Roger Ariew

These volumes contain Descartes's main works in their first English translations, as well as critiques of his philosophy both in English and translated from other languages. Other works in the set bring together writings by Cartesians in English translation, works by English thinkers influenced by Descartes, and the standard seventeenth-century Descartes biographies in their English translations. As a whole, this set provides a group of rare and largely inaccessible works vital to understanding the impact of Cartesian thought on his contemporary Anglophone world.

I argue that Descartes and the Cartesians are likely in agreement that logic is an ars cogitandi whose aim is to perfect the ingenium by the exercise of its operations: ideating, judging, discoursing, and ordering. We can see that these elements are the underpinning of both the Regulae and the Discourse on Method, and thus, like Adrien Baillet and others in the seventeenth century, we can understand these two works as embodying Descartes’ “logic,” despite Descartes’ notorious anti-logic Renaissance rhetoric in both writings.

What I am concerned with here is the cogito in the 17th century before Descartes’ official formulation of it. The arguments published in 1634-1635, by Descartes’ correspondent Jean de Silhon and the Jesuit Antoine Sirmond, can help us understand Descartes’ conception of the cogito and the general Augustinian atmosphere in the 17th century; they provide us also with a better understanding of what was Descartes’ contribution to the cogito and of how to interpret the criticisms it received subsequently.

This volume appears to be the product of much effort, the culmination of more than twenty years of study--though it could not have been "written before the collapse of the research program of the logical positivists," as the back cover proclaims. Schlagel's introduction is more precise: the volume adopts an anti-positivistic approach to understanding science precisely because of the failure of the research program of the positivists and the success of the historicists. In fact, in opposition to the positivists who approach science as a completed system of laws, theories, and mathematical formalism, Schlagel conceives of science as an intellectual enterprise exhibiting a developmental, creative process. Schlagel believes that there is an emerging consensus, in this century, in the work of anthropologists, classicists, philologists, and historians of science about man's intellectual history. He argues that what is lacking is an interpretation of these products from the perspective of gradual cognitive development, that is, from the perspective of various anthropological conceptions of primitive mentality and psychological studies of different mental developments. Chapters I, II, and III provide the details for this original and challenging thesis of the volume.

I am grateful that a set of fine scholars would be willing to reflect upon and write about Descartes and the First Cartesians. Their efforts are greatly appreciated and, on the whole, their observations are sound. It should be evident that I do not consider the work to be the final word on the subject of Descartes and Cartesians, that is, something exhaustive of it or complete for any of its topics. In fact, every time I reconsider an issue from my book, I find that there is more to be said even in respect to what I wrote about in great detail. I will reply to the commentators in the following order: 1. Domenico Collacciani; 2. Lucian Petrescu; 3. Martine...

© Mind Association 2018Some time ago I was at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris investigating the teaching of philosophy during Descartes’ time. Fine monographs had already been published on the various regimens and practices at Descartes’ college at La Flèche, and Jesuit institutions in general, as well as the collegiate curriculum in seventeenth-century France. But as interested as I was in the form of the teaching—how philosophy was taught, where, and when—I was more interested in its content—what was actually taught. A fair number of early modern textbooks and some manuscripts of lectures and student notebooks were still available; beyond that, one could find reports of weekly or monthly disputations, condemnations of specific doctrines, various broadsheets, manifestos, and student theses and dissertations. After overcoming some administrative resistance, I found myself in a room at the Cabinet d’Estampes looking at a...