To Replant and Uproot. Typology of the Cartesian Tree of Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century French Histories of Philosophy

The relations between metaphysics and physics in Cartesianism is a question of crucial importance for nineteenth-century French histories of philosophy. Hence, in its institutionally dominant version, incarnated by Victor Cousin, this philosophy was understood as a spiritualism concerned with the founding of a psychology relying on a rationalist interpretation of the cogito. In order to achieve this, such a psychology must distinguish itself from the empirical method of psychology inherited from the so-called Idéologues. And this required, in turn, that metaphysics must return to its place at the roots of the tree of knowledge, in opposition to a Baconian interpretation considering the history of the mind in prolongation of the natural sciences, and according to the same model. If this ambition proved to be both theoretically and objectively constraining for the “Cousinians,” it was, however, not a unique enterprise in the nineteenth century. Other, alternative trees of knowledge were envisaged, defining other possible readings of the Cartesian philosophy, notably by opening up alleys toward empiricist interpretations. In this chapter, I propose a typology of these alternative trees. The aim is to gain a better understanding of the complexity and the tensions between physics and metaphysics in Descartes on the one hand, and, on the other, to stress the decisive importance of nineteenth-century French historiography for our current understanding of these relations

Archaeology · Cartesian coordinate system · Epistemology · Geometry · Typology · Historical and Literary Studies · Historical Philosophy and Science · History · Mathematics · Philosophy · Philosophy, Science, and History

• The ‘empowered king’ of French spiritualism

  Delphine Antoine-Mahut•British Journal for the History…•2020

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