Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Objections and Replies

Paris

Michel de Soly

1641

The common view is that the mind is like "a wind or similar body"

DESCARTES: You then adopt a droll figure of speech and pretend to interrogate me as if I were present; and you address me no longer as a whole man but as a disembodied soul, I think that you are indicating here that these objections of yours did not originate in the mind of a subtle philosopher but came from flesh alone. I ask you then, O Flesh, or whatever name you want me to address you by, have you so little to do with the mind that you were unable to notice when I corrected the common view whereby that which thinks is supposed to be like a wind or similar body? I of course corrected this view when I showed that it can be supposed that there is no wind or any other body in the world, yet nonetheless everything which enables me to recognize myself as a thinking thing still remains. Hence all your subsequent questions as to whether I might not still be a wind or occupy space or be in motion in several ways, and so on, are so fatuous as to need no reply.
(Fifth Set of Replies, p. 244)

Weather::Wind

Past Masters

Descartes, René. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. Trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothof, and Dugald Murdoch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

10/07/2003