Theseus in the Labyrinth: philosophy as teratomachy in Descartes
Abstract: For Descartes, nature must be interpreted through the formulation of
a limited number of simple laws used to describe the complex multiplicity of the real,
focusing on the rule and normality rather than on the exception and monstrosity.
Nevertheless, monstrosity has a vital theoretical function in Descartes' philosophy,
and it resurfaces continually in his system. In the first part of this article, I analyze the
main figures of monstrosity in Cartesian philosophy. By offering a new reading of the
evil genius and the deceiver God in terms of absolute monstrosity, I intend to
demonstrate the novel role played by the will in this philosophical ‘teratomachy’. In
the second part of this article, examining the peculiar status Admiration occupies in
the economy of the passions, I analyze a passage from the Cogitationes circa
generatione animalium, the only text in which Descartes explicitly discusses physical
monstrosities. I argue that these pages, in which Descartes subscribes to a rigidly
mechanistic, epigenetic view of embryology, are in tension with other parts of his
work, especially with the doctrine of final causes and the idea of continuous creation.
The theme of monstrosity is thus revealed as a tool for assessing the internal
coherence of Cartesian thought. My theory is that the entire philosophy of Descartes
can be read as a veritable war against a certain idea of monstrosity.
Introduction1
One of the main elements of the scientific paradigm of seventeenth-century
mechanism was the formulation of a limited number of simple laws or rules. This
effort was aimed at collecting the multiplicity of phenomena and the virtually infinite
plurality of the observed reality under their interpretative umbrella. To do this, it was
both necessary and desirable to leave aside singular and exceptional cases in order to
construct instead a general normativity that embraced reality as a whole. Descartes
was one of these philosophers whose interest was unequivocally focused on the rule
as a description of the general course of things. His interest, that is to say, was in the
rule rather than the exception, in physiology rather than pathology, and in normality
rather than monstrosity.
However, despite this explicit methodological approach, Descartes' entire work is
haunted by phantoms, oddities, and monstrosities. Between metaphors and analogies,
like a phoenix, the monster rises up continuously in the works of Descartes. What I
suggest in this article is that Cartesian philosophy as a whole is a ‘teratomachy’: a
1
References to Descartes employ the following abbreviations:
AT: René Descartes, Œuvres de Descartes, ed. by Charles Adam and Paul tannery, 12 vols.
(Paris: J. Vrin, 1964-74).
CSM: René Descartes, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, trans. John Cottingham, Robert
Stoothof, and Dugald Murdoch, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
CSMK: René Descartes, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, trans. John Cottingham et
alii, vol. 3, The Correspondence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
1
war, in other words, waged against a certain idea of monstrosity. The fact that
monstrosity remains alluded to, often only hinted at and apparently peripheral, does
anything but diminish its importance. On the contrary, its allusional character
stimulates the interest of the reader in the use of these tropes and adds to their
hermeneutic depth.
The monster is constantly pushed to the margins by Descartes, yet remains the main
challenge both to his thought and to the new philosophy, neither of which could
afford the luxury of leaving any phenomena unexplained. The monster is therefore
evoked, touched upon, and then embraced and neutralized with powerful metaphors
whose function is precisely to disempower its subversive character. Our task, then, is
to analyze the various figures of monstrosity in order to shed light on one of the main
theoretical problems of the mechanistic philosophy as it traversed the entire
seventeenth century.2
In my view, monstrosity has a rhetorical significance in Descartes that is anything but
marginal, along with a theoretical function of the utmost importance. Its meaning can
be explained only by understanding the polemical movement out of which it arose: in
the tension, that is, between the need to marginalize and neutralize monstrous
exception, and the explicit intention to use it theoretically so as to confirm the rule
and the normal. This is not a contradiction on the part of Descartes. On the contrary, it
is a necessary and productive ambiguity that points to the need to use to his own
advantage one of the most challenging theoretical challenges of seventeenth-century
mechanistic philosophy.
This ambiguity is particularly apparent in his writings on medicine, embryology, and
physiology.3 Critics have repeatedly stressed the limits of Cartesian philosophy in
these fields. Without wishing to step into the shoes of the "avocat attardé de la cause
cartésienne" suggested by Pierre Mesnard in the late 1930s,4 I believe that these limits
are more interesting if interpreted as productive tensions arising from the spirit of the
new era, rather than as signs of backwardness or delays in an imagined history of
scientific achievements, or stories of "magnificent and progressive fates." Even so, we
still need to pinpoint the moment when these kinds of tensions begin to give rise to
real difficulties in a system. In his highly perceptive analysis of the work of Gueroult,
George Canguilhem gave a very good description of this overlap of productive
tensions and hermeneutic difficulties in Cartesianism, offering at the same time an
important lesson on historical method.5
2 In
addition to the classic study by Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park, Wonders and the Order of
Nature, 1150-1750 (New York: Zone Books, 1998), see Zakiya Hanafi, "Medicine and the Mechanized
Body," The Monster in the Machine: Magic, Medicine and the Marvelous in the Time of the Scientific
Revolution (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2000) on the relationship between
monstrosity and the mechanistic world view, with reference to Descartes.
3 For more on Cartesian physiology, see Auguste Georges-Berthier, “Le méchanisme et la physiologie
au XVIIe siècle,” Isis 2 (1914): 37-89 and 3 (1920): 21-58; Pierre Mesnard, “L’esprit de la physiologie
Cartésienne,” Archives de Philosophie 13 (1937): 181-220; Anne Bitbol-Hespériès, “Cartesian
physiology,” in Descartes’ Natural Philosophy, ed. by Stephen Gaukroger, John Schuster and John
Sutton (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 349-382; .
4 See Mesnard, “L’esprit de la physiologie Cartésienne,” 182.
5 See George Canguilhem, “Organisme et modèle mécaniques. Réflexions sur la biologie cartésienne,”
Revue Philosophique de la France et de l’étranger 80 (1955): 281-299, for whom "all respect and
admiration aside, it behooves us to provide a rigorous exposition of what obstacles Cartesian rigour
came up against, giving ourselves the responsiblity of deciding whether or not it was successful or not,
2
In an incisive analysis of theodicy in the time of Descartes, Sergio Landucci, in his
turn, has shown that there is an implicit tension between the content of the Fourth
Meditation, and the final part of the Sixth Meditation. This ambiguity allows for two
opposing solutions to the theme of “evil” and its justification within the Cartesian
system. On the one hand, we have Leibniz extolling the perfection of creation in an
effort to take what we might define as an Augustinian view to its extreme
consequences. On the other, we have Malebranche and then Bayle who instead
overturned this view to exalt the wisdom of the Creator, at the cost of admitting
imperfection into the created world.6
Now, although the link between "evil" and "monstrosity" is evident, I do not believe
that the two concepts fully coincide. To interpret the monster only as a particular case
or special application of a more general concept of evil diminishes its theoretical and
scientific interest. The theological problem of the justification of the created world
does not correspond exactly to the physical violation – real or apparent – of the rules
and laws through which nature works. Without providing a precise definition of
monstrosity,7 therefore, I suggest that its study must be intertwined with the problem
of theodicy, opening up the inquiry, however, onto further points of philosophical and
scientific interest.
In the first part of this article I will analyze the main figures of monstrosity in
Cartesian philosophy, showing their rhetorical impact and theoretical function. I will
explain how they are essential to the very foundation of the Cartesian system. The
notions of the evil genius and the deceiver God, which must be considered separately
within the broader issue of theodicy, instead converge and join forces in the two-faced
figure of radical monstrosity. It is a figure to which the Cartesian subject must
respond forcefully in the search for a cornerstone to hold up the entire system. This
inquiry will necessarily entail an examination of the peculiar status that Admiration
holds in the Cartesian economy of the passions. On the one hand, Admiration draws
constantly on the conceptual sphere of monstrosity; on the other, it moves towards a
positive knowledge of the rare and "singular".
In the second part of this article I will analyze a passage from the Cogitationes circa
generatione animalium, the only text in which Descartes explicitly discusses physical
monstrosities. I will argue that these pages, in which Descartes subscribes to a rigidly
mechanistic, epigenetic view of embryology, are in tension with other parts of his
work, especially with the doctrine of final causes and the idea of continuous creation.
and, when necessary, accepting the risk of taking on, at our own expense, the study of the same
difficulties." See also Martial Gueroult, Descartes selon l’ordre des raisons (Paris: Aubier, 1953).
6 See Sergio Landucci, “Per la storia della teodicea nell’età cartesiana,” Rivista critica di storia della
filosofia 36 (1981): 401-437.
7 This cannot be done as a "premise" to seventeenth-century philosophy. Far more interesting, to my
mind, is the way the conceptual spheres in which these notions gravitate are linked discursively and
develop out of extremely fluid confines. C.P. Ragland, “Descartes’s Theodicy”, Religious Studies 43
(2007): 125-144, for example, discusses error as "an epistemological version of the problem of evil."
Similarly, we could discuss evil as "an ethical version of the problem of monstrosity", or monstrosity
as a "physical (and also metaphysical) version of the problem of evil." Rather than positing a definition
from the outset, I believe it can be derived from a historical study of the philosophical ideas of this
complex period straddling the crisis in the Renaissance conception of the world and the rise of the
mechanical world view. For more on these problems of definition, see Bernard Tocanne, L’idée de
nature en France dans la seconde moitié du XVII e siècle. Contribution à l’histoire de la pensée
classique (Paris: Klincksieck, 1978). More specifically on monstrosity, see Jean Ceard, La nature et les
prodiges. L’insolite au XVIe siècle (Genève: Droz, 1996).
3
The theme of monstrosity is thus revealed as a tool for assessing the internal
coherence of Cartesian thought.
1. Divertissements and true knowledge
Descartes is probably the first philosopher of the modern age to use juridical
terminology in a systematic and conscious way to describe mechanical phenomena.
Starting from the early 1630s, and in particular with De Mundo, Scholastic
philosophy was systematically put into question, not only with regard to its content,
but also and especially with regard to its language.8 It was in the language of laws,
norms, and rules that the metaphorical constellation serving as a backdrop for rational
mechanics, and more generally for the philosophy of the new era, began to be
expressed.9
But Descartes did not limit himself to the use of legal metaphors. Legal language was
also assigned the essential function of mediating between the new image of nature and
the new science whose task it was to describe it.10 Descartes was also, therefore,
among the first to explain what a law is, how it depends on God and how it is
impossible – despite His absolute freedom – that this world or others be subject to a
different kind of normativity. In the Cartesian lexicon, the law became the key to
understanding nature and its necessity. Knowledge of causes – the only one that made
sense in the new scientific context – necessarily had to be attained by describing the
general laws by which phenomena are produced.11
The question of investigating general rules rather than focusing on the exceptions and
special cases typically pursued by the previous philosophy is at the heart of the
Cartesian research program from the time of the Recherche de la verité.12 Descartes
does his best to stage the opposition between a method of inquiry that heads directly
8
See Jorge Secada, Cartesian metaphysics: The Scholastic Origins of Modern Philosophy (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2000).
9 See Daniel Garber, Descartes Embodied: Reading Cartesian Philosophy through Cartesian Science
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), especially Chap. 7, “Mind, Body, and the Laws of
Nature in Descartes and Leibniz,” 133-167. See also John R. Milton, “The Origin and Development of
the Concept of the ‘Laws of Nature’,” Archives européennes de Sociologie 22 (1981): 173-195, Sophie
Roux, “Les lois de la nature au XVIIe siècle: le problème terminologique,” Revue de Synthèse 122
(2001): 531-576 ; John Henry, “Metaphysics and the Origin of Modern Science: Descartes and the
Importance of Laws of Nature,” Early Science and Medicine 9 (2004): 73-114.
10 According to Catherine Wilson, “From Limits to Laws: The Construction of the Nomological Image
of Nature in Early Modern Philosophy,” in Natural Law and the Laws of Nature in Early Modern
Europe, ed. Lorraine Daston and Michael Stolleis (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 13-28, this is actually
what made it possible for Descartes to posit the origin of the universe as a sort of 'chaos' without
'chance'. The notion of the whirlpools – as Descartes himself stressed several times – is not in
disagreement with the Atomist version of the origins of the universe. He does distance himself quite
clearly from the Atomists, however, insofar as the development of the universe from the original chaos
obeys laws rather than the automaton of Democritus, Epicurus and Lucretius.
11 The conceptual distance that separates Descartes from Bacon, in this sense, is already enormous. For
Bacon, knowledge is still largely the collection and description of phenomena in their diversity,
complexity and reciprocal relations. For Descartes it is a matter, rather, of reducing this complexity to a
limited number of principles, to a clearly known series of laws. The undertaking of knowledge is not
only to clarify phenomena and their relations, but also to state for the first time, in a clear and distinct
fashion, the laws describing their occurrence. See Stephen Gaukroger, Francis Bacon and the
Transformation of Early-Modern Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
12 This is the true watershed – one might say – between a praiseworthy but vague interest in the
renewal of philosophy versus a necessary, mature search characterizing the new method of inquiry. See
Letter CXLVI to Mersenne of October 11, 1638, AT II, 380, CSMK, 124.
4
to the gathering of general rules versus one that dallies with unique and exceptional
cases, unnecessarily delaying the progress of knowledge.13 Epistemon insists on
knowing more about some of the “special” difficulties in each science, such as human
contrivances, apparitions, illusions and all the marvelous effects attributed to magic.
Not so that he can become a magician, by any means, but "in order to prevent our
judgement from being beguiled by wonder at something of which it is ignorant".14
Descartes leaves the matter suspended here, and Epistemon's questions remain
unanswered. The philosophical and scientific program of Eudoxus, on the other hand,
is set out in clear terms.
Human life has objective limits. An economy of knowledge must thus be constructed
with care, without dissipating the little energy we have at our disposal. It would be
folly to pass over the most useful and necessary things to learn how to speak "Swiss"
or "Lower Breton" or, even worse, to study all the herbs and stones that come from
the Indies, behold the Phoenix, and, in short, all the marvels of nature.15 A "science"'
of the monstrous would fall under this category, but would be vain curiositas and an
unnecessary waste of energy. Better then to cast doubt on these things, cast doubt on
everything, and rebuild the foundations of knowledge, not on the accumulative
"plenitude" of sterile erudition, but on the emptiness of a radical doubt that has little
or nothing to do with marvels, monstrosities, miracles, and prodigies. The uncertainty
caused by doubt – continues Eudoxus – may make you afraid. But it is like the empty
images that alarm us in the dark of night: if we flee them, they follow us; but if we
approach them, as if to touch them, our fear vanishes in an instant.16
There is undoubtedly a "science of miracles", which can even be considered a part of
mathematics and which serves to reveal the illusions that the magicians claim to
produce using demons. Descartes speaks to Mersenne about this in the Fall of 1629.
Even though he despises these things, they could at least serve as a pleasant (although
useless) divertissement.17 Better in any case to leave aside these chimeras, monsters
and phantoms of all sorts, to turn to the construction of a system which only has room
for general rules, universal experiences, and normal phenomena.18
That is why the exceptional, the miraculous, and the monstrous apparently remain
outside the system. There is simply no place for them, because they are neither useful
13
His physiology, for example, writes Mesnard in "L'esprit de la physiologie cartésienne [The Spirit of
Cartesian Physiology," 199, "...was never presented as an exhaustive explanation: in all Cartesian
constructs there are a small number of formative ideas [idées-mères] whose limited dialectics control
the entire body of the planned discipline."
14 See La Recherche de la Verité par la lumière naturelle, AT X, 504, CSM II, 404.
15 AT X, 503, CSM II, 403-404.
16 AT X, 513, CSM II, 408.
17 AT I, 21.
18 A number of slight misunderstandings with his long-time friend, Father Mersenne, arise out of this
topic starting as early as the late 1620s. Curious to hear the opinion of his brilliant young colleague,
Mersenne does not hesitate to ask for clarification on a series of apparently "strange" phenomena, such
as the spots that a mother's imagination produces on the fetus and which then appear on the new-born
baby. Although the subject is "worthy" of examination, responds Descartes, in reality he has not yet
addressed himself to it. See AT I, 153, CSMK, 26. See also the letter dated December 18, 1629. AT I,
83 ff., CSMK 13 ff. This is not about having or not having faith in individual observations. But,
inasmuch as they are addressed to "singular" phenomena and cannot be universalized, they hold no
interest.
5
nor interesting.19 This is where early mechanism differs substantially from its fully
mature version. Distinguished Cartesians in subsequent decades will feel obliged to
amply and explicitly address monstrosity, understood as the "exception" that puts the
system to the test and which, therefore, demands an explanation.20 The rule is saved
from the exception only to the extent it is able to explain, justify and take the
exception into account.
And yet, the monster reappears when we least expect it. For example, alongside the
peaceful, carefree walks along the canals of Amsterdam, another image of the
philosopher begins to emerge. He presents his philosophy as a veritable war against
monstrosity. With determination, he enters into the labyrinth of ignorance. Armed
with the weapons of the new method, he adventures where no one has dared to go
before, to confront the monster of ignorance face to face and eventually defeat it: "In
hoc uno totius humanæ industriæ summa continetur, atque hæc regula non minus
servanda est rerum cognitione agressurro, quam Thesei filum labyrinthum
ingressuro."21
Once again, the monster is not named, yet the reference is clear. This hunting
expedition against the Minotaur of ignorance, a monstrous metaphor of erring reason,
of knowledge based on affirmations which lack a method, is no less violent than
Plato's attack on the Sophists expressed in terms of fishing. The battle Descartes
wages against this type of monstrosity, which lies hidden in his prose, is precisely
what we need to bring to the surface. In order to grasp the exact rhetorical and
hermeneutic function of monstrosity in his philosophy, we need to reactivate what he
himself deployed to neutralize, tame, and finally destroy it.
2. The center and the periphery: the function of anomalies in Cartesian
philosophy
To define the theoretical scope of monstrosity for someone like Descartes who
rarely speaks of it directly, and who consciously strives to relegate it to the margins of
his system, entails a particular interpretative strategy. In the following section we will
bring into view the theoretical value of monstrosity, and even more importantly, we
will directly address its polemical scope. As we shall see, the only way to define the
concept of monstrosity is by allowing it to emerge out of the conflictual movement
which tends to eliminate it. One of Descartes' undertakings is to reject the monstrous,
to exile it beyond the margins of a method concerned with the general laws of the
universe.
19 Furthermore,
that nature works in the simplest way possible is commonly recognized. The
mechanistic philosophy – that of Descartes, Mersenne, or Roberval – rallies openly and without
ambiguity on this point, as an unambiguous and non-negotiable result of the confrontation between
different, conflicting astronomical theories. This simplicity prompts us to focus on the rule rather than
the exception. See on this point the classic studies by Robert Lenoble, Mersenne ou la naissance du
mécanisme (Paris, J. Vrin: 1943), Eduard Jan Dijksterhuis, De mechanisering van het wereldbeeld
(Amsterdam: J.M. Meulenhoff, 1950), René Dugas, La mécanique au XVIIe siècle (Neuchâtel: Editions
du Griffon, 1954).
20 On the appearance and frequency of the monstrous in the second half of the 17th century see Emile
Bouvier, “La croyance au marveilleux à l’époque classique,” in Mélanges d’histoire littéraire offerts à
Daniel Mornet (Paris: Nizet, 1951): 99-108, who shows how belief in the supernatural influences and
interacts with all the fields of inquiry (and discoveries) of the Enlightenment. See, of course, also Lynn
Thorndyke, A History of Magic and Experimental Science (New York: Cambridge University Press,
1941).
21 AT X, 380, CSM I, 20.
6
This objective is only partially achieved, however. In reality, the monstrous continues
to lay siege to the entire system, from the outside, and to threaten the system with its
theoretically subversive potential. Descartes is fully aware of this polemical tension.
To safeguard the esprit de système he is perfectly willing to expel the singular, the
rare and the monstrous from his inquiry. But, at the same time, he is quite cognizant
of the immense theoretical implications that the problem of monstrosity poses to the
mechanical philosophy. His challenge, therefore, is to "tame" these figures, at the
same time neutralizing their potentially subversive character and putting them to work
by giving them a positive function: the function, namely, of explaining and
confirming the rule to which they claim to be the exception.
This tension runs throughout all the major works of Descartes, as well as through his
correspondence. Although man does not understand many of the things in the world,22
"it would be irrational for us to doubt what we do understand correctly just because
there is something which we do not understand and which, so far as we can see, there
is no reason why we should understand."23 What we do not understand is not essential
and does not put into question what is clearly understandable.24 The exception,
therefore, is marginalized. It is driven outside the core of the system, to a place where
it is rendered harmless because it does not require any further investigation.
At the same time, however – and this is a symptom of the productive tension and
ambiguity at work in Cartesian thought – he strives continuously to show that
apparently inexplicable phenomena are actually comprehensible, whenever the
method and the conclusions of the new philosophy are employed: "There is no
phenomenon of nature which I have omitted to consider in this treatise."25 Part IV of
the Principia dwells on a series of phenomena that are prodigious or regarded as such,
and that can easily be accommodated within a fully mechanistic explanation.
The same oscillation can be found in Letter CXCIX of July 30, 1640 to Mersenne, in
which Descartes focuses on the subject of birthmarks, spots impressed on the fetus by
the mother's imagination. Descartes offers a mechanistic, although somewhat
elliptical explanation26 which attempts to tie the topic into the curious description of
an infant born with the same fracture of the arm that its mother had while pregnant.27
The curiosity stems from the fact that the baby was supposedly healed by applying the
22
For example how could God have made the eternal truths (that two plus two equals four) any
different from what they are? See Edward M. Curley, “Descartes on the Creation of the Eternal Truth,”
Philosophical Review 93 (1984): 569-597 and Steven Nadler, “Scientific Certainty and the Creation of
the Eternal Truths: A Problem in Descartes,” Southern Journal of Philosophy 25 (1987): 175-192.
23 Sextæ Responsiones, in AT VII, 436, CSM I, 294.
24 In any case, given the possible theological consequences of doubting what we do not understand, it is
absolutely vital to remember that there are things that come from an infinite God that we cannot
understand in our finiteness, but about which we cannot doubt nonetheless. See Principia philosophiæ
I, 25, AT VIII-1,14. CSM I, 201.
25 AT VIII-1, 323, CSM I, 285.
26 AT III, 121, CSMK, 148. Both the mother and child have the same "disposition" in the brain, and
therefore it is possible to deduce that "chaque membre de l'enfant correspond à chacun de ceux de la
mere, comme on peut prouver par raison mechanique [each of the child's limbs correspond to each of
the mother's, as can be proved by mechanical reason]". On the fetus in Cartesian metaphysics, see
Rebecca M. Wilkin, "Descartes, individualism, and the fetal subject," Differences: A Journal of
Feminist Cultural Studies 19 (2008): 96-127.
27 Described by Petrus Forestus [Pieter Van Foreest], Observationum et curationum chirurgicarum
libri quatuor posteriores de vulneribus, ulceribus, fracturis, luxationibus (Lugduni Batavorum: ex
officina Plantiniana Raphelengii, 1610).
7
same remedies that had been applied to the mother. In any case, the principles of his
philosophy appear sufficient to explain this apparently prodigious phenomenon.
Rebecca Wilkin's study on birthmarks traces the evolution and significance of the
maternal imagination and its effects on the fetus in early Cartesianism.28 At stake is
whether the mother's imagination is to be considered responsible for the
malformations of her new-born child, in other words, for the production of monsters.
In La Forge's view, for example, this question is the acid test for the entire
mechanistic philosophy, one that will later take on central importance as reworked by
Malebranche. Descartes' hesitancy is obvious, though. Just at the point where the
argument could take an interesting turn and sweep away all the absurd explanations of
the old philosophy, he draws up short, right at the threshold. Monstrosity, only
evoked, seems neglected or kept at a distance. Yet, in the same letter – this is how the
tension manifests as a symptom – Descartes insists on the fact that the principles of
his mechanism specifically explain these apparently inexplicable phenomena much
better than any other hypothesis. The "silk", for example, that grows on a girl's
forehead, or the thorn that blooms on the body of a Spaniard – the prodigious cases
mentioned by Mersenne – should perhaps be investigated more thoroughly. But in any
case,
Concerning your statement that it is not possible to explain this phenomenon by
referring to no other principle of life than heat, it seems to me on the contrary that
this explanation served better than any other. For heat being a principle common
to animals, plants and other bodies, it is not surprising that it serves to endow man
and plant with life. In contrast, if there were a need for a principle of life in plants
that was not of the same type as that which exists in animals, these could not be
compatible.29
There are two moves played out in this passage. The exceptional and prodigious
cases, the marginal and monstrous figures, are kept at a distance, away from the
center of the system. At the same time, they are reintegrated, whenever possible and
even at the cost of providing poorly structured explanations, in order for them to be
neutralized and used to confirm the general principles of the system. Given the fact
that these figures are anything but absent, it behooves us to explain their theoretical
function.
The first thing to observe is that Descartes' writings are populated by a plethora of
figures that are "marginal", hybrid, semi-pathological, borderline – in a word,
monstrous. Not only do these sorts of tropes crowd the pages, their position and
rhetorical function are anything but marginal. They abound, for example, in Letter
CDLX of November 23, 1646 to William Cavendish, Marquis of Newcastle, his
English friend with the "geometric mind."30 Descartes returns to the theme of the
primacy and uniqueness of "human" nature compared to animal nature.31 But no
28 Rebecca
M. Wilkin, “Essaying the Mechanical Hypothesis: Descartes, La Forge, and Malebranche
on the Formation of Birthmarks,” Early Science and Medicine 13 (2008): 533-567.
29 AT III, 122.
30 AT IV, 568-577, CSMK, 302-304.
31 On the letter to the Marquis of Newcastle see John Cottingham, “‘The only sure sign…’ Thought and
language in Descartes,” in Thought and Language, ed. by John M. Preston (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1998) 29-55, now in Cartesian Reflections: Essays on Descartes’s Philosophy
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
8
animal is capable of thought except for man. Although some of the beasts are stronger
or better endowed than we are for certain functions, they still remain "animals"
nonetheless. The only property that is typically and exclusively human is thought or
reason.
But how can he demonstrate this clearly to his friend Cavendish? This is the challenge
that gives rise to a series of monstrous and prodigious figures used to illustrate and
validate Descartes' argument. Sleepwalkers, for example, accomplish prodigious
feats, evidently without the use of reason.32 An even stronger argument, says
Descartes, is that only communication through words or signs unequivocally shows
the humanity of the human animal. That we are talking about words and signs must be
specified in order to include the "deaf and dumb" but exclude "parrots", which may
certainly utter articulate sounds but cannot speak. And where in this taxonomy are
"madmen" to be placed? In the human domain, of course, since they are clearly
capable of speaking "à propos" of certain topics, without however, being fully
rational. Once again, the "deaf and dumb", although "imperfect" men, show their full
humanity by inventing "special signs" to express their thoughts.33
Sleepwalkers, the deaf and dumb, madmen, beasts that speak or bury their dead…
beings that are both marginal and marvelous throng onto the scene to confirm the
rigid dualism that distinguishes and separates humanity from animality: no matter
how perfect the most perfect of mammals may be, they will always be more similar to
the most primitive and imperfect of inferior beings, like oysters or sponges, and
therefore devoid of immortal soul. The use of borderline figures seems to be the best
rhetorical strategy for Descartes. Standing at the limits and confines of this strict
division, monstrosity could be understood as a synonym of ambivalence and
interpreted as a sign of uncertainty. Instead, the intention is quite the opposite: to
show that these figures in particular, which are located "at the limit", imply no
ambiguity whatsoever; on the contrary, they confirm the rule. The theory is confirmed
both at its center and its margins thanks to the theoretical contribution of these
monstrous figures.
It is through the subject of blindness, however, that the heuristic power of a certain
idea of monstrosity is fully revealed. The concept occupies a central place in the
theory of knowledge, up to Locke's Sensism and the Enlightenment thought of
Molyneaux, Saunderson and Diderot.34 But it was Descartes who first exploited the
rhetorical and theoretical depth of its potential. In his Dioptrique, as we know, the
figure of the blind man serves to show how light is communicated in a straight line
from the object to our eyes. More generally, it is used to describe the fully mechanical
character of the "most universal and most noble" of the senses, namely, sight.
The blind "see" with their hands: they do not simply use their hands as if they were
eyes, their sense of touch is actually their sight. The differences that a "normal",
sighted man perceives in objects are grasped in a "similar" way to those a blind man
feels with his stick. But reality, as we know, is misleading. What we understand, for
example, about perspective (in which circles are depicted as ovals and squares as
lozenges) suggests a fundamental difference between reality and perception. The
32
Epistola CDLX, AT IV, 573, CSMK, 302-303.
AT IV, 575, CSMK, 303-304.
34 See Marion Chottin, ed., L’aveugle et le philosophe, ou comment la cécité donne à penser (Paris:
Publications de la Sorbonne, 2009).
33
9
same mental and rational operation that a blind person makes to translate the tactile
stimuli from the stick into mental images must be made by anyone who sees ovals and
lozenges while at the same time knowing perfectly well that he or she is looking at
circles and squares.
But then, it is the blind man, once again, a paradigmatic figure of abnormality (if not
monstrosity), that is used to explain, illustrate and confirm the main doctrine of the
system. The universal and universalizable principle – knowledge and the deceptive
and misleading relationship between reality and the senses – is explained through a
marginal, pathological figure. Descartes' rhetorical procedure is even more
interesting: not only because it proceeds in an opposite direction to what he
systematically and repeatedly states – that his sole interest is in the rule and the
universal to the detriment of the exception and the particular – but also because, in
this way, the monstrous and exceptional figure is fully controlled and neutralized. The
blind man – a figure of the 'deviant’ – is not an exception to the system, an anomaly
to explain inasmuch as it deviates from the rule. Quite the opposite: the anomaly is
directly employed and integrated into the system. It is put to work and, in this way,
fully tamed.35
One often has the impression, however, that these marginal and monstrous figures
that find their way into Descartes' writings actually arrive from the outside. As if
clarity and distinctness, the primary objectives of proper philosophizing, were
constantly threatened by what is doubtful and indistinct. Philosophy is harried by
these anomalies of the system, perception, and knowledge that come to infiltrate and
populate its presentation, and which expose its foundations to a precariousness that
undoubtedly reflects the precarious nature of our senses and cognitive abilities.
The evocative power, for example, of the famous image somewhere between a dream
and a nightmare that suddenly emerges in the Second Meditation is extraordinary. We
should not be surprised at the weakness of our mind reflected in our improper, but
common use language when we say video. I see this wax, but what I really should say
is “I judge” what I see to be wax; namely, colors, shapes, and nothing more.
Similarly, when I look out of the window and say that I see human beings, "Yet do I
see any more than hats and coats which could conceal automatons?"36 What do these
simulacra of truth – more properly "monsters" of the perception than of the
imagination – come to disturb?
What betrays us, then, is our judgement. There is nothing anomalous in the
"imagination", i.e., in the mental representation of "images" which are neither true nor
false per se. This is also why the chimera – yet another archetype of monstrosity –
35 Veronique
Le Ru, “L’aveugle et son bâton, ou comment Descartes résout l’énigme de la
communication de l’action ou de la force mouvent,” in L’aveugle et le philosophe, 15-25 shows that
the figure of the blind man has an even greater theoretical scope in Cartesian philosophy than
previously noted. Not only does this figure of "the deviant" explain the movement of light and the fully
mechanical character of the sense of sight, it also serves to resolve the more complex problem of the
communication of action and the driving force.
36 CSM II, 21, AT VII, 32. The French version is more rhetorically "aggressive" and powerful
compared to the "automata" of the Latin text. The capacity of an automaton to walk is not excluded in
principle from Cartesian philosophy, nor is it particularly problematic. All the more interesting, then, is
the fact that these neutral and, all in all, reassuring "automatons" become disturbing "spectres [ou]
hommes feints qui ne se remuent que par ressors [phantoms [or] fake human beings who only move by
means of springs]." Cfr. AT IX, 25.
10
insinuates itself surreptitiously between man and heaven, or between angels and
God.37 But because what is being put into question is the judgement, the image itself
is neutralized: "whether it is a goat or a chimera that I am imagining, it is just as true
that I imagine the former as the latter."38 Reason will thus be given the task of
intervening to discipline the chimera, to restore order to the reasoning, as it were.
The same process takes place with regard to the memory, which is similar to the
imagination in this respect. The perception is no longer what deceives the mind; in
other words, the external reality – or its deceptive perspective – is not the only thing
that creates false images. Chimeras are also produced by the memory, a mirror of
internal images that, as such, do not come from the outside. In this instance, the
monstrous imagination threatens the clarity of the system from within. It is not the
perception that is deceptive, but the mind itself, through one of its most important
faculties.39 Chimeras and hippogryphs still lurk, so to speak, ready to awaken in the
sleep of reason whenever it is distracted or absent.
Metaphors aside, Descartes is well aware of the danger represented by dreaming. The
radical difficulty that arises from reflecting on the epistemological and ontological
foundations of the real has soporific or even narcotic-like effects.40 What is required,
then, is a choice of the will: the choice to resist the sleep of reason so as to go deeper
and reinforce it, like a dam holding back the monstrous fluidity of the real. Even the
most imaginative of mental images must be anchored in reality. Even the most
chimeric productions of the imagination must be "tamed" and brought back to some
essential relationship with reality, no matter how minimal. This is suggested, once
again, by reason; the need to avoid skepticism of the most damaging kind also
demands it.
If dreaming is what we must talk about, then Descartes will attempt to plant the
banner of solid rationality at the heart of its territory. Although faint, it will act as a
light in the darkness that threatens our knowledge from having any pretense of
objectivity. Monstrosity serves once again as a hingepin for this delicate
epistemological operation. It is explicitly alluded to, only to be immediately tamed by
the rational process.
There is nothing more dangerous, and at the same time more necessary, than thinking
about reality as a dream. It is precisely when we are dreaming that we experience the
inability to distinguish between a truth and a falsehood. But it is also at the heart of
this terrifying idea that we find a foothold for escaping from this threatening mix of
the oneiric and the real. Even in dreams, says Descartes in the First Meditation, things
are represented like images painted on canvas (veluti pictas imagines).41 And, like
images on a canvas, they must necessarily be minimally related to a reality that is
ontologically prior and higher:
For even when painters try to create sirens and satyrs with the most
extraordinary bodies, they cannot give them natures which are new in all
37
AT IX, 29 for the French version, AT VII, 37 for the Latin, CSM II, 25.
II, 26.
39 AT XI, 184.
40 See the closing passage of the First Meditation, AT IX, 18, CSM II, 15.
41 On the First Meditation, see Denis Kambouchner, Les Méditations métaphysiques de Descartes, I,
Introduction générale, Première Méditation (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2005).
38 CSM
11
respects; they simply jumble up the limbs of different animals. Or if perhaps
they manage to think up something so new that nothing remotely similar has
ever been seen before – something which is therefore completely fictitious and
unreal – at least the colours used in the composition must be real.42
Dream images are thus brought up as a threat, in the nightmarish possibility of an
evaporation of the borders between reality and dreams. Immediately afterwards,
however, they are subordinated and pegged once again to a minimal, albeit tenuous,
principle of truth, a common denominator with reality: ad minimum veri colores esse
debent. The jumble and composition of members belonging to different animals,
certainly reminiscent of Horace's chimera, the true archetype of monstrosity, 43 is not
even the most threatening monster. Descartes pushes the idea of monstrosity even
further, beyond the boundaries of what the Latin poet feared and condemned: more
terrifying still is the idea of a monster that does not resemble anything, one that has no
relationship whatsoever to any known thing (nihil omnino ei similar fuerit visum).
Interestingly enough, Descartes does not discuss geometric figures, or even simply
curved and straight lines, in order to establish a common basis to any possible image.
Rather than geometry, what unites all the existent or conceivable images is color.
Colors are chronologically and ontologically prior to forms. In this respect, Descartes
is aligning himself with an ancient tradition going back at least to Empedocles,
according to which forms are attained by means of colors.44 Painting imitates forms,
but they are secondary to colors. If this conception strikes us as particularly
significant in the Greek tradition,45 its appearance is even more astonishing in the
work of Descartes whose effort to geometrize the world was unprecedented. The
reason, however, is to be found precisely in the need to radicalize the concept of
monstrosity, to free it from any resemblance to forms pre-existing in the human mind.
The metaphor of colors once again serves to posit a type of monstrosity that
resembles nothing else, and which makes headway down the dangerous route of
making itself independent from the rule that claims dominate it.
This is where Descartes erects his barricade, at the same time reeling in this extreme
figure of monstrosity: no matter how remote from all the rest, from any other known
image, this new and terrible chimera will at least be composed of "true" colors. This is
42
CSM II, 13, AT IX, 15 for the French version VII, 20 for the original Latin text.
Horace, Ars poetica, trans. by A.S. Kline, in Poetry in Translation, http://tkline.pgcc.net/
(accessed May 28, 2010), 1-13: "If a painter had chosen to set a human head on a horse’s neck, covered
a melding of limbs, everywhere, with multi-coloured plumage, so that what was a lovely woman, at the
top, ended repulsively in the tail of a black fish: asked to a viewing, could you stifle laughter, my
friends? […] ‘But painters and poet have always shared the right to dare anything.’I know it: I claim
that licence, and grant it in turn: but not so the wild and tame should ever mate, or snakes couple with
birds, or lambs with tigers.”
44 See Fragment B 23, in Hermann Alexander Diels and Walther Kranz, Die Fragmente der
Vorsokratiker (Berlin: Weidman, 1952), English translation by Kathleen Freeman, in Ancilla to the
Pre-Socratic Philosophers : A Complete Translation of the Fragments in Diels (Cambridge (Ma):
Harvard University Press, 1948), 75: "As when painters decorate temple-offerings with colours – men
who, following their intelligence, are well-skilled in their craft – these, when they take many-coloured
pigments in their hands, and have mixed them in a harmony, taking more of some, less of another,
create from them forms like to all things, making trees and men and women and animals and birds and
fish nurtured in water, and even long-lived gods, who are highest in honour."
45 The issue is treated masterfully by Jackie Pigeaud, “La greffe du monstre,” Revue des Études Latines
66 (1988): 197-218 and Jackie Pigeaud, “La rêverie de la limite dans la peinture antique,” La part de
l’Œil 6 (1990): 115-124.
43 See
12
the minimum core of truth, providing a foothold to climb out of the abyss of dreams
and up to the surface of clear, rational thinking.46 Some minimal reality forms the
substrate of all images, seu veræ, seu falsæ, and of all beings, no matter how fanciful
they may be. Monstrosity is thus "chained" to a core of the real that serves as a basis
for correct reasoning. This core of the real is necessary and sufficient to turn the
deception we experience from our perception into the safety we gain from our
reasoning. In order to arrive at this conclusion, however, the monstrous had to be
summoned and awakened, only to be immediately tamed and circumscribed within a
safe, reliable domain.
3. Rational law inside me, and universal normativity above me
This fundamentally important point cannot be overly stressed: monstrosity, in
the peculiar forms it assumes in Descartes, is not marginal; rather, it plays a central
role in the construction of the system. Descartes is at the same time "driven" to make
use of monstrosity and "forced" to allude to it, only to immediately attempt to tame it.
He is forced to do so because monstrosity and anomaly must necessarily be contended
with by every philosophical system intending to construct an eternal and necessary
natural order.
The tension between the chimeras of the imagination, dreams, and false perception on
the one hand, and the core of the real to which they are ontologically subordinate on
the other, creates a guaranteed escape from the prison of skepticism and uncertainty.
But if the tension between these two poles is the central element, it is because the
rhetorical and heuristic route that Descartes takes is, from the outset, necessarily
dualistic. Radical evil, the abyss of doubt, monstrosity and the chimera of false
reasoning must be called upon from the outset in order to free oneself of them as soon
as possible. They must be affirmed, as a monstrous hypothesis, in order for them to be
immediately refuted. The real, the true, and the normal are necessarily placed in
tension with the imagined, the false, and the monstrous. They are not ontologically
prior, but they become so, in and through the rhetorical strategy of Cartesian thought.
One of the passages where this successfully productive tension is most obvious is the
dazzling beginning of the Third Meditation: "I will now shut my eyes, stop my ears,
and withdraw all my senses…"47 This is a centripetal movement. I need first of all to
defend my position and gather around the central core of the self, around thought that
is as pure and remote as possible from reality. But then I must leave this central core,
moving toward the external, which is still uncertain and yet to be demonstrated,
toward "the earth, sky, stars, and everything else that I apprehended with the senses."
This time the movement is centrifugal, creating uncertainty. I am of course sure that I
possess the ideas of the objects in my mind, but who can assure me as to their external
existence? We must turn around and go back once again, returning to our own mind,
focusing on elements which appear to be simpler, such as geometric objects. When I
II, 13-14. "By similar reasoning, although these general kinds of things – eyes, head, hands and
so on – could be imaginary, it must at least be admitted that certain other even simpler and more
universal things are real. These are as it were the real colours from which we form all the images of
things, whether true or false, that occur in our thought. This class appears to include corporeal nature in
general, and its extension; the shape of extended things; the quantity, or size and number of these
things; the place in which they may exist, the time through which they may endure, and so on." AT IX,
15 for the French version, AT VII, 20 for the original Latin text.
47 CSM II, 24, AT IX, 27.
46 CSM
13
think of “2” and “3” as objects which, when added together, make “5”, do I not
perhaps understand them clearly enough to be able to say that they exist beyond any
doubt?48
This seemingly unassailable certainty had to be conquered by force and justified. For
Descartes, reason is not the "measure" by which to calibrate one's certainties. At least,
not before it, too, is "measured", justified, and established. The result of the rational
inquiry is not in danger, but the possibility of "really" carrying out that inquiry outside
of illusion and deception is. The subjective will to engage oneself in the inquiry takes
on a decidedly central role. And the effort Descartes puts into establishing the
foundation becomes a truly colossal undertaking. The subject is not strong inasmuch
as he or she is originally endowed with reason, since reason is precisely what is being
put to the test here. On the contrary, reason becomes strong to the degree the subject
is able to assert it, in exposing himself or herself to the absolute, monstrous risk that
he or she does not exist. The force of reason has no other strength, we might say, than
its force.
To accomplish this feat, Descartes does not hesitate to call on radical evil, through the
hypotheses of the evil genius and the deceiver God. At this point we arrive at the heart
of Cartesian theodicy, a topic that has received a great deal of scholarly attention.49 It
is important, however, to at least recall that these two figures of radical evil are
distinct and perform different functions in the Cartesian rhetoric.50 They represent two
different types of monstrosities that Descartes summons and brings together so as to
confront them and defeat them in the duel with reason.51
The evil genius "invention" performs its function entirely in the sphere of nature.
Without doubt a figure of radical evil, it is in itself a monster, since it is capable of
producing the radical monstrosity of absolute deception ex hypothesi. It is a
monstrosity, however, that "only" affects the sphere of the objective existence of
reality, its relationship with the knowing subject, and the limits of perception and
knowledge. One responds to this monstrosity by stripping oneself down and by
48 CSM
II, 25, AT IX, 28.
For more on theodicy in Descartes, in addition to Landucci, see Michael J. Latzer, “Descartes’s
Theodicy of Error,” in The Problem of Evil in Early Modern Philosophy, ed. by Elmar J. Kramer and
Michael J. Latzer (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), 35-48 ; Zbigniew Janowski, Cartesian
Theodicy: Descartes' Quest for Certitude (Dordrecht : Kluwer, 2002); C.P. Ragland, “Descartes’s
Theodicy,” and lastly, Denis Kambouchner, “Y a-t-il une théodicée cartésienne?”, in Antoine
Grandjean (éd.), Théodicées (Hildesheim-Zürich-New York: Olms, 2010): 41-58.
50 This aspect is explored in the classic studies by Henri Gouhier, Descartes – Essais (Paris: J. Vrin,
1949); Ferdinand Alquié, La découverte métaphysique de l’homme chez Descartes (Paris: PUF, 1950);
Leslie J. Beck, The metaphysics of Descartes : A Study of the Meditations (Oxford: Clarendon
Press,1965); Geneviève Rodis-Lewis, L’oeuvre de Descartes (Paris, J. Vrin, 1971), vol. I, and Richard
H. Kennington, “The Finitude of Descartes’ Evil Genius,” Journal of the History of Ideas 32 (1971):
441-446, now in On Modern Origins : Essays in Early Modern Philosophy, ed. by Pamela Kraus,
Frank Hunt (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2004), 145-151.
51 I do not agree, therefore, with Pierre Guenancia, “Un Dieu trompeur est-il un monstre?,” in La vie et
la mort des monstres, ed. by J.-C. Beaune (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 2004), 149-155, who claims that
only the deceiver God can be understood as a "monster", while the evil genius is only one of the many
poetic inventions Descartes makes use of without constituting a real threat to the whole system.
Descartes used this type of device to settle the accounts once and for all, concludes Guenancia, starting
from the time of the Regulæ. In my view, even the "minor" fictional devices, like the evil genius,
constitute real obstacles to Descartes. Or rather, they constitute real opportunities to productively
exploit the issue of monstrosity and its attendant ontological problems based on a precise rhetorical
strategy.
49
14
amputating all one's potentially illusory features. In other words, one responds by
becoming – even if only for a moment – the monster that the evil genius would like to
condemn us to being: "I shall consider myself as not having hands or eyes, or flesh, or
blood or senses, but as falsely believing that I have all these things."52
In the act of deceiving myself, or making myself a blind, mutilated, intangible
monster, even if only by way of hypothesis, this evil genius at the same time offers
me the minimal core of truth I need to doubt him, at least as much as he leads me to
doubt myself. At least in the sense that when “he” acts on “me”, when we are on the
same plane, I will no longer be forced to acknowledge or grant him, even by way of
hypothesis, more reality than what he grants me:
There is a deceiver of supreme power and cunning who is deliberately and
constantly deceiving me. In that case I too undoubtedly exist, if he is deceiving
me; and let him deceive me as much as he can, he will never bring it about that I
am nothing so long as I think that I am something. So after considering
everything very thoroughly, I must finally conclude that this proposition, I am, I
exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my
mind.53
Let him deceive me as much as he can, then! "As much as" he deceives me, "all the
more" he irrefutably demonstrates my existence to me. The more monstrous this
hypothesis is, the more monstrous is the genius who gives rise to it, and the more
clear and obvious is the avenue to follow in order to neutralize and "normalize" it.
The deceiver God, on the other hand, is not limited to this fictional device: for
Descartes it is a "metaphysical hypothesis."54 What is at stake here is no longer
limited to the external reality, the dimension we might define as the "horizontal" one
between the knowing subject and the object of knowledge. What is at stake and called
into doubt again is the "vertical" and ontological dimension upon which the entire
metaphysics and the very possibility of reason are founded. In His absolute freedom,
the deceiver God assails evident and even mathematical truths. Even the principle of
non-contradiction teeters under the blows of this monster, who can see to it that 2 plus
3 does not equal 5.
Tullio Gregory, in an article that has not received the attention it merits, has tried to
go beyond the view now widely accepted in the literature on the difference between
the evil genius and the deceiver God.55 He has reconstructed the philosophical bases
of theodicy in the context of the late-medieval debate, going back in particular to the
Occamism of Gregory of Rimini and Gabriel Biel.56 The Deus qui potest omnia of the
Occamists, says Tullio Gregory, is not solely a metaphysical hypothesis that gets
52 Meditation
I, CSM II, 15, AT IX, 18.
Meditation II, CSM II, 17, AT IX, 19.
54 As Gouhier observes.
55 Tullio Gregory, “Dio ingannatore e Genio maligno. Note in margine alle "Meditationes" di
Descartes,” Giornale critico della filosofia italiana 28 (1974): 477-516. See also Michael H. Keefer,
“The Dreamer's Path: Descartes and the Sixteenth Century,” Renaissance Quarterly 49 (1996): 30-76.
56 See Gregorii Ariminensis, Gregorius de Arimino In primo [et secundo] Sententiarum nuperrime
impressus, et... sue integritati restitutus per fratrem Paulum de Genazano. - Additiones... que post
hanc... impressionem... interposite fuere ab aliis impressoribus... (Venetiis: sumptibus haeredum O.
Scoti ac sociorum, 1518-1522) e Gabriel Biel, Commentarii doctissimi in III Sententiarum libros
magistri Gabrielis Biel,... cum supplemento... (Brixiae: T. Bozolam, 1574).
53
15
added to the "physical" one of the evil genius. The omnipotent and deceiver God is
the reflection of very concrete concerns that existed and traversed the culture of the
Cartesian age; this makes it interesting to revisit the Occamist elements of theodicy in
a very different context than the late Medieval period in which Gregory of Rimini and
Gabriel Biel wrote.
Extending the interpretation of Tullio Gregory, I would argue that the evil genius and
the deceiver God embody the monstrosity and challenge of a potential violation – one
that is absolute and radical – to the new principle of universal normativity established
by Descartes. If we accept the idea that there is a difference between the two figures,
the evil genius can be said to demolish the order established by the universal
normativity, described by science and concretely experienced by human beings in
their daily lives. The deceiver God, for its part, goes even deeper, undermining the
foundations of a possible normativity or of any possible normativity. How could I
ever found a rational law inside me, without being able to affirm a universal
normativity above me?
The monstrosities of which I speak thus take on the semblance of a two-headed
monster, a Janus figure whose two heads or faces perform different theoretical
functions, but which converge in their attack on the possible foundations of certainty.
The physical and metaphysical planes converge for Descartes in this foundational
teratomachy. From this perspective, I can say that the reinterpretation of theodicy at
the dawn of the new era casts a new light on the whole problem.57 Once we
acknowledge the more fundamental character of the threat that the deceiver God
represents compared to that of the evil genius, it seems fair to say that Descartes shifts
the problem to the construction of a subject capable of resisting it. This subject
deploys his own will as a final barricade against both physical and metaphysical
monstrosity.
The dichotomy between the self and the world is profound. It is the rupture between a
world that may not be real and a "self" that must be real, in so far as it places itself in
front of this world. However, it is precisely the space of this dichotomy that enables
the foundation of an impregnable core of the real, at least in the eyes of Descartes.
That is why the false or the monstrous must be summoned from the outset.
Summoned, that is, into the heart of the foundational and absurd hypothesis (if not ab
absurdo) of the evil genius on the physical plane, and the deceiver God on the
metaphysical.
That is why monstrosity must also necessarily be radical. The foundations of the
whole system are to be laid on its ruins. The way out of skepticism is only possible
through the space of this dichotomy, namely, in the radical separation between a
twofold dimension: mine, about which I know nothing and can say nothing with
certainty; and another one that I imagine as being as deceptive and monstrous as
possible. But, at the exact instant I do so, our mutual difference is actually confirmed
by the space and the tension between the two dimensions. The monstrous "Other",
57 I
do not agree, then, with critics who argue that Cartesian theodicy is a relatively minor part of the
system. See Donald A. Cress, “Truth, Error, and the Order of Reasons: Descartes’ Spuzzling Synopsis
of the Fourth Meditation,” in Reason, Will, and Sensation : Studies in Descartes’s Metaphysics, ed. by
John Cottingham (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 141-155 and Georges Dicker, Descartes : An
Analytical and Historical Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). C.P. Ragland,
“Descartes’s Theodicy”, underlines the same problem.
16
false and deceptive by definition, actually confirms my existence and my normal
identity as real and not deceptive. This dualism is necessary, once again, ab origine.
In a study of Descartes’ anthropology, Alexandre Matheron has shown in that the
intellectual pleasure of the subject, which derives from the active, successful exercise
of reason over the passions, is all the greater the larger the threat we must overcome
and defeat.58 I believe that this scheme is replicated in the metaphysical sphere as
well, precisely through the evil genius and the deceiver God: in the end, the more
these figures represent a radical monstrosity, the stronger in the end the subject who
dares to challenge it will be.59
It may seem paradoxical, finally, that this mental operation, of fundamental
importance to the foundations of the whole system, grants such a crucial role to the
will. Descartes posits and then immediately withdraws the idea of a radical
monstrosity, which the subject overcomes, not thanks to the force of reason, therefore,
but to the force of the will that reason requires. But, it might be objected, is Descartes
not the philosopher who posited the root of all evil as an excess of will over
understanding? How, then, can we grant such a big role to the will in the Cartesian
philosophical war against monstrosity? My reading is not intended to diminish the
importance of the Cartesian arguments on the vices arising from an excess of will
over intellect. I do think, however, that the interpretation I am proposing of the evil
genius and the deceiver God in terms of radical monstrosity sheds light on texts in
which the will plays a different role for Descartes from the one that is traditionally
recognized.
When faced with the monstrous hypothesis, the suspension of judgement cannot be
deduced from reason; it must be imposed or decided by the force of the will.
Certainly, doubt immediately prevails in its logical necessity. But it remains a "test"
through which human freedom is revealed to itself as identical to that of God.60
According to this interpretation, an ontological dimension of freedom/will is kept
separate from a psychological dimension, described instead by the well-known theory
of the faculties. In support of this reading, one could also cite the second letter to
Mesland of February 9, 1645.61 In this letter, Descartes agrees with the position held
58 Alexandre
Matheron, “Psychologie et politique : Descartes. La noblesse du chatouillement,”
Dialectiques 6 (1974): 79-98.
59 David McCallam offers a study developed along similar lines in “Encountering and countering the
‘uncanny’ in Descartes’s Méditations,” French Studies 57 (2003): 135-147. The article conducts a
convincing Cartesian "archeology" of the Freudian unheimlich. Not as something we suffer from,
however, as in E. T. A. Hoffmann and the Romantics, but alluded to – in the heart of seventeenthcentury rationalism – to tame irrationality in the process of constructing modern subjectivity. McCallan
rightly concludes that this process is not entirely free of ambivalence, however.
60 There is no space here to analyze the dialogue between Derrida and Foucault on the role of madness
in Descartes. Still, in support of my hypothesis it seems licit to cite the evocative conclusions reached
by Derrida, for whom "being Cartesian" means "willing-to-be Cartesian." See "Cogito et histoire de la
folie,” in L’écriture et la différence (Paris: Seuil, 1967), 95. It means, continues Derrida “vouloir-direl'hyperbole-démoniaque à partir de laquelle la pensée s'annonce à elle-même, s'effraie elle-même et se
rassure au plus haut d'elle-même contre son anéantissement ou son naufrage dans la folie et dans la
mort” [It signifies a will-to-say-the-demonic-hyperbole on the basis of which thought heralds, frightens
and reassures itself, at its peak, against its annihilation or its foundering in madness and in death]. See
contra Michel Foucault, “Mon corps, ce papier, ce feu,” in Histoire de la folie (Paris: Gallimard,
1972): 583-603.
61 AT IV, 172-175.
17
by the Jesuit Petau62: indifference is not the lowest level of freedom, but the
expression of free will, the ability to assent or not assent.
Descartes, it seems to me, is trying here to shake off an intellectualistic concept of
freedom in order to give full and unparalleled autonomy to the will. The hesitations in
this letter are obvious, however. Descartes senses that he has not completely
overcome the problem that he raised in the Fourth Meditation, since the gap between
the two concepts of freedom/will would open up an irremediable rupture at the heart
of the system. However, this movement toward rendering the free will autonomous
still remains and, as I argue here, also emerges out of the duel with the absolute
monstrosity of the evil genius and the deceiver God.63
4. From thauma to knowledge: the good use of the passions
Monstrosity also produces theoretical effects of remarkable intensity in the
sphere of the passions. Admiration, we might say, is the mother of all superstition.
This might be one of the main conclusions arrived at by many of the philosophers
committed to the construction of a new mechanistic image of the world versus the old
philosophical conceptions, still imbued with hidden qualities, mysterious tendencies,
and intentional species. Descartes states this repeatedly in his writings.64
The divine character and the mysterious nature of monstrosity began to change in the
period between the 16th and 17th centuries, thanks to the revolutionary impetus of
Cartesian ideas and his rejection of admiration. The De Mundo, the De Homine and
especially the Discours are fundamental stages for the entire philosophical and
scientific thought of Western civilization. However, without completely calling into
question the Cartesian condemnation of admiration, we must analyze more fully the
role it plays in his overall system of knowledge. His was not a condemnation pure and
simple. In the Passions of the Soul in particular, admiratio has a very complex
function, and it would be difficult to regard it exclusively as the opening to all types
of superstition and ignorance.
The beginning of Meteors directly tackles the question of admiratio. We naturally
admire things that are above us, such as celestial phenomena or the clouds. Although
they are only a little higher than the mountains, for example, painters and poets depict
them as the throne of God.65 The deliberate ambiguity of Descartes and the double
meaning of "things that are above us," to indicate both atmospheric and "superior"
phenomena, in the sense of heavenly and divine, can hardly escape our notice. His
62 Denis
Petau, Dionysii Petavii, è soc. jesu, de Libero arbitrio libri tres (Lutetiae Parisiorum: Seb.
Cramoisy, 1643). See footnote 2 in René Descartes, Tutte le lettere 1619-1650, ed. by Giulia
Belgioioso (Bologna: Bompiani, 2005), 1969.
63 Jean-Paul Sartre interprets the subversive potential of Cartesian freedom in the same vein in “La
liberté cartésienne,” in Situations, I : Essais Critique (Paris: Gallimard, 1947): 289-308.
64 Yet, as has been noted, admiration will be reappraised by Cartesianism, or at least by a certain strain
of Cartesian thought, during the height of 18 th-century rationalism. For example by Bertrand de
Fontenelle, Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes (Amsterdam: E. Roger, 1719). See Jean Ehrard,
L’idée de nature en France dans la première moitié du XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Albin Michel, 1963). It is
interesting to note that this strand of Cartesianism picks up, more or less consciously, on the seminal
ideas of Augustine regarding admiration of divine works and his condemnation of those who are ready
to admire and marvel at any oddity, while no longer marveling at the natural course of the world and
the work of the Creator. See Augustine of Hippo, De civitate Dei, in Patrologia Latina, ed. by JacquesPaul Migne (Paris: J.P. Migne, 1841), vol. 41, especially XVI.8 e XXI.8.
65 AT VI, 231.
18
programmatic intent immediately becomes clearer: to break the mechanism of
admiration which ties incomprehension and ignorance, firstly, to physical causes,
especially about atmospheric phenomena, and secondly, to superstition and the image
of a God sitting on top of the clouds who "uses his own hands to open and close the
gates of the winds, to water the flowers and hurl lightning at the rocks."
His objective is immediately revealed: "If I explain here the nature of celestial
phenomena, so that no longer will you admire what it gives cause to, in the same way
will you consider it possible to discover the causes of all that is most admirable on the
earth."66 At the end of the text, Descartes adds: "I hope that those who have
understood everything spoken of in this treatise in the future will not see anything in
the clouds whose causes cannot be easily understood or that would be cause for
admiration."67
This essay, therefore, which addresses itself to many phenomena traditionally
considered "prodigious", like rainbows, the mother of thauma for the ancients, is
primarily written to argue against admiration.68 We thus find ourselves in the very
same domain where monsters and prodigies are traditionally catalogued. Descartes is
attempting to use the new conceptual tools of mechanism in order to escape from the
late-Renaissance mentality that still grouped all these phenomena into the same
category which – albeit with different variations and nuances – provoked the same
feeling of admiration and wonder.69
In this sense, admiration leads to superstition. Monstrosity is at work indirectly in this
case. Admiratio is the affect we normally feel toward incomprehensible and
inexplicable phenomena, but especially toward things that are prodigious and
monstrous. However, as Daston and Park have shown,70 it also has a more complex
and fundamental role in the overall dynamics of the passions and, ultimately, in the
relation they have with the intellect and knowledge. To grasp what this role is, let us
turn our attention to The Passions of the Soul.
After speaking "in general", Part II of The Passions goes into detail about their
number and order, beginning with the six primitive passions and how they function.
Admiration – the subject of the polemical De Mundo, De homine and the Discourses
– now becomes none other than "the first of all the passions."71 This is not a reversal
of position, but rather the need for deeper examination of this "primary" passion,
placed at the center of the relationship between the emotional sphere and the
intellectual sphere. Admiration, we read, arises when we encounter any object that is
surprising to us because of its novelty or because it differs from what we thought or
66 Ivi.
67 Ibid.,
366.
Carl B. Boyer, The Rainbow, from Myth to Mathematic (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1959), Jean-Robert Armogathe, “The Rainbow: a privileged epistemological model,” in Descartes’
Natural Philosophy, 249-257, Douwe Tiemersma, “Methodological and theoretical aspects of
Descartes’ treatise on the rainbow,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 19 (1988): 347-364
and, more recently, Simon Werrett, “Wonders never cease: Descartes’s Météores and the rainbow
fountain,” British Journal for the History of Science 34 (2001): 129-147 for more on the rainbow.
69 See Ceard, La nature et les prodiges.
70 See Daston and Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 255-301.
71 AT XI, 373, art. LIII, CSM I, 350. See also AT VI, 380. Etienne Gilson, Index Scolastico-Cartésien
(Paris: J. Vrin, 1979), 215, provides a helpful reference to Commentarii in tres libros de Anima
Aristotelis (Conimbricæ, 1598), Lib. 3, cap. 13, quæst. 1, art 5.
68 See
19
believed it should be. It arises, therefore, either out of total ignorance of what lies
before us, or from the difference between the thing as it really is and how we
imagined it was supposed to be. It is important to note, moreover, that admiration
arises at once, before we know whether the admired object is convenient or not with
our nature. This takes place before the movement of the passions leans toward the
"favorable" or the "unfavorable", along the crest, for example, of esteem and love, or
in the opposite direction, toward contempt and hatred.
After a short list of some of the more common passions, Descartes presents a detailed
analysis of admiration, in Articles 70 to 78. No other passion receives so much
attention or plays such a critical role in initiating the mechanical process of
knowledge. Given its status, the passion of admiration can be viewed as a "mirror",
reflecting back to us not only Descartes' programmatic statements, but also the strong
importance that the rare, the prodigious, the marvelous, and the monstrous hold in his
system, summoned only to be tamed and led back under the dominion of reason. The
ambiguity is explicit, and the balance in which the passion of admiration must be
kept, between excess and lack, is a strong indicator that we have arrived at one of the
fundamental kernels of Cartesian philosophy.
The primitive passions, then, are love, hate, desire, joy, sadness, and, of course,
admiration. It is defined as a "sudden surprise" of the mind that causes it to regard
objects that appear to be "unusual and most strange" with concentrated attention.72
The monstrous clearly falls into this category. There are two stages to the process.
First, the object assumes a certain "worthiness" for the mind – because of its rarity or
prodigiousness or monstrosity. This gives rise to a movement of the spirits that
reverberates both in the brain, "to strengthen and preserve" the impression of the
object in one of its parts, as well as in the body, to keep the sense organs "fixed" on
the situation that set the process into motion.
Although this passion does not involve any change in the heart or blood, the force of
its impact is enormous "because of the element of surprise, i.e. the sudden and
unexpected arrival of the impression which changes the movement of the spirits."73
Surprise is thus the defining property of admiration. Its power lies in the fact that it is
at its strongest when it first appears. After striking with all its potential, it can only
subside, but it can never grow slowly and gradually. Similarly to how the soles of our
feet are unaccustomed and, therefore, vulnerable to a delicate movement that causes a
tickling sensation, yet they can walk on a rough surface and support the weight of the
body without any problem, in the same way, the mind can easily handle what it is
ordinarily accustomed to, but when faced with anything rare and out of the ordinary it
becomes vulnerable to admiration.
This process may cause adverse effects, since the surprise may be so strong that "the
whole body remains as immobile as a statue, making it possible for only the side of
the object originally presented to be perceived, and hence impossible for a more
detailed knowledge of the object to be acquired." Astonishment is therefore a harmful
"excess" of admiration, and "it can never be other than bad."74 But this is exactly
where the ambiguity lies. If astonishment is always bad, the admiration from which it
originates is presented instead as necessary to acquiring knowledge in Descartes’
72 AT
XI, 380, CSM I, 353.
381, CSM I, 353.
74 Ibid., 383, CSM I, 354.
73 Ibid.,
20
view. The usefulness or "good use" of the passions in general consists in ensuring that
the thoughts in the mind that need to be preserved are strengthened and retained
before they flow away, erased by other thoughts. The passions act as a catalyst or
stabilizer of thoughts. As for admiration in particular,
It is useful in that it makes us learn and retain in our memory things of which
we were previously ignorant. For we wonder only at what appears to us unusual
and extraordinary; and something can appear so only because we have been
ignorant of it, or perhaps because it differs from things we have known (this
difference being what makes us call it ‘extraordinary’). […] the other passions
may need to make us take note of things which appear good or evil, but we feel
only wonder at things which merely appear unusual. So we see that people who
are not naturally inclined to wonder are usually very ignorant.75
Although excessive admiration may cause harm, then, by fixing the mind in
"wonder", it is necessary to stimulate knowledge; also, wherever admiration is
lacking, ignorance prevails. It is true that the greatest risk comes from admiring too
much rather than too little, but the fact remains that an inclination toward admiration
"makes us disposed to acquire scientific knowledge." This process must necessarily
be subordinate to the intellect and reason. However, in his analysis of admiration,
Descartes seems to have opened the door to something new with respect to his
programmatic statements about an exclusive interest in the general, universal,
ordinary and normal. This is supported by what he describes as the only possible
antidote to an excessive imperium of admiration:
There is no remedy for excessive wonder except to acquire the knowledge of
many things and to practise examining all those which may seem most unusual
and strange [my italics].76
What becomes necessary is practise with the rare and extraordinary, in other words,
interest in what may appear prodigious or monstrous – at least until the intellect and
reason intervene.77 We could try to express this suggestion of Descartes in more
"modern" terms by saying that "curiosity is the mother of invention." But in my view
this would neutralize the most interesting aspect to emerge from this long analysis of
admiration. Curiosity must be directed, at least initially, toward that which appears
unusual and strange. The difference thus stems from the motivation behind the affect.
The rare, the singular or the monstrous must be taken as a means, and not as an end.
Good curiositas is what inclines admiration toward the side of knowledge rather than
wonder.78
Now, the ambiguity and the fundamental importance of this passion, caused by rare,
prodigious or monstrous objects and events, is that this impression on the brain and
this "block" to the attention, both mental and corporeal, is both necessary to
knowledge, but also potentially damaging if it lasts too long or is not properly quelled
by reason. This is precisely what leads to the observation that, in contrast with the
75 Ibid.,
384, CSM I, 354-355.
385, CSM I, 355.
77 Descartes is perfectly in harmony, in these passages, with the concept of admiration understood as
curiositas that Augustine describes in De vera religione, caput XLIX, 163, in Patrologia Latina, ed. by
Jacques-Paul Migne, (Paris: J. P. Migne, 1841), vol. 34, 121-172.
78 AT XI, 386, CSM I, 355-356.
76 Ibid.,
21
programmatic statements on an exclusive interest in the general, the normal and the
ordinary, the unexpected and the monstrous have an epistemological function of
fundamental importance.
Descartes is attempting to build a new image of nature and knowledge. This implies a
different attitude towards the rare, the unusual, and the monstrous which will be
amplified throughout the decades to come. But the fact remains that the rare or
monstrous are hardly "expelled" out of the system, marginalized or removed in favor
of an exclusive interest in the normal and the ordinary. On the contrary, the rare and
the monstrous, the source of admiration, are placed at the heart and origin of the
cognitive act, thus exposing them to the dangers, ambivalence and paradoxes of
uncertainty and error.79 This "disturbing" presence of the monstrous inside a system
whose aim is to neutralize its deleterious effects and the potentially "bad" admiration
it may cause, is at the heart of the only passage in which Descartes mentions physical
monstrosities, which we will look at closely in the following section.
5. The monster: degree zero of normality?
Descartes explicitly discusses the issue of physical-anatomical monstrosities
in Cogitationes circa generationem animalium. The dating of this text is uncertain,
but according to Charles Adam, the topic begins to head the list of Descartes' interests
at least as early as the late 1620s.80 Like all Cartesian treatments of the formation of
life, this text does not have much breadth to it. Descartes remains unclear on many
points and, as commentators will observe very early on, even in Cartesian circles,81 he
passes too quickly over issues that will present the greatest challenges to scientists
more directly involved in this field of research during the same period.
Their discoveries soon put into question the entirely mechanistic explanations on the
formation of the fetus that Descartes had advanced.82 Over very few years, the debate
79
In his subsequent reflection on the passions, Descartes continues to refer to the "special" character of
admiration. He returned to it, for example, in May 1646, in correspondence with Elizabeth. See
Epistola CDXXXI, in AT IV, 409-10, CSMK, 286-287.
80 See AT XI, 503. This collection of texts was not published until 1701, in the Opera posthuma with
the title Primæ cogitationes circa Generationem Animalium. Along with the De la formation du foetus,
published by Clerselier in 1664 and the Excerpta anatomica, which only appeared in print in 1859, it
makes up the entire corpus of Cartesian writings on the generation of animals. The fragmentary and
unfinished nature of these texts does not justify the doubts about their authenticity that have been
voiced by several distinguished scholars. See Bertrand de Saint-Germain, Descartes considéré comme
physiologiste (Paris: Victor Masson et fils,1869). For more on these problems, as well as Descartes'
new-found interest in these issues, see J. Roger, Les sciences de la vie dans la pensée française du
XVIIIè siècle. La generation des animaux de Descartes à l'Encyclopédie (Paris: Armand Colin, 1963),
140-154. Roger notes that the theme of "sympathy", which reappears in the relationship between the
fetus and the mother, was already used by Descartes in the Compendium musicæ of 1619. Mesnard, in
"L'esprit de la physiologie Cartésienne," goes so far as to ask whether Descartes' move to Amsterdam
in 1629 was dictated by his interests in physiology and anatomy, in addition to the "facilité de
disséquer en paix" in the Dutch city.
81 Especially by Regius. See Paul Mouy, Le développement de la physique cartésienne, 1646-1712
(Paris: J. Vrin, 1934), and Roger, Les sciences de la vie. See also the more recent work by Géraldine
Caps, Les «médecins cartésiens». Heritage et diffusion de la représentation mécaniste du corps humain
(1646-1696) (Hildesheim; Zurich; New York: Olms, 2010).
82 Descartes, as is well known, based his theories on direct anatomical observations, but also mainly on
the writings of Fabricius ab Acquapendente from Padua, who was a student of Fallopius, teacher of
Harvey, and author of the De Formato Fetu (1600) and the De formatione Ovi et Pulli (1621). See
Hyeronimus ab Acquapendente (Fabricius), The Embryological Treatises (Ithaca and New York:
22
was quickly projected into a new set of issues that left the overly simplistic Cartesian
explanation behind. This was thanks to continuing improvements in lenses, and,
starting in the early 1670s, the microscope observations of Regnier de Graaf, followed
by those of Leeuwenhoeck, Swammerdam and Malpighi. Ovism, animalculism and
preformationism developed as opposing theories, definitively relegating to the past –
at least in practice if not in theory – the ancient Aristotelian-Galenist doctrines, but
also supplanting the rigidly mechanistic epigeneticism of Descartes.83
The text on monsters, then, is only a short fragment, contained in a text whose
original composition is uncertain and whose influence is limited in years. However,
because of its location, form, and content, it takes on special significance in
reconstructing the importance and role of the concept of monstrosity in Cartesian
philosophy. As I will show, this passage reveals a tension with other fundamentally
important parts of Descartes' work, especially 1) on the importance and existence of
final causes and 2) on the theory of continuous creation.84
The Cogitationes circa generationem animalium develop a strictly mechanistic theory
on the formation of the fetus guided by the ideal of a "mathematical embriology".85
There is no digression and no rhetorical artifice: for some pages Descartes proceeds in
a linear fashion to describe the formation of the organs and, specifically, how the sex
is determined. Suddenly, with no warning whatsoever, we come to a passage that
leaves the immediate field of epigenesis and a purely physical, mechanical problem to
pose a "rhetorical" question that clearly shifts the focus to metaphysics:
Someone will say with disdain that it is absurd to attribute a phenomenon as
important as the formation of man to such small causes; but what greater cause
than the eternal laws of nature is required? Does one want the immediate
intervention of some form of intelligence? If so, what intelligence? God
himself? Why then are monsters born? Would one want to see in such things the
operation of that wise goddess of nature that owes its origin to nothing other
than the folly of the human mind?86
Immediately afterwards, the discussion is picked up again where it was broken off,
continuing to explain the movement of blood. The reader is brought back to the
physical, after being made aware of the metaphysical implications of the issues in
question.
I believe this digression is fundamentally important. Monstrosity is mentioned
explicitly, and with a force that is unprecedented in the rest of his work. It should also
be noted that a few lines before this passage, Descartes has developed an explanation
Cornell University Press, 1967). The subject of the controversy from the theological point of view was
generally Galen's On the Formation of the Fetus. On the topic of embryology, see the classic study by
Jean Rostand, La formation de l’être. Histoire des idées sur la génération (Paris: Hachette, 1930) and,
regarding antiquity, see Erna Lesky, Die Zeugungs- und Vererbungslehren der Antike und ihr
Nachwirken (Wiesbaden: Verlag der Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur in Mainz, 1951).
83 See Tocanne, L’idée de nature en France, 64 ff., who points readers wanting a more in-depth
analysis to Roger, Les sciences de la vie.
84 The text, moreover, is open and ambiguous enough to be compatible with profoundly different, later
mechanistic positions, such as Spinoza's rigid anti-finalism or the theocentric and finalistic
mechanicism of Malebranche.
85 The term comes from Roger, Les sciences de la vie, 144.
86 See AT XI, 524, and the translation into French by Victor Cousin, in Œuvres de Descartes, publiés
par Victor Cousin, vol. XI (Paris: Levrault, 1826), 404.
23
of the formation of another form of life traditionally considered monstrous, namely,
the hermaphrodite.87 The explanation gradually "deduces" it, step by step, from
normal embryonic development. This shift is made without any qualitative jump, as if
the monster was in a certain sense a simple variation and a particular case – albeit
very rare – of the normal.88
What is Descartes' intention, then, behind this apparently dazzling passage in a text
which, as a whole, does not aspire to a particularly significant rhetorical impact?
Monstrosity is "played" through a fully mechanicist reading against the other,
opposing "monstrosity" which was in the opinions of Galen and his followers on final
causes.89 "Someone", writes Descartes, will be shocked by these arguments. The
general reference is to the Galenism and finalism that still raged through the
universities and to which many were still devoted, even among the more enlightened,
like his friend Mersenne.
For these followers of the Galenist school, the formation of man could certainly not
be confined within such a simplistic explanation, nor could it be attributed to causes
of such minor importance as exclusively mechanical ones. But these levibus causis
were precisely the first step in challenging the anthropocentric theory that had given
rise to so many misunderstandings and falsehoods. Although there were no doubts as
to the "pre-eminence" of man, the human mind, and human reason over the other
animals, even Descartes was always careful to blame the absurd anthropocentric
prejudice which led to an incomprehension of nature and which could result,
paradoxically, in attributing greater importance to this world than to the beyond.90
Once the anthropocentric prejudice is weakened, man must be readmitted into nature,
in his proper place, context, and with the proper role: "We may say that all created
things are made for us in the sense that we may derive some utility from them; but I
do not know that we are obliged to believe that man is the end of creation."91 At stake,
then, are the controversies of both anthropocentrism and final causes, within which
Descartes inserts the reference to the theme of monstrosity.
The canonical position of Descartes, as we know, is to deny that the study of final
causes has any utility whatsoever for physics or understanding nature, without calling
their existence in the mind of God into question, however. This argument is
developed especially effectively in the Fourth Meditation,92 as well as in the Principia
I, 28: "When dealing with natural things we will, then, never derive any explanations
from the purposes which God or nature may have had in view when creating them
87 The
hermaphrodite was of course one of the most disturbing figures of monstrosity in the early
modern period. A figure of duplicity, ambiguity and the explosion of borders, it produced rhetorical
and epistemological effects of remarkable intensity during these decades. See Lorraine Daston and
Katharine Park, “Hermaphrodites and the orders of nature,” Gay and Lesbian Quarterly 1 (1995): 419438, Catherine Randall Coats, “A Surplus of Signifiance: Hermaphrodites in Early Modern France,”
French Forum 19 (1994): 17-35, Kathleen Perry Long, “Sexual Dissonance: Early Modern Scientific
Accounts of Hermaphrodites,” in Wonders, Marvels, and Monsters in early Modern Culture, ed. by
Peter G. Platt (Newark: University of Delaware Press, London: Associated University Press, 1999),
145-63.
88 See Œuvres de Descartes, publiés par Victor Cousin, 403-404.
89 Ibid., 414.
90 Principes III,2, AT VIII, 80-81, CSM I, 248. He writes about this again to Elizabeth in September
1645, in AT IV, 292, CSMK, 266.
91 Epistola CDLXXXVIII to Chanut of June 6, 1647, AT V, 53, CSMK, 321.
92 AT IX, 44, CSM II, 30.
24
<and we shall entirely banish from our philosophy the search for final causes>."93 At
the same time, there is no doubt that final causes exist, over and above the limited
capacity of human understanding. They exist in the mind of God, who has freely
created them, as He has created us unable to grasp all His "conseils".
Admiration resurfaces in this context, accompanied now by indignation, a form of
envy that is not a vice.94 Indignation is a complex passion giving rise to both "the
laughter of Democritus and the tears of Heraclitus." The way it works is of interest for
understanding the role of monstrosity. People believe things should happen or present
themselves in a certain way. When this fails to occur, the surprise causes a mixture of
indignation and admiration to well up that is typical of people who want more to
appear virtuous than be virtuous. There is an ethical side to this argument, then, that is
inseparable from the epistemological aspect. Indeed, "it is impertinent and absurd not
to confine one's indignation to the actions of human beings and to extend it to the
works of God and nature."95
Human beings have expectations and are ignorant. When disorder, chaos, and
monstrosity appear unexpectedly, they provoke indignation and blame in us that may
possibly be extended to nature and God. The argument of the Fourth Meditation is
thus confirmed and Descartes has come full circle. Overall, this is a point of
fundamental importance in the development of Cartesianism. It will leave dissatisfied
both the supporters of final causes like Gassendi,96 and the rigid opponents of finalism
like Spinoza.97 But above all, it will leave the door open to a plethora of different
positions, which can somehow be collected under the broad umbrella of Cartesianism,
but which vary widely on the issue of how much room to grant to finalism.98 In my
opinion, these vacillations in 17th-century Cartesianism were caused by an essential
ambiguity in Descartes' text. This is not a contradiction, but rather an opening that
makes a series of positions, even divergent ones, possible.99
The reference to monsters, in that key passage in the Cogitationes, can be considered
a basic declaration, a sort of a "minimal" kernel essential to any mechanistic stance.100
93 AT
VIII-1, 15, CSM I, 202.
III, 195, AT XI, 475, CSM I, 397-398.
95 Part III, 198, AT XI, 476, CSM I, 398-399.
96 Defender of a knowledge of final causes as not only necessary but also sufficient for understanding
efficient causes. See Pierre Gassendi, Disquisitio Metaphysica seu Dubitationes et Instantiæ Adversus
Renati Cartesii Metaphysicam et Responsa, ed. by Bernard Rochot (Paris: J. Vrin, 1962), Dubitatio I,
395-417. More generally, on Gassendi's critique of Descartes, see Antonia LoLordo, "'Descartes' One
Rule of Logic': Gassendi’s Critique of the Doctrine of Clear and Distinct Perception,” British Journal
for the History Philosophy 13 (2005): 51-72. See also Olivier R. Bloch, La philosophie de Gassendi:
nominalisme, matérialisme et métaphysique (La Haye: Martinus Nijhoff, 1971) and Antonia LoLordo,
Pierre Gassendi and the Birth of Early Modern Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2009).
97 Who accuses Descartes of having taken a major step forward, but of not knowing or being able to
draw all the necessary consequences from his philosophy. See Benedictus de Spinoza, Ethics, V,
Preface, in Complete Works, ed. by Samuel Shirley (Indianapolis (In): Hackett, 2002), 363-365.
98 Regius, Legrand, Heerebord, de Raei, Guillaume Lamy, Clauberg, Velthuysen, Geulincx just to cite
a few of the most important names.
99 There is similar vacillation therefore – not identical however – between the Fourth and Fifth
Meditations, highlighted by Landucci, "Per la storia della teodicea nell’età cartesiana." These
fluctuations and ambiguities allow subsequent thinkers, who support profoundly different and
sometimes diverging positions, all to find their theoretical point of departure in Descartes.
100 And, as such, it may be compatible with Gassendi's finalistic mechanism, the rigid antifinalism of
Spinoza, and the finalistic theocentrism of Malebranche.
94 Part
25
However, it is in tension with some of Descartes' most important ideas, such as that of
continuous creation, and the existence of final causes, no matter how unknowable and
useless they are for the study of physics.
The human intellect is limited, and it is therefore impossible to understand everything
that God has created, and continues to create in the universe. This is a theme that
Descartes begins to develop very early on101 and which will remain essential
throughout his work: the presumption of human understanding that exceeds our
faculties is the source of serious prejudice, just as excessive will with respect to
intellect is the source of error in the cognitive process. Rather than be indignant,
therefore, about what we do not understand, we would do better to apply ourselves to
our studies and investigate what is within our capabilities.
The incapacity of the human intellect to embrace all of God's works is a recurrent
theme in Christian thought at least since Augustine. Augustine is also a crucial thinker
for Descartes on the issue of monstrosity. The Augustinian position was that in no
way can monsters be seen as imperfections. Only the ignorant define what they fail to
understand as disorder and imperfection. The human mind is too limited to grasp the
entire divine design, which we must posit unhesitatingly as absolutely perfect. That is
why the problem of theodicy, ultimately, is unfounded for Augustine. This is not a
matter of justifying God for any evil that exists in the world, because, in this sense,
there is no such thing as evil or imperfection or monstrosity.102
Thinking about the imperfections and monstrosities of nature, I believe we can say
that Descartes integrates the Augustinian attitude into his philosophy to a considerable
degree, at least in his major works.103 The Fourth Meditation is especially significant,
once again, in these terms. Not only does it contain the theme of our intellect being
inadequate to embrace all the mysteries of creation, but, following Augustine,
Descartes also argues for the need to consider what we do not understand – including
imperfections and ourselves, in that we are "monstrously" inclined to error – in the
overall context of the universe. From this perspective, chaos, imperfection, and
monstrosity appear in a very different light, reabsorbed into the entire divine creation
as a whole:
It also occurs to me that whenever we are inquiring whether the works of God
are perfect, we ought to look at the whole universe, not just at one created thing
on its own. For what would perhaps rightly appear very imperfect if it existed
101 Epistola
XXI of April 15, 1630, AT I, 146, CSMK, 23.
For more on the Renaissance and early modern reception of Augustine in relation to monstrosity,
see Ceard, La nature et les prodiges. See also Gillian R. Evans, Augustine on Evil (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1982).
103 Out of the vast bibliography on Descartes and Augustine, I will limit myself to citing only the
classical, seminal study by Etienne Gilson, La liberté chez Descartes et la théologie (Paris: Alcan,
1913); Stephen P. Menn, Descartes and Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)
and Zbigniew Janowski, “How to read Descartes’ Fourth Meditation: Augustinian sources of Cartesian
metaphysics,” Dionysius 19 (2001): 167-186. A highly useful resource for research on the topic is
provided by Zbigniew Janowski, Augustinian-Cartesian Index: Texts and Commentary (South Bend
(IN): St. Augustine's Press, 2004).
102
26
on its own is quite perfect when its function as a part of the universe is
considered.104
Imperfection, therefore – and, by extension, monstrosity – is a concept that has
meaning only by isolating the object or phenomenon in question. But when it is
considered "in mundo rationem partis", the variety of things will appear as an overall
perfection.
This argument tends to develop an Augustinian type of attitude, placing the emphasis
on the limits and the defects of our understanding rather than on the perfection of the
things "in themselves". This is an explanation that could be defined as both ethical
and esthetic, in the sense that what appears to us as chaotic, monstrous and
reprehensible, is not, in fact, when seen from a different, broader perspective, a
perspective in which what is good and right is also beautiful. However, this
explanation appears to be in tension with other passages in which Descartes seeks to
establish his answers based on more strictly mechanical arguments, developing his
arguments on a rigorously physical, mathematical basis, rather than on ethical or
esthetic grounds.105
This tension is evident, for example, in the Replies to the Objections collected by
Mersenne on the Second Meditation. The issue is still imperfection, which clearly
points to the responsibility of God in creating monstrosity. A reply must be made,
insists Mersenne, to the atheist for whom the existence of an infinitely good God – the
absolute Being – would exclude the existence of any other thing, especially nonBeing, evil and imperfections. The profoundly ethical slant of Mersenne's question
cannot be overlooked. We might translate and summarize it as follows: Si deus est,
unde monstra?106
Descartes, however, here as elsewhere, tends to shift the issue out of ethics onto a
physical-mathematical plane. It is not a matter of responding to Mersenne's atheist on
the existence of good and evil, so much as on his "bad" idea of the infinite. The
infinite is certainly not what excludes the existence of finite things. In the first place,
then, the atheist commits a logical error, since the infinite creative potential of God
hardly implies the impossibility of creating any finite thing. The opposite is true: God
can create anything He wants, and the existence of the finite in no way stands in
contradiction to the infinite.107
104 AT
IX, 44, CSM, 39. The need to consider things in context returns continuously in Descartes, on
the epistemological as well as on the ethical plane. See for example Epistola CDXCV of November 20,
1647 to Queen Christine of Sweden, in AT, V, 82 ff, CSMK, 324 ff.
105 This does not imply – as is obvious to anyone writing in this intellectual context – a rigid separation
between the fields. On the contrary, as Leibniz will clearly perceive, mathematics and esthetics can
converge in a certain idea of perfection. Purely by way of example, see § 242 of G.W. Leibniz,
Theodicy : Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man, and the Origin of Evil, trans. by E.
M. Huggard, ed. by A. Farrer (London: Routledge, 1951), 277.
106 Second set of objections, AT VII, 125, IX, 99, CSM II, 89.
107 Second set of replies, AT VII, 141, CSM II, 101. Descartes' reply is clearly effective in responding
to the ingenuous objection of Mersenne's hypothetical atheist. However, this teetering from one sphere
to another, from the ethical to the physical-mathematical, or at least epistemological – and the tension
between the two that I am trying to bring to light – presents certain difficulties, and does not escape the
notice of someone who is much less naive, such as Antoine Arnauld. See the Objections to the Fourth
Meditation, ibid., 167-68. See also Steven Nadler, “Arnauld’s God,” Journal of the History of
Philosophy 46 (2008): 517-538.
27
This tension also emerges between the more rigidly mechanistic explanation of
monstrosity, provided especially in the Cogitationes, and the idea of continuous
creation, which is vital for the whole Cartesian system. Already in De Mundo, nature
is defined as matter itself, with its own qualities, inasmuch as it is continuously
preserved by God.108 The passage is particularly consistent with the explanation in the
Cogitationes because, once again, for Descartes, it is a matter of forcefully asserting
that "by 'nature' here I do not mean some goddess or an other sort of imaginary
power."109
In nature, maintains Descartes, changes may only be improperly attributed to God, in
that His action is immutable. And the rules according to which these changes occur
are precisely the "laws" of nature.110 God, therefore, continuously creates and
preserves matter, which necessarily changes within and in accordance with such
laws.111 However, the problem of disorder, imperfection, and monstrosity in nature
remains to be resolved. If God continuously creates and preserves matter, where do
monstrosities come from?112
Descartes now attempts to regroup "irregularities" back under the difference between
rectilinear and curved motions, distancing himself once again from the position we
have defined in very general terms as Augustinian, which views imperfections as
depending solely on our ignorance:
It must be said that God alone is the author of all the motions in the world in so
far as they exist and in so far as they are rectilinear; but it is the various
dispositions of matter which render them irregular and curved. Likewise, the
theologians teach us that God is also the author of all our actions, in so far as
they exist and in so far as they have some goodness, but it is the various
dispositions of our wills that can render them evil.113
In the mind of Descartes, once again, the physical, metaphysical and ethical spheres
all refer to each other. It is extremely important to note, however, that the explanation
tends to vacillate again in a very different direction: there is no reference here to the
deceptive imagination of imperfections due to our ignorance. What we have now is
the genuine "resistance" of matter, in its actual existence, to the rectilinear movement
originally created by God. In the same way, in the actual existence of human will,
there is resistance to the good movement originally impressed in us by God.
108 AT
XI, 36-7, CSM I, 92.
Ivi.
110 For more on God and the laws of nature, see Daniel Garber, Descartes’ Metaphysical Physics
(Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), especially chapter 9, “God and the
Grounds of the Laws of Motion: Immutability, Force, and Finite Causes,” 263-305.
111 See also the Third Meditation, AT IX, 38-9, CSM II, 26-27.
112 Malebranche, for example, will be able to explain the existence of evil and monstrosities within a
mechanicist framework, but by separating the simple, general laws of nature from the particular
existence of monsters. The action of God and the existence of monsters can be justified in these terms.
But the notion of continuous creation raises far greater difficulties. This is something that Bayle will
realize at a later date, in his criticism of Malebranche and the occasionalist interpretation of continuous
creation. If the human soul is created at each instant together with its will, then it is not responsible for
its disposition toward crime and sin, in the same way it is not responsible for its existence. In other
words, the human soul does not exist per se, but rather, thanks to the constant action of God. See Pierre
Bayle, art. Sennert (Daniel), Rem. D (Amsterdam: P. Brunel, 1740), vol. IV, 191 b.
113 AT XI, 46-47, CSM I, 97. See Geoffrey Gorham, “The metaphysical roots of Cartesian physics : the
law of rectilinear motion,” Perspectives on Science, 13 (2005): 431-451.
109
28
As an interpretation of the imperfections of nature and monstrosity, this explanation
draws more heavily on Aristotle and the resistance of matter to form than on
Augustine and the limitations of the intellect.114 But this would be overreaching our
interpretation. Nevertheless, a clear tension remains implicit in the various
explanations that Descartes provides of both ethical and physical imperfections in
nature as well as under the general category of divine laws.
In his comments on Gueroult, Canguilhem suggested that there is an obscure point in
the relationship between Cartesian biology and metaphysics. Only the hypothesis of
the Creator-God would allow, on the one hand, for the subject to be understood as a
substantial union between body and soul and, on the other, for the rigid distinction
between fully human life and animal and mechanical life. For Canguilhem, this
tension suggests the need to reflect on the "statistical" point of view and probability in
biology (all biology, both human and animal). The point of view of the "totality",
introduced by Descartes to rigidly separate human life and animal life leads to a dead
end. In subsequent decades, the philosophy of biology began to question the
ontological primacy of the human body, qua human, in order to gain access to a
different set of issues, namely, regarding "fluctuations", "errors", successful and
unsuccessful attempts.115 Although Canguilhem does not address the issue of
monstrosity in these pages on Descartes,116 I hope to have shown in this article that
the problem of monstrosity is precisely what allows the most interesting tensions in
Cartesian philosophy to be brought into view.
6. Conclusion
In Part III of the Principles, Descartes begins his examination of the "visible
world". On the basis of the principles laid down in the first two parts, the task is now
to understand all natural phenomena perceived through the senses. He begins by
following the methodological procedure already described, by starting from the most
general things on which all others depend. As soon as the scientific undertaking is
about to begin, admiration makes its entry once again. We must start "par l’admirable
structure de ce monde visible."117 The power and the goodness of God are infinite,
while our intellect is very limited. Therefore, maintains Descartes, we can never go
wrong by imagining the works of God as too perfect, but we would certainly go
wrong by imagining it instead as having some lack or limit. The danger does not lie in
overestimating creation, but in underestimating the infinite power of the Creator
because of our failure to understand the created world.
On the one hand, then, the Cartesian enterprise of reducing nature to a set of
universal, physical-mathematical principles that embrace all phenomena has already
begun. On the other, however, Descartes is fully aware of the implications, and the
114 See
Aristotle, Generation of Animals (London: Heinemann and Cambridge (MA): Harvard
University Press 1963), IV, 3 767 a 13, as well as IV, 4 770 b 10. See also The Physics (London:
Heinemann and Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, 1952), II, 9 199 b. On the resistance of
matter to form in Aristotle, see Pierre Aubenque, Le problème de l’être chez Aristote (Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France, 1962). For more on Aristotelian teleology and the actualization of form see
Monte R. Johnson, Aristotle on Teleology (Oxford: Oxford Clarendon Press, 2005).
115 See Canguilhem, “Organisme et modèle mécaniques,” 297-98.
116 This subject is amply developed elsewhere, along with the introduction of the statistical and
probabilistic point of view into biology. See “La monstruosité et le monstrueux” and “Le normal et le
pathologique,” in La connaissance de la vie (Paris: J. Vrin, 1992).
117 AT IX, 103, CSM I, 248.
29
theoretical and theological dangers, of the problem of monstrosity, ones which will
cause much ink to be spilled in Cartesian circles over the ensuing decades.118 He is
aware of the threat that hangs over the whole system,119 as well as the potential that
lies in the possibility of taming and neutralizing monstrosity, by using the questions it
engenders to his own advantage.
Out of this, as I hope to have demonstrated, comes the successfully productive tension
that arises between texts that tend to present the world as surpassing the human
intellect, stressing our finitude with respect to infinite, incomprehensible divine
nature; and texts that tend toward explanations that are perhaps simpler, more limited
and dissatisfying, but which break more forcefully with the old philosophy. The
scientific longevity of these texts may be shorter and their influence more
restricted.120 From this tension, however, comes a complex image and powerful
theoretical function of monstrosity which tends to be masked by a one-sided reading
of Descartes' work. Even though he lacked the intellectual and scientific tools to
definitively put to rest the issue of monstrosity, Descartes fully grasped its importance
and weight. In so doing, he left the door open for his followers to pursue one of the
most interesting and fruitful problems of modern philosophy.
118 Dennis
Des Chene has shown the extraordinarily interesting development of Pierre Sylvain Régis'
position in the direction of early preformationism. In his Cours entier de Philosophie of 1691, Régis
develops a theory of monstrosity and anomaly whose purpose is to distinguish between the domains of
natural philosophy and theology, as well as to reactivate the teleological dimension and extend it to the
domain of animal life, thereby pushing Cartesian positions to the extreme but also surpassing them. By
exploiting the tension that is implicit, but already existent in Descartes' writings, as I have described it
in this article, Régis, says Des Chene, believes it possible to extend finalism beyond the human world
to the animal world. See Dennis Des Chene, “Life after Descartes : Régis on Generation,” Perspectives
on Science 11 (2003): 410-420. See also Dennis Des Chene, Spirits and Clocks : Machine and
Organism in Descartes (Ithaca and New York: Cornell University Press, 2000).
119 And which Cartesianism will soon begin to have to take stock of when confronted by reports such
as the one appearing in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 2 (1667): 480:
"another Monster was produced, which was an Infant come to maturity, having instead of a Head and
Brains, a Mass of flesh like any Liver; and was found to move. And this Foetus occasioned a Question
for the Cartesians, how the motion could be performed, and yet the Glandula pinealis, or Conarium be
wanting; nor any Nerves visible, which come from the Brain? The marrow in the Spine was of the
same substance. It liv’d four days, and then dyed." See L. Thorndyke, History of Magic and
Experimental Science (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958) VIII, 253.
120 Mesnard writes again in “L’esprit de la physiologie Cartésienne,” 219 that "la lutte contre le
finalisme rhétorique et stérilisant des aristotéliciens atardés requérait des positions nettes, dût-on payer
cette netteté au prix d’une mutilation nécessaire. La réintroduction du finalisme sur le plan moral dans
les dernières années de la méditation cartésienne prouve néanmoins que cet anathème n’avait rien de
définitif." Roger echoes him in Les sciences de la vie, 152: "Seul Descartes a osé jouer jusqu’au but la
partie du mécanisme. Il ne pouvait pas ne pas la perdre. Mais son échec mérite le respect, car son
ambition téméraire est l’ambition nécessaire de toute science humaine.”
30