The Embodied Descartes: Contemporary Readings of L’Homme

Abstract

A certain reading of Descartes, which we refer to as 'the embodied Descartes', is emerging from recent scholarship on L'Homme. This reading complicates our understanding of Descartes's philosophical project: far from strictly separating human minds from bodies, the embodied Descartes keeps them tightly integrated, while animal bodies behave in ways quite distinct from those of other pieces of extended substance. Here, we identify three categories of embodiment in contemporary readings of Descartes's physiology: 1) bodily health and function, 2) embodied reflex and memory, and 3) embodied cognition. All present more or less strong versions of the embodied Descartes. Together, they constitute a compelling reading of a Cartesian natural philosophy that, if not expressly antidualist, is an awfully long way from the canonical picture.

Early anthropological interest: Magnus Hundt’s and Galeazzo Capra’s quest for humanity

“…René Descartes and Thomas Hobbes devised treatises on human nature in which physical characteristics were thoroughly showcased. In several editions, Descartes' Traité de l'Homme contained medical illustrations and was sometimes combined with medical treatises (Hutchins, Eriksen, and Wolfe 2016;Hobbes 1999;Shapin 2000). A similar procedure can be found in Hundt's Antropologium, which contains woodcuts of the human members and organs (Figures 2 and 3).…”

Movements, Memory, and Mixture: Aristotle, Confusion, and the Historicity of Memory

“…In continual interaction with the blending of internal fluids, the non-naturals combined not only to produce an individual's current, fragile balance against imminent physiological stagnation or excess, but also to ground ongoing psychological stability. Contrary to much mythologizing by modern philosophers, these views did not disappear with the 'scientific revolution' or with the 'mechanical philosophy', but were newly entrenched or implemented in Descartes' highly dynamic picture of brain, memory, and the passions (Sutton 1998(Sutton , 2000bHutchins et al 2016). In this long-standing ecological framework, the material basis of human psychology was mixed or porous, open to a variety of worldly influences.…”

Atheist Therapy: Radical Embodiment in Early Modern Medical Materialism

“…The view of La Mettrie as a Cartesian, or at least as transposing Cartesian schema, e.g., the animal-machine, into a materialist framework has been criticized as inadequate since at least the 1980s; notably, La Mettrie's matter theory is completely un-Cartesian (it's more Epicuro-Gassendist), and his hedonistic moral theory and account of action are also quite foreign to Cartesian anthropology. That said, Descartes certainly speaks of the paramount importance of medicine, and can be read in a more "embodied" way than standard portrayals of Cartesian dualism, but that would be a different paper from this one: for a start, see Hutchins, Wolfe and Eriksen (2016) and for some discussion of Descartes' medical ideas, Schmaltz (2016), chapter 5. 5/16 traditional mechanicism," which he also describes as Cartesian and "lacking a future" scientifically; in his classic monograph of 1963, Roger had already stated that "La Mettrie wants to remain a mechanist.…”