Cartesian Questions III: Descartes Beneath the Mask of Cartesianism

by Jean-Luc Marion, Stephen E. Lewis Jr. (Translator)

Overview

In this masterful work, Jean-Luc Marion shows how some of Descartes' most decisive points remain masked by the various "Cartesianisms" that historiography and convenient simplifications alike have constructed. The book's first half shows how Descartes lines up against Cartesianism, setting forth several closely argued attempts to free up the positive status of skepticism in the Cartesian corpus, the non-substantial (and non-reflexive) character of the ego cogito, the complex elaboration of the idea of the infinite, and the role of esteem as a mode of the cogitatio. Marion then offers a second set of studies examining the work of Montaigne, Hobbes, and Spinoza and seeking to reconstitute some of the ways in which Cartesianism (and non-Cartesianism) become opposed to Descartes. Arising at the pivot point between these two paths of inquiry is a chapter dedicated to Descartes and phenomenology, with particular focus on how Descartes can be understood to have practiced—in his own way and by anticipation—a genuine phenomenological reduction. The final volume in Jean-Luc Marion's erudite trilogy of Cartesian Questions, this authoritative book demonstrates that, rather than belonging strictly to the past, Descartes continues to speak to our future.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781503643345
Publisher:	Stanford University Press
Publication date:	08/05/2025
Series:	Cultural Memory in the Present
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	382

About the Author

Jean-Luc Marion is a member of the Académie Française. Previous books with Stanford include Revelation Comes from Elsewhere (2024), In the Self's Place (2012), and Being Given (2002). Stephen E. Lewis, Professor of English at the Franciscan University of Steubenville, has translated numerous books of French philosophy, including eight by Jean-Luc Marion. Stephanie Rumpza is a researcher in philosophy at Sorbonne Université (Paris-IV) and author of Phenomenology of the Icon: Mediating God through the Image (2023).

Table of Contents

Foreword: Descartes Beneath the Mask
Translators' Note
I. Doubt, the Supreme Game
1. Between Two Doubts
2. The Cartesian Construction of Doubt
3. A Review of Former Doubts
4. The Mathesis Universalis and the Radical Pyrrhonian Argument
5. From One Performative to the Other
6. Doubt as First Principle
II. Ego sum, Outside the Subject
1. The Privileged Formulation
2. The Objection Starting from Substance
3. The Ego as Substance under Reserve
4. The Objection Starting from the Subject
5. The Objection Starting from Representation
6. The Non-reflexive Cogito
7. The Objection Starting from the Cause
8. The Ego Clear of All Cause
III. Knowing by Esteem
1. The Aporias of Generosity
2. Esteem, a Mode of Thinking
3. "The True Office of Reason
4. To Esteem, to Esteem Oneself (Montaigne)
5. Esteem in Love (Descartes)
6. Esteem and the Moi (Pascal)
7. A Practice of Doubt
IV. The Infinite: The Unfolding of Finitude
1. Finitude as a Question
2. The Limits without Limits
3. The Power and the Incomprehensibility
4. The Indetermination of the Perfect
5. The Ontic Infinite
6. The Transcendental Infinite
7. Experience and the Infinite
8. The Will Reduced to Infinity
V. From Descartes to Phenomenology, and Back
1. The Alleged Accord
2. Husserl's Disagreement
3. Heidegger's Disagreement
4. The Question of the Point of Departure
5. The Return to Phenomena Quatenus Quidam Cogitandi Modi
6. The Neutralization of the Origin and the Criterion of Evidence
7. The Doubling of the Res and the Correlation of Appearing
8. Thought as Decision
9. Thinking by Acts
VI. Montaigne, or Doubt without Ego sum, Ego existo
1. Without "Any Communication with Being"
2. "The Being Outside of Being," or the Dying "Moi"
3. The "Moi" without Cogitatio of Self
4. "Keeping to Oneself," or the Reduction
5. The "Entire Form"
6. "My Universal Being"
7. Being and "Life"
8. To God's Grace
VII. Hobbes, or the Idea and Being as Body
1. The Debate about the Idea
2. Unimaginable Ideas
3. Ideas of God and the Self
4. The Question of Substance
5. The Privilege of Simple Material Natures
6. Conceived Being, or the Body
7. The Irreducible Privilege of the Cogitatio
VIII. Spinoza, or the Unification of the Proofs of the Existence of God
1. Delay and Divergence
2. The Cartesian Origin of the Multiplication of Proofs
3. The Irreducible Plurality of Definitions
4. Perfection and Cause
5. Perfection and the Infinite
6. The Unification of Metaphysical Names
IX. Spinoza: Adequation and Vision
1. The Construction of Inadequacy
2. The Conditions of Adequacy: Spinoza's Agreement with Descartes
3. Divine Knowledge and Adequacy: Spinoza's Disagreement with Descartes
4. The Conquest and the Aporia of Adequacy
5. The First Challenge of the Recourse to Adequacy
6. The Second Challenge of the Recourse to Adequacy
7. Spinozist Thought and the Beatific Vision
Conclusion: The Descartes to Come
Appendix: Montaigne, or the Proper Usage of the Skepticism of Saint Augustine
Notes
Index of Names

Editorial Reviews

"In his great work, Jean-Luc Marion peels back the Cartesian masks to reveal an authentic Descartes from beneath the layers of interpretations and commentaries by Cartesians and anti-Cartesians, also discussing those, such as Montaigne and Hobbes, whose work constrained him or set up false expectations for his philosophy. This is a marvelous enterprise which initiates Marion's renewed efforts to read, reread, and rethink the Cartesian corpus from end to end." —Roger Ariew, Distinguished UniversityProfessor, University of South Florida

"Once again, Marion unmasks Descartes with charming irreverence, reading him alongside his near contemporaries—Montaigne, Hobbes, and Spinoza—and ours. And once again, he shows us something fresh and new in these texts." —Daniel Garber, A. Watson J. Armour III UniversityProfessor, Princeton University

From the Publisher