476. What He Should Have Said: the Early Cartesians
Early Cartesians including Cordemoy and de La Forge develop but also challenge Descartes’ ideas, defending atomism and occasionalism.
Note: the picture will make sense once you've heard the episode!
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Themes:
• S. Nadler (trans.), Gérauld De Cordemoy: Six Discourses on the Distinction Between the Body and the Soul, and Treatises on Metaphysics (Oxford: 2015).
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• F. Ablondi, Gérauld De Cordemoy: Atomist, Occasionalist, Cartesian (Milwaukee: 2005).
• D. Antoine-Mahut and S. Gaukroger, Descartes’ Treatise on Man and its Reception (Cham: 2016).
• R. Ariew Descartes and the First Cartesians (Oxford: 2015).
• J. Ferrari et al. (eds), Descartes und Deutschland—Descartes et l’Allemagne (Hildesheim: 2009).
• T.M. Lennon, The Battle of Gods and Giants: the Legacies of Descartes and Gassendi, 1655-1715 (Princeton: 1993).
• S. Nadler, Occasionalism: Causation among the Cartesians (Oxford: 2011).
• S. Nadler, The Good Cartesian: Louis de La Forge and the Rise of a Philosophical Paradigm (Oxford: 2024).
• S. Nadler, T. Schmaltz, and D. Antoine-Mahut (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Descartes and Cartesianism (Oxford: 2019).
• T. Schmaltz, Radical Cartesianism: The French Reception of Descartes (Cambridge: 2002).
• T. Schmaltz (ed.), Receptions of Descartes: Cartesianism and Anti-Cartesianism in Early Modern Europe (London: 2005).
• T. Schmaltz, Early Modern Cartesianisms: Dutch and French Constructions (Oxford: 2017).
• T. Verbeek, Descartes and the Dutch: Early Reactions to Cartesian Philosophy, 1637–1650 (Carbondale: 1992).
• T. Verbeek (ed.), Johannes Clauberg (1622-1665) and Cartesian Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century (Dordrecht: 1999).
Comments
Occasionalism
Any relation of the occasionalism mentioned here to the arguments of Islamic theologians like those against which Maimonides argued, that something like what the early moderns called “laws of nature” might be vindicated?
In reply to Occasionalism by Brad
Occasionalism
Good question! In an upcoming episode I will talk to Steve Nadler about occasionalism and in that interview (which has already been recorded) we discuss this issue and agree that it is difficult to establish a concrete link between Islamic occasionalism (so, from the kalām or Islamic theological tradition) and post-Cartesian occasionalism. So you can wait for that brief discussion but basically I see it as emerging out of concerns internal to Cartesianism, the ones I explained in this episode, and I think Prof Nadler broadly agrees. You're right though that Maimonides would be a possible vehicle for transmission, maybe also Averroes who discusses kalām in some works.
race and gender
This podcast is drowning in a "race and gender" agenda. Are these two things really that important?
In reply to race and gender by mehmet
Race and gender
Well, yes they are. But I think you may be exaggerating: I certainly make no apologies for covering those two topics extensively, to the contrary it's one of the features of the series I am most proud of. But I don't think we've spent as much time on either in the last year or so as we have on, say, epistemology or philosophy of mind. Indeed since the Africana series ended and we moved on to Chinese philosophy, the topic of race hasn't come up at all, and that was more than a year ago.
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