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Enlightenment Criticisms of Descartes’ Anthropology

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Descartes’ Treatise on Man and its Reception

Part of the book series: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science ((AUST,volume 43))

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Abstract

Descartes took the notion of the cultivation of the self seriously, drawing on the physiology of L’Homme as well as ethical precepts drawn from writers such as Seneca. Enlightenment thinkers such as Diderot were engaged in the same anthropological project, but they rejected Descartes’ account as being too individualistic.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind (London, 1949).

  2. 2.

    See Stephen Gaukroger, Descartes’ System of Natural Philosophy (Cambridge, 2002).

  3. 3.

    See Theo Verbeeck, ‘The Invention of Nature: Descartes and Regius’, in S. Gaukroger, J. Schuster, and J. Sutton et al., Descartes’ Natural Philosophy (London, 2000), 149–67.

  4. 4.

    See Stephen Gaukroger, Descartes, An Intellectual Biography, ch. 10.

  5. 5.

    Lettre sur les aveugles, in Denis Diderot, Oeuvres Philosophiques, ed. P. Vernière (Paris: Garnier, 1961), 81–146.

  6. 6.

    Jessica Riskin, Science in the Age of Sensibility (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 21.

  7. 7.

    See, for example, Diderot, Oeuvres Philosophiques, 92–3, where he suggests that the reaction to a man urinating and spurting blood is effectively on a par in the blind.

  8. 8.

    Anne Vila, Enlightenment and Pathology (Baltimore, 1998), 183.

  9. 9.

    See Peter H. Niebyl, ‘The Non-Naturals’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 45 (1971), 486–92; and Chester R. Burns, ‘Nonnaturals: A Paradox in the Western Concept of Health’, Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 1 (1976), 202–11.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Unit for the History and Philosophy of Science, University of Sydney, Level 3, Carslaw Building (F07), Eastern Avenue, Sydney, NSW, 2006, Australia

    Stephen Gaukroger

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  1. Stephen Gaukroger
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Correspondence to Stephen Gaukroger .

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  1. Département de Sciences Humaines, CERPHI, IHRIM, CNRS, UMR 5317. ENS de Lyon, Lyon Cédex 07, France

    Delphine Antoine-Mahut

  2. Unit for the History and Philosophy of Science, University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    Stephen Gaukroger

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Gaukroger, S. (2016). Enlightenment Criticisms of Descartes’ Anthropology. 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_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46989-8_16

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