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On Descartes' Passive Thought On Descartes’ Passive Thought On Descartes’ Passive Thought The Myth of Cartesian Dualism Jean- Luc Marion Translated by Christina M. Gschwandtner The University of Chicago Press :: Chicago and London The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2018 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. For more information, contact the University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637. Published 2018 Printed in the United States of America 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 1 2 3 4 5 ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 19258- 1 (cloth) ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 19261- 1 (e- book) DOI: https:// doi .org/ 10 .7208/ chicago/ 9780226192611 .001 .0001 Originally published as Sur la pensée passive de Descartes. © Presses Universitaires de France, 2013. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Marion, Jean-Luc, 1946– author. | Gschwandtner, Christina M., 1974– translator. Title: On Descartes’ passive thought : the myth of Cartesian dualism / Jean-Luc Marion ; translated by Christina M. Gschwandtner. Other titles: Sur la pensée passive de Descartes. English Description: Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifi ers: LCCN 2017035328 | ISBN 9780226192581 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780226192611 (e-book) Subjects: LCSH: Descartes, René, 1596–1650. | Mind and body— Philosophy. | Philosophy, French—17th century. Classifi cation: LCC B1875 .M336613 2018 | DDC 194—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017035328 This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48– 1992 ( Permanence of Paper). To all my students, who have helped me, followed me, and often preceded me There are two facts about the human soul on which all the knowledge we can have of its nature depends. The fi rst is that it thinks, the second is that, being united to the body, it can act and be acted upon along with it. To Elizabeth, 21 May 1643 (AT III: 664, 23– 27; CSMK: 217– 18; trans. lightly modifi ed) I think the healthy thing for man— for refl ective nature— is to think with his whole body; then you get a full harmonious thought, like violin strings vibrating in unison with the hollow wooden box. Mallarmé to Eugène Lefébure, 17 May 18671 1. Stéphane Mallarmé, Selected Prose Poems, Essays, and Letters, trans. Bradford Cook (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1956), 95. Contents Translator’s Introduction xi Preface xxxi Bibliographic Note xxxv Introduction 1 §1. The Delay of Interpretations 1 1 The Existence of Material Things or the “Scandal of Philosophy” 9 §2. The Sixth Meditation as Aporia 9 §3. Kant’s Critique 17 §4. Three Weaknesses in the Demonstration of the Existence of Material Things 20 §5. The Historical Confi rmation of the “Scandal” by Descartes’ Successors 30 §6. A Critique of Kant’s Critique 33 2 Bodies and My Flesh 40 §7. A New Distinction 40 §8. Arcte, “very closely” 46 §9. Meum corpus: The Husserlian Moment 54 §10. In/commoda: The Heideggerian Moment 61 §11. A Revision of the Existence of Material Things 71 CONTENTS x 3 The Indubitable and the Unnoticed 79 §12. Indecisiveness (1632) and Confusion (1637) 79 §13. The Finally Indubitable Flesh (1641) 86 §14. A Doubtful Doubting (1641) 94 §15. Recapitulation and Confi rmations of the Flesh 99 §16. The Modalities of the Cogito and the Privilege of Passivity 104 4 The Third Primitive Notion 119 §17. From Simple Natures to Primitive Notions 119 §18. The Third Is the First 130 §19. The Ontic Paradoxes 138 §20. The Epistemological Paradox 145 §21. Meum corpus and the Exception 151 5 Union and Unity 160 §22. The Question of Exception in the Replies 160 §23. Regius and the ens per accidens 167 §24. The ens per se, Suárez, and Descartes 173 §25. The Sole Substantial Form 181 §26. The Substantial Union without Third Substance 189 6 Passion and Passivity 199 §27. From Action and Passion to Cause 199 §28. To Think Passively, or Thought as Passion 206 §29. All That the Soul Senses 216 §30. Generosity, or the Will as Passion 225 §31. Virtue and Passion 231 Conclusion 242 §32. Descartes’ Advance 242 Index of Names 251 Translator’s Introduction Why should we still read Descartes today? Jean- Luc Marion responds to this question by claiming that “the way Descartes is interpreted during a particular period appears to correspond to the broader state of French phi- losophy at that time . in short, tell me who Descartes is, and I will tell you the state of philosophy in the era in which you work.”1 He goes on to elaborate the vari- ous ways in which Descartes was discussed in subsequent philosophical history and to show how the respective interpretation of Descartes was refl ective of the larger questions asked during that particular period. While this is obviously a comment on the history of Descartes inter- pretation, it might just as well be applied to Marion’s own extensive reading of Descartes. Who is Descartes today? What does that tell us about the “state of philosophy” and— maybe even more interestingly— what does it tell us about Marion as an interpreter of Descartes but also as an important contributor to contemporary philosophy in his own right? How does Marion’s work on Descartes interact with his work in phenomenology? This “fi nal” 1. Jean- Luc Marion, La rigueur des choses. Entretiens avec Dan Arbib (Paris: Flammarion, 2012), 71, 72, trans. as The Rigor of Things: Conversations with Dan Arbib (New York: Fordham University Press, 2017), 41. TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION xii book on Descartes2 constitutes not only the culmination of Marion’s work on Descartes specifi cally, but also the fullest interaction between these two “sides” of Marion’s philosophical interests: Descartes studies and contemporary phenomenology. On Descartes’ Passive Thought is certainly the pinnacle of the con- versation between Descartes and phenomenology in Marion’s work. His reading of Descartes on the body and on the distinction or relationship between soul and body is not only deeply informed by phenomenologi- cal considerations of the fl esh- body distinction and phenomenological analyses of affectivity, but— not surprisingly in light of Marion’s earlier Descartes interpretations— he recovers aspects of Descartes in his read- ing that he contends still have something to teach us today, and precisely on phenomenological terms.3 This introduction will try to point to some of the ways in which this book is crucial in both respects. I. Descartes’ Passive Thought The central concern in this book is a reading of the Sixth Meditation, supplemented by The Passions of the Soul, the letters to Elizabeth (and others), and to some extent the entire rest of Descartes’ extensive work.4 Marion fi rst works out the aporia of the Sixth Meditation, which he 2. Marion claims in the preface that it is the fi nal one that “ends” his work on Descartes. 3. In this he is followed even more strongly by his student Emmanuel Falque who consistently reads medieval and patristic thinkers phenomenologically and argues that they can help solve phenomenological problems. In his God, the Flesh, and the Other, written under Marion’s supervision, he draws on six dif- ferent medieval and patristic thinkers to push phenomenological thinking on these three topics further, calling it a “phenomenological practice of medieval philosophy” and arguing that medieval philosophy not only treats phenomeno- logical concepts (like God, fl esh, and other), but also is able to “renew” them. Emmanuel Falque, Dieu, la chair, et l’autre. D’Irénée à Duns Scot (Paris: PUF, 2008), 12; translated by William Christian Hackett as God, the Flesh, and the Other: From Irenaeus to Duns Scotus (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2015), xxii. He works this out even more fully in his Passer le Rubicon. Philosophie et théologie: Essai sur les frontières (Paris: Lessius, 2013), trans- lated by Reuben Shank as Crossing the Rubicon (New York: Fordham Univer- sity Press, 2016). 4. Marion’s reading ranges over Descartes’ entire oeuvre, often tracing de- vel opments of the shades of meanings of particular terms in their specifi c con- texts in Descartes’ development, drawing on letters and obscure remarks in mi- nor texts, as much as the main texts such as the Meditations. He also comes full circle by connecting the reading of Descartes’ fi nal work, The Passions of the TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION xiii suggests is interested not only in the distinction between soul and body, but also in the relationship between them, besides the quite separate question of the existence of material things. The issue at stake, then, is not just the relationship between soul and body in some general sense, but the relationship of my soul or mind to my body, that is to say, my fl esh, which, Marion argues, is a different “body” from the “bodies” of material things. The Sixth Meditation, in Marion’s view, advances a distinction between bodies as “external bodies” (alia corpora) and my body (meum corpus) as self- affected fl esh, although Descartes obviously does not use the phenomenological terminology that distinguishes more clearly between body (Körper) and fl esh (Leib, translated into French as chair). Marion uncovers several aspects of Descartes’ argument concerning “my body” or fl esh, which becomes “the body, which I regarded as part of myself, or perhaps even as my whole self.”5 First of all, contrary to popular perception, Descartes does not try to prove that I have a body.
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