The purpose of the article is to outline and comprehend the Descartes’ theory about anthropological component of ontology as the most important part of his philosophy. The accomplishment of this purpose covers the successive solution of the following tasks: 1) review of the research literature concerning the problem of human’s presence and the individual nature of truth; 2) emphasize the ambivalence of the basic intention of his legacy; 3) justify the thesis about constitutivity of human’s presence and comprehend passions as (...) the form of disclosure of ontology’s anthropological component. Methodology. The use of the euristic potential of phenomenology, postpositivism and postmodernism makes it possible to emphasize the multiple-layer and multiple-meaning classical philosophy works, to comprehend the limitation and scarcity of the naïve-enlightening vision of human nature and to look for a new reception of European classics that provides the overcoming of established nihilism and pessimism concerning the interpretation of human nature. Scientific novelty. It is the first time that anthropological component of Descartes’ ontology became an object of particular attention. It previously lacked attention because of following main reasons: 1) traditional underestimating of the fact of Descartes’ legacy incompleteness as an unrealized anthropological project and 2) lack of proper attention to the individual nature of truth. The premise for its constructive overcoming is the attention to ambivalence of the basic intention and the significance of ethics in the philosopher’s legacy. His texts and research literature allow confirming the constitutive nature of human’s presence and passions as the key form of disclosure of the ontology anthropological component. Conclusions. The established tradition of interpretation the Descartes’ philosophizing nature as the filiation process of impersonal knowledge loses its cogency these days. The unprejudiced vision of the texts urges to revise the interpretation of cognition process as reflection, the vision of philosophizing process as the depersonalized one, and reduced human image as a thinking thing as unacceptable. (shrink)

The usual reading of Descartes' “anthropological” perspective classifies it as a radical dualism with a distinction between two substances, mind and body, which experience major interaction difficulties. Through a contextualization of Descartes' physiological and psychological thought as well as through a less fragmented reading of his work, we intend to review this traditional interpretation, thereby showing its distorted character. When we pay attention to passion, a new Descartes’ image as a sort of phenomenal monism appears, which is markedly different from (...) the legendary image typically associated with him, even today. (shrink)

Descartes analysed the mind into various faculties or powers, including pure intellect, imagination, senses, and will. This article focuses on his account of the sensory power, in relation to its Aristotelian background. Descartes accepted from the Aristotelians that the senses serve to preserve the body by detecting benefits and harms. He rejected the scholastic Aristotelian sensory ontology of resembling species, or ‘forms without matter’. For the visual sense, Descartes offered a mechanistic ontology and a partially mechanized account of sensory processes, (...) including some previously ascribed to judgement. He did this in the context of his theory of brain signs that prompt sensations. The article contends that Descartes’s use of the sign-relation was modelled on standard discussions of non-resembling signs in commentaries on Aristotle’s De interpretatione. It follows three uses of the sign-relation: brain states that cause colour sensations; brain states that cause experiences of spatialized contents, such as shapes; and brain states that realize a ‘natural geometry’. It argues that Descartes’s natural geometry does not involve mental operations but physiological mechanisms that co-vary with the distance to seen objects. While retaining the language of sensory powers, Descartes offered a partial mechanization of those powers. (shrink)

This paper examines the dispute between Burge and McDowell over methodology in the philosophy of perception. Burge (2005, 2011) has argued that the disjunctivism posited by naive perceptual realists is incompatible with the results of current perceptual science, while McDowell (2010, 2013) defends his disjunctivism by claiming an autonomous field of enquiry for perceptual epistemology, one that does not employ the classificatory schemes of the science. Here it is argued that the crucial point at issue in the dispute is Burge’s (...) acceptance, and McDowell’s rejection, of the ‘Cartesian idealization’ of mind as a self-contained system. Burge’s case against disjunctivism rests on the assumption of a clearly demarcated boundary between mind and world, a picture of the mind that McDowell’s philosophy reacts against. This boundary is required for scientific, causal explanations of perceptual processing because it is a simplifying assumption that helps present scientists with a clearly demarcated object of investigation. Concurring with McDowell, I conclude that philosophers need not carve up their objects of investigation in the same way. (shrink)

In the _Meditations_ and related texts from the early 1640s, Descartes argues that the self can be correctly considered as either a mind or a human being, and that the self’s properties vary accordingly. For example, the self is simple considered as a mind, whereas the self is composite considered as a human being. Someone might object that it is unclear how merely considering the self in different ways blocks the conclusion that a single subject of predication—the self—is both simple (...) and composite, which is contradictory. In response to this objection, this paper develops a reading of Descartes’s various ways of considering the self. I argue that the best reading of Descartes’s qualified claims about the self, i.e., about the self _qua_ mind or the self qua human being, presupposes an account of the unqualified self, that is, of the self _simpliciter_. I argue that the self _simpliciter_ is not a mind, and that it is not a human being either. This result might suggest the pessimistic conclusion that Descartes’s view of the self is incoherent. To avoid this result, I introduce a new metaphysical account of the Cartesian self. On my view, the self is individuated by a unified mental life. The self is constituted by the beings that jointly produce this mental life, and derives its unity from it. (shrink)

The purpose is to reveal and comprehend forms of influence metaphysical' revolution for a way of interpretation of the anthropological project by Descartes on the basis of investigations of modern dekartes's researchers, that is the recognition of a fundamental role of metaphysics. Methodology. As methodological base modern investigations of dekartes's researchers accenting a fundamental role of metaphysics and expediency of unbiassed judgment of heritage of the great thinker are used. The scientific novelty. The transformation of the anthropological project is outlined (...) as manifestation of metaphysical revolution. It is about a transcendencecy of naive anthropology, that is interpretations of human nature as its corporality and transition to metaphysical anthropology which consists in upholding of unconditional priority of human thinking as associated with God. As result of transition concentration of attention on intense human nature, that is at tension between sensuality and intelligence, aspiration to truth and tendency to delusion, between Life and Nothing, etc. Conclusions. The appeal to the incomplete anthropological project of Descartes on the basis of innovative researches allows proving the thesis about influence of metaphysical revolution on a way of its interpretation. The main forms of oriented to science ideals of naive anthropology, trust in evidence of the senses, atheism, interpretation of science as the main form of detection rationality of human nature, which Descartes tends constructively to overcome in the text of "meditation", are highlighted. During creation of metaphysical anthropology the attention of the thinker is drawn by the fact of impossibility of comprehension of human nature by means of natural-science rationality and expediency of the appeal to metaphysics. The subject of attention of the thinker is the tension between sensuality and intelligence, need for truth and tendency to delusion, ontologic tension between Life and Nothing etc. (shrink)