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Fable, Method, and Imagination in Descartes DePaul University Via Sapientiae College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences 9-2014 Fable, method, and imagination in Descartes James E. C. Griffith DePaul University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://via.library.depaul.edu/etd Recommended Citation Griffith, James E. C., able,"F method, and imagination in Descartes" (2014). College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations. 172. https://via.library.depaul.edu/etd/172 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences at Via Sapientiae. It has been accepted for inclusion in College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Via Sapientiae. For more information, please contact [email protected]. FABLE, METHOD, AND IMAGINATION IN DESCARTES A Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy September, 2014 BY James E. C. Griffith Department of Philosophy College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences DePaul University Chicago, IL Copyright © 2014 James E. C. Griffith All rights reserved To my mother . la fable de mon Monde me plaist trop pour manquer à la paracheuer. —René Descartes, letter to Marin Mersenne, November 25, 1630 Contents Acknowledgments vi Abbreviations vii Introduction 1 Endings and Beginnings 4 What Is a Fable? 7 Why Fable in Descartes? 18 Ending the Beginning 30 Part I Chapter One: Fable Proper 34 Fable against Poetry 35 Fable and Pedagogy 56 Chapter Two: Fable Expanded 81 Fable and Other Forms 82 Fable and Deception 108 Part II Chapter Three: Method 141 Simplicity and Complexity 142 Error and Inexact Science 170 Histoire and Rule-Obedience and Rule-Generation 190 Chapter Four: Imagination 210 Pedagogy and Imagination 211 Space, Fable, and Argumentation 230 Wonder and Learning 253 Imagination and Comedy 270 By Way of a Conclusion: An Objective Formality 287 Bibliography 301 Acknowledgments I would like to thank Richard A. Lee, Jr., Michael Naas, and Peg Birmingham for their comments and guidance in completing this project. I should also thank the Graduate Research Conference Funding Program at DePaul University for monetary support to present early stages of this research and the Doctoral-Undergraduate Opportunities for Scholarship Program at DePaul University for a research grant. There are too many people to name and too many moments to remember, but my friends and colleagues in the graduate student community of the Department of Philosophy should also be thanked for invaluable conversations that helped shape the research. Four people in particular should be named, however: Amanda Parris, Will Meyrowitz, Ian Moore, and Gucsal Pursar. In addition, Sarah Prusik’s contributions as a DUOS partner were invaluable. I would especially like to thank Alicen Beheler for her beyond infinite emotional support and challenging conversations over the course of the writing. Maggie Griffith Williams, Jermaine Williams, and Molly Fitzgibbon were also central to my not considering myself demens. Finally, I would like to thank Tony, Ed, Dox, Noah, Jen, James, Jenny, and Kelly for their sometimes overzealous reminders that taking breaks from writing and research is healthy. Abbreviations AT René Descartes, Oeuvres de Descartes, ed. Charles Adam and Paul Tannery, 12 vols. (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1897-1913). Followed by volume number in Roman numerals. CED Princess Palatine Elisabeth of Bohemia and René Descartes, The Correspondence between Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia and René Descartes, ed. and tr. Lisa Shapiro (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2007). CSM René Descartes, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, tr. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch, 2 vols., (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984-1985). Followed by volume number in Roman numerals. CSM-K René Descartes, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, tr. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch, and Anthony Kenny, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). DCB René Descartes, Descartes’ Conversation with Burman, tr. John Cottingham (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976). E René Descartes, Discourse on Method, Optics, Geometry, and Meteorology, tr. Paul J. Olscamp (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2001). HR René Descartes, The Philosophical Works of Descartes, tr. Elizabeth S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross, 2 vols. (Cambridge, University of Cambridge Press: 1985). Followed by volume number in Roman numerals. LMD Adrien Baillet, The Life of Monsieur Des Cartes, Containing the History of his Philosophy and Works: as also, The most Remarkable Things that befell him during the whole Course of his Life (abridged), tr. S. R. (1693). TM René Descartes, Treatise of Man, tr. Thomas Steele Hall (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003). VMD Adrien Baillet, La Vie de Monsieur Des-Cartes, 2 vols., (1691). Followed by volume number in Roman numerals. W René Descartes, The World, or Treatise on Light, tr. Michael S. Mahoney, http://princeton.edu/~hos/ mike/texts/descartes/world/world.htm, accessed 1/10/2008. Introduction If there is a standard description of Descartes‟ method to be found, John Cottingham is one of the most likely sources: Descartes‟s method, then, consists in breaking a problem down and taking it back to its simplest essentials, until we arrive at propositions which are simple and self- evident enough to serve as reliable „principles‟ or starting points, from which the answers to the questions that perplex us may eventually be deduced. Such eventual results may come only at the end of a long chain of deductive reasoning, but Descartes maintains that our conclusions can enjoy the same certainty and self- evidence as our starting points, provided we proceed slowly and cautiously, step by step, and provided we make sure that each step in our chain of reasoning is transparently clear.1 Descartes developed this method in imitation of mathematics, especially geometry and what will become, through Descartes, algebra, where knotty problems are resolved through a process of simplification until the essential points are revealed and the solution clear. One of his major contributions to philosophy is the generalization of this method, known as analytic reduction or analysis, beyond mathematics proper, into all scientific pursuits (“scientific” here being used in the broadest sense so as to include metaphysics). However, Descartes did not develop this method in a vacuum. It was in explicit distinction from the investigative methods dominant in at least the universities of the time, in particular with what in mathematics is called the synthetic method and that Descartes associates with syllogisms. Whereas a synthesis operates via “assumed abstract objects and statements about them, and, by a series of steps conventionally admitted to be valid, arrived at a desired conclusion,” a syllogism‟s conclusion emerges from previously accepted 1 John Cottingham, The Rationalists (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 36. premises.2 Such a method is unacceptable for Descartes because he wants to be able to claim that his scientific knowledge is clear and distinct precisely because it does not emerge from assumptions or premises that have not been arrived at from an analytic reduction. He wants to be able to claim to have shown to himself clear and distinct ideas as concerns the truth of the world. He needs to be able to make such a claim, and thus to be able to show others how they can show such things to themselves, because the world taken as it appears is deceptive or at least dubitable, despite and because he himself came across it by chance and not by method (see CSM I, p. 112; AT VI, p. 3). Descartes begins many of his texts—in particular the Discourse on Method, the Meditations on First Philosophy and the Principles of Philosophy—by saying we should take note of facts such as, at a distance, a square tower can appear round. If the world is sometimes deceptive, it is dubitable, and there would seem to be no escape from this doubt, especially if “All teaching and all learning through discourse proceed from previous knowledge” when this previous knowledge would itself be based on deceptive, dubitable sensation.3 Thus, Descartes‟ search is for a method that will allow for correcting some of the errors involved with synthesis and syllogism. However, he runs into the problem of justifying this new method. More, the question at hand in much of Descartes‟ project is how any method is justified. On the one hand, it might appear as though utility could be a satisfactory explanation. On the other, this explanation works on the assumption that a method has already been deployed because, to judge something as useful, a method must have already been used in order for its utility to be discovered. What is at stake in Descartes is how anyone can inaugurate a new method. 2 Alexander Jones, “Introduction,” in Pappus of Alexandria, Book 7 of the Collection, pt. 1, ed. and tr. Alexander Jones (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1986), p. 66. 3 Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, tr. Hippocrates G. Apostle (Grinnell, IA: The Peripatetic Press, 1981), 71a. See also Aristotle, Physics, 184a-184b. 2 Inaugurating a method requires a shift in thinking, in the most basic standards of what even constitutes thinking. Thus, it is impossible for Descartes, for the most part and in most of his works, to engage in the syllogistic or synthetic reasoning of the universities of his day. One cannot inaugurate a new method through an old one, at least not when the methods at hand are the fundamental methods for all education. But then how can a new method be inaugurated? Some technique other than that of logic, of proofs, premises, and conclusions, is required. In at least three crucial moments throughout Descartes‟ career, he has recourse to an interesting choice of technique: the fable.
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