Rene Descartes - The Passions of the Soul and Other Late Philosophical Writings (Oxford Worlds Classics)

OXFORD WORLDS CLASSICS

THE PASSIONS OF THE SOUL

AND OTHER LATE PHILOSOPHICAL WRITINGS

REN DESCARTES was born at La Haye near Tours on 31 March 1596. He was educated at the Jesuit Collge de La Flche in Anjou, and at the University of Poitiers, where he took a Licentiate in Law in 1616. Two years later he entered the army of Prince Maurice of Nassau in the Netherlands, and met a local schoolmaster, Isaac Beeckman, who fostered his interest in mathematics and physics. After further travels in Europe he settled in Paris in 1625, and came into contact with scientists, theologians, and philosophers in the circle of the Minim friar Marin Mersenne. At the end of 1628 Descartes left for the Netherlands, which he made his home until 1648; he devoted himself to carrying forward the mathematical, scientific, and philosophical work he had begun in Paris. When he learned of the condemnation of Galileo for heresy in 1633, he abandoned his plans to publish a treatise on physics, and under pressure from his friends consented to have the Discourse on the Method printed, with three accompanying essays on topics in which he had made discoveries. In 1641 his Meditations on First Philosophy appeared, setting out the metaphysical underpinnings of his physical theories; these were accompanied by objections written by contemporary philosophers, and Descartess replies to them. His writings provoked controversy in both France and the Netherlands, where his scientific ideas were banned in one university; his works, however (including the Principles of Philosophy of 1644), continued to be published, and to bring him notoriety and renown. In 1648 he accepted an invitation from Queen Christina of Sweden to settle in Stockholm; it was there he died of pneumonia on 11 February 1650.

MICHAEL MORIARTY is Drapers Professor of French at the University of Cambridge. Among his publications are Early Modern French Thought: The Age of Suspicion (2003), Fallen Nature, Fallen Selves: Early Modern French Thought II (2006), and Disguised Vices: Theories of Virtue in Early Modern French Thought (2011). He has edited Descartess Meditations on First Philosophy for Oxford Worlds Classics.

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Acknowledgements

FOR inspiration and support I most warmly thank Terence Cave, Susan James, Ian Maclean, Quentin Skinner, and Rebecca Wilkin. It has been a pleasure, while putting this volume together, to work in the Department of French and Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages at the University of Cambridge, and especially alongside my early-modernist colleagues. I have benefited especially from Emma Gilbys Cartesian insights, and from her energy in organizing intellectual exchanges, including a conference on Descartes in Cambridge in September 2014. I have also had the advantage of the friendly and stimulating atmosphere of Peterhouse, where my colleagues Tim Crane and Scott Mandelbrote organized a Descartes reading group, and I have had Mari Jones and Claire White as colleagues in French. Many thanks are due also to Judith Luna for commissioning this volume and for all her prompt and effective assistance and generous encouragement. Thanks also to Laurien Berkeley for her vigilant and helpful copy-editing. My greatest debt, as always, is to Morag, James, and John.

Beyond these personal connections, anyone working on Descartes knows how much he or she owes to the generations of scholars in various disciplines and from many countries whose work has illuminated the life, background, and above all the texts of this author. I hope that my own debts are, however imperfectly, acknowledged in the notes.