A Design for Life: Descartes's Ethical Perfectionism
A Design for Life: Descartes’s Ethical Perfectionism
The aim is to complete a research monograph on the moral philosophy of René Descartes (1596-1650). The project will be based on, but also constitute an important development of, several years of previous work on the topic. The project is important since Descartes’s moral philosophy, in contrast to his epistemology and metaphysics, has so far received very limited attention by scholars, both with respect to its central components (e.g. perfection, virtue, the highest good, free will, and happiness), and with respect to how, if at all, the relevant components form a coherent whole. In the monograph, I present an interpretation of Descartes's moral philosophy in its entirety and argue that it offers a distinctive and interesting form of ethical perfectionism. The monograph will fill a gap in the literature on Descartes's philosophy. It should attract attention particularly from scholars specializing in early modern philosophy, but also from researchers in moral philosophy and its history more generally. Various publishers, including Cambridge University Press, have expressed a strong interest in the manuscript. I will spend one month of the project at the University of Turku in Finland, where I will present a draft of the manuscript to internationally renowned experts in early modern philosophy working in the research project The Modern View of Concepts (http://users.utu.fi/valvil/EAS.html).
Final report
Thanks to the generous funding that I received from Riksbankens jubileumsfond (RJ Sabbatical), I was able to complete a first full draft of a monograph on the moral philosophy of René Descartes (1596-1650). The working title of the monograph is Living well for Humans – A Study in René Descartes's Ethical Thought. Compared to other aspects of Descartes's philosophy (especially his metaphysics and epistemology), very little has been written so far about his ethics. The monograph should be of interest particularly to scholars of Descartes, but also to scholars of early modern moral philosophy in general. I have furthermore done my best to write the monograph in such a way that it can be used in teaching at higher levels in philosophy.
Several publishing houses have expressed their interest in the monograph. However, in the light of very helpful comments from different readers, I decided to rework the manuscript one more time before submitting it. My aim now is to submit a final version of the text in late summer or early fall of 2023.
In the monograph, I develop an interpretation of Descartes's ethics as it is presented first in his extensive correspondence with Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia (1618-1680) during the mid-1640s, and which then culminates in the third and final part of his last published work, The Passions of the Soul (1649), with the introduction of an ideal that he calls generosity (la generosité). This ideal, or this virtue, as Descartes also refers to it, consists partly in a habitual knowledge that the only thing that really belongs to ourselves is our free will and that we deserve praise or blame only on the basis of whether we use this freedom of will well or badly; partly in a habitual sense or feeling within ourselves of a firm resolution to always use our free will well (i.e., to always choose first to form and then to act in accordance with our most considered judgments about what would be best to do in the circumstances). A person in possession of generosity is ensured both of living morally well (i.e., in the way each person ought to do), and to live happily (i.e., to enjoy complete inner contentment or peace of mind). That the virtue of generosity guarantees happiness, according to Descartes, is largely because it entails a complete command over our passions. Such control does not entail that the generous free themselves completely from all passions, but rather that they never have excessive passions. In the final chapter of the monograph, I furthermore discuss how the ideal of generosity relates to the most famous passages in Descartes' earlier works where he touches upon ethics: the provisional moral code (morale par provision) that he presents in Book 3 of the Discourse on the Method (1637), and the so-called the tree analogy in the preface to the French edition of the Principles of Philosophy (1647).
Working on the monograph has been quite demanding, not least because there is so little previous research to lean on. However, I have had the great fortunate to have several knowledgeable philosophers reading and commenting on drafts of various chapters. In addition, I have regularly met with some of them - Martina Reuter, Peter Myrdal, Arto Repo and Valtteri Viljanen – for in depth discussions in Turku. Their criticisms have been invaluable to my work.
While working on the monograph, I have encountered at least three new paths or venues that I intend to pursue in future research. To begin with, it has become clear that Descartes's ethics involves a kind of egalitarianism, which would be very interesting to investigate also on a political level (this is a topic about which practically nothing has been written so far). Secondly, the notion of free will plays a central role in Descartes' ethical thinking. Exactly how Descartes conceives of free will has been hotly debated by scholars, but by taking his ethics seriously we gain new angles on this question that have not yet received quite the attention they deserve. Thirdly, in the future I hope to be able to develop further something that I only briefly touch upon in the monograph, namely the importance that Descartes gives to engaging in philosophy in order to live well. In my reading, Descartes stands out as a clear representative of the notion of philosophy as a way of life that is often attributed to various ancient philosophers.
During the year I held the RJ Sabbatical, I focused almost exclusively on writing a thorough and complete draft of the monograph. However, I also published two articles and wrote a couple of book reviews (see the separate publication list). One of the articles - "Descartes On How We Should Feel About Death" - has a very clear connection to the work on the monograph (much of what is said in the article is also used in the monograph). In the second case, it was instead a co-authored article for the Oxford Handbook on Meaning in Life, in which some different positions are discussed regarding what makes a person's life meaningful.
Several publishing houses have expressed their interest in the monograph. However, in the light of very helpful comments from different readers, I decided to rework the manuscript one more time before submitting it. My aim now is to submit a final version of the text in late summer or early fall of 2023.
In the monograph, I develop an interpretation of Descartes's ethics as it is presented first in his extensive correspondence with Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia (1618-1680) during the mid-1640s, and which then culminates in the third and final part of his last published work, The Passions of the Soul (1649), with the introduction of an ideal that he calls generosity (la generosité). This ideal, or this virtue, as Descartes also refers to it, consists partly in a habitual knowledge that the only thing that really belongs to ourselves is our free will and that we deserve praise or blame only on the basis of whether we use this freedom of will well or badly; partly in a habitual sense or feeling within ourselves of a firm resolution to always use our free will well (i.e., to always choose first to form and then to act in accordance with our most considered judgments about what would be best to do in the circumstances). A person in possession of generosity is ensured both of living morally well (i.e., in the way each person ought to do), and to live happily (i.e., to enjoy complete inner contentment or peace of mind). That the virtue of generosity guarantees happiness, according to Descartes, is largely because it entails a complete command over our passions. Such control does not entail that the generous free themselves completely from all passions, but rather that they never have excessive passions. In the final chapter of the monograph, I furthermore discuss how the ideal of generosity relates to the most famous passages in Descartes' earlier works where he touches upon ethics: the provisional moral code (morale par provision) that he presents in Book 3 of the Discourse on the Method (1637), and the so-called the tree analogy in the preface to the French edition of the Principles of Philosophy (1647).
Working on the monograph has been quite demanding, not least because there is so little previous research to lean on. However, I have had the great fortunate to have several knowledgeable philosophers reading and commenting on drafts of various chapters. In addition, I have regularly met with some of them - Martina Reuter, Peter Myrdal, Arto Repo and Valtteri Viljanen – for in depth discussions in Turku. Their criticisms have been invaluable to my work.
While working on the monograph, I have encountered at least three new paths or venues that I intend to pursue in future research. To begin with, it has become clear that Descartes's ethics involves a kind of egalitarianism, which would be very interesting to investigate also on a political level (this is a topic about which practically nothing has been written so far). Secondly, the notion of free will plays a central role in Descartes' ethical thinking. Exactly how Descartes conceives of free will has been hotly debated by scholars, but by taking his ethics seriously we gain new angles on this question that have not yet received quite the attention they deserve. Thirdly, in the future I hope to be able to develop further something that I only briefly touch upon in the monograph, namely the importance that Descartes gives to engaging in philosophy in order to live well. In my reading, Descartes stands out as a clear representative of the notion of philosophy as a way of life that is often attributed to various ancient philosophers.
During the year I held the RJ Sabbatical, I focused almost exclusively on writing a thorough and complete draft of the monograph. However, I also published two articles and wrote a couple of book reviews (see the separate publication list). One of the articles - "Descartes On How We Should Feel About Death" - has a very clear connection to the work on the monograph (much of what is said in the article is also used in the monograph). In the second case, it was instead a co-authored article for the Oxford Handbook on Meaning in Life, in which some different positions are discussed regarding what makes a person's life meaningful.