ON THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE PRIMACY OF THE SOUL IN THE CHARTESIAN MEDITATIONS: THE GNOSIOLOGICAL STATUS OF THE RES COGITANS

Abstract

In this article I aim to examine and elucidate the cartesian foundations that underpin the res cogitans’s primacy within the methodological trajectory of knowledge in the Meditations. Given that the fundamental presuppositions of the text appear to remain in continuous dialogue with the classical philosophical tradition, I seek to demonstrate such connections in order to identify the principal argumentative structures and to analyse the conceptual development as well as its direct impact on Cartesian thought. To this end, I begin with an analysis of the epistemological progression within the Meditations in order to clarify its central concepts and thereby avoid ambiguities and interpretative confusions concerning the status of the soul in Descartes’ work. A particular attention is given to the recurrent and often misleading attribution of a strict dualism in the Descartes’s thought, an interpretation that overlooks the complexity of The Passions of the Soul as well as the secondary literature with which Descartes is in explicit dialogue and in which supports his thought. Finally, it is argued that a certain divine element is operative within the faculty of understanding which functions as a necessary and foundational condition of the entire Cartesian epistemological progression that is, in itself, the primary ground for the indubitable existence of the res cogitans, as expressed in the foundational proposition cogito ergo sum, the first principle of certain knowledge.