474. States of the Union: Descartes on the Passions
What do emotions reveal about the connection between mind and body? We turn to Descartes’ correspondence with Elisabeth and his On the Passions to find out.
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Themes:
• S.H. Voss (trans.), René Descartes: The Passions of the Soul (Indianapolis: 1989).
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• S. Brassfield, “Never Let the Passions Be Your Guide: Descartes and the Role of the Passions,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 20 (2012), 459–77.
• D. Brown, Descartes and the Passionate Mind (Cambridge: 2006).
• P. Frierson, “Learning to Love: From Egoism to Generosity in Descartes,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 40 (2002), 313-38.
• S. Greenberg, “Descartes on the Passions: Function, Representation, and Motivation,” Nous 41 (2007): 714–34.
• S. James, Passion and Action: the Emotions in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy (Oxford: 1997).
• P. Hoffman, “Cartesian Passions and Cartesian Dualism,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 71 (1990), 310–33.
• L. Levy, “Memory and the Passions in Descartes’ Philosophy,” History of Philosophy Quarterly 28 (2011), 339-54.
• A.O. Rorty, “Cartesian Passions and the Union of Mind and Body,” in A.O. Rorty (ed.), Essays on Descartes’s Meditations (Berkeley: 1986).
• D. Rutherford, “Reading Descartes as a Stoic: Appropriate Action, Virtue, and the Passions,” Philosophie Antique 14 (2014), 129–55.
• L. Shapiro, “Descartes’ Passions of the Soul and the Union of Mind and Body,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 85 (2003), 211–48
• J. Skirry, Descartes and the Metaphysics of Human Nature (New York: 2005).
• B. Williston and A. Gombay (eds), Passion and Virtue in Descartes (Amherst: 2003).
Comments
Glad to see Buster Keaton…
Glad to see Buster Keaton reappear after having long been silent.
In reply to Glad to see Buster Keaton… by Brad
Buster
A listener complained it had been too long, so I brought him back!
And yes I see what you did there with the "silent," very good.
Sherlock Jr.
Okay, but how did he do the train shot?
In reply to Sherlock Jr. by Neville Park
Sherlock Jr
Ha, that's a good question. I don't really know but I think you can see that the shot has been sped up, so I assume that they put Buster and the motorcycle on platform that traveled along a track running perpendicular to the train tracks, and fixed a camera to the rolling platform to keep him in shot. Then they had the train come fairly slowly down the track as the platform moved across it, and sped up the film to make it look like a very narrow miss.
Here is the shot for those who want to see it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cp5fTvEWdh4
about three minutes into the clip. The annoying music is of course not original.
In reply to Sherlock Jr by Peter Adamson
Okay, I Had To Know. I can't…
Okay, I Had To Know. I can't find an actual cited source for this (although it's mentioned in many places, e. g., this thorough walk-through (bike-through?) of the chase sequence), but apparently it was filmed backwards in addition to being in very slow motion. Therefore the train was simply pulled backwards as he moved past it right-to-left.
Here's the scene in reverse.
In reply to Okay, I Had To Know. I can't… by Neville Park
Backwards Buster
Wow that's amazing! Thanks for looking into this, I am really happy to know how it was done.
Back to the beginning
Hi Peter, yesterday I was discussing Thales with my students (after they heard your podcast, episode 1), and wanted to explain to them that "philosophy begins in wonder and ends in wonder." As in, "the first moment of wonder is more like puzzlement. But once you figure it out, the result is a second type of wonder--more like awe." So what I did was, yes, show them Sherlock Jr., that part in which Buster Keaton jumps into the lady selling ties, and then challenged them to figure out how they'd done it, which they couldn't. Then I showed them a video that explained the trick.
You should have seen their faces.
So I was so happy when I heard this episode today and found Buster still relevant in the modern age! There was a full circle moment right there.
In reply to Back to the beginning by Alfredo
Buster
Amazing! That is one of his all time great tricks, it's fantastic that it still holds up. We recently had a comment exchange here on the site about the oncoming train shot in Sherlock Jr which is another "how did he do that?" moment.
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