Table Of ContentMind, Body, and Morality
The turn of the millennium has been marked by new developments in
the study of early modern philosophy. In particular, the philosophy of
René Descartes has been reinterpreted in a number of important and
exciting ways, specifically concerning his work on the mind-body union,
the connection between objective and formal reality, and his status as
a moral philosopher. These fresh interpretations have coincided with
a renewed interest in overlooked parts of the Cartesian corpus and a
sustained focus on the similarities between Descartes’ thought and the
philosophy of Baruch Spinoza.
Mind, Body, and Morality consists of fifteen chapters written by
scholars who have contributed significantly to the new turn in Descartes
and Spinoza scholarship. The volume is divided into three parts. The first
group of chapters examines different metaphysical and epistemological
problems raised by the Cartesian mind-body union. Part II investigates
Descartes’ and Spinoza’s understanding of the relations among ideas,
knowledge, and reality. Special emphasis is placed on Spinoza’s
conception of the relation between activity and passivity. Finally, the
last part explores different aspects of Descartes’ moral philosophy,
connecting his views to important predecessors such as Augustine and
Pierre Abelard, and comparing them to Spinoza.
Martina Reuter is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Social Sciences
and Philosophy at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland.
Frans Svensson is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy,
Linguistics, and Theory of Science at the University of Gothenburg,
Sweden.
Routledge Studies in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy
Pierre Bayle’s Cartesian Metaphysics
Rediscovering Early Modern Philosophy
Todd Ryan
Insiders and Outsiders in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy
Edited by G.A.J. Rogers, Tom Sorell and Jill Kraye
Vanishing Matter and the Laws of Nature
Descartes and Beyond
Edited by Dana Jalobeanu and Peter R. Anstey
Locke and Leibniz on Substance
Edited by Paul Lodge and Tom Stoneham
Locke’s Science of Knowledge
Matthew Priselac
The Idea of Principles in Early Modern Thought
Interdisciplinary Perspectives
Edited by Peter R. Anstey
Physics and Metaphysics in Descartes and in his Reception
Edited by Delphine Antoine-Mahut and Sophie Roux
Experiment, Speculation and Religion in Early Modern Philosophy
Edited by Alberto Vanzo and Peter R. Anstey
Mind, Body, and Morality
New Perspectives on Descartes and Spinoza
Edited by Martina Reuter and Frans Svensson
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.
com/Routledge-Studies-in-Seventeenth-Century-Philosophy/book-series/
SE0420
Mindy, Body, and Morality
New Perspectives on
Descartes and Spinoza
Edited by Martina Reuter
and Frans Svensson
First published 2019
by Routledge
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Reuter, Martina, editor.
Title: Mind, body, and morality : new perspectives on Descartes and
Spinoza / edited by Martina Reuter and Frans Svensson.
Description: 1 [edition]. | New York : Taylor & Francis, 2019. |
Series: Routledge studies in seventeenth-century philosophy ; 19 |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019005347 | ISBN 9780815384946 (hardback)
Subjects: LCSH: Descartes, Renâe, 1596–1650. | Spinoza, Benedictus de,
1632–1677. | Mind and body.
Classification: LCC B1875 .M53 2019 | DDC 194—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019005347
ISBN: 978-0-8153-8494-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-351-20283-1 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
Contributors vii
Acknowledgments x
1 Introduction 1
MARTINA REUTER AND FRANS SVENSSON
PART I
Cartesian Persons 15
2 The Metaphysics of Cartesian Persons 17
DEBORAH BROWN
3 The Gender of the Cartesian Mind, Body, and
Mind-Body Union 37
MARTINA REUTER
4 “I certainly seem to see”: Embodiment in the Second
Meditation 59
MIKKO YRJÖNSUURI
PART II
Ideas, Knowledge, and Reality 75
5 Ideas and Reality in Descartes 77
PETER MYRDAL AND ARTO REPO
6 Spinoza’s Three Kinds of Cognition: Imagination,
Understanding, and Definition and Essence 96
JOHN CARRIERO
vi Contents
7 Mind-Body Interaction and Unity in Spinoza 119
OLLI KOISTINEN
8 Spinoza and the Inferential Nature of Thought 132
KAROLINA HÜBNER
9 Self-Consciousness and Consciousness of Self:
Spinoza on Desire and Pride 143
LISA SHAPIRO
10 Spinoza on Activity and Passivity:
The Problematic Definition Revisited 157
VALTTERI VILJANEN
PART III
Will, Virtue, and Love 175
11 Teleology and Descartes’ Problem of Error 177
TOMAS EKENBERG
12 Descartes’ Generosité 191
CALVIN G. NORMORE
13 A Cartesian Distinction in Virtue: Moral and Perfect 208
FRANS SVENSSON
14 Spinoza and the Cartesian Definition of Love 226
DENIS KAMBOUCHNER
15 Self and Will in Descartes’s Account of Love 239
LILLI ALANEN
Index 259
Contributors
Lilli Alanen is Professor Emerita of History of Philosophy at Uppsala Uni-
versity. She specializes in early modern conceptions of mind, human
agency, cognition, and passions, and has published numerous articles
on Descartes, Spinoza, and Hume. She is the author of Descartes’s
Concept of Mind (Harvard UP, 2003), and co-editor with Charlotte
Witt of Feminist Reflections on the History of Philosophy (Springer,
2004). Her current work is on Spinoza on reason and perfection, and
on a monograph on Descartes’s Moral Mind. She is an elected member
of a number of learned societies, including Institut International de
Philosophie and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Deborah Brown is a reader in philosophy at the University of Queensland
and Director of the University of Queensland Critical Thinking Proj-
ect. She has written extensively in the field of Early Modern Philos-
ophy, particularly, on the philosophy of Descartes. Her 2006 book,
Descartes and the Passionate Mind, was published by Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, and her forthcoming book, Descartes and the Ontology
of Everyday Life, co-authored with Calvin G. Normore, is being pub-
lished by Oxford University Press.
John Carriero is a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Los
Angeles. He is author of Between Two Worlds: A Reading of Descartes’s
“Meditations” (Princeton UP, 2009) and co-editor with Janet Broughton
of A Companion to Descartes (Blackwell, 2008). He has published exten-
sively in seventeenth-century rationalism, especially on Spinoza.
Tomas Ekenberg is a docent of theoretical philosophy at Uppsala Uni-
versity. He specializes in early medieval ethics, metaphysics, action
theory, and moral psychology and their origins in late ancient phi-
losophy. He has published several articles on Anselm of Canterbury’s
and Augustine’s thought and co-edited the anthology Subjectivity and
Selfhood in Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy (Springer, 2016).
viii Contributors
Karolina Hübner is an associate professor at the University of Toronto,
and author of several articles on Spinoza’s philosophy.
Denis Kambouchner is Professor of History of Early Modern Philoso-
phy at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University. His major publica-
tions are devoted to Descartes, including L’Homme des passions.
Commentaires sur Descartes (Albin-Michel, 1995; 2 vols.); Les
Méditations Métaphysiques de Descartes (PUF, 2005; vol. 1); Des-
cartes et la philosophie morale (Hermann, 2008); Descartes n’a pas
dit (Les Belle-Lettres, 2015). He is the chief editor of the new series
of Descartes’ Complete Works (Tel-Gallimard, in progress; 7 vols.).
He has also published a number of studies on the modern problems
of culture and education, including L’école, question philosophique
(Fayard, 2013).
Olli Koistinen is a professor at the Department of Philosophy, Univer-
sity of Turku. He works mainly on early modern philosophy and has
published papers on Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Kant. He has
edited The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza’s Ethics (Cambridge UP,
2010) and (with John Biro) Spinoza: Metaphysical Themes (Oxford
UP, 2002). He also works on contemporary metaphysics, especially ac-
tion theory, a subject on which he has published a monograph.
Peter Myrdal is a post-doctoral researcher at Uppsala University and a
visiting scholar at the University of Turku. He works on metaphysics,
theories of cognition, and ethics in early modern philosophy—in par-
ticular in Leibniz—on which he has published several papers.
Calvin G. Normore is Brian P. Copenhaver Professor of Philosophy at
UCLA, William Macdonald Professor of Moral Philosophy (Emeri-
tus) at McGill University and Honorary Professor at the University
of Queensland. He studied at McGill and the University of Toronto
(Ph.D. 1976) and was a Killam Post-doctoral Fellow at the University
of Alberta and a Senior Fellow of the Society of Fellows at Columbia
University. He has taught at Princeton University, the University of
Toronto, and the Ohio State University and held visiting appointments
at York University (Toronto), the University of California, Irvine, and
Yale University. Normore is past president of the Pacific Division of
the American Philosophical Association, and a member of the Ameri-
can Academy of Arts and Sciences. He works primarily in Medieval
and Early Modern Philosophy and is co-author (with Deborah Brown)
of Descartes and the Ontology of Everyday Life forthcoming from
Oxford University Press.
Contributors ix
Arto Repo is an independent scholar, affiliated with the University of
Turku. He works on metaphysics and theories of cognition in early
modern philosophy—in particular in Leibniz and Kant—on which he
has published several papers.
Martina Reuter is a docent of philosophy and a senior lecturer in gender
studies at the University of Jyväskylä. She has published articles and
book chapters on Mary Wollstonecraft’s moral philosophy, on Des-
cartes and François Poulain de la Barre, on feminist interpretations of
the history of philosophy, and on phenomenology.
Lisa Shapiro is a professor of philosophy at Simon Fraser University. Her
research concerns the way early modern philosophers, such as Des-
cartes, Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia, and Spinoza understand the role
of the passions or emotions in cognition, as well as in early modern
arguments for and accounts of education designed to develop thinking
things. She is committed to rehabilitating the work of early modern
women philosophers.
Frans Svensson is a senior lecturer in the Department of Philosophy, Lin-
guistics, and Theory of Science, at the University of Gothenburg. He
specializes in moral philosophy and the history of ethics.
Valtteri Viljanen is an Academy of Finland Research Fellow at the Uni-
versity of Turku. He is author of Spinoza’s Geometry of Power (Cam-
bridge UP, 2011) and numerous articles on Spinoza.
Mikko Yrjönsuuri is a professor of philosophy at the University of Jyväs-
kylä. His interests are mainly in medieval and early modern philosophy.
He has worked on a variety of themes, including logic and semantics,
the mind and selfhood, and ethics and social theory. He chaired the
commission translating Descartes’ works into Finnish (4 vols.).
