The conception of René Descartes as the arch-rationalist has been sufficiently exploded in recent literature; however, there is still a large lacuna in our understanding of how empirical research and experimentation fits within his philosophy. My dissertation is directed at addressing just this problem. I contend that Descartes’ famed method is not a singular monolith but instead two interdependent methods: one directed at metaphysical and epistemological truth, while the other directed at empirical questions and contingent facts of the world. I claim there is evidence for this position not only in his actual scientific practice, but also in the rhetorical structure of the Discourse on Method and the Principles of Philosophy. In exploring the empirical side of Descartes’ method, I show how his unusual system produces a system of experiment designed to serve both as a discovery and verification tool at the same time. As a further application of my interpretation, I argue that the Passions of the Soul and Descartes’ ethical theory expressed in his correspondence must also be seen as part of his two-fold methodology. Instead of attempting to cast Descartes as a virtue ethicist or deontologist, as is normally done, I emphasize that Descartes’ ethics is centered on the mind-body union, and therefore, includes an empirical element as well. The end result is an ethics that requires a detailed study of mechanics, anatomy, physics, as well as medicine. Lastly, I show how this methodology can help us understand the works of some of his early followers: Claude Gadroys and Jacques Rohault. Both of these philosophers not only serve to ground my interpretation, but also to highlight aspects of Cartesian that have often been passed over. I show how the experimentalism of Jacques Rohault goes beyond the epistemological boundaries set up by Descartes, as signifies a new direction that will ultimately eclipse the Cartesian school of thought. In the case of Claude Gadroys, I present a concrete example of the exploitation of the over generality of Cartesian principles. In so doing, I show that while Descartes’ experimentalism was intended to rule out the possibility of occult causes, he in fact created a system that allowed for them, only under a different guise.

Consagrado pela doutrina de que o nosso mundo é o melhor dos mundos possíveise por seu otimismo em relação à humanidade, o filósofo alemão G. W. Leibniz (1646-1716) não poderia deixar de tecer considerações sobre o problema da felicidade humana.Mas, em face das inúmeras mazelas que afligem a humanidade, e sendoo leibnizianismo um otimismo teísta, fundado naconvicçãoa respeitodo governo soberanode um Deusbom, segundo oqual se admite a existência de uma ordem moral e divina no Universo, apresentam-se para o pensador algumas dificuldades no que tange àdefesa da tese do melhor dos mundos, se quisermos admitir que este melhor consiste de um plano divino que diz respeito de alguma forma à humanidade e a seu bem estar, demandando-se, assim, a justificaçãodesua posiçãoà luz da experiência humana observável e dos aspectos metafísicos, teológicos e moraisde seu pensamento. O presente trabalho visa, assim, tratardo problema da felicidade humana no melhor dos mundos possíveis, partindo-se da exploração da concepção leibniziana de felicidade, elucidando-se o sentido da tese do melhor dos mundos possíveis, e culminando com a defesa da tese de que, a despeito das aparências em sentido contrário, neste melhor mundo, a felicidade dos espíritos é o principal embora não o único desígnio de Deus, considerando-se também o papel de uma solução escatológicae levando-se em contaque a felicidade, para o autor, não é um atributo estáticodo mundo, mas parte de um progresso perpétuo em perfeição e na direção de novos prazeres. / Establishedby his doctrine that our world is the best of the possible worldsand by his optimism about humanity, the german philosopher G. W. Leibniz (1646-1716) could not depart himself from considering the problem of human happiness. But, in face of the numerous ills that afflict humanity, and since leibnizianism is a theisticoptimism, founded on the conviction aboutthe sovereigngovernment of a goodGod, according to which the existence of a moral and divine order in the universe is admitted, some difficulties arise for the thinker in defending the thesis of the best of the possible worlds, if we want to admit that this \"best\" consists of a divine plan that somehow concerns humanity and its welfare, demandingthe justificationof his position in the light of observable human experience and the metaphysical, theological, and moral aspects of his thought. The present work, therefore, proposesdealing with the problem of human happiness in the best of possible worlds, starting from the exploration of the leibnizian conception of happiness, elucidating the meaning of the thesis of the best of possible worlds, culminating in the defense of the thesis that, in spite of appearances incontrary, in this \"best world\" the happiness of the spirits is the principal -though not the only of God\'s designs,andalso considering the role of an eschatological solution,and taking into account that happiness, for the author, is not a staticattribute of the world, but part of a perpetual progress in perfection and in the direction of new pleasures.

This commentary on article #19 of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's Discourse on Metaphysics is for the purpose of promoting the understanding of Leibniz on the role of teleology in physics. Understanding Leibniz on final causes is crucial to understanding his overall natural philosophy. If one approaches Leibniz with a bias regarding either final causes or protestant Christian theology, such that they ignore these aspects of Leibniz, such a person is in danger of completly misunderstanding this philosopher. Leibniz is a mix of natural philosophy, mechanical physics, and protestant Christian theology. The rationale behind this study is to cause the student of philosophy to consider a somewhat ignored side of Leibniz which stems from his combination of two politically incorrect words in academics today, "intelligent" and "design". Both of these words are found in #19. Both of these terms are employed in concert with the Christian idea of God, a combination which is highly charged in academics today, and most politically incorrect. To address the political incorrectness of this combination of terms, however, is to engage in the understanding of what it mean to think and argue in seventeenth century Europe. To wrestle with these terms in article #19, therefore, is to wrestle with those positions which caused great tensions in early modern culture. The approach taken for this work is a line by line exposition of the text, unearthing the arguments involved and those philosophers who made them. Once into this particular text, article #19 turns out to be enormous in its scope of Leibnizian thought. Its subject matter mirrors the thinking of Leibniz, and is background material for other projects Leibniz was involved in at the time, such as the laws of motion in optics. The significance of this work to the discipline is that Leibniz, one of the most intellectually gifted men in human history, no less the co-discoverer of the calculus, argues that reality is an intelligent design created by a loving person who only wants to be loved by the creation in return. This puts him at odds with pure mechanists in his day, and it puts him at odds with many in philosophy today. For all those in philosophy who argue that there is no reason for reality existing, at least not as it does, Leibniz provides a very clear counter argument. Leibniz's point in #19 is that there is a place for end purposes in calculating the laws of nature, and that those who dismiss end purposes do so for insufficient reasons.

Recent philosophers assess differently the extent to which affinity is to be found between the idealist metaphysics of G. W. Leibniz and George Berkeley. I argue that these figures’ idealisms are indeed strongly aligned. They espouse related accounts of the nature of mental substance and state. They similarly restrict the domain of causality. They each reject the Lockean primary/secondary quality dichotomy. Over against the criticism that idealisms cannot allow for a distinction to be made out between real and illusory perceptual experience, the two philosophers offer comparable solutions. Nevertheless, their ontologies are not identical, and are primarily to be distinguished in terms of their disparate characterisations of ultimate reality as being either immanent or transcendent to percipient subjects like us. This continuum of transcendentism and immanentism has further application as a conceptual tool both for tracing the rise of modern philosophy and for developing new metaphysical and epistemological accounts of the nature of the world and our relation to it.

Consagrado pela doutrina de que o nosso mundo é o melhor dos mundos possíveise por seu otimismo em relação à humanidade, o filósofo alemão G. W. Leibniz (1646-1716) não poderia deixar de tecer considerações sobre o problema da felicidade humana.Mas, em face das inúmeras mazelas que afligem a humanidade, e sendoo leibnizianismo um otimismo teísta, fundado naconvicçãoa respeitodo governo soberanode um Deusbom, segundo oqual se admite a existência de uma ordem moral e divina no Universo, apresentam-se para o pensador algumas dificuldades no que tange àdefesa da tese do melhor dos mundos, se quisermos admitir que este melhor consiste de um plano divino que diz respeito de alguma forma à humanidade e a seu bem estar, demandando-se, assim, a justificaçãodesua posiçãoà luz da experiência humana observável e dos aspectos metafísicos, teológicos e moraisde seu pensamento. O presente trabalho visa, assim, tratardo problema da felicidade humana no melhor dos mundos possíveis, partindo-se da exploração da concepção leibniziana de felicidade, elucidando-se o sentido da tese do melhor dos mundos possíveis, e culminando com a defesa da tese de que, a despeito das aparências em sentido contrário, neste melhor mundo, a felicidade dos espíritos é o principal embora não o único desígnio de Deus, considerando-se também o papel de uma solução escatológicae levando-se em contaque a felicidade, para o autor, não é um atributo estáticodo mundo, mas parte de um progresso perpétuo em perfeição e na direção de novos prazeres. / Establishedby his doctrine that our world is the best of the possible worldsand by his optimism about humanity, the german philosopher G. W. Leibniz (1646-1716) could not depart himself from considering the problem of human happiness. But, in face of the numerous ills that afflict humanity, and since leibnizianism is a theisticoptimism, founded on the conviction aboutthe sovereigngovernment of a goodGod, according to which the existence of a moral and divine order in the universe is admitted, some difficulties arise for the thinker in defending the thesis of the best of the possible worlds, if we want to admit that this \"best\" consists of a divine plan that somehow concerns humanity and its welfare, demandingthe justificationof his position in the light of observable human experience and the metaphysical, theological, and moral aspects of his thought. The present work, therefore, proposesdealing with the problem of human happiness in the best of possible worlds, starting from the exploration of the leibnizian conception of happiness, elucidating the meaning of the thesis of the best of possible worlds, culminating in the defense of the thesis that, in spite of appearances incontrary, in this \"best world\" the happiness of the spirits is the principal -though not the only of God\'s designs,andalso considering the role of an eschatological solution,and taking into account that happiness, for the author, is not a staticattribute of the world, but part of a perpetual progress in perfection and in the direction of new pleasures.

My dissertation focuses on the moral philosophy of Descartes, Pascal, and Spinoza in the context of the revival of Stoicism within the seventeenth century. There are many misinterpretations about early modern ethical theories due to a lack of proper awareness of Stoicism in the early modern period. My project rectifies this by highlighting understated Stoic themes in these early modern texts that offer new clarity to their morality. Although these three philosophers hold very different metaphysical commitments, each embraces a different aspect of Stoicism, letting it influence but not define his work. By addressing the Stoic themes on the morality of these three authors, I also hope to help better capture the intellectual climate of the time by bringing Stoic themes into the foreground. Stoicism is a Hellenistic philosophy that considered the passions a sickness of the intellect and the source of all human suffering; they believed the cure was virtue, which was obtained through replacing irrational passions with rational beliefs. Stoicism had a revival in the Renaissance ushering in a wave of Neostoic authors who play an important role in shaping the intellectual landscape of the following centuries. My first two chapters discuss Descartes, who wrote a “provisional morality” early in his public life, only (as I show) to ignore the subject of ethics until near his death. In my first chapter I argue that, though many present-day scholars misread Descartes’ first ethics as part of his final ethics, this earliest “provisional morality” mimics Neostoic Skeptics such as Montaigne and is provisional because his method of doubt is also provisional. In my second chapter I show that Descartes’ late, and more developed, moral theory attempts to synthesize a variety of ancient, and seemingly contradictory, ethical traditions: Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Aristotelianism. In many ways Descartes embraces Stoic morality, but as a mechanist he does not view passions as an intellectual sickness; rather they are a physiological event, an amoral instrument that can be used to help control one’s irrational desires. I further defend my thesis externally by showing that this is the reading supported by Descartes’ contemporaries including critics such as Leibniz and early Cartesians such as Antoine Le Grand and Pierre-Sylvain Régis My third chapter discusses Pascal, who embraces Stoicism differently. Pascal offers Stoicism as the first tier of a binary ethics: modeled after Augustine’s city of God and city of man, it is an alternative moral code for those who are ignorant of the good and true happiness. Finally, in my fourth chapter, I discuss two common misinterpretations of Spinoza’s ethics: one of them neglects the Stoic influence on his thought while the other embraces it too strongly, portraying him as an unadulterated Stoic. Although there are ways that he is more Stoic than Descartes and Pascal, such as in his panpsychism and monism, this does not extend to his morality. Rather than accepting either of the two readings, I highlight anti- Stoic themes that are also present. I conclude that if the discussion is contained to his morality, Spinoza is no more Stoic than the other Neostoics I discuss in previous chapters.

This project traces shifts in understandings of causation from the premodern to the early modern period, focusing on one premodern interpretation of causation as representative of the Neoplatonic period, that of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, and comparing this perspective to several early modern thinkers, especially, Isaac Newton, Rene Descartes, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and Francis Bacon. For Dionysius, formal and final causation have metaphysical superiority over efficient and material causation. By contrast, beginning in the early modern period, efficient causation, the sense that describes how an object acquires a particular shape, begins to be seen as metaphysically supreme. The main historical and philosophical reasons for this shift in perceived supremacy are the affirmation of the primary-secondary quality distinction, and the rejection of Forms and teleology. The primary-secondary quality distinction allows for reality to be completely quantified, and thereby renders superfluous qualitative approaches to reality, such as formal causation. Similarly, the rejection of Forms and teleology leaves formal causation meaningless. After this historical overview, the philosophical hypothesis that Dionysius's premodern understanding of causation is more amenable to those who want to avoid nihilism is defended: purely scientific notions of causation have no means for providing whatness, intelligibility, or determinacy to the world in a rationally defensible manner, and thus, when pressed, a purely scientific view of the world is without whatness, intelligibility, and determinacy, which, by definition, leads to nihilism. By contrast, a world with causes other than solely scientific causes, specifically, a world with formal (and final) causation such as Dionysius's, allows for whatness, intelligibility, and determinacy, and thereby escapes nihilism because whatness requires Form, intelligibility requires Form and teleology, and determinacy requires teleology (which, in turn, is a supplement to Form). As argued, science studies the world of becoming, and therefore cannot provide the grounds for the world of being (which belongs to metaphysics); to live in a world of pure becoming without being is to have a nihilistic worldview. The epilogue draws a significant implication from this conclusion: the premodern approach invites a necessary revival of natural philosophy because the world of becoming is wider than modern science acknowledges.

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In presenting their correspondence, I highlight the means in which Hobbes is able to divorce nature and politics in his philosophy. This is done by bringing to light Hobbes’s agreement with Descartes’s deceiving God argument. First, I demonstrate Hobbes’s hidden agreement with it by analyzing his objection to Descartes’s first Meditation. Second, I show that Hobbes and Descartes both retreat into consciousness in order to deal with the possibility of deception on the behalf of God. Third, I trace Hobbes’s rational justification for entertaining that very possibility. Fourth, I bring forward Hobbes’s certain principle, that God is incomprehensible. Fifth, I demonstrate Hobbes’s rationalization for rendering nature incomprehensible in turn. From this key insight, the differences between the two philosophers stand out more. Whereas Descartes rids himself of the possibility of a deceiving God, Hobbes does not. Sixth, I show that Descartes needs to rid himself of that possibility in order to have a basis for science, Hobbes’s science is such that he does not need to rid himself of that possibility. My investigation ends by considering both Hobbes’s and Descartes’s stance on nature, in relation to politics. I find that Hobbes’s principle is much more practical that Descartes’s principle. Hobbes’s principle is shown to be much more instructive and sustainable for human life. In conclusion, this analysis of the origins, principles, and orientation of the two philosopher’s thought brings forward the overarching question, whether the recovery of value and meaning is to be brought about in nature, or in civilization.

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