aristotle. Ed. McKeon, Richard. New York: Random, 1941. 927–1112.Google Scholar
Armogathe, Robert. “Les sens: Inventaires médiévaux et théorie cartésienne.” Descartes et le moyen âge. Ed. Biard, Joël and Rashed, Roshdi. Paris: Vrin, 1997. 175–94.Google Scholar
Bordo, Susan R. The Flight of Objectivity: Essays on Cartesian-ism and Culture. Albany: State UP of New York, 1987.Google Scholar
Dear, Peter. “A Mechanical Microcosm: Bodily Passions, Good Manners, and Cartesian Mechanism.” Science Incarnate: Historical Embodiments of Natural Knowledge. Ed. Lawrence, Christopher and Shapin, Steven. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1998. 51–82.Google Scholar
Deneys-Tunney, Anne. Écritures du corps: De Descartes à Laclos. Paris: PU de France, 1992.Google Scholar
Descartes, René. Œuvres de Descartes. Ed. Adam, Charles and Tannery, Paul. 13 vols. Paris: Cerf, 1897–1913.Google Scholar
Descartes, René. Œuvres philosophiques. Ed. Alquié, Ferdinand. 3 vols. Paris: Garnier, 1963–73.Google Scholar
Dupleix, Scipion. Éthique, ou la philosophie morale. Paris, 1620.Google Scholar
Du Vair, Guillaume. La philosophie morale des stoïques. Œuvres. Paris, 1619. 255–88.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. Surveiller et punir. Paris: Gallimard, 1975.Google Scholar
François, de Sales. Traité de l'amour de Dieu. Douay, 1617.Google Scholar
Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Truth and Method. New York: Seabury, 1975.Google Scholar
Garber, Daniel. “Understanding Interaction: What Descartes Should Have Told Elisabeth.” René Descartes. Ed. Chappell, Vere. Vol. 1. New York: Garland, 1992. 323–40.Google Scholar
Gassendi, Pierre. “Cinquièmes objections.” Descartes, Œuvres philosophiques 2: 705–86.Google Scholar
Gaukroger, Stephen. Descartes: An Intellectual Biography. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995.Google Scholar
Gouhier, Henri. La pensée métaphysique de Descartes. Paris: Vrin, 1962.Google Scholar
Gueroult, Martial. Descartes selon l'ordre des raisons. Vol. 2. Paris: Aubier, 1953. 2 vols.Google Scholar
Harth, Erica. Cartesian Women: Versions and Subversions of Rational Discourse in the Old Regime. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1992.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
James, Susan. Passion and Action: The Emotions in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy. Oxford: Clarendon, 1997.Google Scholar
Judovitz, Dalia. The Culture of the Body: Genealogies of Modernity. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2001.Google Scholar
Kambouchner, Denis. L'homme des passions: Commentaires sur Descartes. Paris: Michel, 1995.Google Scholar
Levi, Anthony. French Moralists: The Theory of the Passions. Oxford: Clarendon, 1964.Google Scholar
Merlin, Hélène. Public et littérature. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1994.Google Scholar
Morgan, Vance. Foundations of Cartesian Ethics. Atlantic Highlands: Humanities, 1994.Google Scholar
Reiss, Timothy J. Knowledge, Discovery and Imagination in Early Modern Europe: The Rise of Aesthetic Rationalism. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reiss, Timothy J. Mirages of Selfe: Patterns of Personhood in Ancient and Early Modern Europe. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2003.Google Scholar
Rorty, Amélie O. “Descartes on Thinking with the Body.” The Cambridge Companion to Descartes. Ed. Cottingham, John. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992. 371–92.Google Scholar
Seneca. De vita beata. Ad Lucilium epistulae morales. Ed. and trans. Gummere, Richard M. Vol. 2. Loeb Classical Lib. New York: Putnam, 1920. 446–71.Google Scholar
Talon-Hugon, Carole. Descartes, ou, les passions rêvées par la raison: Essai sur la théorie des passions de Descartes et de quelques-uns de ses contemporains. Paris: Vrin, 2002.Google Scholar
Thomas, Aquinas. Aquinas Ethicus: The Moral Teaching of St. Thomas, a Translation of the Principal Portions of the Second Part of the Summa theologica. Ed. Joseph Rickaby. Vol. 1. London: Burns, 1896.Google Scholar
Thomas, Aquinas. A Commentary on Aristotle's De anima. Trans. and ed. Robert Pasnau. New Haven: Yale UP, 1999.Google Scholar