Cees Leijenhorst

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.1 (2002) 122-123 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Spirits and Clocks: Machine & Organism in Descartes Dennis Des Chene. Spirits and Clocks: Machine & Organism in Descartes. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2001. Pp. xiii + 181. Cloth, $39.95. Confronted with the thousandth "entirely new" interpretation of the Cartesian mind-body union, one sometimes wonders whether anything new can in fact be said about the great Descartes. Once again, after his invaluable and prize-winning Physiologia (Cornell University Press, 1996), Des Chene proves that a serious historian, with a keen awareness of historical context, actually can. Unlike the usual accounts of Descartes's animal-machine, Des Chene does not concentrate on the all too familiar set of questions whether or not machines can think, sense, etc. Instead, Des Chene interprets the machine-metaphor the way Descartes meant it to be, viz. as a model for explaining animal and human physiology instead of (cognitive) psychology. Des Chene's central claim is that the Traité de l'Homme and Descartes's later (unpublished) physiological tracts are an attempt to replace scholastic commentaries on Aristotle's De Anima, itself discussed in this book's companion volume Life's Forms (Cornell University Press, 2000). Spirits and Clocks investigates how Descartes's general mechanistic program (outlined in Physiologia) is applied to the field of animal and human life. This project in itself had a far more lasting influence than Descartes's specific and often bizarre physiological explanations. Therefore, Des Chene rightly concentrates on the philosophical aspects of Descartes's general project of "mechanizing" physiology. His short but illuminating book studies a wide range of ontological, epistemological, and even aesthetic aspects of the machine metaphor and, although this is not the express goal [End Page 122] of the book, it also sheds new light on the epistemology and metaphysics of the Meditations. In this sense Spirits and Clocks is not only a significant contribution to the history of biology but first and foremost a must for historians of philosophy.Des Chene explains that the use of a machine model in physiology was neither new nor entirely unacceptable to the Aristotelians. What is new is Descartes's use of it. His mechanistic understanding of the body as a machine is incompatible with accepting the soul as the source of life and the principle of all our physiological and psychological capacities, while Aristotelians had no problem in accepting both the soul and certain machine models of the body. (Aristotle himself uses the lever to explain animal motion.) Des Chene sketches Descartes's attempt to explain all physiological processes by means of the physical properties of material parts that obey the general laws of motion, excluding all talk of ends. In this context, the use of illustrations is of considerable importance: though they cannot per se convey a denial of a "soul-model" of physiology, they strongly suggest that the (mechanistically understood) machine is all there is to say about the functions of human and animal bodies. Des Chene offers an interesting, albeit sometimes somewhat speculative and ahistoric, discussion of the aesthetic aspects of the machine model.As Des Chene showed in his Physiologia, the rejection of teleology is one of the main goals of Descartes's physics. However, although Descartes may be successful in rejecting the view that stones fall down from some kind of desire to reach their final destiny, he is less successful in denying that the eye is meant for seeing (and hence for our self-preservation). Des Chene gives a truly fascinating account of the limits of Descartes's denial of teleology in physiology. This includes questions about the physical unity of the human body: how can I explain why I have this body and how can I even identify this body as a unit without invoking ends? Similarly, Descartes takes the healthy, "normally" functioning body as the norm of his investigations. But, again, can he do so without acknowledging some form of teleology? Descartes's answer in most of these cases is that the final goals...

In recent years, the metaphysics of the young Leibniz has deservedly attracted a fair amount of scholarly attention. Among others, the collection of articles edited by Stuart Brown, Antognazza’s admirable book about Leibniz’ views on the relation between theology and philosophy and Philipp Beeley’s rich work on Leibniz’ physics have all significantly helped us understanding the complex mind of the young Leibniz. Nevertheless, no one has hitherto dared to face the huge task of giving a synthetic account of Leibniz’ metaphysics in the period between 1661 and 1686, the year that Leibniz himself indicates as the start of his mature thought. With a courage nicely expressed by the rodeo yell of her book’s dedication, Mer cer plunges into the chaotic mass of notes, scribbles, letters and other materials of these years, especially of the pre-Hanover period, which fortunately are now all available in the Akademie Ausgabe. Mercer’s book is thus a reminder how important the painstaking philological work of the German editorial team actually is. Mercer’s work is the best possible proof that the thick Akademie volumes contain much more than just some moderately interesting additions to Leibniz’ known works. On the basis of an enormously diverse range of materials, Mercer offers a powerful image of the metaphysics of the young Leibniz that will doubtlessly affect our interpretation of the late and canonical Leibniz too.

Causality is without doubt one of the main topics of Hobbes's philosophy. Quite justifiably, F. Brandt stated that Chapters 9 and 10 of De Corpore, which expound Hobbes's doctrine of causality, are the most crucial ones ever written by Hobbes. According to Hobbes the quest for causes is the quintessence of all philosophical inquiry. "Philosophy is such knowledge of effects or appearances, as we acquire by true ratiocination from the knowledge we have first of their causes or generation. And again, of such causes or generations as may be from knowing first their effects." Although this definition as such is quite peculiar and fraught with difficulties, the description of philosophy in terms of causal knowledge is in itself rather traditional. Hobbes himself admits that he follows the Aristotelian dictum scire est per causas scire. However, although Hobbes agrees with the Aristotelians that knowledge bears a causal character, he fundamentally disagrees with them as to "what he saw to be genuinely causative." Hobbes's doctrine of causes may be seen as a systematic attempt to discard the scholastic view on causality and replace it with strict mechanistic explanatory principles. Therefore, Hobbes's theory of causality can only be understood properly if we put it against its scholastic background, which is the line of interpretation followed in the present article. It will be made clear that Hobbes's relation to scholasticism is rather complex, ranging from downright rejection to the adoption of terminological distinctions as well as of specific arguments and doctrines.

In recent years, the metaphysics of the young Leibniz has deservedly attracted a fair amount of scholarly attention. Among others, the collection of articles edited by Stuart Brown, Antognazza’s admirable book about Leibniz’ views on the relation between theology and philosophy and Philipp Beeley’s rich work on Leibniz’ physics have all significantly helped us understanding the complex mind of the young Leibniz. Nevertheless, no one has hitherto dared to face the huge task of giving a synthetic account of Leibniz’ metaphysics in the period between 1661 and 1686, the year that Leibniz himself indicates as the start of his mature thought. With a courage nicely expressed by the rodeo yell of her book’s dedication, Mer cer plunges into the chaotic mass of notes, scribbles, letters and other materials of these years, especially of the pre-Hanover period, which fortunately are now all available in the Akademie Ausgabe. Mercer’s book is thus a reminder how important the painstaking philological work of the German editorial team actually is. Mercer’s work is the best possible proof that the thick Akademie volumes contain much more than just some moderately interesting additions to Leibniz’ known works. On the basis of an enormously diverse range of materials, Mercer offers a powerful image of the metaphysics of the young Leibniz that will doubtlessly affect our interpretation of the late and canonical Leibniz too.

Thomas Hobbes's doctrine of space is here considered as an example of the Nachzuirkung of Jesuit commentaries on Aristotle's natural philosophy in seventeenth-century mechanistic science. Hobbes's doctrine of space can be reconstructed in terms of his intensive dialogue with late scholasticism, as represented in the works of several important Jesuit authors. Although he presents his concept of space as an alternative to the Aristotelian notion of place, there are some remarkable similarities between Hobbes's alternative notion of space and the concept of spatium imaginarium, found in the Jesuit commentaries. While Hobbes adopts many scholastic elements, he employs these to his own purposes. Thus, on the one hand, this article does not so much challenge Hobbes's "modernity", but rather tries to put it in its proper perspective. On the other hand, it tries to show the vitality and importance of Jesuit natural philosophy in non- or even anti-Aristotelian contexts

In order to study “physics before Newton,” it is necessary to have at least a general idea what the terms ‘physics’ or ‘natural philosophy’ actually mean in a medieval and early modern context. Now, defining the medieval and early modern usage of the terms ‘physics’, ‘natural philosophy’, and their equivalents is no small beer. So far, the only scholar to have found the courage to embark upon this enterprise is Andrew Cunningham. He tries to make the case that natural philosophy was an essentially “God oriented,” hence inherently theological discipline. Natural philosophy was “about God and His creation.” It did not promote knowledge of nature as a goal in itself, but as a means to acquire insight into God and His creation. According to Cunningham, this fundamentally religious agenda still dominated even Isaac Newton’s Principia Philosophiae Naturalis Mathematica, as is testified by passages such as the famous General Scholium to the second edition.

Cees Leijenhorst’s essay is largely a response to two articles. The first is by Edwin Curley, I Durst not Write so Boldly or How to Read Hobbes’ Theological-Political Treatise, Scienza e Politica ed. by P. Bostreghi , 497-593. Leijenhorst goes through several of Curley’s arguments to show that the supposed atheism which is the logical outcome of Hobbes’s remarks, as read by Curley, in fact do not lead to that conclusion. The second article is Agostino Lupoli’s ‘Fluidismo’ e Corporeal Deity nella Filosofia Naturale di Thomas Hobbes: A Proposito dell’hobbesiano ‘Dio delle Cause’, Rivista di Storia della Filosofia 54 n. s. : 573-610.) In broad agreement with Lupoli, Leijenhorst refines and somewhat revises the latter’s arguments to show greater consistency and continuity of thought in Hobbes. He concludes, There does not appear to exist any reason for doubting Hobbes’s sincerity with respect to his outspoken endorsement of the orthodox Christian creatio ex nihilo

This essay addresses a core issue in philosophical psychology, reflection and self-awareness. For late Scholastics the main question was, ‘How is it that we can be aware that we are seeing _p_ when in the midst of seeing _p_ if the mind is always directed toward objects in the world, like _p_?’ Suárez addressed this in three parts—whether the sensitive soul could be aware of its own acts; how the intellectual soul knows itself; and whether and how the soul in the afterlife can know itself in its disembodied state? It is argued that even though Suárez adopted the Thomistic position at the beginning of his examination of soul’s self-awareness, by the end the moves that he made effectively undercut the Thomistic account of self-awareness.