Descartes at School: HisRulesas a Jesuit Study Manual

Abstract

René Descartes's “Regulae ad Directionem Ingenii” (Rules for the direction of the mind) is a satirical study manual concerned with invention in the humanist sense of the discovery of arguments in texts, not the discovery of novelties in nature. Descartes employed Jesuit pedagogical techniques and an extensive technical vocabulary shared by Aristotelian philosophy and classical rhetoric to criticize the shortcomings of Scholastic philosophy. Although it felt like philosophy to its practitioners, technical dialectic appeared from the outside as a classroom exercise of commonplacing, fueled by schoolroom rivalry and vanity. The interplay of play and seriousness in the “Regulae” challenges standard philosophical hermeneutics.