Fable, Method, and Imagination in Descartes
What role do fables play in Cartesian method and psychology? By looking at Descartes’ use of fables, James Griffith suggests there is a fabular logic that runs to the heart of Descartes’ philosophy. First focusing on The World and the Discourse on Method,
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James Griffith
Fable, Method, and Imagination in Descartes
James Griffith Bratislava International School of Liberal Arts Bratislava, Slovakia
ISBN 978-3-319-70237-7 ISBN 978-3-319-70238-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70238-4 Library of Congress Control Number: 2017957864 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: The Print Collector / Alamy Stock Photo Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
To my mother
Preface
This project began as a doctoral dissertation at DePaul University in Chicago, in particular with a graduate seminar in which I was struck by how strange it seemed that Descartes, the philosopher of clear and distinct ideas, would refer to one of his fundamental works on science, The World, as a fable. To some degree, this fact still seems strange to me. In trying to work out why Descartes would have done this, I discovered a strand of literature on the subject and eventually realized that paying close attention to it could have a significant impact in how we understand the father of modernity. As the father of modernity, Descartes can seem distant from our ostensibly postmodern world. However, certain readers make clear that he is much closer to ourselves than we might always want to admit. And yet, his paternity does not exist in a vacuum and those other readers help lay out the conditions under which Descartes was writing and philosophizing. Attending to the status of something as strange as the fable in Descartes should, it seems to me, take care to acknowledge both of these aspects, the strange closeness and the historical distance.
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