Your complimentary articles

You’ve read all of your complimentary articles for this month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please

If you are a subscriber please sign in to your account.

To buy or renew a subscription please visit Subscriptions.

If you are a print subscriber you can contact us to create an online account.

Letters

Letters to the Editor

Nobody expects the… • Jagiellonian jinks • Chaotic choices • Replies to Shenkman

Nobody expects the…

Dear Editor,

Regarding Peter J. Lorden’s letter (PN3): I agree wholeheartedly with his remarks concerning what is still being written vis à vis Cartesian epistemology. I also endorse his view that Descartes was probably a ‘very confused young man’; but then, as he was writing with the Inquisitorial Fathers breathing down his neck, some confusion is understandable! And that brings me to the purpose of this letter.

The point to be made is that Descartes was and is important; or at least his texts are; but should we not be asking new questions about those texts, with the conditions they were written under in mind? Once we start to do that, they immediately assume different ‘meanings’ and significance. Crucially, the Meditations represent the social and personal anxieties, ideologies and conjectures, of Descartes time, which are ineluctably bound to religious and political antagonism inherent in the rise of early capitalism.

…