Argument and Persuasion in Descartes' Meditations

248 Pages·2010·0.79 MB·English

by  David Cunning

Argument and Persuasion in Descartes’ Meditations
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Argument and Persuasion in
Descartes’ Meditations
David Cunning
2010
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cunning, David.
Argument and persuasion in Descartes’ Meditations / David Cunning.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-19-539960-8
1. Descartes, René 1596–1650. Meditationes de prima philosophia.
2. Methodology. 3. First philosophy. 4. God—Proof, Ontological. I. Title.
B1854.C86 2009
194—dc22 2009038538
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
To
Naomi
and
Mira Grey
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Acknowledgments
I
am grateful to a number of individuals and institutions for their infl u-
ence and support while I was writing this book.
I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Alan Nelson of the University of
North Carolina, Chapel Hill. I am thankful for the time, attention, and advice that
he offered so generously when I was his student (at UC Irvine) in the 1990s, and for
the time and attention and advice that he has offered since. Alan has taught me
many lessons, the most important of which (perhaps) is to read the great philoso-
phers of history systematically, so that the odds are increased that they might still be
great philosophers when we are done reading them. He has worked through almost
everything that I have (eventually) published, and I do not know where I would be
without his comments and his encouragement.
I am grateful to a number of other philosophers for their help and infl uence. Lilli
Alanen, John Cottingham, Daniel Garber, Paul Hoffman, Calvin Normore, and
Alison Simmons have made time at conferences and other venues to talk through
particular ideas and theses. Janet Broughton fi rst introduced me to early modern
philosophy when I was an undergraduate at UC Berkeley, and it was her Philosophy
25B course that fi rst made me want to pursue philosophy at the graduate level. John
Carriero made himself available for multiple discussions when I attended his Des-
cartes seminar while on leave in 2004. Professor Carriero does not read the M edita-
tions in the same way that I do, but he worked through an early version of the
manuscript in its entirety and offered extremely helpful suggestions. Nicholas
Jolley has been not only a teacher but a mentor. He has read everything, and I am
pretty sure he knows everything, and his comments and advice over the years have
been invaluable. Tom Lennon somehow made the time to read multiple drafts of
this manuscript and has provided numerous detailed suggestions. I am grateful to
him for pointing out to me that one of the central theses that I am defending is that
Descartes is an intuitionist. I am grateful to Ed McCann. His work, his intellectual
scope, and his serious yet playful attitude toward the efforts and ideas of the great
system builders have been a source of inspiration. Tad Schmaltz worked through a
version of my discussion of Descartes on the dubitability of the existence of self and
viii Acknowledgments
made time at his offi ce at Duke University to talk everything through. Chapters 3
and 4 of my manuscript have benefi ted tremendously. I want to thank Professor
Schmaltz and also Professor Christia Mercer for being so generous with their time
at the 2004 NEH Institute on early modern philosophy in Madison, Wisconsin.
I could not have written this book without the support and feedback and encour-
agement of my partner, Professor Naomi Greyser. Naomi is remarkably astute at
perceiving context, subtlety, and other things that are not visible to the naked eye.
She heightens the perceptual acuity of those around her, and she is extremely good
company.
I would like to thank my colleagues in the Philosophy Department at the Uni-
versity of Iowa for making possible a space in which ideas can be pursued in any
and all directions. I want to thank David Stern in particular for providing extensive
comments after reading the entirety of the manuscript, and for informing me of
its title. I also want to thank Jim Duerlinger, Carrie Figdor, Evan Fales, Richard
Fumerton, Ali Hasan, Diane Jeske, and Gregory Landini. I would also like to thank
the many graduate students at the University of Iowa who have offered very
helpful feedback in seminars and discussions, and in particular Seth Jones and Kris
Phillips.
There are a number of other people who have infl uenced me professionally and
who have helped me on this project either directly or indirectly: Laird Addis, Jason
McKenzie Alexander, Jeff Barrett, Bill Bristow, Hal Brown, Sarah Buss, Phil Cum-
mins, Hubert Dreyfus, Patricia Easton, Troy Fitzpatrick, De Gallow, Phyllis Hus-
ton, Jan Kleinschmidt, Steve Mailloux, Genevieve Migely, Lex Newman, Larry
Nolan, Tammy Nyden, Martin Schwab, John Searle, David Woodruff Smith, Kurt
Smith, Nicholas Smith, Alice Sowaal, Kyle Stanford, Thomas Williams, and Andrew
Youpa.
F or their personal infl uence and support, I am grateful to Nic Arp, Mark
Brookfi eld, Aimee Carillo Rowe, Brian Carver, Chris Cunning, Dotty Cunning,
Robert Cunning, Linda Greyser, Naomi Greyser, Stephen Greyser, Mary Herndon,
Beverly Klug, Kathy Kuikendal, Jim Mahoney, Jane Murphy, Linda Nelson, Emil
Palacios, Steve Sanchez, Christopher Stipp, and also my late grandfather, George
Przedpelski, and my late mother, Eva Cunning. Finally, I would like to express my
appreciation for the community of people at Core Fitness in Iowa City, in
particular: Amy Martin, Jeff Norman, Todd Simpson, and Christopher Soldat.
I received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities for
2004–2005, which helped me to get the book underway. The generous fi nancial
support was extremely helpful, as was the supplemental support from the Univer-
sity of Iowa. For making possible the latter, I would like to express my appreciation
to Linda Maxson, Raul Curto, and Joe Kearney. I would also like to thank the UCLA
Center for 17th- and 18th-Century Studies and the William Andrews Clark Memo-
rial Library for a residency fellowship in fall 2004.
F inally, a small amount of material in the book is being reproduced from
articles that I have written. Some of the material in chapter 1 is in “Rationalism and
Acknowledgments ix
Education,” A Companion to Rationalism, ed. Alan Nelson (Oxford: Blackwell,
2005), 61–81; and some of the material from chapter 3 is in “Descartes on the Dubi-
tability of the Existence of Self,” P hilosophy and Phenomenological Research 74:1
(2007), 111–31. I am grateful to Wiley-Blackwell for permission to use both of
these. Some of the material in chapter 5 is in “S emel in Vita: Descartes’ Stoic View
on the Place of Philosophy in Human Life,” F aith and Philosophy 24:2 (2007), 164–
83. I am grateful to the Society of Christian Philosophers and Faith and Philosophy
for the permission. Some of the material in chapter 6 is in “True and Immutable
Natures and Epistemic Progress in Descartes’ Meditations ,” British Journal for the
History of Philosophy 11:2 (2003), 235–48; and some is in “Fifth Meditation TINs: A
Reply to Criticisms of the Epistemic Interpretation,” B ritish Journal for the History
of Philosophy 16:1 (2008), 215–27. I am grateful to the British Society for the His-
tory of Philosophy and B ritish Journal for the History of Philosophy for permission
to use both of these. Finally, some of the material in chapter 8 is in “Descartes on
the Immutability of the Divine Will,” Religious Studies 39:1 (2003), 79–92. I am
grateful to Cambridge University Press for the permission.