Ideation, concealment, and interpretation of Cartesian Dreams
A reappraisal of Descartes’ Myth as father of Modern Rationality
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14422/pen.v78.i300.y2022.017Keywords:
Descartes, dreams, Olympica, enthusiasm, modernity, reasonAbstract
Descartes’ famous dreams have always posed an uncomfortable problem for the history of philosophy, since they raised the possibility that the origin of modern reason could originate from the irrational. Overcoming this problem was not easy for Descartes himself after the years, nor has it been easy for those who since then have argued that his ideas marked the beginning of a new philosophical and scientific period characterized by the rejection of any kind of knowledge based on revelation or mystical inspiration. Most scholars have sought to overcome this irrational character of the origins of rationality by reading dreams under the light of the subsequent development of Cartesian thought. In contrast, I propose here to approach those dreams in the context of the intellectual concerns that the French philosopher had in 1619. There are elements in the description of Cartesian dreams, such as the relevance given to «enthusiasm», or the revelation of a new science «from above», which link it closely to a conception of truth and reason very close to that of Platonists, philosophers and poets that the history of philosophy has subsequently considered to be at the antipodes of modern rationality.
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