Abstract
To the extent that my argument in the preceding chapters has been successful, I have accomplished two goals. First, I have elucidated the nature of Descartes’s account of virtuous belief formation. Second, I have clarified the pragmatic and social nature of Descartes’s philosophical program, by showing how his account of virtuous belief formation is subversive of traditional Christianity and, by implication, of those traditional forms of religion with similar philosophical commitments. In this chapter, I conclude by summarizing my case and by describing in a bit more detail the significance of Descartes’s program.
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Notes
- 1.
Lest there be any misunderstanding, I am merely claiming that the kind of distinction on which Descartes relies is similar to that which Locke makes in his Essay. I am not claiming that there is a particular historic or causal connection between the two.
- 2.
In this section, I am merely sketching the significance of Descartes’s project as it relates to those who followed him. A number of Orthodox Christian philosophers and theologians contend, however, that this kind of religious rationalism may have begun to take effect much earlier in the Latin-speaking West—see, e.g., Bradshaw (2004), Engelhardt (2000), Popovich (1994), and Romanides (2008) as well as Bradshaw (2006) and Lossky (1976; 2001).
- 3.
- 4.
Or of rationalism’s fideistic alter ego.
- 5.
I have not attempted to address this issue. Rather, I attempted merely to explain some of the most significant ways that Descartes’s philosophical project both differs from and presents itself as an alternative to traditional Christianity—and, by implication, to those traditional forms of religion with similar philosophical commitments.
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Vitz, R. (2015). Conclusion. In: Reforming the Art of Living. Philosophical Studies in Contemporary Culture, vol 24. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05281-6_9
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