Renè Descartes (1596-1650) died when Queen Christina invited him to live in a freezing-cold castle in Sweden and teach her science-philosophy. She had insisted they meet daily at 5 am, and then apparently ignored him, while he got sicker and sicker. Descartes lost a daughter and was devastated, as one might expect. He faced a lot of opposition for what he wrote, not only content-wise but also because he chose to write his famous discourse in French, not in Latin as was the habit of academics, which deliberately challenged traditional authority. A very dangerous thing to do at the time. And then hundreds of years later, his name has evolved into a pejorative, in neo-materialist discourse at any rate, to describe the mechanistic Western worldview, which many argue, has directly led to an entanglement of existentially threatening crises affecting the entire globe. Maybe it’s because I’m thinking, reading, wondering what to do with the topic of empathy – but I have begun to feel sorry for Descartes. It has taken me ages to write these notes because it feels like heresy. And maybe I’m talking crap. However, he is blamed for perpetuating mechanistic mind/body dualism, and for rendering matter inert, and for insisting that ‘animals’ (as opposed to ‘humans’, which itself was understood in limited terms) were mere machines, although he later softened this position. I too absorbed the phrase ‘Cartesian’ as a pejorative, a disavowal of the dualistic view of reality he is known for perpetuating.
Lately, despite being a committed non-dualist and materialist, I have become increasingly uneasy about condemning Descartes so easily, especially given I’d never read a word the man wrote. I have since rectified that.
The main source of my unease is the irony which stems from the fact that movements that often express a desire to shift away from the hyper-individualism that mechanism seems to generate, a view frequently found in neo-materialist writing, ends up focusing on an individual to blame for the dualism and hyper-individualism of the West. According to Joseph Henrich (2020), a more probable story is that our individuality along with our commitment to mechanistic dualism result from a multi-pronged nexus involving centuries-long interactions (and intra-actions since we’re discussing neo-materialisms) involving the Roman Catholic Church, Protetism and crucially literacy. Reading and writing produced physical changes in our bodies, “reducing [our] default tendency towards holistic visual processing” (Ibid; 3 – see screenshot below).
(Incidentally: My next blog could be titled “What has philosophy got to do with photography?” A friend asked me this a couple of weeks ago and I’ve been thinking about an answer ever since).
Some random notes:
- My current project (see the above Miro board) aims to explore the role of empathy in a world in which we speak to machines and their exceptionally fast and dynamically functional pattern-finding programmes as if they were our friends, teachers, or therapists. I focus on empathy because it seems to have become a bit unfashionable by some which is a serious problem, I think.
- As part of the research, I read René Descartes because the shape of his writing is similar to another rationalist writer I’m focused on, Sophie de Grouchy (1766-1847) (e.g. vernacular, direct writing. Descartes breaks his thesis down into six digestible sections so non-academics can read them and he writes in French rather than Latin. De Grouchy writes eight letters also in French although that is more common by the time she is writing).
- Part Three of Descartes’ Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One’s Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences is devoted to the morality that emerges from his method or by which he lives. He talks about obeying laws and customs (this will be useful to compare with Arendt’s writing re. loss of tradition) and ends with a summation of his moral framework.
- Furthermore, he is part of a network of thinkers and knowledge-makers who have contributed to theories about morality and ethics, often as an extension of or opposing Descartes. As is de Grouchy.
- Nevertheless, most of what I read castigates Descartes for splitting the mind and body apart, exploring what that split entails for morality, patriarchy, and his stance on animals (no soul, just machines). Many simply have no truck with his dualism (myself included), in which mind/God/masculine are distinct and elevated above the so-called base body/matter/non-masculine.
- Dualism makes no sense to me, not least of all because I grew up and have remained an atheist. But perhaps more so, because when I was twenty, I went to drama school. It was run by an Alexander teacher. The Alexander Technique, named after Frederick Matthias (FM) Alexander (1869-1955) provides people with an holistic approach to addressing unhelpful habits in the body that can lead to pain, loss of voice or illness. The technique is antithetical to mind/body dualism. Even so, the habit of separating emotional/mental from the body, as I have done here demonstrates that despite my suspicion of a dualistic framework, our common language makes it hard to avoid talking in dualistic terms.
- We in the West struggle to express a non-dualistic reality, it is inscribed in our language, the language we use to read and write and speak about reality. We refer to mental health or physical health, for instance, instead of systemic health. What word might we come up with to encompass the whole system, which might also include the environment? “Enbrained” bodies is a Braidottian phrase developed to overcome mind/body dualism at least. System theory (which has its detractors, is also helpful).
- The very thing neo-materialism critiques – dualism as the dominant world view – is inescapable as we discuss it; because language is an immanent becoming of the world in which it manifests, and also reinforces the world as it is used.
- The modern epoch with its liquid code may be disrupting that reality. This is what my work has long focused on. We could be heading for the collapse of Enlightenment/mechanistic dualisms; but paradoxically, most likely as a response to that liquidisation – deeply entrenched opposing ideologies and beliefs emerge. Joanna Zylinska (2024; 253) recently wrote about ‘diffused seeing’, enabled by technical images which provide an opportunity and “desire to visualise anew, assembling alternative if shaky visions of justice and politics, that we can find the solace of there being a future in the first place”. A diffused view may overcome dualistic thought. But our technologies, Matt McManus writes in What is Post Modern Conservatism, “reinforce a dualistic vision of the world, amplifying partisanship, the sense of victimization, and the lust to vent social aggression to warrant attention and praise” (2020: 7). And anyone who has been on Twitter or Facebook or some other social media platform, will have succumbed to that flow at some point, no matter what political colours one wears. ALL of us. (This could be something I address in the empathy project – the paradox of Now). That said, we live in a time of paradox. Arendt (2006) writes about this, as does Andrew Dewdney (2021).
- Perhaps I am becoming more conscious of my own areas of fixedness, as I think about René Descartes and the way his name carries the blame for dualism.
- Our dualistic framework is equated with modernity’s grotesque individualism.
- Arendt (2006; 55 & 67) tells us that “Descartes became the father of modern philosophy because he generalized the experience of the preceding as well as his own generation” and “…the modern age [16/17th century to the moment the first atomic bomb was dropped], previously assumed to have begun with the Renaissance, has been traced back into the very heart of the Middle Ages.” The story is always more complex.
- But if we object to hyper-individualism, what happens when a single force or person is ‘blamed’. Do we blame Trump alone for what is going on in America? (Isn’t Trump filling a Trump-shaped gap that has opened up due to a range of other factors?) Perhaps a diffused [or a Bardian diffractive] reading would be more in keeping with the aims of neo-materialism, in which we comprehend that Descartes expressed something emerging in the world at the time, perhaps borne out of a desire to bridge religion and science. And to counter religious dogma, which he explains in his Discourse. In any case, according to Roger Scruton (yes, him… one of several readers across the political spectrum), someone called Gómez Pereira (1500–1567) came up with a strict separation of mind and body at least 100 years before Descartes, but his wording wasn’t as catchy.
- Descartes got into a lot of trouble at the time. His discourse put his life in danger. It was a dangerous time to be challenging epistemological authority, for centuries equated with religious authority, which at the time had begun its slow crumbling, thanks largely to science, but also in no small part to its own hubris (ibid; Kaufman, 2021; Scruton, 2002). Challenging authority could and often did get you killed in ways that were pretty gruesome.
I am not suggesting that we should embrace Descartes and a split reality. And of course, his plain speaking could be correlated with today’s populist politics and anti-intellectualism rather than a gesture aimed at overcoming academic gate-keeping for the elite. Certainly, there is plenty to convince one that mechanistic dualism is flawed and unhelpful. In any case, structurally, our technology is changing our view regardless, as it infiltrates our being. But I do begin to wonder how we can use one man’s name while trying to undo some of the the iniquities borne of individualism. Especially when by all accounts, that man thought he was challenging the dogma of the church and its authoritarianism of his day.
Additonal Notes:
On the violence of challenging authority in the 16th century:
William Tyndale was executed in 1536. His crime? Translating the Bible into English so it could be read by anyone, rather than only those who spoke Latin, i.e. priests. I asked a large language model to tell me about others – and checked for hallucinations/conflations before sharing.: Étienne Dolet (1509-1546): A French scholar, printer, and humanist was executed for heresy, and translating works by Plato and other classical authors into French, making them accessible to a wider audience. Jan Hus (1369-1415): While slightly earlier than Tyndale, Hus was a Czech theologian who was burned at the stake for heresy. One of his “offences” was advocating for the translation of religious texts into vernacular languages. Giordano Bruno (1548-1600): An Italian philosopher and astronomer who was burned at the stake by the Roman Inquisition. While his execution was later than Tyndale’s, it was partly due to his efforts to spread scientific knowledge that challenged church doctrine. Printers and book distributors: Many unnamed printers and distributors of vernacular Bibles and other prohibited texts faced persecution, imprisonment, and sometimes death throughout Europe during this period. Martin Luther (1483-1546): While not executed, Luther faced excommunication and was declared an outlaw for his translation of the Bible into German, among other actions challenging the Catholic Church’s authority.
Refs:
Arendt, H. (2006) Between past and future: eight exercises in political thought. New York: Penguin Books (Penguin classics).
Berges, S. (2023) Sophie de Grouchy. Available at: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2023/entries/sophie-de-grouchy/ (Accessed: 2 July 2024).
Braidotti, R. (2019) Posthuman knowledge. Medford, MA: Polity.
Descartes, R. (1637) Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One’s Reason and Seeking Truth in the Sciences Available at: https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/descartes1637.pdf Accessed 30/09/24
Dewdney, A. (2021) Forget photography. London: Goldsmiths Press.
Henrich, J. (2020) The WEIRDest People in the World. S.I.: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Available at: https://api.overdrive.com/v1/collections/v1L1BmUAAAA2X/products/aed95372-8c46-493a-915f-6e2db8e463c2 (Accessed: 15 February 2021).
Kaufman, P.B. (2021) The New Enlightenment and the Fight to Free Knowledge. Seven Stories Press.
McManus, M. and DeJong, D. (eds) (2020) What is post-modern conservatism? essays on our hugely tremendous times. Winchester, UK Washington, USA: Zero Books (zer0 books).
Episode 76, René Descartes (Parts I -V) (2020) The Panpsycast Philosophy Podcast. Available at: https://thepanpsycast.com/panpsycast2/episode76-p1 (Accessed: 9 October 2024).
What is the Alexander Technique and what are its Benefits? (2020) The Complete Guide to the Alexander Technique. Available at: https://alexandertechnique.com/at/ (Accessed: 30 September 2024).
Scruton, R. (2002) Spinoza: a very short introduction. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press (Very short introductions).
Zylinska, J. (2024) ‘Diffused Seeing: The Epistemological Challenge of Generative AI’, Media Theory, 8(1), pp. 229–258.