The Origins of Cartesian Dualism

Journal of the American Philosophical Association 6 (3):335-352 (2020)
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Abstract

In the recently discovered Cambridge manuscript, widely regarded as an early draft ofRules for the Direction of the Mind, Descartes does not describe the mind as a ‘purely spiritual’ force ‘distinct from the whole body’. This has led some readers to speculate that Descartes did not embrace mind-body dualism in the Cambridge manuscript. In this article, I offer a detailed interpretation of Descartes's mind-body dualism in the established Charles Adam and Paul Tannery edition ofRules, and argue that, while differences between the Cambridge manuscript and the established version ofRulesare significant, the relevant passages in the Cambridge manuscript preclude interpretation along both materialist and hylomorphic lines. I then offer an account of the development of Descartes's mind-body dualism between the Cambridge manuscript and the established version ofRules. What the Cambridge manuscript reveals is not Descartes before dualism, but rather Cartesian dualism in its barest form.

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Tarek Dika
Johns Hopkins University

Citations of this work

Cartesian intuition.Elliot Samuel Paul - 2022 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 31 (4):693-723.
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References found in this work

Descartes’s Dualism.Marleen Rozemond - 1998 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
The unity of Descartes's man.Paul Hoffman - 1986 - Philosophical Review 95 (3):339-370.
Life’s Form: Late Aristotelian Conceptions of the Soul.Dennis des Chene - 2002 - Philosophical Quarterly 52 (208):390-392.
Descartes's Dualism.Steven Nadler, Gordon Baker & Katherine Morris - 1997 - Philosophical Books 38 (3):157-169.

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