Abstract

We believe that you can tap the Cartesian concept of the three original - the close unity of soul and body, thinking, the extension - to re better understand the whole philosophy of Descartes: his first philosophical proposition "I think therefore I am "The 'I think' should actually correspond to the close unity of the soul and the body of this original concept; his metaphysical thinking around the concept of the original expanded; his physics is totally dependent on the extension of the original concept; his epistemology is more based on his original concept based on the idea, the original concept of a priori knowledge should be the form of Cartesian epistemology which highlights a critical dimension; his concept of human ethics correspond directly to his soul and the body of this original concept of the close unity. We can not too much emphasis on the binary distinction between Cartesian thought, and forget he's an equally original concept of the unity of soul and body. We consider that we can understand more perfectly Descartes' philosophy by his three primitive notions: the unity of the soul and the body, thinking and extension. The cogito of his primary proposition "cogito ergo sum" should be the unity of the soul and the body. His metaphysics is concerned with the primitive notion of thinking. His physics depends on the primitive notion of extension. His epistemology bases more upon these simple natures, namely the three primitive notions, these simple natures should be a priori formers of cognition, so these embody one critical character of his epistemology. The man, which is the central notion of his ethics, should correspond also to the primitive notion of the unity of the soul and the body. When Descartes distinguishes the notion of thinking from the notion of extension , we can not forget his notion of the unity of the soul and the body