ISSN 1393-614X Minerva - An Internet Journal of
Philosophy Vol. 9 2005.
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GENEROSITY AND MECHANISM IN DESCARTES'S PASSIONS
Emer
O'Hagan |
Descartes’s mechanistic account of
the passions is sometimes dismissed as one which lacks the resources to adequately
explain the cognitive aspect of emotion. By some, he is taken to be “feeling
theorist”, reducing the passions to a mere awareness of the physiological state
of the soul-body union. If this reading of Descartes’s passions is correct, his
theory fails not only because it cannot account for the intentional nature of
the passions, but also because the passions cannot play the role in Descartes’s
moral theory they are meant to play. I argue that Descartes’s account is not
best read as a feeling theory. I defend a reading of the Cartesian passions
which acknowledges their mechanistic nature, arguing that for Descartes,
passions are modes of the soul with cognitive significance, they are
perceptions of relational axiological properties. Thus, Descartes’s theory of
the passions has the resources to connect it with an account of good conduct.
As a means of elaborating on the normative nature of the passions I consider
the role of generosity in Descartes’s moral theory.
Cartesian generosity is both a virtue
and the master passion. The generous person has a form of self-mastery that
leaves her full of good will for others and, fortified by sound judgement about
what is most valuable in her person, invulnerable to slights and petty wrongs.
Generosity is the perfection of our dispositions as practical reasoners in the
sense that it includes a theoretical understanding of what is most valuable in
us and the disposition to act in a manner which honours that value. It includes
the identification of oneself with one’s will and the resolve to use that will
well. Descartes’s moral theory is, in part, an exhortation to perfect one’s
capacity for judgement, to appropriately esteem that capacity, and to develop
the dispositions associated with that esteem and capacity.
According to Descartes, the principal
utility of moral theory is the regulation of desires. As agents our experience
is made meaningful by the passions; in order to flourish they must be
well-ordered. Descartes’s moral theory requires that the passions bear some
cognitive significance, operating within a representational system which itself
serves to maintain and benefit the agent. Hence, the passions must be
understood in terms which can grant them cognitive status sufficient to guide
and regulate conduct. Yet some philosophers claim that Descartes’s treatment of
the passions is excessively mechanical and insufficiently cognitive to allow
them such a role. They argue that Descartes’s mechanistic theory of the
passions cannot adequately explain their normative significance in action, as
passions are for him a mere awareness of a physiological state. Without
normative significance, his account of the passions is inadequate and his moral
theory undermined.
However, Descartes’ account of the
passions is more robust than is often supposed. The passions operate within the
soul-body union to inform and guide us in a manner which promotes our
well-being. In this paper I will defend a reading of the Cartesian passions
which acknowledges their mechanistic nature, arguing that for Descartes,
passions are modes of the soul with cognitive significance, they are
perceptions of relational axiological properties, and so Descartes’s theory of
the passions has the resources to connect it with an account of good conduct. As
a means of elaborating on the normative nature of the passions I will consider
the role of generosity in Descartes’s ethics. The generous person is the master
of his own passions; for Descartes, generosity itself is the key to all the
other virtues (Descartes, 1989, A 156, A161).
In the virtue and passion of generosity theoretical insight and moral
disposition come together as practical wisdom.
The
Passions
Descartes wrote his treatise on the
passions, The Passions of the Soul, in response to Princess Elisabeth’s
persistent and acute questioning about the nature of the soul-body interaction.
In order to distance himself from the Stoics who saw the passions as
pathological phenomena to be overcome, he described his approach as that of a
physicist, not a moral philosopher (Rodis-Lewis, 1989, xvi). Descartes aimed to explain the operation of
the passions scientifically within the domain of the soul-body union. For
Descartes, the bodies of animals are automata which, like any mechanism, are
moved as a result of the particular organization of its parts and facts about
mechanical laws. He rejects explanations of the movements of animals which make
reference to an immanent Aristotelian telos (Rodis-Lewis, 1978, 161). The
adaptive behaviour of non-human animals is partially regulated by systematic
bodily events similar to those which cause passions in the souls of persons. In
explaining the bodily causes of the passions physiologically, Descartes is
committed to explaining them as causal systems functioning automatically.
Because we have the capacity for voluntary action humans are not mere automata,
so while Descartes seeks a scientific account he must reconcile this with his
commitment to human self-determination through the will.1
According to Descartes, “Whatever is
done or happens afresh is generally called by the Philosophers a Passion with
respect to the subject it happens to, and an Action with respect to what makes
it happen” (Descartes, 1989, A1). Given this dual aspect nature of the
passions, Descartes must carefully distinguish between the functioning of the
body and the soul respectively. He must account for the functioning of the
passions both in terms of their subjective reference and in terms of their
mechanical operation within the body, and he must reconcile these operations.
In the Second and Third Parts of The Passions of the Soul Descartes
focuses on the role of the will, but in the First Part the focus is on some of
the machinations involved in the production of a passion. Here he writes that
all of the movements of the muscles and the senses depend on nerves coming from
the brain, containing a wind or subtle fluid called “animal spirits”. The heart
rarefies the very finest parts of the blood which compose the animal spirits.
In fact, blood flow plays such an important role in the formation of the
passions that in one place Descartes speculates that watching too many
tragedies can gradually constrict the heart, slow the circulation, and
ultimately cause ill health (Descartes, 1991, 250).
The soul has two types of attributes:
actions and passion. The actions of the soul are its volitions, they come
directly from the soul and depend on it alone. These volitions may have as
their end either the soul itself, as when one wills to love God, or the body
itself, as when one wills to take a walk and one’s legs begin to move. The
passions are perceptions of the soul, and part of thought, although thought
without volition. The perceptions of the soul are mediated by the nerves and
refer to one of three sources: objects outside us which strike our senses, to
our body (or body parts), or to our soul (Descartes, 1989, A22). The
perceptions we refer to the soul are those whose effects are felt as though in
the soul itself, they are the passions proper.
Passions of the soul, properly so
called, are “perceptions or sensations or excitations of the soul which are
referred to it in particular and which are caused, maintained, and strengthened
by some movement of the spirits” (Descartes, 1989, A27). In the early part of
his treatise Descartes considers a fearful response to an animal, the result of
a complex causal process. Fear is produced when the light reflected off the
perceived animal creates images on the perceiver’s eyes which, via the optic
nerves, make their way to the brain where they form two images. The images are
consolidated into one after animal spirits direct the images to the pineal
gland which acts on the soul, causing it to see the animal’s shape. If the
shape resembles things harmful to the body, if it is frightening, passions are
excited in the soul: first apprehension, then fear, then terror or boldness.
The passionate response depends upon the temperament and past experience of the
individual. In some cases the flow of animal spirits from the pineal gland to
the nerves will cause the back to turn and the legs to run away (Descartes,
1989, A35-36).
As mechanistic as this sounds, the
passions are nonetheless not entirely beyond our control. Indeed, Descartes
seems very optimistic about our capacities to regulate the passions, claiming
“there is no soul so weak that it cannot, when well guided, acquire an absolute
power over its passions” (Descartes, 1989, A50). Although one cannot will a
passion into or out of existence directly, one can do so indirectly by
considering reasons, or attending to objects which are usually connected with
an alternative passion. For example, when feeling fearful one might consider
how one will regret fleeing, or conjure up an image of oneself as victor over
the feared object (Descartes, 1989, A45). The will is authoritative but needs
to call upon other cognitive resources. Some times the will can only control or
limit the effects of a passionate state. For example, when one is in the grip
of a passion such as anger, Descartes admits, one can only control its effects.
In anger the hand will rise to strike one’s foe but the will can restrain it
(Descartes, 1989, A46).
Non-human animals share with human
animals the bodily apparatus which make possible the human passions; they too
have animal spirits and the pineal gland which regulate their flow. Of course,
non-human animals cannot have passions of the soul because they don’t have
souls, but the movement of their nerves and muscles occurs because of the
movement of the animal spirits. The machinery of their bodies can be adjusted
and thus they can be trained to behave differently. A dog which is naturally
inclined to run towards a partridge, and run away once a gun is fired, can
nonetheless be trained to stop upon spotting a partridge and run towards it
upon hearing the gunfire. Because human animals possess reason our capacity to
remodel our bodily machinery is even greater. We can, through the use of our
will, train ourselves, so that our passions more readily accord with what is
beneficial to us. Although we are propitiously constructed, and the passions
are guides to what is good, they are imperfect.
Descartes’s position is not, as it is
sometimes characterized, one hostile to the body. He concludes that the
passions are almost all good and are “so useful in this life that our soul
would have no reason to wish to remain joined to its body for even one minute
if it could not feel them” (Descartes, 1991, 300). Indeed, Descartes ends his
treatise on the passions by concluding that all of the good and evil of this
life depends upon them, their mastery being an enormous benefit for any
individual life (Descartes, 1989, A212). We should not try to eliminate the
passions, but should instead aim for skilful and wise management of them.
Are
the Passions Cognitive?
The particulars of Descartes’s
physiology aside, this view of the passions as bodily mechanisms aimed at
facilitating our survival, and making our lives interesting, is one that modern
theorists of the emotions are quick to adopt. Descartes’s account of the
passions is often dismissed, however, not because of its antiquated physiology,
but because he is taken to be offering a strict feeling theory of the passions.
In fact, Descartes is widely misread as a feeling theorist.2 Feeling theories
treat the emotions as relatively simple, unanalyzable ‘feels’ and subsequently
focus on the causal mechanisms which produce them. Feeling theories of the
emotions reduce them to sensations or bodily states, making the conscious
feeling of the physical state the emotion. Thus feeling theories deny the
passions both an intentional object and any significant role in the guidance of
behaviour.
William Lyons is perhaps typical of
those who dismiss Descartes as a feeling theorist. He argues that Descartes’s
description of the passions of the soul is really an account of the causation
of emotion, not of emotion itself. Lyons takes the passivity of the passions to
be fundamental to Descartes’s view, and so interprets the Cartesian passions as
particular forms of bodily commotion, along with a reflective awareness of that
commotion (Lyons, 1980, 1-16). According
to
The passivity of the passions is a
difficult issue for Descartes. He cannot hold that the emotions have the
cognitive status of judgments. If they did they would be actions of the soul,
not passions. On the other hand, if the passions are conceived as modes of the
soul with respect to which we are entirely passive, in the sense that they are
subjectively meaningless happenings, then it is unclear how they could play any
role in the regulation of good conduct.
Lyons, in effect, challenges
Descartes’s claim that the passions, as perceptions of bodily sensations, can
be attributed to the soul. His suggestion is that although Descartes considers
the passions to be a species of thought, he is not justified in his move from
passions as awareness of bodily commotion to the cognitive phenomenon that
typically describes an emotion. Consider Descartes’s account of fear. According
to
If
Given Descartes’s proclivity for
explanation involving reference to blood flow and animal spirits, it is perhaps
understandable that interpretations of his account overstate the physiological
components while discounting the normative dimension. However, when regarded as
a systematic means of protecting and enhancing the union of soul and body,
Descartes’s mechanistic account can be seen to be both intelligibly motivated,
and beyond classification as a simple feeling theory. Passions are not
judgments nor are they simply the awareness of a bodily state. Lyons’s reading,
while not implausible, ignores other important aspects of Descartes’s
account.
The first objection attempts to drive
a wedge between the bodily movements which result in a passion, and the passion
as a form of thought or attribute of the soul, thereby depriving the passions
of their guiding function for the soul. However, Descartes is clear that the
passions are an information resource: “the principal effect of all the passions
in men is that they incite and dispose their soul to will the things for which
they prepare their body, so that the sensation of fear incites it to will to
flee, that of boldness to will to do battle, and so on for the rest”
(Descartes, 1989, A40). This can be consistently interpreted as implying that
the soul-body union is merely disposed to respond to its environment without
being aware of the disposition as a reason and so is merely caused but not
informed. However, attention to Descartes’s texts demonstrates that it is part
of Descartes’s account of the human design plan that the passions function in
us as reasons.
Descartes’s discussion of fear
includes the claim that the blood is rarefied and transmitted through the body
in such a way that the back may turn and the legs may begin to run away, but
also includes the claim that the spirits excite a particular movement in the
pineal gland “which is instituted by nature to make the soul feel this passion”
(Descartes, 1989, A36). Lyons interprets this to imply that the delivery of
this passion to the soul is a simple sensation, but it is not. According to
Descartes, the body is set up in such a way that certain movements of the
animal spirits naturally coincide with fear as a perceptual state of the soul.
One need not infer from one’s rapid heartbeat and trembling limbs that one is
fearful, because persons are so designed that the significance of the embodied
state is by our nature represented to the soul directly by the emotion (albeit
via the pineal gland to the soul). This can be seen from Descartes’s remark
that the purpose of the passions is to “dispose the soul to will the things
nature tells us are useful and to persist in this volition” (Descartes, 1989,
A52). In the case of fear, nature tells one not only that one’s heart is
racing, and one’s legs are trembling, but simultaneously informs one that the
situation is dangerous. The same conception of a naturally beneficial mechanism
is found in Descartes’s discussion of pain in Meditation Six, where he notes that God could have constructed us
so that when in pain one was only aware of the actual motion occurring in the
brain, and was not stimulated to get rid of the pain. However, the design plan
most conducive to the continued well-being of the body is one which immediately
informs the soul of bodily actions in a meaningful way, and this is the one
which God has invoked (Descartes, 1985, 60-61).
In other words, Descartes’s theory of
the passions attributes natural meanings to our inner states as a consequence
of our design plan. His insistence that we have the capacity to correct the
natural meanings conveyed by the body can be seen as yet another way we are
designed to reach the truth. Fear and other passions are, as Descartes
describes them, perceptions or thoughts proper and not simple sensations.3
The passions, “according to the institution of Nature... all have reference to
the body, and are given to the soul only insofar as it is joined with [the
body], so that their natural use is to incite the soul to consent and
contribute to actions which can serve to preserve the body or render it more
perfect in some way” (Descartes, 1989, A137). Of course, the question of
whether meaning can arise out of natural design is a vexing philosophical
problem, currently much-discussed in philosophy of mind. My claim is not that
Descartes has solved the problem by appeal to benevolent design. Rather, my
claim is that a reading of Descartes’s theory of the passions which neglects
this crucial part of his account is flawed. Descartes’s mechanistic model is
specifically designed to make the operative connection between bodily agitation
and a perception of the soul.
All of the passions represent “the
goods to which they tend” (Descartes, 1991, 264). Moral philosophy has as its
principal utility the regulation of desires, through desire we are led to act,
and so our good depends upon a well-ordered character. Descartes’s account of
the natural value of the passions for human well-being rules out a feeling
theory interpretation of his passions in favour of one in which their
occurrence is significant of harms or goods, precisely in a way which gives
them a role to play in guiding behaviour.
In perception the soul attributes a
property to the object perceived. When fearful, the soul does not refer the
property of fear to the external object. Fear represents a relation between the
thing feared and the one feeling fearful. It is an axiological relational
property, identifying the relation which that object has to the soul-body union
as it pertains to its well-being (its ‘being a threat to me’). Passions of the
soul represent the soul as affected in a manner which connects the passion to
its object. Some passions are influenced by judgements, but the passions
themselves are not judgements: “Passions represent the state of the soul as a
consequence of its relation to objects and thus are reasons, whether good or
bad, for forming certain judgements and initiating certain actions” (Brown,
1999, 228). As representations of the state of the soul-body union in its
environment, passions have normative significance. Descartes takes their
guiding function to be integral in their design, noting that “objects which
move the senses do not excite different passions in us in proportion to all of
their diversities, but only in proportion to the different ways they can harm
or profit us or, generally, be important to us” (Descartes, 1989, A52). Fear and other passions are attributed to the
soul and their correlation with bodily states is an arrangement instituted by nature.
This arrangement, although mechanical, is not deterministic; the passions
incite and dispose the soul to will but do not determine it.
The passions are part of a natural
maintenance system, disposing the soul to want the things which nature deems useful
for us. The parallel with perception resides in this: both are natural
maintenance systems which provide the soul with information. Perceptions
provide the soul with corrigible information about properties of the
environment, and the passions provide the soul, again corrigibly, with
information about our good. The benevolence of God’s design plan, according to
Descartes, makes it so. Thus the well-ordered, well-functioning soul-body union
is crucial in both Descartes’s account of theoretical reasoning and his account
of practical reasoning.
Amelie Rorty has argued that in order
to be able to make certain claims about the world, or to discover certain
physical laws, Descartes requires an account of a reliable perceiver (1992).
For perceptions to be reliable the various parts of the body need to be
maintained in good working order, the body must be sound, protected and in good
health in order to function well, hence a maintenance system is essential to
reliable perception. On Rorty’s view, the perceptions of external objects along
with the perceptions of our bodily states constitute an information system. The
perceptions of our bodily states and the passions proper constitute a
maintenance system, each of which contain subsystems. Just as each of the modalities
of sense provide different types of information of objects outside the body, so
each of the basic emotions have a function within the maintenance system.
We have a rough notion of a normal and reliable
healthful body as one whose interactions with other bodies produces changes
that enable it to maintain and enhance its functioning. It is a body whose
maintenance system operates so that it feels hunger and moves toward food when
its body is depleted, a body that is, furthermore, nourished by the food it
eats. It is a body that feels pain and moves away from harmful stimuli,
experiences pleasure at and moves toward physically beneficial interactions. It
inclines the mind to fear what is dangerous, hate what injures it, to love what
benefits it (Rorty, 1992, 381).
The passions function in the
maintenance system, but not infallibly. However, the maintenance and
information systems need not be infallible. In order to enable reliable
perception all that is required is that there be a means of discovering
law-like correlations between them. The healthy body provides a baseline, not a
norm, for establishing reliable perceptions. As long as we can recognize our
own deviations from the baseline the intellect is in a position to make good
the deficit. The hot-tempered man is in a similar condition as the colour-blind
man insofar as each has a deficit in respectively the maintenance or
information system. Once aware of his colour-blindness, the colour-blind man
can use the system of law-like correlations to infer that what he sees as grey
is really green or red, or to refrain from passing judgment. Similarly, once
aware of his hot temper the hot-tempered man can recognize his rage as an
over-reaction and try “not to consent to its effects and to restrain many of
the movements to which it disposes the body” (Descartes, 1989, A46). Through
habituation we are able to modify our natural responses. This isn’t only
relevant to individual deficits, Descartes’s account of perception acknowledges
the naturally unreliable, but correctable nature of the senses. Our perceptions
of the world are unreliable if not understood in the appropriate way. For
example, we have two different ideas of the sun: our simple idea makes the sun
appear very small, while our idea, based on astronomical reasoning, shows the
sun to be much larger than the earth (Descartes, 1985, 29).
In a similar fashion, the passions
are part of a natural maintenance system. The passions are part of a divinely
created system which allows for the flourishing of the soul-body union. However, while Descartes’s account of the
passions is very modern in its mechanistic focus, he doesn’t attempt to explain
purposiveness in mechanistic terms. Non-human animals lack their own purposes
and thus can be described in entirely mechanistic terms, but human animals,
because they are a union of soul and body defy complete mechanistic
description. A discussion of generosity highlights the central role freedom
plays in Descartes’s account of the passions. Because generosity depends upon
excellence in willing, it is unlike other passions which share some of the
necessary physical features for passion mechanisms with the passionless
non-human animals (they don’t have souls and so cannot have passions of the
soul). Generosity, the master passion, helps to maintain the soul-body union by
maintaining the will.
Generosity
Descartes’s discussion of generosity
is important because it completes his account of self-governance by the correct
operation of the will. Our good lies in an appropriate disposition to value
what is most valuable in us. This is the virtue of generosity. Descartes’s use
of the term “generosity” to denote the particular passion and virtue which he
so describes is strikingly odd. This oddity should not be attributed to a
different use of the term in his day, as “generosity” had much the same usage
that it now has, although then it also connoted a certain sense of nobility.4
Descartes’s generosity includes the liberality of spirit one typically
associates with the concept, but does so while focusing on the correct
operation of the will:
True Generosity, which makes a man esteem himself as
highly as he can legitimately esteem himself, consists only in this: partly in
his understanding that there is nothing which truly belongs to him but this
free control of his volitions, and no reason why he ought to be praised or
blamed except that he uses it well or badly; and partly in his feeling within
himself a firm and constant resolution to use it well, that is, never to lack
the volition to undertake and execute all the things he judges to be best —
which is to follow virtue perfectly (Descartes, 1989, A153).
Contrasting pride and generosity,
Descartes tells us that pride is distinguished by being a good opinion of
oneself which is based on some cause other than the correct use of one’s free
will.5
If the cause of self-esteem is anything other than “the volition we feel within
ourselves always to make good use of our free will, from which I have said
Generosity arises, it always produces a most blameworthy Pride” (Descartes,
1989, A158). Generosity and pride both consist in a good opinion of oneself,
however in the former case the opinion is just and in the latter it is unjust.
Generosity and pride are both caused by a movement of the spirits composed of
wonder, joy, and love; they arise out of the same sort of physiological change
(Descartes, 1989, A160). Pride, however, entails a variability in the movements
of the spirits which generosity does not, because the proud are more likely to
be subsequently humbled. The proud are slaves to their desires and thus their
souls are constantly agitated. The generous person, whose passion doesn’t rest
upon misplaced or mistaken evaluation, will experience a movement of that
passion which is in comparison, firm and constant.
Although generosity and pride can be
referred to the same body-based cause, they are distinct passions. The
difference between pride and generosity rests in the agent’s just or unjust,
accurate or inaccurate, perception of her own sound functioning. In at least
some cases passions are distinguished by the intentional object they represent.6
Pride and generosity are distinguished by their different intentional objects
which will vary in accordance with differences in the agent’s attitude and
beliefs. The passions must be understood not as mechanisms operating
independently of cognitive constraints, but as complex states with intentional
components.7
Descartes’s remarks on generosity indicate that we play an important role in
the functioning and refinement of our passions insofar as we have some capacity
to determine the passion’s referent. Because the passion represents a
relational axiological property, Descartes’s account of the passions has the
resources to build a morality on the proper ordering of the soul. We should
strive to esteem ourselves appropriately. This will require directing our
attention away from those aspects of our behaviour over which we have little
control toward the quality of our willing in thought and action.
Passions have two necessary features:
they must have a good use, and they must be caused, maintained, and
strengthened by some movement of the animal spirits (Descartes, 1989, A176,
A27). Generosity is useful to us because it combats vain desires, manifesting
an understanding and appreciation of the will which curtails futile concerns.
Not only is it useless to fervently desire something which one has no capacity
to bring about, it is detrimental insofar as it occupies one’s thoughts and
thereby distracts one from desiring what is within the realm of human
acquisition. Generosity also counters excessive anger, results in a virtuous
humility, leaves one full of good will for others, and makes one the master of
her own passions (Descartes, 1989, A203, A154). Generosity makes us esteem what
is in our power; what is not within our control deserves little esteem.
Generosity makes “us greatly esteem liberty and absolute dominion over
ourselves, which we cease to have when we can be injured by anyone, it limits
us to having scorn or at most indignation for the wrongs at which others
usually take offense” (Descartes, 1989, A203). The generous are masters of
their own passions and, while inclined to take on great tasks, will not take on
anything impossible. Aware of our imperfect nature, and still aware that every
person has the capacity to use the will properly, the generous person will
demonstrate a virtuous humility. She will demonstrate a good will for all and
will never scorn others, because she will realize that all persons have the
capacity for generosity and that errors must be due to a lack of understanding
rather than a lack of good will (Descartes, 1989, A154).
Generosity is the master passion,
involving three components. First, the generous person recognizes that she is
most fundamentally her free will; second, she understands that she ought only
to be praised or blamed according to the operation of this faculty; and third,
the generous person must be resolutely disposed to use her will well. The
emphasis on free will is, of course, a well-established feature of Descartes’s
philosophy. In Meditation IV, when
Descartes considers how it is possible that God might have made him such that
he is prone to error, he concludes that God has given him a perfect free will,
and error arises only through his own misuse of it. It is his free will that
assures Descartes that he has been made in the likeness of God. Non-human
animals, whose movements are determined, are not appropriate subjects of praise.
What is praiseworthy in a person is his success at authoring his own actions:
“The supreme perfection of man is that he acts freely or voluntarily, and it is
this which makes him deserve praise or blame” (Descartes, 1985, 205). Mastery of the operation of one’s will is
thus of fundamental importance in agent evaluation, because the will is all
that is entirely under one’s control and thus its actions are the proper
objects of evaluation. The connection between the free will and the good is
prominent in Descartes’s writings on morality.
The third component, that the
generous person have a settled and sure commitment to use his will well, marks
generosity as a disposition and virtue which itself manifests an appropriate
evaluative response to one’s own nature.8 The generous person is
characterologically disposed to value what is valuable in us. Hence, the virtue
in generosity is the unification of theoretical insight and practical
commitment. Our free will is not merely the source of that which makes us appropriate
subjects of praise, but because the will can be used well, the perfection of
the will is the source of the agent’s own good. Virtue is our supreme good
(Marshals, 1998, 149).
According to Descartes, the supreme
good of each person “consists only in a firm will to do well and the
contentment which this produces” (Descartes, 1991, 324). The moral quality of a life depends upon the
operation of the will because it alone is absolutely within our disposal. Excellence
in willing is thus a way of perfecting what is most essential to the self. The
will cannot be better disposed than
by a firm and constant resolution to carry out to the
letter all the things which one judges to be best, and to employ all the powers
of one’s mind in finding out what these are. This by itself constitutes all the
virtues; this alone really deserves praise and glory; this alone finally,
produces the greatest and most solid contentment in life. So I conclude that it
is this which constitutes the supreme good (Descartes, 1991, 324-5).
Cartesian generosity is a
foundational epistemic and moral virtue as well as a passion. The passions are
an important part of the machinery of our bodies and are mechanisms that we
can, indeed must control and develop. The passions are part of the human
machinery supplied by a benevolent Creator and, insofar as they are mechanisms,
their role in our design plan is to guide us roughly toward what is in our
interest. Both human and non-human animals are constructed in a manner which is
overall advantageous to their survival, however because non-human animals lack
free will and rationality their mechanical ordering is not in any respect under
their control. The design of human mechanisms is more complicated and it is
part of that design that they be partially under voluntary control in the
soul-body union. Descartes acknowledges exactly this when he develops the idea
of generosity as the master virtue and passion which leads the will to choose
rightly and value rightly those things presented to it.
References
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William 1967. “Emotion and Feeling,” The Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
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NOTES
1. This is a large and important tension in Descartes’s thought. In this
paper I do not evaluate his success in resolving this tension.
2. For example, Patricia
Greenspan refers to a Cartesian account of emotions as sensations (Greenspan,
1988, 3). William Alston counts Descartes among feeling theorists (Alston,
1967, 480). See also
3. For further discussion
of Descartes’s naturalism see Eric Dayton’s “Could It Be Worth Thinking About Descartes
on Whether Animals Have Beliefs?” (
4. Stephen Voss notes
this in a translator’s footnote on p. 104 (Descartes, 1989).
5. In some translations
other than the Voss translation used here, “pride” is translated as “vanity”,
which more clearly expresses the vice involved in that form of passionate
response.
6. Stephen Gaukroger
complains that Descartes’s only means of explaining differences in temperament
is through a “tennis-racquet” account of the workings of the pineal gland. If I
am correct, this charge is mistaken (Gaukroger, 1995, 402).
7. de Sousa’s notion of
the “paradigm scenario” is useful in thinking about such variability because it
acknowledges the essential biological component of an emotion while
accommodating diversity in the normative functions and significance that
emotional responses may come to possess. “Paradigm scenarios involve two
aspects: first, a situation type providing the characteristic objects of
the specific emotion-type...and second, a set of characteristic or “normal” responses
to the situation, where normality is first a biological matter and then very
quickly becomes a cultural one” (de Sousa, 1987, 182).
8.
While it does seem legitimate to question the
plausibility of describing generosity as both the peculiar kind of passion that
it is and also a virtue, for the purposes of this paper, this question will go
unanswered. For an insightful discussion of how generosity can be both a
passion and virtue, see Lisa Shapiro’s “Cartesian Generosity,” (1999).
Copyright © 2005 Minerva
All rights are reserved, but fair and
good faith use with full attribution may be made of this work for educational
or scholarly purposes.
Emer O’Hagan is Assistant Professor
of Philosophy at the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon,
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