This is the first book-length study of Descartes's metaphysics to place it in its immediate historical context, the Late Scholastic philosophy of thinkers such as Suárez against which Descartes reacted. Jorge Secada views Cartesian philosophy as an 'essentialist' reply to the 'existentialism' of the School, and his discussion includes careful analyses and original interpretations of such central Cartesian themes as the role of scepticism, intentionality and the doctrine of the material falsity of ideas, universals and the relation between sense and (...) understanding, causation and the proofs of the existence of God, the theory of substance, and the dualism of mind and matter. His study offers a picture of Descartes's metaphysics that is both novel and philosophically illuminating. (shrink)

A discussion of Suarez's views on continuous quantity in the context of his place in the history of philosophy. The paper raises issues about conceptual change in intellectual history. It advances original interpretations of Aristotle and Suarez on continuous quantity.

This is a discussion of the moral psychology of monstrous evil. It suggests that deliberate monstrously evil acts committed in the name of the good by moral agents arises from a peculiar vice which blinds them to the humanity of others. It also examines an opposing virtue, generosity.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.1 (2003) 127-128 [Access article in PDF] Dennis Des Chene. Life's Form: Late Aristotelian Conceptions of the Soul. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000. Pp. viii + 220. Cloth, $45.00. The history of philosophy aims at the recovery and interpretation of past thought, and its reconstructions seek to avoid anachronism. Dennis Des Chene's book is exemplary in this respect. It offers a sophisticated (...) and accurate report on Late Scholastic views and arguments about life and its form and principle, the soul. It is full of subtle and informed discussions of texts from, principally, Francisco Toledo, Pedro Fonseca, the commentators from Coimbra, Francisco Suárez, and Rodrigo de Arriaga.But the aim of the history of philosophy is philosophical and not exclusively historical. Recovery of the past is, for the historian of philosophy, at the service of contemporary understanding. The Late Scholastic authors studied by Des Chene understood this to be so. Suárez, for instance, distinguished between those doctrines and inquiries which are "antiquated (antiquatae) and wholly relegated from philosophy" and those which are not (Metaphysical Disputations, "Copious Index to Aristotle's Metaphysics," Book I, ch. 7). Unfortunately, when judged from this perspective, Des Chene's book is not as successful.In spite of its many comparisons between current debates, Descartes's views, and Late Scholastic doctrines, the book does not succeed in extracting much by way of genuine philosophical insight. Though well-informed and intelligent, for the most part these glosses are mere statements of Late Scholastic views in contemporary terms. But correctly describing alchemical theories from the point of view of modern chemistry does not make them any less archaic.This book is indeed more a contribution to the history of ideas or of science than to the history of philosophy. To be fair, it is true that, first, as such it is a most valuable contribution; second, much of what Late Scholastics had to say about life and the soul is indeed antiquated; third, even if philosophically antiquated, an adequate grasp of Late Aristotelian thought on these matters is necessary to understand Descartes and subsequent developments; and finally, the kind of informed historical recovery that Des Chene has provided here is a necessary condition for whatever philosophical lessons could be gained from these texts.Life's Form is divided into four parts. The first, "Data for the Study of Souls," looks at the phenomena which the Late Aristotelians sought to understand and explain, recovering both their grasp of the place of the living among other substances, and the constraints, [End Page 127] originating both from accumulated experience and from Christian faith, to which they were subject.The second part, "Defining the Soul," first examines the question of how to define life. It then looks at the definition of the soul as "first act of an organic or potentially living physical body"—whether the soul is an accident of the body, an entirely separate substance, or the substantial form of the body. Here one finds addressed the question whether there is a form of the body separate from the soul, or whether strictly the body has only one form, the soul. The issue of cadaveric forms, peculiar forms of corpses arising after death and the departure of the soul, comes up here. In the last section of this part Des Chene examines the definition of the soul as a principle of life and the relation, both epistemological and ontological, between this definition in terms of the operations of the soul, and the earlier one of the soul as form, that is, in terms of its being.Part 3, "Powers and Parts," looks at the vegetative (nutritive, reproductive, and augmentative), animal (sensitive), and spiritual (intellective) powers of the soul. Des Chene examines the criteria for distinguishing between powers, the relation between the one soul and its many powers, and the unity of the soul. "Unity," the fourth part of the book, takes up this last topic. It looks at the vegetative, sensitive, and intellectual powers as "parts" of the... (shrink)

Descartes escribió que "no debemos nunca preguntar si algo existe al menos que ya conozcamos que es". Los comentaristas le han prestado poca atención a esta doctrina. Se trata, sin embargo, de una pieza medular en la metafísica cartesiana. Además, contiene una clave para la comprensión de las relaciones filosóficas entre Descartes y sus predecesores escolásticos. Este trabajo articula la doctrina esencialista de Descartes, contrastándola con el existencialismo de los aristotélicos. Finalmente, el trabajo respondeafirmativamente a la pregunta, ¿le fue fiel (...) Descartes, en sus propios escritosy en particular en las Meditaciones Metafísicas, al orden esencialista delconocimiento? (shrink)