The First Person: Descartes,Locke and Mind-Body Dualism

Whether Descartes actually thought of mind and matter as being only logically or conceptually, as opposed to ontologically, distinct is a matter of debate. What the union between mind and matter could possibly mean on either view is no less disputable, as a considerable number of philosophical difficulties are entailed either way. These interpretative problems clearly also hold for what Descartes was and is now taken to have meant. See, Wilson Margaret Dauler , Descartes (London, 1978), 177–220. For an account of the ‘official doctrine’, i.e., dualism as commonly understood, see Ryle's Gilbert The concept of mind (London, 1949), 11–24. In Ryle's view it is a category mistake to think of mind and matter in polar opposition as they belong to different logical types. For a recent exposition and critique of what Descartes could have had in mind, see Clarke's Desmond Descartes' philosophy of science (Manchester, 1982), 24–30. An account of Descartes's philosophy sympathetic to dualism is Curley's E. M. Descartes against the skeptics (Oxford, 1978).

For an analysis of the place of repetition in myth, see Lévi-Strauss Claude , Structural anthropology , trans. by Jacobson Claire and Schoepf Brooke Grundfest (Harmondsworth, 1963), 206–31. We shall not here have leave to discuss what precisely is being repeated. Similarly, the related and equally interesting question of what precisely is being reflected in this myth, what its metaphorical structure is a metaphor of, will no more than be raised in the following pages. Again, the function of this or any other myth will not be explored here. These subjects will be the topic of longer analysis. Instead, we shall simply use the story of Genesis as a backdrop to our account of the place given to Descartes in histories of the modern notion of man and the person. In so doing, however, it is hoped that something of the nature and the role of the myth will be revealed.

Brown's Theodore M. excellent “Descartes, dualism, and psychosomatic medicine”, in Bynum W. F. and Porter Roy (eds), Essays in the history of psychiatry (forthcoming), shows the persistence of the myth of Descartes's dualism within holistic medicine. He rectifies the double fallacy on which it rests by showing the extent to which Descartes stressed that mind and body closely interacted and by tracing this view both before and after Descartes. It is my contention in this paper, that such revisionism can be accommodated within, and indeed requires, the view that the story of Descartes's effect on philosophy and science is mythical, in an anthropological sense. For various characterizations of Descartes's relation to modern philosophy and science, dualism and the self, which endorce the myth, see MacIntyre's Alasdair well-known A short history of ethics (London, 1980), in which the only reference to Descartes mentions the moment of “illumination” in which he “founded modern philosophy” (p. 178). In Richard Rorty's influential Philosophy and the mirror of nature (Oxford, 1980), 3–4, we are said to “owe the notion of ‘the mind’” to Descartes and the latter is characterized throughout the book as providing the beginning of ‘traditional philosophy’. In Roger Smith's “Mind-body relation”, in Bynum W. F. Browne E. J. Porter Roy (eds), Dictionary of the history of science (Princeton, N.J., 1981), 269–71, dualism is described as being elaborated by Descartes and the questions surrounding it as having “their locus classicus in René Descartes”. Ayer A. J. , “I think, therefore I am”, in Doney Willis (ed.), Descartes (London, 1970), 80, writes: “the attempt to put knowledge on a foundation which would be impregnable to doubt is historically associated with the philosophy of Descartes.” Other examples of the widespread view that “It is with Descartes that the story of modern philosophy begins” and that it is “not for nothing [that] he has been called ‘the father of modern philosophy’”, to use the words of Buchdahl Gerd , Metaphysics and the philosophy of science (Oxford, 1969), can be found in Butterfield H. , The origins of modern science, 1300–1800 (London, 1963); Hall A. Rupert , From Galileo to Newton, 1630–1720 (London, 1963); and Koyré Alexandre , Etudes d'histoire de la pensée philosophique (London, 1971).

It is a feature of nearly all histories of philosophy and, more especially, of science that they weight the contributions of their various key thinkers. In such appraisals, Descartes is not always granted the place of honour. For a treatment of the competing Baconian myth, see, for instance, Hall , op. cit. (ref. 3), 103–6.

“Prolem sine matre creatam” is the epigraph to Montesquieu's De l'Esprit des lois (Geneva, 1747). Montesquieu is said to have explained it to Mme Necker as follows: “In order to produce great works, two things are necessary: A father and a mother, genius and liberty…. My work has lacked the latter.” (cited in Montesquieu, Oeuvres complètes, ed. by Oster Daniel (Paris, 1964), 13, my translation).

MacIntyre , op. cit. (ref. 3); Butterfield , op. cit. (ref. 3), 146–7, is more inclined towards casting Descartes in a messianic role and describes the process of conversion which his followers underwent. Summing up, he writes: “It is all like the Christians recounting conversions in the early stages of a religious movement, when one man after another sees the light and changes the course of his whole life.” For an interesting treatment of such moments of discoveries, see Hadamard Jacques , The psychology of invention in the mathematical field (London, 1954).

See ref. 2. Apart from assessing how the Judeo-Christian story of creation and, indeed, Greek mythology has affected our conception of genius and artistic and intellectual creativity, consideration would, obviously, also have to be given to the extent and force of paternalistic assumptions in mythical accounts of discoveries and inventions. The only mention of a ‘mother’ that I have come across in the history of thought is MacIntyre's, op. cit. (ref. 3), 230, when referring to Mary Wollstonecraft as “the mother of female emancipation”. The simple comparison between ‘father’ and ‘mother’, both as nouns and as verbs, in the Oxford English dictionary will demonstrate that the increase in the number of female inventors would not necessarily imply an increase in the usage of ‘mother’ in the context of discovery.

Ayer A. J. , “The concept of a person”, in The concept of a person and other essays (London, 1963), 390. Mind-body dualism is not the only theory which Descartes is thought to have been the first to formulate most succinctly. Similar views are put forward with regards to his discussion of motion, for instance. Butterfield, op. cit. (ref. 3), 13; Koyré Alexandre , Newtonian studies (London, 1965).

Clarke , op. cit. (ref. 1), 24 (my emphasis).

ibid., 40. Clarke, who wishes to question the extent to which Descartes believed in and was committed to dualism, appeals to the notion of tradition to avoid the myth of Descartes the father: “Dualism … should also be recognised for what it is. It is a theory borrowed by Descartes from tradition to explain what he took to be an indubitable fact of our experience, namely the fact of our having sensory experiences”.

Centore F. F. , Persons: A comparative account of the six possible theories (London, 1979), 44.

Krailsheimer A. J. , Studies in self-interest: From Descartes to La Bruyère (Oxford, 1962), 218.

Rorty Amélie Oksenber (ed.), The identities of person (London, 1969).

Lacan Jacques , Séminaire II: Le moi dans la théorie de Freud et dans la technique de la psychanalyse (Paris, 1978), 13–14, my translation.

These debates, interestingly, share many features with those around the subject of Descartes's dualism.

Burnet John , “The Socratic doctrine of the soul”, Proceedings of the British Academy (1916), 235–59, cited in Claus David B. , Toward the soul (London, 1981).

Claus , Toward the soul, 6.

ibid., 7.

ibid., my emphasis.

Anonymous, “Immatérialisme”, in Diderot Denis and le Rond d'Alembert Jean (eds), Encyclopédie ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (Neufchâtel, 1765), viii, 570. The distinction between ‘material’ and ‘corporeal’ is not given in the article. What seems to be described here is one substance capable of sustaining two kinds of properties. My translation.

ibid., 573.

ibid., 573.

ibid., 574.

“Ames des bêtes”, Encyclopédie (Paris, 1751), i, 344.

ibid., 350.

Centore , op. cit. (ref. 11); Berman Morris , The reenchantment of the world (London, 1981).

Lacan , op. cit. (ref. 14), 13–14. Edmund Leach has developed the notion that the unity of the species is a recent concept in ch. 2 of his forthcoming The unity of man and thereby extended Michel Foucault's statement at the end of Les mots et les choses (Paris, 1966), 398, that the concept of man is a recent invention. Jean-Pierre Vernant has argued that the concept of free-will was one which the Ancient Greeks simply did not have and has contended with our conceptual difficulties in interpreting agency and action in Greek tragedies. See, for instance, his “Aspects de la personne dans la religion Grecque”, in Mythe et pensée chez les Grecs II (Paris, 1965).

As Clarke does, op. cit. (ref. I), 30.

Butterfield , op. cit. (ref. 3), 84. This author explains the end of Cartesians as follows: “In the time of Newton and well into the eighteenth century, there was a grand controversy between an English school, which was popularly identified with the empirical method, and a French school, which glorified Descartes and came to be associated rather with the deductive method. In the middle of the eighteenth century, however, the French, with a charm that we must describe as Mediterranean, not only submitted to the English view of the matter, but in their famous Encyclopédie made even too ample a return, placing Bacon on a pedestal higher perhaps than any that had been given him before. It would appear that their excess of graciousness or charity brought some confusion into historical science at a later stage in the story”.

“Cartésianisme”, Encyclopédie, ii, 719. It is attributed to M. l'abbé Pestré.

Condillac , Essai sur l'origine des connaissances humaines, ed. by Derrida Jacques (Auvers-sur-Oise, 1973), 285.

The language of seduction also has a mythical pedigree, starting with the Garden of Eden.

“Cartésianisme”, op. cit. (ref. 30), 719.

Condillac , op. cit. (ref. 31), 284. This repetition has, to my knowledge gone unnoticed. Condillac himself claimed that a great many authors had lifted passages from the Essai, see p. 87 of Derrida's introduction, “L'Archéologie du frivole”. For the reproduction of the passage in De l'art de penser, see p. 57 of the same introduction.

He even questioned the need for Descartes's doubt; Condillac , op. cit. (ref. 31), 280.

Descartes , Discourse on method and the meditations, translated with an introduction by Sutcliffe F. E. (Harmondsworth, 1968), “First meditation”, 97. For a discussion of the relation between madness and reason in Descartes and of Michel Foucault's treatment of it in Histoire de la folie (Paris, 1961), see Derrida's Jacques “Cogito et histoire de la folie”, in L'ecriture et la différence (Paris, 1967), 51–97.

This occurs in every discussion of mind-body relations, including, if not especially, those aimed at a critique of dualism or those works of interpretation analysing non-dualistic thinkers. A good example of this is provided by Taylor Charles , Hegel and modern society (Cambridge, 1979). This book does more to impress the categories of mind and of body as put forward by Cartesian dualism on the mind of its readers, than it could possibly hope to convey Hegel's notion of the ‘embodied subject’.

Nancy Jean-Luc , Ego sum (Paris, 1979).

Ibid .; Descamps Christian , “La formation du moi”, in Delacampagne Christian and Maggiori Robert (eds), Philosopher (Paris, 1980), 79; Taylor , op. cit. (ref. 37); Rorty , op. cit. (ref. 3).

For a discussion of “which of the two Saints comes closer to the Cogito, ergo sum?”, see Hintikka's Jaakko “Cogito, ergo sum: Inference or performance?”, in Willis Doney, op. cit. (ref. 3), 108–39.

Courcelle Pierre , Connais-toi toi-même: De Socrates à St. Bernard (Paris, 1975).

See ref. 12.

This view of philosophy is both inspired by and critical of Rorty, op. cit. (ref. 3).

Hobbes , Leviathan, ed. by Macpherson C. B. (Harmondsworth, 1968), 217. This edition retains the seventeenth century spelling.

ibid., 217–18.

Burthogge Richard , An essay upon reason and the nature of spirits (London, 1694), 277–8; Robertson William , An attempt to explain the words reason, substance, person, creeds… (London, 1768), 24–25; and Faulche Samuel , “Personne”, Encyclopédie (Neufchatel, 1765), xii, 431–2.

Pascal , Pensées, 688–323.

Hume , A treatise of human nature, ed. by Selby-Bigge L. A. (London, 1975), 259.

ibid., 268–9. For a discussion of Hume's theory of personal identity in its eighteenth century context, see my “The torrent and the brook: A juxtaposition of Diderot and Hume”, The British journal for eighteenth century studies, vii (1984).

Allison Henry E. , “Locke's theory of personal identity: A re-examination”, in Tipton I. C. (ed.), Locke on human understanding: Selected essays (Oxford, 1977), 105–22; Dunn John , “Individuality and clientage in the formation of Locke's social imagination”, in Brandt Rheinhard (ed.), John Locke: Symposium Wolfenbüttel 1979(Berlin and New York, 1981), 43–73.

Locke John , An essay concerning human understanding, ed. by Nidditch Peter H. (Oxford, 1975), Book 111, ch. XI, sec. 16, 516.

ibid., Book II, ch. XXIV, sec. 2, 318.

Hume , op. cit. (ref. 48), 261.

Locke , op. cit. (ref. 51), Book II, ch. XXVII, sees 6 and 9, 331–2 and 335.

ibid., Book II, ch. XXVII, sec. 7, 332.

ibid., Book II, ch. XXVII, sec. 26, 346.

ibid., Book II, ch. XXVII, sec. 12, 337.

Diderot , Rêve de D'Alembert, ed. by Vernière Paul (Paris, 1964), 306.

Rorty , op. cit. (ref. 3).