Abstract

Menn presents here a radical reading of Descartes’s relation to the works of St. Augustine. As he briefly reports it, the reigning scholarly view, initiated by Gilson and Gouhier, has been that “Descartes does not fuse faith and reason; on the contrary, he keeps them rigorously separate, following the Thomist rather than the Augustinian model. Therefore... Descartes does not share the Augustinian spirit, nor the Augustinian conception of philosophy itself”. Menn rejects this interpretation root and branch. Descartes’s goal, he argues, was to “construct a complete scientific system... on the basis of an Augustinian metaphysics”. Thus “... the entire metaphysics of the Meditations is the result of this process of adaptation of Augustinian metaphysics”. Menn presents his case in two parts. Part 1, “Augustinian Wisdom,” offers a survey of the position, first of Plotinus, and then of Augustine. Part 2 is a laborious reading of the Meditations in the light of Menn’s major thesis.