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Descartes: Body and Soul

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Peter Remnant
Peter Remnant*
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia
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Extract

There is an account of the soul's capacity to activate its body which is frequently attributed to Descartes and, so far as I know, has only once been said not to represent his opinion on this topic. I shall refer to it with, I hope, pardonable exaggeration as the standard account. The earliest attributions to Descartes of the standard account, which I have been able to discover, are in various writings by Leibniz; there is a rather full version in his “Explanation of the New System of the Communication of Substances” (1696):

You know that M. Descartes believed that the same quantity of motion is conserved in bodies …. Even so, the changes which take place in the body as a consequence of the modifications of the soul caused him embarrassment, because they seemed to violate this law. He thought therefore that he had found a way out of the difficulty, which is certainly ingenious, by saying that we must distinguish between motion and direction of motion; and that the soul cannot increase or diminish the motive force, but that it changes the direction or determination of the course of the animal spirits, and it is in this way that voluntary motions take place.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , September 1979 , pp. 377 - 386
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1979

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References

1 Leibniz: Philosophical Writings, ed. G.H.R. Parkinson (1973), pp. 129f. See also Leibniz's letter to Arnauld, April 30, 1687; New Essays on Human Understanding I.1, preamble; Theodicy §60;Monadology §80.

2 Other subscribers to the standard account include: S.V. Keeling, Descartes, 2nd ed. (1968), pp. 164 and n, 219f; A.G.A. Balz, Cartesian Studies (1951), p. 206n; J. Ohana, “Note sur la théorie Cartésienne de Ia direction du mouvement”, Etudes philosophiques 16 (1961 ), pp. 313ff. Ohana is probably unique in wishing to maintain not only that the standard account correctly describes Descartes's opinion but that, suitably interpreted, it also correctly describes the facts. Many recent writers do not mention the standard account at all: e.g. L. J. Beck, Anthony Kenny and Hiram Caton. Since Caton denies that Descartes believes in any sort of interaction between soul and body, by implication he denies that Descartes believes the standard account; however the only explicit denial of this that I know of occurs in Norman Kemp Smith's Studies in the Cartesian Philosophy (1902), p. 83, n. 2.

3 This and subsequent quotations from the Principles of Philosophy are from Descartes: Philosophical Writings, tr. and ed. G.E.M. Anscombe and P.T. Geach (1954).

4 Compare Kemp Smith: “Leibniz … , and also many modern commentators, asserts that Descartes himself tried to escape the difficulty [by way of the standard account]. But though Descartes frequently speaks of the motion of the ‘animal spirits’ as being merely directed (not originated) by the movements of the pineal gland, he never, so far as we are aware, suggests that those movements of the pineal gland, which are involved in voluntary action, can be explained in a similar manner as previously existing and merely guided by the mind” (see note 2 above).

5 The final sentence is omitted from the Anscombe-Geach translation.

6 The key passages have been gathered together in Descartes’ Philosophical Writings, sel. and tr. N. Kemp Smith (1952), pp. 269ff; Descartes's letters (but not Elizabeth's) are given in full in Descartes: Philosophical Letters, tr. and ed. A. Kenny (1970), hereinafter referred to as Kenny.

7 From the account in the Passions it might be thought that pineal glands are the only inhabitants of the realm of animated bodies; elsewhere, however, Descartes stresses that although the soul can exercise its force at any point in the body it is in fact co-extensive with the whole body, “the whole in the whole, and the whole in any of its parts” (Descartes’ Philosophical Writings, p. 279).

8 See e.g. Treatise of Man, paras. 1-2; Discourse on Method V, para. 2; Optics I, para. 3; Principles of Philosophy III.44.

9 See The Leibniz-Arnauld Correspondence, ed. and tr. H.T. Mason (1967), p. 117.

10 I am grateful to my colleague Jonathan Bennett for comments on a draft of this paper and to Ann Mackenzie of York University for help in locating texts.