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The Passions of the Soul and Other Late Philosophical Writings
'Those most capable of being moved by passion are those capable of tasting the most sweetness in this life.'
Descartes is most often thought of as introducing a total separation of mind and body. But he also acknowledged the intimate union between them, and in his later writings he concentrated on understanding this aspect of human nature. The Passions of the Soul is his greatest contribution to this debate. It contains a profound discussion of the workings of the emotions and of their place in human life - a subject that increasingly engages the interest of philosophers and intellectual and cultural historians. It also sets out a view of ethics that has been seen as a radical reorientation of moral philosophy.
This volume also includes both sides of the correspondence with Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia, one of Descartes's keenest disciples and shrewdest critics, which played a crucial role in the genesis of The Passions, as well as the first part of The Principles of Philosophy, which sets out the key positions of Descartes's philosophical system.
ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
Descartes is most often thought of as introducing a total separation of mind and body. But he also acknowledged the intimate union between them, and in his later writings he concentrated on understanding this aspect of human nature. The Passions of the Soul is his greatest contribution to this debate. It contains a profound discussion of the workings of the emotions and of their place in human life - a subject that increasingly engages the interest of philosophers and intellectual and cultural historians. It also sets out a view of ethics that has been seen as a radical reorientation of moral philosophy.
This volume also includes both sides of the correspondence with Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia, one of Descartes's keenest disciples and shrewdest critics, which played a crucial role in the genesis of The Passions, as well as the first part of The Principles of Philosophy, which sets out the key positions of Descartes's philosophical system.
ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
- GenresPhilosophy
400 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2016
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135 people want to read
About the author
René Descartes
1,623 books2,407 followers
Meditations on First Philosophy
(1641) and
Principles of Philosophy
(1644), main works of French mathematician and scientist René Descartes, considered the father of analytic geometry and the founder of modern rationalism, include the famous dictum "I think, therefore I am."
A set of two perpendicular lines in a plane or three in space intersect at an origin in Cartesian coordinate system. Cartesian coordinate, a member of the set of numbers, distances, locates a point in this system. Cartesian coordinates describe all points of a Cartesian plane.
From given sets, {X} and {Y}, one can construct Cartesian product, a set of all pairs of elements (x, y), such that x belongs to {X} and y belongs to {Y}.
Cartesian philosophers include Antoine Arnauld.
René Descartes, a writer, highly influenced society. People continue to study closely his writings and subsequently responded in the west. He of the key figures in the revolution also apparently influenced the named coordinate system, used in planes and algebra.
Descartes frequently sets his views apart from those of his predecessors. In the opening section of the Passions of the Soul , a treatise on the early version of now commonly called emotions, he goes so far to assert that he writes on his topic "as if no one had written on these matters before." Many elements in late Aristotelianism, the revived Stoicism of the 16th century, or earlier like Saint Augustine of Hippo provide precedents. Naturally, he differs from the schools on two major points: He rejects corporeal substance into matter and form and any appeal to divine or natural ends in explaining natural phenomena. In his theology, he insists on the absolute freedom of act of creation of God.
Baruch Spinoza and Baron Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz later advocated Descartes, a major figure in 17th century Continent, and the empiricist school of thought, consisting of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume, opposed him. Leibniz and Descartes, all well versed like Spinoza, contributed greatly. Descartes, the crucial bridge with algebra, invented the coordinate system and calculus. Reflections of Descartes on mind and mechanism began the strain of western thought; much later, the invention of the electronic computer and the possibility of machine intelligence impelled this thought, which blossomed into the Turing test and related thought. His stated most in §7 of part I and in part IV of Discourse on the Method .
A set of two perpendicular lines in a plane or three in space intersect at an origin in Cartesian coordinate system. Cartesian coordinate, a member of the set of numbers, distances, locates a point in this system. Cartesian coordinates describe all points of a Cartesian plane.
From given sets, {X} and {Y}, one can construct Cartesian product, a set of all pairs of elements (x, y), such that x belongs to {X} and y belongs to {Y}.
Cartesian philosophers include Antoine Arnauld.
René Descartes, a writer, highly influenced society. People continue to study closely his writings and subsequently responded in the west. He of the key figures in the revolution also apparently influenced the named coordinate system, used in planes and algebra.
Descartes frequently sets his views apart from those of his predecessors. In the opening section of the Passions of the Soul , a treatise on the early version of now commonly called emotions, he goes so far to assert that he writes on his topic "as if no one had written on these matters before." Many elements in late Aristotelianism, the revived Stoicism of the 16th century, or earlier like Saint Augustine of Hippo provide precedents. Naturally, he differs from the schools on two major points: He rejects corporeal substance into matter and form and any appeal to divine or natural ends in explaining natural phenomena. In his theology, he insists on the absolute freedom of act of creation of God.
Baruch Spinoza and Baron Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz later advocated Descartes, a major figure in 17th century Continent, and the empiricist school of thought, consisting of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume, opposed him. Leibniz and Descartes, all well versed like Spinoza, contributed greatly. Descartes, the crucial bridge with algebra, invented the coordinate system and calculus. Reflections of Descartes on mind and mechanism began the strain of western thought; much later, the invention of the electronic computer and the possibility of machine intelligence impelled this thought, which blossomed into the Turing test and related thought. His stated most in §7 of part I and in part IV of Discourse on the Method .
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 9, 2017
This book contains different parts, all centered around Descartes' thoughts on ethics. I will not go into details about all these parts, I will briefly comment on the two most important parts: (1) the correspondence between Descartes and Princess Élisabeth and (2) Descartes' physiological study of the passions.
René Descartes corresponded with Princess Élisabeth over a period of years. Élisabeth was part of the English and German royal family and suffered personal as well as familial tragedies. Her correspondence with Descartes centrered around these feelings of depression and sadness. She asked Descartes to teach her how to control her passions and how to lead a good, virtuous life. This made Descartes think about ethics, a subject that he had left untouched in his earlier philosophical works. During the correspondence, we can see Descartes giving Élisabeth stoic-inspired responses. Personally, I found this correspondence not interesting at all - why? I don't know.
In his Les passions de l'âme (1649) - or Passions of the Soul in English, he undertakes a physiological study of human passions. He begins with describing how human physiology works, and then goes on to explain what kinds of passions there are and how these function physiologically. It doesn't take an expert to see that his conception of human physiology is outdated by centuries. Descartes thinks, for example, that animal spirits move through our veins and arteries to our limbs, organs and brain. Uhm....right. He deals with all this in a total of 212 short texts - I found these even less interesting than the letters. His treatment of the passions is dry, abstruse and, as mentioned, based on ancient and false conceptions of human physiology.
To sum up: I didn't like this book at all. First of all, this is a collection of works, all centered around Descartes' ethics. Even though the subject (ethics) is the binding factor, it does seem a random collection at times. Second, I found the correspdonce not interesting (as is sometimes claimed by contemporary philosophers). Third, his physiological research into the passions is faulty and non-inspiring. And finally, Descartes comes up with a lot of thoughts, but doesn't answer the important ethical questions.
To end this review, I'll give a brief overview of Cartesian ethics (more for my own administration, so I can look it up in the future).
Descartes' ethics comes in two parts. His preliminary ethics were a temporary scaffold to guide him through the early stages, when he was looking for a new metaphysical system to base our tree of knowledge on. This system is too general to be worth mentioning. After having found his final philosophy (cf. his Principia Philosophiae), he turns to ethics (under pressure from Élisabeth, as mentioned). His definitive ethics is made up of three maxims:
1. Use your reason to guide your actions (i.e. reasonably decide what to do).
2. Show determination to execute everything that your reason dictates (this is his definition of virtue).
3. Almost everything that's good, lies outside your power; learn not to wish those goods anymore.
Well, what to think? First, this is very stoïcal (the Greek stoïcal works had been re-discovered during the Renaissance). Second, these maxims lack moral guidance. How do I know what moral criteria to apply in order to decide, reasonably, what to do? Descartes doesn't give an answer.
This is all we learn from the letters. Should we look into his more systematic study of the physiological workings of the passions for an answer?
First, Descartes tells us that the passions are inherently good, because we are created by a perfect God: this is a strange theological position, usually theologians claim that they are inherently bad. The reason why passions seem to be bad, is that we misuse them. The passions are meant to signal us what could be good for us; they also make us see things better than they are. This leads to wrong usage or even misuse of our passions. We should use reason to discipline our passions.
Well, that doesn't answer the question. How should we use our reason to discipline our passions? (This is the same question as the original, just in other words...).
What does his research say? Descartes distinguishes between two types of passions. Six basic passions (wonder, love, hate, desire, joy, gloom) and many composite passions (pride, humility, hope, fear, jealousy, courage, etc.). He gives a detailed description of these passions, explaining us their physiological causes, their physical appearance and what the good and bad use is of each passion. But this doesn't answer the question at all!
Apart from the fact that his research is just plain wrong, he doesn't offer us any guidance on how to discipline our passions with the use of our reason. And worse, his whole ethics is based on shaky foundations. He builds on certain notions - the existence of God, the immortality of our (immaterial) soul, the pineal gland as seat of the soul, complete freedom of will, etc. - that seem very problematic. Descartes presupposes that we are equipped with a complete free will: otherwise, how can you even decide to guide your own passions? What happens to his ethics if we don't have an immortal soul? And lastly: he talks about ethics descriptively (describing and explaining the workings), but not prescriptively.
I think modern day neuroscientists would say that Descartes gets it the wrong way around. We cannot discipline our passions, but passions discipline us. Emotions have a biological function: to make us pursue the things that give us pleasure (eat, sleep, sex, etc.) and avoid the things that give us pain (bodily harm, being turned down by potential mates, etc.). So emotions have an adaptive function. I think David Hume got closer to the truth when he exclaimed that "reason is a slave of the passions."
So, in all, Descartes builds a fantasy, takes years to do it, without giving us any new ethical insight or offering us any ethical guidance. This, plus the fact that I found both (short) works boring, lets me give this book a 2, at best.
René Descartes corresponded with Princess Élisabeth over a period of years. Élisabeth was part of the English and German royal family and suffered personal as well as familial tragedies. Her correspondence with Descartes centrered around these feelings of depression and sadness. She asked Descartes to teach her how to control her passions and how to lead a good, virtuous life. This made Descartes think about ethics, a subject that he had left untouched in his earlier philosophical works. During the correspondence, we can see Descartes giving Élisabeth stoic-inspired responses. Personally, I found this correspondence not interesting at all - why? I don't know.
In his Les passions de l'âme (1649) - or Passions of the Soul in English, he undertakes a physiological study of human passions. He begins with describing how human physiology works, and then goes on to explain what kinds of passions there are and how these function physiologically. It doesn't take an expert to see that his conception of human physiology is outdated by centuries. Descartes thinks, for example, that animal spirits move through our veins and arteries to our limbs, organs and brain. Uhm....right. He deals with all this in a total of 212 short texts - I found these even less interesting than the letters. His treatment of the passions is dry, abstruse and, as mentioned, based on ancient and false conceptions of human physiology.
To sum up: I didn't like this book at all. First of all, this is a collection of works, all centered around Descartes' ethics. Even though the subject (ethics) is the binding factor, it does seem a random collection at times. Second, I found the correspdonce not interesting (as is sometimes claimed by contemporary philosophers). Third, his physiological research into the passions is faulty and non-inspiring. And finally, Descartes comes up with a lot of thoughts, but doesn't answer the important ethical questions.
To end this review, I'll give a brief overview of Cartesian ethics (more for my own administration, so I can look it up in the future).
Descartes' ethics comes in two parts. His preliminary ethics were a temporary scaffold to guide him through the early stages, when he was looking for a new metaphysical system to base our tree of knowledge on. This system is too general to be worth mentioning. After having found his final philosophy (cf. his Principia Philosophiae), he turns to ethics (under pressure from Élisabeth, as mentioned). His definitive ethics is made up of three maxims:
1. Use your reason to guide your actions (i.e. reasonably decide what to do).
2. Show determination to execute everything that your reason dictates (this is his definition of virtue).
3. Almost everything that's good, lies outside your power; learn not to wish those goods anymore.
Well, what to think? First, this is very stoïcal (the Greek stoïcal works had been re-discovered during the Renaissance). Second, these maxims lack moral guidance. How do I know what moral criteria to apply in order to decide, reasonably, what to do? Descartes doesn't give an answer.
This is all we learn from the letters. Should we look into his more systematic study of the physiological workings of the passions for an answer?
First, Descartes tells us that the passions are inherently good, because we are created by a perfect God: this is a strange theological position, usually theologians claim that they are inherently bad. The reason why passions seem to be bad, is that we misuse them. The passions are meant to signal us what could be good for us; they also make us see things better than they are. This leads to wrong usage or even misuse of our passions. We should use reason to discipline our passions.
Well, that doesn't answer the question. How should we use our reason to discipline our passions? (This is the same question as the original, just in other words...).
What does his research say? Descartes distinguishes between two types of passions. Six basic passions (wonder, love, hate, desire, joy, gloom) and many composite passions (pride, humility, hope, fear, jealousy, courage, etc.). He gives a detailed description of these passions, explaining us their physiological causes, their physical appearance and what the good and bad use is of each passion. But this doesn't answer the question at all!
Apart from the fact that his research is just plain wrong, he doesn't offer us any guidance on how to discipline our passions with the use of our reason. And worse, his whole ethics is based on shaky foundations. He builds on certain notions - the existence of God, the immortality of our (immaterial) soul, the pineal gland as seat of the soul, complete freedom of will, etc. - that seem very problematic. Descartes presupposes that we are equipped with a complete free will: otherwise, how can you even decide to guide your own passions? What happens to his ethics if we don't have an immortal soul? And lastly: he talks about ethics descriptively (describing and explaining the workings), but not prescriptively.
I think modern day neuroscientists would say that Descartes gets it the wrong way around. We cannot discipline our passions, but passions discipline us. Emotions have a biological function: to make us pursue the things that give us pleasure (eat, sleep, sex, etc.) and avoid the things that give us pain (bodily harm, being turned down by potential mates, etc.). So emotions have an adaptive function. I think David Hume got closer to the truth when he exclaimed that "reason is a slave of the passions."
So, in all, Descartes builds a fantasy, takes years to do it, without giving us any new ethical insight or offering us any ethical guidance. This, plus the fact that I found both (short) works boring, lets me give this book a 2, at best.
September 14, 2023
head: hurting
January 5, 2018
To say that insects incite strong emotions seems too simple. It’s the quality of their strength that confounds me. Observe Descartes talking about negative passions within the body/soul: “Article 89 Of desire born of repulsion: ...repulsion has been established by nature to convey to the soul the idea of sudden and unexpected death, in such a way that, although the source of this repulsion may be only the feel of a little worm in the skin...our initial feeling is as of an emotion as violent as if our senses were registering a very real danger of death.” Did I expect that? Only kind of....
April 26, 2022
Best thing I've read by Descartes so far
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews