Papers by Andreea Mihali
Parrhesia 38, 2023
This paper is structured in four parts. Parts I-III investigate Descartes’ thinking about moral m... more This paper is structured in four parts. Parts I-III investigate Descartes’ thinking about moral matters by tracking three stages in the moral development of a fictionalized character modeled on Descartes himself. The character whose development we will follow in this paper is ‘fictionalized’ since the sources I will draw on below include elements from Descartes’ actual life, without being restricted to them. In the opening parts of the Discourse Descartes uses autobiographical details but also poetic license. His extended correspondence, upon inspection, offers an image of Descartes closer to the fictionalized portraits
of the narrators of the Discourse and the Meditations than we first expect. This is not surprising in light of the 17th century conventions of epistolary decorum and politesse, conventions including artifice, invention and hyperbole. During the early modern period, in the process of writing letters, one was actively creating a (more or less) public persona.
The Discourse and the Principles describe our protagonist’s childhood as a time when he receives an education and is trained to obey his teachers. The Discourse follows him during youth when he travels the world, gets acquainted with other peoples and customs, applies himself at getting rid of errors and prejudices and in this way works at establishing the reliability of his reason (AT VI, 1-31; CSM
I, 111-126). To facilitate his project of theoretical and scientific inquiry, he also decides to try to get his desires under control (AT VI, 25-27; CSM I, 123-124). Finally, in the 1645-1646 Correspondence with Elizabeth and in The Passions of the Soul, moral maturity culminates in a harmonious emotional constitution and the corresponding legitimate self-esteem. At this stage, our hero’s composure and tranquility are challenged by ongoing accusations of atheism which could end in condemnation and even imprisonment. Nonetheless, as indicated by his comments to Mesland that he could live “quite peacefully and happily even if the
verdict of the entire learned world were against [him]” (AT IV, 217; CSMK 249), he strives assiduously to acquire and maintain Cartesian generosity.
Part IV summarizes the main points of the paper and concludes by stressing the richness of Descartes’ views when considered in relation to both his philosophical predecessors and successors.
Comparative Philosophy, 2023
In this paper I argue that the continued relevance of Descartes' philosophy for present-day conce... more In this paper I argue that the continued relevance of Descartes' philosophy for present-day concerns can be demonstrated by bringing to bear on his Meditations state-of-the-art developments in Informal logic and Argumentation theory, specifically Leo Groarke’s approach to multimodal arguments. I show that the meditative exercises that Descartes viewed as preconditions of establishing the metaphysical tenets of his system can be recast in present-day form using technological tools and media that we are familiar with. We will see that, due to the different historical and cultural contexts, the 21st century Cartesian meditating process can be: 1) technology-enhanced (a customizable, multimodal process using images and nonverbal sounds alongside verbal claims) and 2) interdisciplinary (sensitive to and informed by the history of philosophy, of ideas and of art). Reformulated and practised in this way, Descartes’ meditative exercises can serve as tools for honing much-needed critical thinking skills and dispositions, as well as for promoting autonomous decision-making. After providing examples of this contemporary Cartesian meditation, I suggest that Groarke’s multimodal approach can be extended to reconstructing the arguments of other philosophers thus supplying a way of doing history of philosophy that is both novel and has personal benefits for its practitioners.
Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy, 2022
This paper focuses on the emotional make-up of Descartes' generous person. Described as having co... more This paper focuses on the emotional make-up of Descartes' generous person. Described as having complete control over the passions, the generous person is not passion-free; she feels compassion for those in need but unable to bear their misfortunes with fortitude, hates vice, takes satisfaction in her own virtue, etc. To bring to light the coherence of the generous person's emotional configuration, a compare and contrast analysis with Descartes' deficient moral type, the abject person, is provided. Real life as well as literary examples (Queen Christina of Sweden, Descartes himself and Kadhy Demba, one of the main characters of Marie NDiaye' novel Trois Femmes Puissantes) further refine the portrait of Descartes' generous person and show that generosity is achievable by anyone who uses their will well. Descartes' position on harmonizing the passions is reconstructed as a developmental trajectory: harmonizing the emotions is possible courtesy of God who put this sphere of created affairs under our jurisdiction; harmonizing the passions is required since the alternative is sub-optimal (souls enslaved and miserable); finally, harmonizing the emotions is satisfying. Since, as the above examples demonstrate, in the process of making their emotional composition coherent, different people take different routes and thus "create for themselves a personal, quite personal ideal", acquiring Cartesian generosity points the way to Nietzsche's later notion of self-creation.
Pacific Philosophical Quarterly , 2014
This article brings to light the role and importance of Descartes' concept of freedom for his eth... more This article brings to light the role and importance of Descartes' concept of freedom for his ethics of belief. For Descartes, I argue, correctly assigning epistemic praise/blame means tracking authentic freedoms: ascertaining whether an act of assent is spontaneous or perverse both before and after eliciting the act of will. Authentic spontaneity ensures that the agent receives praise for his epistemic accomplishment, which includes the right results as well as the right order of steps. Authentic perversity leads to the agent being blamed for not accepting the truth while fully aware of the gravity of the gesture.
International Philosophical Quarterly, 2011
This paper challenges the standard interpretation of Descartes’s view that the essence of the min... more This paper challenges the standard interpretation of Descartes’s view that the essence of the mind is thinking. Most commentators take the essence of the mind to be constituted by thoughts as objects of awareness. By contrast, the position defended here is that willing is as much part of the essence of the Cartesian meditating mind as awareness. Willing is not just a type of thought, but whenever thinking occurs it invariably involves both awareness and willing. To substantiate the claim that Descartes could not separate willing from the one meditating, the paper examines the role of the will at all the key junctures of the Meditations: the cogito, the clarity and distinctness of some of our ideas, the arguments for God’s existence, and the propensity to believe that our ideas of sensible things come from those things.
Book Reviews by Andreea Mihali
“The Will to Reason” (La volonté de raisonner) de C. P. Ragland est l’un des plus récents livres ... more “The Will to Reason” (La volonté de raisonner) de C. P. Ragland est l’un des plus récents livres d’Oxford University Press traitant principalement de Descartes. Ce volume est le fruit d'années de recherche que Ragland, professeur de philosophie à l’université de Saint Louis, a dédié au sujet de la volonté et la liberté dans les œuvres de Descartes. Certains points de vue, déjà défendus par Ragland dans ses articles, sont repris ici ; d’autres sont changés ou raffinés. D’après Ragland, et c’est la thèse principale de cette monographie, la préoccupation centrale de Descartes consiste à établir de façon certaine la consistance et cohérence de la raison humaine.
In April 2016 St. Augustine's Press (South Bend, Indiana) published A Reading Guide to Descartes'... more In April 2016 St. Augustine's Press (South Bend, Indiana) published A Reading Guide to Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy by Italian scholar Emanuela Scribano. First published in 1997 and presently translated into English by C.C. Godfrey, this is Scribano's first book-length work available to English-speaking readers. Its publication marks another step in a trend of increasing contact and collaboration between North American and European Historians of Early Modern Philosophy, trend which has been gathering momentum during the last few years. As the title indicates, this volume intends to provide assistance to those interested in getting a better understanding of Descartes' Meditations, one of the seminal texts of Western Philosophy. Without being a line-by-line commentary of Descartes, this Reading Guide closely follows the reasoning of the Cartesian meditator.
Les arts de lire des philosophes modernes, publié sous la direction de Delphine Antoine-Mahut, Jo... more Les arts de lire des philosophes modernes, publié sous la direction de Delphine Antoine-Mahut, Josiane Boulad-Ayoub et Alexandra Torero-Ibad, est le plus récent volume paru dans la collection «Mercure du Nord» des Presses de l'Université Laval. Les arts de lire des philosophes modernes est un ouvrage collectif contenant vingt-deux contributions, la plupart écrites par des chercheurs consacrés, auxquels se joignent quelques étudiants. La période étudiée s'étend de la fin du XVI e siècle (Giordano Bruno) jusqu'à l'époque de l'Encyclopédie (Diderot, D'Alembert, D'Holbach). Cette réflexion sur les arts de lire des philosophes modernes atteint avec succès les objectifs de la collection «Mercure du Nord», en ce qu'elle a pour «effet une mise en question critique, au sens large du terme, de notre propre actualité culturelle, comprise comme stock de médiations et lieu renouvelé de réceptions inaperçues comme telles» (p. 10).
This Oxford Handbook examines the radical transformation of worldview taking place in the period ... more This Oxford Handbook examines the radical transformation of worldview taking place in the period from the middle of the 16th century (from the publication in 1543 of Copernicus' De Revolutionibus) to the early 18th century (the years immediately before Hume and the Enlightenment). The intention of the volume is to cover both well-known and undeservedly less well-known philosophical texts by placing these works in their historical context which includes tight interconnections with other disciplines (e.g., experimental science) as well as historical and political events. By proceeding in this manner the editors hope to recover a meaning of "philosophy" that comes closer to the way its early modern proponents would have understood and practiced it. The editors also point to the reader-friendly character of this Handbook: in addition to grouping chapters in five categories (metaphysics; the mind; epistemology; ethics and political philosophy; and religion), cross-references to chapters or pages dealing with the same (or similar) issues make it possible for readers to consult the book selectively. Due to space constraints, in the remainder of this review I propose to take advantage of this feature and briefly look at the articles
Noa Naaman-Zauderer's book aims to bring to light the ethical underpinnings of Descartes' system:... more Noa Naaman-Zauderer's book aims to bring to light the ethical underpinnings of Descartes' system: on her view, in both the practical and the theoretical spheres Descartes takes our foremost duty to lie in the good use of the will. The marked ethical import of Cartesian epistemology takes the form of a deontological, non-consequentialist view of error: epistemic agents are praised/blamed when they fulfill/flout the duty to not assent to ideas that are less than clear and distinct. Extra-theoretical realms admitting of no clear and distinct perceptions are subject to 'softer' duties of acting on the basis of the best available reasons. Since Cartesian epistemology involves ethical considerations, and since the late Cartesian ethics of virtue crucially depends on metaphysical knowledge about the nature and function of the will, Descartes' ethics is not just a fruit of his tree of knowledge but it also nourishes its own roots. Below I will briefly look at the chapters of this book tracking some of its Cartesian deontological motifs.
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Papers by Andreea Mihali
of the narrators of the Discourse and the Meditations than we first expect. This is not surprising in light of the 17th century conventions of epistolary decorum and politesse, conventions including artifice, invention and hyperbole. During the early modern period, in the process of writing letters, one was actively creating a (more or less) public persona.
The Discourse and the Principles describe our protagonist’s childhood as a time when he receives an education and is trained to obey his teachers. The Discourse follows him during youth when he travels the world, gets acquainted with other peoples and customs, applies himself at getting rid of errors and prejudices and in this way works at establishing the reliability of his reason (AT VI, 1-31; CSM
I, 111-126). To facilitate his project of theoretical and scientific inquiry, he also decides to try to get his desires under control (AT VI, 25-27; CSM I, 123-124). Finally, in the 1645-1646 Correspondence with Elizabeth and in The Passions of the Soul, moral maturity culminates in a harmonious emotional constitution and the corresponding legitimate self-esteem. At this stage, our hero’s composure and tranquility are challenged by ongoing accusations of atheism which could end in condemnation and even imprisonment. Nonetheless, as indicated by his comments to Mesland that he could live “quite peacefully and happily even if the
verdict of the entire learned world were against [him]” (AT IV, 217; CSMK 249), he strives assiduously to acquire and maintain Cartesian generosity.
Part IV summarizes the main points of the paper and concludes by stressing the richness of Descartes’ views when considered in relation to both his philosophical predecessors and successors.
Book Reviews by Andreea Mihali
of the narrators of the Discourse and the Meditations than we first expect. This is not surprising in light of the 17th century conventions of epistolary decorum and politesse, conventions including artifice, invention and hyperbole. During the early modern period, in the process of writing letters, one was actively creating a (more or less) public persona.
The Discourse and the Principles describe our protagonist’s childhood as a time when he receives an education and is trained to obey his teachers. The Discourse follows him during youth when he travels the world, gets acquainted with other peoples and customs, applies himself at getting rid of errors and prejudices and in this way works at establishing the reliability of his reason (AT VI, 1-31; CSM
I, 111-126). To facilitate his project of theoretical and scientific inquiry, he also decides to try to get his desires under control (AT VI, 25-27; CSM I, 123-124). Finally, in the 1645-1646 Correspondence with Elizabeth and in The Passions of the Soul, moral maturity culminates in a harmonious emotional constitution and the corresponding legitimate self-esteem. At this stage, our hero’s composure and tranquility are challenged by ongoing accusations of atheism which could end in condemnation and even imprisonment. Nonetheless, as indicated by his comments to Mesland that he could live “quite peacefully and happily even if the
verdict of the entire learned world were against [him]” (AT IV, 217; CSMK 249), he strives assiduously to acquire and maintain Cartesian generosity.
Part IV summarizes the main points of the paper and concludes by stressing the richness of Descartes’ views when considered in relation to both his philosophical predecessors and successors.