Abstract

Only rarely does Descartes deal with specifically political questions, and then when he does so, it is only by denial, to justify his refusal to “become involved” in politics. All the texts show that this attitude of rejecting politics is not dictated primarily by prudence, the rule in this century of intolerance, but by a concern for philosophical consistency. This denial, as we will be attempting to establish, seems conditioned by fundamental options of Cartesian philosophy. For the moment we will only examine the theoretical effects of this refusal to write about politics other than by denial; such effects seem to us to consist in the exclusion of politics outside the realm of knowledge and its problematic inclusion into that of morality. And although it has been possible to speak of a “political Descartes”, it is completely against his stated intentions. This Descartes would be political in spite of himself. In fact, such an approach can only consist in a political interpretation of this denial, in a political reading of the texts that reject, or more often pass over in silence, politics as such. Although a reading of this kind can be at best a hazardous one, we will not attempt to challenge its legitimacy, for it is certainly possible to affirm that the work of Descartes is ridden and wrought by the question of politics (just as all philosophical thought, in one way or another, must of necessity confront political reality), but it is not without importance to begin by noting that it is never touched upon other than indirectly, obliquely, through the use of theoretical devices whose finality is not political.