The eleatic Descartes

Journal of the History of Philosophy

Volumn 45, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 29-47

  Lennon, Thomas ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN ONTARIO   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 67650521667     PISSN: 00225053     EISSN: 15384586     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/hph.2007.0013     Document Type: Article

References (27)

1. Francisco Suarez, Disputationes metaphysicae VII, On the Various Kinds of Distinctions, trans. C. V. Vollert (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1947), 27
2. "I am not for changing things into ideas, but rather ideas into things." George Berkeley, The Works of George Berkeley, ed. A. A. Luce and T. E. Jessop (London: Thomas Nelson, 1949) vol. II, 244
3. For Descartes, mind-independence is an absolute, binary notion qualifying existence, which itself is an absolute notion. A thing either exists or does not, and its existence depends on the mind or it does not. But reality itself is for him a relative notion, admitting of degrees, perforce in some sense other than mind-independence. See Vere Chappell, "The Theory of Ideas," in Amelie Oksenberg Rony, Essays on Descartes' Meditations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 190
4. For his criticism of the Cartesian view as held by J. C. Sturm, see his On Nature Itself, in Letters and Papers, 505
5. See Thomas M. Lennon, "The Problem of Individuation among the Cartesians," in Individuation and Identity in Early Modern Philosophy, ed. K. F Barber and J. J. E. Gracia (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), esp. 19-24
6. René Descartes, Principles of Philosophy [Principles] II, 33
7. CSM René Descartes, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vols. I-II, trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). Cited by volume and page number
8. CSMK René Descartes, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. III, trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch, Anthony Kenny (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). Cited by page number. Occasionally, where indicated, these translations have been modified
9. Descartes, Principles II, 34
10. Nicolas Malebranche, Entretiens sur la métphysique et sur la religion, ed. A. Robinet (Paris: J. Vrin, 1965), 162
11. Descartes, Principles III, 28-29
12. CSM I, 229 (modified)
13. February 9, 1645, in CSMK, 241-42 (modified)
14. In Descartes's theory of distinctions (derived from Scotus, likely via Suarez), rational distinctions depend on our thought; real distinctions, clearly, do not. A third, intermediate distinction is the modal distinction, which in this regard is, at least initially, ambiguous. Recently it has been sharpened by Lawrence Nolan ("Reductionism and Nominalism in Descartes's Theory of Attributes," Topoi 16 [1997]: 129-40) beyond anything else in the literature
15. This is to subscribe to the "occasionalist" account of force put forward by Gaiy Hatfield ("Force [God] in Descartes' Physics," Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 10 [1979]: 113-40): God is the only force
16. CSM I, 227 (modified)
17. Hence Emily Grosholz's outright confusion of the two notions of internal and external place in what is otherwise an exceedingly sophisticated treatment in her "Descartes and the Individuation of Physical Objects," in Individuation and Identity in Early Modern Philosophy: Descartes to Kant, ed. K. F. Barber and J. J. E. Gracia (Albany: Slate University of New York Press, 1994), 42
18. Leclerc sees the problem, but responds that Descartes's system is thereby "landed in insuperable incoherence and also imprecision in regard to the concept of motion" (Ivor Leclerc, The Nature of Physical Existence [London: George Allen and Unwin, 1972], 222; see also 192-93)
19. For more, see Thomas M. Lennon, The Battle of The Gods And Giants: The Legacies of Descartes and Gassendi, 1655-1715 [Gods and Giants] (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), sec. 12
20. See Anthony Kenny, Descartes: a Study of his Philosophy [Study] (New York: Random House, 1968) 214-15
21. For more on this important text, which comes from a different context, see Thomas M. Lennon, "Pandora; or, Essence and Reference: Gassendi's Nominalist Objection and Descartes's Realist Reply," in Descartes and His Contemporaries, ed. Roger Ariew and Marjorie Grene (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995), 159-81
22. CSMK, 202-03 (modified)
23. CSMK, 362 (slightly modified, emphasis added)
24. See Margaret Wilson, Descartes (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978), 83-84
25. Thomas M. Lennon, Gods and Giants, 197-98
26. CSM II, 227 (modified)
27. CSM II, 230-31 (modified)