Abstract

Descartes' 1649 treatise Les passions de l'ame is often dismissed as a rather peripheral work within the Cartesian corpus. I offer a detailed reading of the treatise's main aims and achievements, and attempt to situate it in the context of other traditions of writing on the passions with which Descartes was familiar. ;In chapter one, I give a detailed account of Descartes' definition of 'passion', and claim that for Descartes the passions are distinguished from other species of thought not only in terms of their unique physiological causes, but also in terms of their relationship to our beliefs. In chapter two, I consider Descartes' claim to be explaining the passions 'en physicien', and argue that this claim should be taken literally--though the subject of the treatise are modes of the soul, Descartes viewed his explanation of them as part of his materialist physics. In chapter three I consider whether the treatise contains teleological elements which pose a problem for his claim that the treatise belongs to his physics. ;In chapter four, I look at certain claims which are associated with Neostoic and Augustinian thought, claims which concern the naturalness of passions to human beings, as well as the ability which humans have to control their passions. I then show how Descartes' own position both differs from and resembles the stoic and Augustinian views. In chapter five, I argue that Descartes' account of the passions must be read in the context of--indeed as being a direct response to--scholastic treatises on the passions, focusing on the widely influential account of the passions offered by Aquinas in Summa Theologiae 1a2ae, 22-48. ;In chapter six, I look at Descartes' correspondence with Elizabeth, and argue that Elizabeth forced Descartes to seriously revise his commitment to an ethic of invulnerability, and to recognize, if only grudgingly, the phenomenon of moral luck. In chapter seven I consider the reception of Descartes' treatise in the second half of the seventeenth-century, and argue that it exercised a profound influence on post-Cartesian discussions of the passions