On Descartes' Passive Thought

The Myth of Cartesian Dualism

von Jean-Luc Marion

304 Seiten, Hardcover

Kurzbeschreibung des Verlags

On Descartes' Passive Thought is the culmination of a life-long reflection on the philosophy of Descartes by one of the most important living French philosophers. In it, Jean-Luc Marion examines anew some of the questions left unresolved in his previous books about Descartes, with a particular focus on Descartes's theory of morals and the passions.

Descartes has long been associated with mind-body dualism, but Marion argues here that this is a historical misattribution, popularized by Malebranche and popular ever since both within the academy and with the general public. Actually, Marion shows, Descartes held a holistic conception of body and mind. He called it the meum corpus, a passive mode of thinking, which implies far more than just pure mind--rather, it signifies a mind directly connected to the body: the human being that I am. Understood in this new light, the Descartes Marion uncovers through close readings of works such as Passions of the Soul resists prominent criticisms leveled at him by twentieth-century figures like Husserl and Heidegger, and even anticipates the non-dualistic, phenomenological concepts of human being discussed today. This is a momentous book that no serious historian of philosophy will be able to ignore.

• ISBN: 9780226192581
• Sprache: Englisch
• Erscheinungsdatum: 10.04.2018
• Größe: 232 x 158 mm
• Verlag: University of Chicago Press
• Übersetzung: Christina M Gschwandtner