Cartesian Psychophysics and the Whole Nature of Man

Richard F. Hassing is research associate professor in the School of Philosophy at Catholic University.

• 1 Background: What was Rejected?2 Early Cartesian Psychophysics: The Treatise of Man3 Baseline Teleology: Sensation and the Teaching of Nature in Meditation 64 Human Difference: Speech and the “True Man” in Discourse 55 The Passions of the Soul, Part I, aa. 1–44: General Theory of the Passions (the Use of Physics)6 The Passions of the Soul, Part I, aa. 45–50: The Soul’s Power in Relation to its Passions(Leaving Physics Behind)Interim Conclusions: “the Whole Nature of Man” or Descartes’s Final Dualism7 The Passions of the Soul, Part II, aa. 51–67: The Causes, Use, and Derivation of the PrincipalPassions (to the Standpoint of the Self-Conscious I) 8 Art. 68: On Descartes’s Rejection of the Distinction between Concupiscible and IrascibleAppetites (art. 47, continued)9 Arts. 144–146: Fortune, Providence, and the Regulation of Desire (a Theological Accompaniment to the Self-Conscious I)10 On Generosity and the Meaning of Cartesian Individualism (Wholes, Parts, and theRedirection of Thumos)11 Gravitas: Autobiography of a Childhood but Persistent Prejudice (the Psychogenesis ofAnthropomorphism)ConclusionAppendix Descartes: Concepts Engineer

Richard Hassing’s monograph is to my knowledge the first full-length study of Descartes’s Passions of the Soul…. Hassing’s excellent study should be of interest not just to Descartes scholars, although that group clearly is its primary intended audience, but to anyone interested in the Cartesian origins of modern self.