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University of Chicago Press, Chicago
2018
304 Pages
ISBN 9780226192581
On Descartes' passive thought
the myth of Cartesian dualism
Jean-Luc Marion
Translated by Christina M. Gschwandtner
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.
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Full citation:
Marion, J.-L. (2018). On Descartes' passive thought: the myth of Cartesian dualism, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
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