Abstract
The story of L’Homme is a true novel. Its plot weaves itself along three intersecting points: an unfinished text, a copied or plagiarised text, and a corrected text. Telling this whole and complex story helps us to understand the true place of Descartes in the history of modern anthropology and in the contemporary attempt to explain cognition, memory, sensation and human health. In a nutshell, it is probably the best way to understand the Cartesian contribution to the vast philosophical programme of seeking to know oneself.
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Notes
- 1.
A new manuscript has recently been found at Cambridge by Richard Serjeantson. This discovery has reignited lively discussion on this text.
- 2.
For a selection of the most important, see Frédéric de Buzon, La science cartésienne et son objet: “Mathesis” et phénomène. Paris: Champion, 2013; Desmond Clarke, Descartes. A Biography, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007; Daniel Garber, Descartes Embodied. Reading Cartesian Philosophy through Cartesian Science. Chicago, Cambridge University Press: 2000; Daniel Garber, Descartes’s Metaphysical Physics. Chicago, University of Chicago Press: 1992; Daniel Garber and Sophie Roux (eds.), The Mechanization of Natural Philosophy, Dordrecht: Springer, 2013, 237–262.; Stephen Gaukroger, Descartes: An Intellectual Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995; Stephen Gaukroger, ed. Descartes’ Natural Philosophy Routledge, 2000; Stephen Gaukroger, John Schuster & John Sutton eds., Descartes’ Natural Philosophy, London and New York: Routledge, 2000; Stephen Voss, ed., Essays on the Philosophy of Science of René Descartes, New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Concerning works not yet published, see notably Delphine Bellis’ thesis, presented by Zittel, C., “Delphine Bellis, Le visible et l’invisible dans la pensée cartésienne. Figuration, imagination et vision dans la philosophie naturelle de René Descartes (2010)”. Studium, 2011, 4 (3), 183–185.
- 3.
For a selection of the most important, see Vincent Aucante, La philosophie médicale de Descartes. Paris: PUF, 2006; Annie Bitbol-Hespériès, Le principe de vie chez Descartes. Paris: Vrin, 1996; Géraldine Caps, Les “médecins cartésiens”. Héritage et diffusion de la représentation mécaniste du corps humain (1646–1696). Georg Olms Verlag; Hildeshein. Zürich. New York: 2010; Denis Des Chene, Physiologia. Natural Philosophy in Late Aristotelian and Cartesian Thought. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1996; Denis Des Chene, Spirits and Clocks, Machine and Organism in Descartes. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2001; François Duchesneau, Les modèles du vivant de Descartes à Leibniz. Paris: Vrin, 1998; Ronan De Calan, Généalogie de la sensation. Physique, physiologie et psychologie en Europe, de Fernel à Locke. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2012; Delphine Kolesnik-Antoine (Antoine-Mahut), L’ Homme cartésien. La “force qu’a l’âme de movoir le corps”: Descartes, Malebranche, PUR, 2009; Mirko, D. Grmek, La première révolution biologique. Réflexions sur la physiologie et la médecine du XVIIe siècle. Paris: Payot, 1990; Franco Aurelio Meschini, Neurofisiologia cartesiana. Firenze: Leo Olschki, 1998; and Emanuela Scribano, Macchine con la mente. Fisologia e metafisica tra Cartesio e Spinoza. Carocci editore e Frecce: Roma, 2015. Concerning works in progress not yet published, see Barnaby R. Hutchins, Obscurity And Confusion: Nonreductionism in Descartes’s Biology and Philosophy. PhD dissertation, Department of Philosophy and Moral Sciences, Ghent University, 2016.
- 4.
René Descartes, Œuvres. Published by Charles Adam and Paul Tannery. New presentation by Bernard Rochot and Pierre Costabel, 11 volumes. Paris: Vrin-CNRS, 1964–1974, re-ed. 1996.
- 5.
Two other editions are currently in publication. The first is that of Annie Bitbol-Hespériès, to be published in volume 3 of the new edition of the Complete Works of Descartes directed by Denis Kambouchner (Paris: Tel, Gallimard). Annie Bitbol-Hespériès continues with and is completing the work in which she was the first to engage with the medical sources of the treatise in the 1980s under the direction of Geneviève Rodis-Lewis, which resulted in the 1990 publication of her thesis: Le principe de vie chez Descartes (Paris: Vrin). In it she consolidates the reintegration of L’Homme in the continuity of The World, and was also the first to popularise it in France on the occasion of her edition of L’Homme published by Seuil in 1996. The second edition, at my initiative, will be published by Garnier Flammarion in 2017 in paperback. The apparatus criticus has a simple function of explaining allusions and striking the most important theoretical points. The special feature of this edition lies in the adoption of a different perspective from the previous work. By reproducing the full text of the Clerselier edition, it effectively assumes the role of a reading of the text from its receptions. My introduction places here the foundations of this methodological option and the contribution of Annie Bitbol-Hespériès to this volume introduces us to her own project. The reader can thus complement one approach with the other.
- 6.
For the most important, see Descartes. The World and Other Writings. Ed. Stephen Gaukroger, Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy: Cambridge University Press, 2004; in Dutch: Descartes. De wereld. De mens. Het zoeken naar de waarheid. Redactie & annotatie Erik-Jan. Bos, Han Van Ruler. Inleidingen Erik-Jan. Bos; Vertaling Jeanne Holierhoek. Boom: Amsterdam, 2011; in German: René Descartes, Die Welt: Abhandlung über das Licht. Der Mensch (Philosophische Bibliothek), transl. Christian Wolhers, Hamburg, Meiner: 2015; and in Italian: René Descartes, Opere postume 1650–2009, a cura di Giulia Belgioioso, con la collaborazione di Igor Agostini, Francesco Marrone, Massimiliano Savini, Milano: Bompiani, 2009 (translation of L’Homme by Siegrid Agostini). It should be added that a team from the University of Lisbon, directed by Adelino Cardoso, is currently working on a Portuguese translation of L’Homme in the Latin edition by Florent Schuyl.
- 7.
For the latest developments, see Claire Crignon, Delphine Antoine-Mahut, “Etude bibliographique”, in Gesnerus, Swiss Journal of the History of Medicine and Sciences, “Teleology and mechanism in Early Modern Medicine”, Vol. 71 (2014), N°2, 187–203.
- 8.
Victor Cousin (1792–1867) is considered the leader of a spiritualist school founded on a rationalist interpretation of the Cartesian cogito and as the first French person to have truly proposed the history of philosophy. He served as, successively or jointly, all institutional powers: president of the Board of Education, president of the philosophy Agrégation and the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques, director of the École normale. He determined the curricula, trained and appointed teachers and, in short, founded a state philosophy. On this point, see the excellent work of Patrice Vermeren: Victor Cousin. Le jeu de la philosophie et de l’Etat. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1995.
- 9.
Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind, Hutchinsons University Library (particularly chapter 1: “Descartes’ Myth”), re-ed. University of Chicago Press, with an introduction by D. Dennett, 2002. See also Desmond Clarke, “Exorcising Ryle’s Ghost from Cartesian Metaphysics”, Philosophical Inquiry 23 (3–4): 27–36 (2001);. Dubois (1970), “Ryle et Merleau-Ponty: faut-il exorciser le fantôme qui se cache dans la machine humaine?”, Revue Philosophique de la France et de l’Etranger, t. 160, 1970, 299–317; H.P. Rickmann, “Exorcising the Ghost in the Machine”, Philosophy, 63, 1988 (246), 487–499; Desh Raj Sirswal, “Gilbert Ryle on Descartes’ Myth”, K.U. Research Journal of Arts and Humanities, 2007, 81–86 and Antti Revonsuo, “Is there a Ghost in the Cognitive Machinery?”, Philosophical Psychology, 1993, 6, (4), 387–405. The issue of these debates is interestingly synthesised by Daniel C. Dennett in Consciousness Explained (Little: Brown and Company, 1991) through a reference, rare enough in these corpora to be highlighted, to the Treatise on Man: “The embarrassment of dualists on this point is actually simpler than the mention of the alleged laws of physics would suggest. It is the same inconsistency as that which arises from children – which they joyfully tolerate in order to laugh – during the stories of Casper the Friendly Ghost. How can Casper both pass through walls and catch a falling towel? How can mental substance both escape any physical measurement and control the body? A ghost in the machine does not help us with our theories if it cannot move things around him - like a violent and noisy spirit that can tip over a lamp and slam a door. But all that can move a physical thing is itself a physical thing (albeit perhaps a kind of strange and so far not studied physical thing)”.
- 10.
On the historical nature of these debates, see Delphine Antoine-Mahut, “Esprit, es-tu là ? Eléments pour une hantologie de Casper, le gentil fantôme”, in Le corps et l’esprit. Problèmes cartésiens, problèmes contemporains, ed. Sandrine Roux, Paris: Editions des archives contemporaines, 2015, 129–146.
- 11.
Claude Clerselier (1614–1684) was a lawyer in the Parisian parliament. He was the stepbrother of Pierre Chanut and the stepfather of Jacques Rohault. Notably, he was the editor and translator of several of Descartes’ works, especially of the latter’s Letters, published in three volumes in Paris, 1657, 1659 and 1667, and of the 1664 edition of L’Homme. He published a new edition of L’Homme, as chapter 18 of The World, in 1667 and another from the Principles of Philosophy in 1681. He is a self proclaimed faithful disciple of Descartes’, conscious of restoring the true meaning of the master’s writings and proving their orthodoxy in a posthumous context that challenges them.
Florentius Schuyl (1619–1669)? Here I will partially reproduce note 4, p. 24 of the correspondence edition between Descartes and Regius by Erik-Jan. Bos (The Correspondence between Descartes and Henricus Regius. Zeno: The Leiden-Utrecht Research Institute of Philosophy, 2002): “After his graduation in the Utrecht Faculty of Arts, (he) studied philosophy and theology in Leiden for a short while, before being appointed professor of philosophy at the illustrious School at’s-Hertenbosch un 1640. In the 1640s, Schuyl embraced Cartesianism. Eventually he became interested in the philosopher’s posthumous works, and in 1662 he published Descartes’ Traité de l’homme in a Latin translation (…) In 1664, Schuyl graduated in medicine and he was immediately appointed professor of medicine in Leiden”.
- 12.
Henricus Regius (1598–1679) was the first chair of medicine and botany at the University of Utrecht (1638). There he taught Cartesian physiology and the circulation of the blood and maintained that the consistency of Cartesianism implies excluding all that relates to metaphysics from the limits of human reason.
- 13.
On the Querelle, see especially Theo Verbeek, La Querelle d’Utrecht, Paris: Les impressions nouvelles, 1988 and Theo Verbeek, Descartes and the Dutch: early reactions to Cartesian philosophy, 1637–1650, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992, and Theo Verbeek, “Ens per accidens: le origini della Querelle di Utrecht,” Giornale critico della filosofia italiana, 71 (1992), 276–288.
- 14.
On Regius, see Lettres à Regius et Remarques sur l’explication de l’esprit humain, ed. Geneviève Rodis-Lewis Paris: Vrin, 1959; Delphine Kolesnik-Antoine (Antoine-Mahut), “La question des passions chez Regius et Descartes. Premiers éléments d’interprétation”, in Azimuth, Storia e Letteratura, “The Domain of the Human. Anthropological Frontiers in Modern and Contemporary Thought”; “Il dominio dell’umano. Frontiere antropologiche tra moderno e contemporaneo”. Dir. Simone Guidi, 2013, 13–32; Delphine Kolesnik-Antoine (Antoine-Mahut), “Les expériences physiologiques chez Henricus Regius: les pierres lydiennes du cartésianisme ?”, in Journal of Early Modern Studies, II, “The creative role of experimentation in Early Modern Science”. Dir. Dana Jalobeanu, April 2013,125–145; Delphine Antoine-Mahut, “Peut-on à la fois être cartésien et sceptique?” in Pour et contre le scepticisme. Théories et Pratiques de l’Antiquité aux Lumières. Elodie Argaud, Nawal el Yadari, Sébastien Charles and Gianni Paganini eds. Paris: Champion, 2015, 55–70; Delphine Bellis, “Empiricism without Metaphysics: Regius’ Cartesian Natural Philosophy”, Mihnea Dobre and Tammy Nyden (eds.), Cartesian Empiricisms, Springer: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 2013, 151–183; Roberto Bordoli (a cura di), René Descartes. Henricus Regius. Il carteggio. Le polemiche, Naples: Cronopio, 1997; Erik-Jan. Bos in The Correspondence between Descartes and Henricus Regius, Zeno, The Leiden-Utrecht Research Institute of Philosophy, 2002; Erik-Jan. Bos, “Henricus Regius et les limites de la philosophie cartésienne”, in: D. Kolesnik-Antoine (Antoine-Mahut) (ed.), Qu’est.-ce qu’être cartésien?, Lyon: ENS editions, 2013, 53–68; Robin Buning, “Henricus Regius and the earliest teaching of Cartesian philosophy at Utrecht University”, Delphine Kolesnik-Antoine (Antoine-Mahut) and Catherine Secrétan (eds.), Les Pays-Bas aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, Paris: Champion, 2015; Desmond Clarke, “The Physics and the Metaphysics of the Mind: Descartes and Regius”, John Cottingham and P. Hacker (eds.), Mind, Method and Morality: Essays in Honour of Anthony Kenny, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, 187–207; Paolo Farina, “Sulla formazione scientifica di Henricus Regius: Santorio Santorii e il De statica medicina,” Rivista Critica di Storia della Filosofia, 30 (1975), 363–399; “Il corpuscolarismo di Henricus Regius: materialismo e medicina in un cartesiano olandese del seicento,” in Ugo Baldini (ed.), Ricerche sull’atomismo del Seicento (Firenze, 1977); T.P. Gariepy, “Mechanism without Metaphysics: Henricus Regius and the Establishment of Cartesian Medicine”, Yale University, 1990; Gideon Manning, “Naturalism and Un-naturalism Among the Cartesian Physicians,” Inquiry, 51/5 (2008), 441–463; Karl E. Rothschuh, “Henricus Regius und Descartes. Neue Einblicke in die frühe Physiologie (1640–1641) des Regius”, Archives internationales d’histoire des sciences, 21, 1968, 39–66; Theo Verbeek (ed.) Descartes et Regius. Autour de l’Explication de l’esprit humain, Amsterdam/Atlanta, Rodopi, coll. “Studies in the History of Ideas in the Low Countries”, 2, 1993; Theo Verbeek, “The Invention of Nature. Descartes and Regius,” in Stephen Gaukroger, John Schuster and John Sutton, eds., Descartes’ Natural Philosophy (London, 2000), 149–167; and Catherine Wilson, “Descartes and the corporeal mind. Some implications of the Regius affair”, in Descartes’ Natural Philosophy. Edited by S. Gaukroger, J. Schuster and J. Sutton, Routledge: London and NY, 2000, 659–679.
- 15.
Fundamenta Physices, Amsterlodami, Ludovicum Elzevirium, 1646. The text is revised and completed in 1654 in the Philosophia naturalis, editio secunda, Priore multo locupletor, & emendatior, Amsterdam: Ludovic Elzevier; then in 1661: Philosophia naturalis; in qua tota rerum universitas, per clare & facilia Principia, explanatur, Amsterlodam, Ludovic & Daniel Elzevier. There is a known French translation attributed to Claude Rouxel: Philosophie naturelle, Utrecht, Rodolphe van Zyll, 1687.
- 16.
For a theorisation and application of the history of philosophical ideas taking charge of the Descartes “ad hocs” produced by these receptions, see F. Azouvi, Descartes et la France. Histoire d’une passion nationale. Paris: Fayard, 2002.
- 17.
anthropos.ens-lyon.fr
- 18.
- 19.
We would like to thank Springer for their remarkable hospitality.
- 20.
When we refer to one of this volume’s contributions, we will give, in brackets, the name of the author in italics followed by an asterisk.
- 21.
We detail the conditions of this application to the human body in “La machine du corps”, in Lectures de Descartes, eds. Frédéric de Buzon, Elodie Cassan and Denis Kambouchner, Paris: Ellipses, 2015, 229–252.
- 22.
“Now before I pass to the description of the rational soul, I want you once again to reflect a little on all that I have just said about this machine.” (AT XI, 200, Gaukroger, 168).
- 23.
To explain why he didn’t take care of questions relative to generation earlier, Descartes often alleges a lack of experience. See, for example, Discourse on the Method, V, AT VI, 45–46: “From the description of inanimate bodies and plants I went on to describe animals, and in particular men. But I did not yet have sufficient knowledge to speak of them in the same manner as I did of the other things - that is, by demonstrating effects from causes and showing from what seeds and in what manner nature must produce them. So I contented myself with supposing that God formed the body of a man exactly like our own.”
- 24.
The work Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus was published in Frankfurt in 1628. Descartes reproduces Harvey’s overall explanation but inverts the diastolic and systolic phases. On this point, see notably Annie Bitbol-Hespériès, Le principe de vie chez Descartes, op.cit., and François Duchesneau, Les modèles du vivant de Descartes à Leibniz, op.cit.
- 25.
AT VI, 46.
- 26.
To Elizabeth, 25th January 1648, AT V, 112: “I am now working on another manuscript, which I hope Your Highness may find more agreeable. This is a description of the functions of animals and of man. The draft I made about twelve or thirteen years ago (which Your Highness has seen) fell into the hands of some people who transcribed it badly, and I thought I ought to put it in order - that is to say, rewrite it. Just in the last eight or ten days I have even ventured to try to explain the manner in which animals develop from the very beginning of their existence. I say ‘animals’ in general, for I would not be so bold as to undertake such a thing in the particular case of man, because I simply do not have a sufficient number of observations for such an undertaking.”
- 27.
Notably the letter to Mersenne in November 1646, in which Descartes states: “It is now twelve or thirteen years since I described all the functions of the human or animal body; but the manuscript is in such a mess that I would be hard put to it to read it myself. Nevertheless, four or five years ago I could not avoid lending it to a close friend, who made a copy which was then recopied by two more people, with my permission but without my rereading or correcting the transcripts” (AT IV, 566–577).
- 28.
Here we reproduce the very helpful notes of the Biographical Lexicon by Erik-Jan. Bos, The Correspondence between Descartes and Henricus Regius, op.cit., 249–256. They give us some idea of the variety of Descartes’ visits. Anthony Studler van Van Surck ou Zurck (1608–1666) “was a correspondent of a close friend of Descartes; his acquaintance with the Frenchman dates from 1633, when they both lived in Amsterdam (AT I 268–269). In October 1633, he went to Leiden to study law, and he matriculated again at Leiden University in 1636 and 1639. He was Lord of Sweyburg and Bergen (from 1640), Knight of Holland, and ‘Hoogheemraad van de Uitwaterende Sluizen’. He acted as Descartes’ banker in Holland”.
Jean-Alphonse Pollot (1603–1668) “Pollot joined the Dutch States’ army at the age of 17. Despite the loss of his right arm during the siege of ’s-Hertogenbosch in 1629, he stayed in the service of the Dutch army. In 1633 he was appointed a captain. He was also known as ‘Monsieur Alphonse” to distinguish him from his brother Jean-Baptiste Pollot (who died in 1641), whom he succeeded as chamberlain of Frederik-Hendrik in 1642. After the Stadholder’s death, Amalia van Solms appointed him her personal steward in 1648. He returned to Geneva in 1659. He was a close friend of Descartes’, who profited from his connections in The Hague when the Utrecht Vroedschap intended to put him on trial in 1643″.
Adriaan Heereboord (1613–1661) “studied from 1631 until 1637 at the Statencollege in Leiden. In 1640, he was appointed associate professor of logic at Leiden University, receiving the degree of magister philosophiae from Golius in February 1641. In 1643 and 1644, he held disputations both pro and contra Descartes and Regius (…), but Descartes records his pro-Cartesianism in a letter to Pollot of 8 January 1644, adding that in his most recent disputations ‘(Heereboord) s’y declare plus ouvertement pour moi, et me cite avec beaucoup (plus) d’éloges, que n’a jamais fait Mr. de Roy (Regius)’ (AT IV, 77). Heereboord’s staunch defence of the New Philosophy met with serious opposition from the professors of theology Jacob Trigland (1583–1654) and Jacob Revius (1586–1658), and he professor of philosophy Adam Stuart (1591–1654), which battle resulted in the so-called Leiden Crisis in 1647”.
- 29.
For his part, M. Van Otegem does not clear up this ambiguity.
- 30.
- 31.
Concerning a “false letter” composed by Clerselier, see Giulia Belgioioso, “Un faux de Clerselier”, Bulletin cartésien, XXXIII, 2005, in Archives de Philosophie, 2005, 68, 1, 148–158, also consultable at www.cartesius.net; and her article “Les ‘correspondances’ de Descartes” in DesCartes et DesLettres. ‘Epistolari’ e filosofia in Descartes e nei cartesiani, cura di Francesco Marrone, Le Monier, 2008, 8–32.
- 32.
F.-A. Meschni, “Filologia e scienza. Note per un’ edizione critica de L’Homme di Descartes”, Le Opere dei Filosofi e degli scienziati. Filosofia e scienza tra testo, libro e biblioteche. A cura di F-A. Meschini. Con la collaborazione di F. Puccini. Leo S. Olsschki, 2011, 165–204 and A. Bortolotti, “I manoscritto di Descartes nella seconda metà del’ 600″, Rivista du storia della filosofia, IV/1987, 675–695.
- 33.
“Un témoignage oublié sur le manuscrit du Traité de L’Homme de Descartes”, Archives de Philosophie, volume 71, book 1, Spring 2008, 148–149.
- 34.
On the theoretical affinities between Elizabeth and Regius, see Delphine Antoine-Mahut, “Élisabeth philosophe: un cartésianisme empirique?”, in Élisabeth face à Descartes: deux philosophes? Marie-Frédérique Pellegrin and Delphine Kolesnik-Antoine (Antoine-Mahut) eds., Paris: Vrin, 2014, 119–138.
- 35.
Mechanism without Metaphysics: Henricus Regius and the Establishment of Cartesian Medicine, op.cit.
- 36.
The full title is: Brevis explicatio mentis humanae sive animae raitonalis; antea publico examini proposita, et deinde opêra Henricii regii Ultrajectini nonihil dilucidate, et à notis Cartesii vindicata, Utrecht, G. van Zijl, 1657.
- 37.
I began the analysis of these processes in “Les voies du corps. Schuyl, Clerselier et La Forge lecteurs du traité de L’Homme de Descartes”, in Consecutio temporum (consecutiotemporeum.org), Rivista critica della postmodernità, « Corpo, desiderio, lavoro: per un nuovo materialismo », eds. Francesco Toto and Roberto Finelli, n°2, February 2012. I synthesise, complete and reorganise them here.
Louis de La Forge was born in 1632 in La Flèche and died in 1666 in Saumur. Son of a doctor and himself a medical doctor, he was a grand admirer of Descartes and took upon himself the task of completed the master’s work from principles theorised by the latter. He is thus the commentator and one of the illustrators of L’Homme in Clerselier’s edition of 1664. He is also the author of the Treatise on the Human Mind (1666), in which he is especially at pains to develop the considerations relative to the union of the body and soul.
- 38.
On this dossier of condemnations, see John Cottingham, Roger Ariew and Tom Sorell in Descartes’ Meditations background source materials, Cambridge: Cambridge Philosophical Texts in Context, 1998.
- 39.
Several works have been dedicated to this question on the relations between Descartes and Augustin, in particular Emmanuel Faye’s collective on “Cartésianisme et augustinisme” (Corpus, 2000), that provides important bibliographical indications.
- 40.
Through his son at least. I give examples of these insertions in “Les voies du corps”, op.cit.
- 41.
Desmond Clarke offers an excellent presentation and translation in English: Treatise on the Human Mind, ed. and trans. by Desmond Clarke (Dordrecht: Springer 1997).
- 42.
Caspar Bartholin (the Ancient) was born in February 1585, 12th in Danemark (Sweden today) and he died in July, 1629, the 13rd. He publishes the Anatomicae Intitutiones Corporis Humani (1611). He has two sons: Thomas Bartholin (the Ancient), 1616-1680-, Danish physician, mathematician and theologian; and Erasme Bartholin (1625–1698), Danish mathematician. Thomas Bartholin has two sons: Caspar Bartholin the Young (1655–1738) and Thomas Bartholin the Young, historian. Thomas Bartholin the Young (Caspar’s Son) publishes Anatomia, ex Caspari Bartholini parentis Institutionibus, omniumque recentiorum et propiis observationibus tertiùm ad sanguinis circulationem reformata (1641 for the first edition, then 1651, 1655, 1666, etc). It was translated in French in 1647, under the title: Institutions anatomiques de Gasp. Bartholin, augmentées et enrichies (…) par Thomas Bartholin, docteur en médecine et fils de l’auteur et traduites en français par Abr. Du Prat, docteur en médecine (this translation was established considering the second edition).
- 43.
The most illuminating passage on this point is a fortiori the argument that concludes the response to Bartholin’s objections and is anchored in the most recent anatomical observations:
“Someone might add, to support Bartholin, that Sylvius found sand and a stone in this gland. It does not matter. Because even if his body became stone, provided he has sufficiently large pores to let in spirits, and he is not big enough to make it sag, and still hold it down, so that it does not cease to be suspended, it will not become the seat of the soul (...) I say more, when in place of the gland there would be no particular body, such as it is of the very gland, and that it would be nothing else than the place of the discharge of the arteries and the lassis choroid, as may have happened in the beginning of the formation of the brain, and in the heads of those where there was said to have been found nothing but water (assuming that these observations are true), this place would not become the seat of the soul”.
- 44.
I develop this point in “Reintroducing Descartes in the history of materialism: The effects of the Descartes/Hobbes debate on the first reception of Cartesianism” in Cartesian Mind and Nature, Stephen Gaukroger and Catherine Wilson eds., New York: OUP, forthcoming.
- 45.
Plempius to Descartes, January 1638, AT I, 498; Descartes to Plempius, 15 February 1638, AT I, 530 (translation) and Tel VIII-2, 414 and Plempius to Descartes, March 1638, AT II, 54. I analyse the terms and the issues of this exchange in “La machine du corps”, op. cit., 246–251. Vopiscus Fortunatus Plemp(ius) (1601–1671) was “born in Amsterdam of a Catholic family. (He) was educated at a Jesuit college in Ghent. He was a student at Leuven, Leiden, Padua and Bologna, where he graduated in 1624. He practised in Amsterdam from 1624 to 1633. In 1634 he was appointed professor of medicine at Leuven University. Descartes and Plemp knew each other personally, and it seems likely that they dissected animals together in Amsterdam in the early 1630s. Plemp’s initial rejection of the theory of the circulation of the blood disappointed Descartes, and his apparently unauthorised publication of a shortened version of Descartes’ letters to Plemp on the subject in De fundamentis medicinae (1638) put an end to their relationship. In the second edition of his work (1644) Plemp accepted the circulation of the blood, be it along Harveyan lines » (Erik-Jan. Bos, The Correspondence between Descartes and Henricus Regius, op.cit, 251).
- 46.
See in particular the explanations addressed to the “scrupulous Cartesians” in the preface of the Treatise on the human mind: “I also used words which I thought were the most meaningful and intelligible, even specifying the meaning of words such as ‘mind’ or ‘idea’ which could have been equivocal. If any overly scrupulous Cartesian is shocked to see that I limited the second term exclusively to the forms of thought of the mind, although Mr. Descartes uses it also to signify the forms of animal spirits (with which these other forms of our thoughts are linked), I ask them to consider that, in a subject as obscure as this and in which misunderstanding was very much to be feared, I could not be too careful in the choice of words nor try too hard to avoid equivocations and disputes over words” (Clarke, op. cit., 5, 6).
- 47.
On this iatro-mechanistic context, see the excellent edition Discours sur l’anatomie du cerveau of Niels Sténon by Raphaële Andrault. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2009.
- 48.
The full text of the Universa Medicina (3rd edition, the text was published in Frankfurt in 1574) reads: “(…) the human body having been divided by anatomy into its parts that are apparent to the senses, we must move on to those that are only known by the mind, and by continuing further, see of what elements each of these are composed, what is the mixture of elements, what is their temperament, which virtues and faculties are hidden in them, and by which mind and heat they are preserved. And when the resolution of these things will be known, we will then know by their composition what are the efficient causes of all things, and which moods are engendered, what are the functions of each of them, and what is the office of all of them. And we will thus understand all physiology, which teaches by demonstration the knowledge of the natural composition of man”.
- 49.
Sténon perfectly understood the significance of this approach when he writes, in his Discours sur l’anatomie du cerveau (op.cit., 92–93): “No one else (other than Descartes) has explained mechanically all the actions of man, and primarily those of the brain; others will discover man himself; Mr. Descartes only tells us of a machine that nevertheless shows us the inadequacy of what others teach us (...). He knew too well the shortcomings of history that we have of man to begin to explain its true composition. Hence he undertakes not to do it in his Treatise on Man, but to explain a machine that makes all actions of which men are capable. Some of his friends explain here a little differently than he; yet we see at the beginning of his book that he heard it that way”.
- 50.
Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, Œuvres complètes, Volume VI, 1694–1727 (ed. Alain Niderst) Paris Corpus: Fayard, 1994. Malebranche’s eulogy is found on pages 337–360.
- 51.
The Cartesian explanation of muscle contraction serves as a paradigm for the application of the correct method to follow to seek truth, in book VI, Part II, Chapter VIII of The Search After Truth. The De motu animalium (1680–1681) by Jean-Alphonse Borelli is notably cited in a very positive way in the Dialogues on Metaphysics and Religion, X, article VI. Theodore states: “I recently read a book, Du mouvement des animaux, that merits examination. The author considers with care the game of the machine necessary to change its place. He explains precisely the force of the muscles, and the reasons for their situation, all by the principles of geometry and mechanics. But what he does not stop at is what is easiest to find in the machine of the animal, he makes known so much art and wisdom in he who formed him and fills the mind of the reader with admiration and surprise”.
- 52.
See notably The Search After Truth, II, Part I, chapter 1, §II: “Whether therefore, in the sense of Willis, the two small bodies, he called corpora striata, lies the common sense that brain convolutions conserve species of memory, and the corpus callosum is the seat of the imagination; whether, following the feeling of Fernel in the pia mater, which surrounds the brain substance; whether in the pineal gland of Descartes; or finally in some other unknown part hitherto, that our soul has its main functions, one does not put at a loss. It is enough that a main part; and it is even absolutely necessary, as also that the bottom of Descartes system remains. For it must be remarked that when he was mistaken, as are many of appearance, when he assured that it is in the pineal gland the soul is immediately united, however it could do harm deep in his system, which we still draw all the utility that can be expected of real, to advance in the knowledge of man. “
- 53.
On this point, see Delphine Antoine-Mahut (ed.), Les malebranchismes des Lumières. Etudes sur les réceptions contrastées de la philosophie de Malebranche, fin XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles. Paris: Champion, 2014; and Angela Ferraro’s thesis, La réception de la philosophie de Malebranche au XVIIIe siècle. Métaphysique et épistémologie, defended the 15th April 2016 at the Sapienza University (Rome), under the joint supervision of Carlo Borghero (Sapienza University) and Denis Moreau (University of Nantes).
- 54.
The reference text on this point, and in which Malebranche links cosmogenesis and embryogenesis to show how Descartes has given natural reason and religion, is The Search after Truth, VI, II, IV, OC II (Vrin, Robinet), 343–344. Malebranche reads Descartes by himself, thus employing the same hermeneutic method as La Forge or Schuyl. But he is interested for his part in other texts. Here, in the rare passages in which Descartes refers to religion.
- 55.
Exercitationes de Generatione Animalium. Quibus accedunt quaedam de partu; de membranis ac humoribus uteri; & de conceptione. Londini: Typis Du-Gardianis; Impensis O. Pulleyn, 1651.
- 56.
On this point, see Jacques Roger, Les sciences de la vie dans la pensée française du XVIIIe siècle: la génération des animaux de Descartes à l’Encyclopédie. Paris: Armand Colin, 1963.
See also André Robinet, Malebranche de l’académie des sciences. Paris: Vrin, 1970.
- 57.
Schematically, these readings are rooted in Article 47 of Part III of the Principia philosophiae, in which Descartes states that matter “can successively take all forms”. On this point, see André Charrak, “Descartes au principe des cosmogenèses matérialistes”, Corpus. Revue de philosophie, n° 61: “Matérialisme et cartésianisme”, 2011.
- 58.
The text most clearly stating the need to defend Descartes from such accusations, after his blacklisting in the early 1660s, is the Lettre écrite à un sçavant Religieux de la Compagnie de Jesus: Pour montrer, I. Que le Systeme de Monsieur Descartes, et son opinion touchant les bestes, n’ont rien de dangereux. II. Et que tout ce qu’ilen a écrit, semble estre tiré du premier Chapitre de la Genese… (1668), by Gérauld de Cordemoy.
- 59.
There is to date no comprehensive reconstruction of the context and challenges of the Malebranche’s “solution”. For the most recent and enlightening works on this point, see Karen Detlefsen, “Biology and Theology in Malebranche’s Theory of Organic Generation”, in The Life Science in Early Modern Philosophy, Ohad Nachtomy and Justin Smith eds., OUP, 2014; Keith Hutchison, “Supernaturalism and the Mechanical Philosophy”, History of Science 21 (1983), 297–333 and Andrew Pyle, “Malebranche on Animal Generation: Preexistence and the Microscope”, in The Problem of Animal Generation in Early Modern Philosophy, ed. by Justin E.H. Smith, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, 194–214.
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Antoine-Mahut, D. (2016). The Story of L’Homme . In: Antoine-Mahut, D., Gaukroger, S. (eds) Descartes’ Treatise on Man and its Reception. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, vol 43. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46989-8_1
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