Descartes

Abstract

In his concluding characterization of Cartesianism and its place in the history of philosophy, Kuno Fischer begins with the following definition of a philosophical school (Fischer 1887, pp. 466–469). A school states conclusions drawn from several first principles. The elaboration and refinement of the link between first principles and conclusions, includ- ing partial revision of these conclusions, represents the evolution of a school. The transformation — partial or complete — of the first principles takes an idea beyond the school’s boundaries; new principles answer the fundamental questions in a different way. If the questions themselves also change, then there is a transition not only to a new school, but also to a new epoch in philosophy. Of course, such a hierarchy of transformations must not so much define the position of Descartes, as emphasize the epochal character of Kant’s ideas. Fischer relates the evolution of Cartesianism within its own boundaries, which are those of a self-identical school, to the activity of Descartes’s and Malebranche’s students. The partial transformation of first principles he ascribes to Spinoza, the complete transformation, to Leibniz, and the rejection of the questions that the old and new principles answered, to the work of Kant.