6. Of ‘isms’

2020 ◽  
pp. 61-74
Author(s):  
Edward Craig
Keyword(s):  
General Type ◽  
Karl Marx ◽  
Rene Descartes ◽  
Logical Structure ◽  
Dialectical Materialism ◽  
René Descartes

Epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge, belief, and closely related notions like reasons and justification. ‘Of ‘isms’’ explains some philosophical ‘ism’ words, which are broad terms designating a certain general type of doctrine. René Descartes was one of the most famous exponents of dualism, as he worked on proving a doctrine that pre-dated him; materialism and idealism were based on earlier concepts, giving rise later to the dialectical materialism of Karl Marx. Idealism holds that everything has a mental or spiritual basis. Rationalism and empiricism are opposed to each other. Empiricists believe everything is filtered through our perceptions rather than reality having an inherently logical structure.

Jenny

2020 ◽  
pp. 62-65
Author(s):  
Willy Thayer
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Machine Tool ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Karl Marx ◽  
Rene Descartes ◽  
Labor Power ◽  
The Status ◽  
René Descartes ◽  
Mode Of Production

This chapter looks at how Karl Marx figures the expanded circulation of capital as it spread around the planet in the becoming of the spinning Jenny, a complex machine-tool and the epitome of the Industrial Revolution. It highlights the power of the Jenny, such that Marx granted it the status of an event that reveals itself posthumously as the trace of the Industrial Revolution. The Jenny, a complex machine-tool, is a mechanism that executes functions that are analogous to those carried out by artisanal labor power that uses similar tools. The chapter also looks at how the Jenny broke out of the limits imposed by the working body-machine of fixed, endogenous, specialized terminals of the artisanal mode of production. As a mechanical body, the Jenny had already been dreamed of in the seventeenth century by René Descartes in his Treatise on Man, but which might best be referred to as a Treatise on Artificial Man.

http://www.essaysonconservatism.ru/

2021 ◽  
Vol 64 ◽  
pp. 141-147
Author(s):  
Nikolai A. Shchipkov
Keyword(s):  
Karl Marx ◽  
Rene Descartes ◽  
Giambattista Vico ◽  
Auguste Comte ◽  
René Descartes ◽  
History Of ◽  
Western European ◽  
European Thought

A Few Definitions of Term “Culture” in the History of Western European thought: René Descartes, Giambattista Vico, Auguste Comte, Karl Marx

Kazimir Malevich: Economy as the Fifth Dimension

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (6) ◽  
pp. 215-228
Keyword(s):  
Karl Marx ◽  
Dialectical Materialism ◽  
Economic Base ◽  
Surplus Value ◽  
Bourgeois Society ◽  
Fifth Dimension ◽  
Fourth Volume ◽  
Contemporary Painting ◽  
New Criterion ◽  
The Impact

This paper deals with the impact that Karl Marx"s Das Kapital (and especially its fourth volume, the theory of Surplus Value) had on the category of economy in Kazimir Malevich"s output. In a series of texts, Malevich proclaims economy the new criterion of art and the Black Square its embodiment in contemporary painting. While the author was analyzing Marx"s views on labor and human nature, echoes of them turned up in Malevich"s manifestos and philosophical essays where the artist pondered the idea of the liberation of creative exaltation. The article others an interpretation of the creative process itself from the standpoint of economy, which for Malevich provided an opportunity to lay down the foundation for a new kind of art that was consistent with the prevailing ideology. The author points out that while Malevich was in Vitebsk he studied Marx"s works with idea of incorporating economic studies into art: his speculations on the relationships between the ideological superstructure and the practical, economic base were written in the manner of Marxist philosophy and provided the basis for his main essays, The World as Non-Objectivity (1923) and Suprematism: Thee World as Non-Objectivity or Eternal Rest (1923-1924). They defined the new art as an independent ideological superstructure positioned “outside of other contents and ideologies.” Parallel to that, the author examines the correspondence between Malevich"s theory of the surplus element and Marxist doctrines on surplus value. It is also shown that Malevich hoped to prove that, as in dialectical materialism, his new surplus element opens the way to a new artistic structure that is emerging from the womb of the old system in the same way that communism comes about as a kind of heterogeneous body from within the underpinnings of bourgeois society.

The Price of Truth: Reciprocity, Giving, and Generosity in the Philosophy of René Descartes

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (6) ◽  
pp. 147-170
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Rene Descartes ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Other ◽  
Economic Science ◽  
Homo Oeconomicus ◽  
Intellectual Activity ◽  
René Descartes ◽  
Economic Thinking ◽  
Selfish Interest

The article provides a comparison of the concept of homo œconomicus with the core theses of René Descartes’ moral philosophy. The first section draws on the work of the contemporary Western philosopher Anselm Jappe in which Descartes’ philosophy is held to be the cornerstone of the established view and current scientific definitions of homo œconomicus as the fundamental and indispensable agent of capitalistic relations. As opposed to this “common sense” position in the modern social sciences, the second section of the article builds upon Pierre Bourdieu’s Anthropologie économique (2017) to demystify the notion of homo œconomicus. The article then examines some aspects of modern philosophical anthropology that show odd traces of Descartes’ thinking and that are regularly applied in economic science as well as in the critique of economic thinking as such. These are the concepts of mutuality, giving, exchange and generosity, and they are regarded as central to the philosopher’s moral doctrine.The author concludes that the philosophical doctrine of generosity has very little in common with the bourgeois ideology of utility which implies an instrumental relationship between subjects: in Caretesian moral philosophy the Other is neither an object of influence nor a means to achieve someone’s personal goals nor a windowless monad. Generosity certainly has its economic aspects, but these do not include accumulating wealth in the bourgeois sense. It is more in the realm of the aristocratic practice of making dispensations. All throughout his life Decartes may be viewed as exhibiting a peculiar kind of nobility in which the desire to give, endow and sacrifice outweighs any selfish interest. The vigorous pursuit of well-being gives way to a quest for the leisure required to pursue intellectual activity, and care for oneself does not preclude attending to and loving the Other, whatever form it may take.

La disparition des formes aristotéliciennes. À propos d'une démarche clandestine dans les Méditations

Dialogue ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 539-548
Author(s):  
Georges Moyal
Keyword(s):  
Rene Descartes ◽  
René Descartes

RÉSUMÉMême si l'appréhension que l'on peut avoir des formes aristotéliciennes résulte de ce qu'Aristote nomme «induction», rien ne nécessite que leurs composantes soient reliées entre elles de façon intelligible, comme le sont, au contraire, les propriétés de la matière. C'est ce qui porte René Descartes à en débarrasser les sciences par une démarche effectuée subrepticement dans sa VIe Méditation, et à leur substituer la matière, dénominateur commun des êtres naturels. C'est cette démarche — elle continue d’éluder certains de ses lecteurs —, que nous tentons de mettre au jour dans ce qui suit.

Beautiful Surfaces

Nuncius ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-287
Author(s):  
Eleanor Chan
Keyword(s):  
Rene Descartes ◽  
Latin Translation ◽  
Daunting Task ◽  
René Descartes ◽  
Critical Interpretation

The assumption that the Cartesian bête-machine is the invention of René Descartes (1596–1650) is rarely contested. Close examination of Descartes’ texts proves that this is a concept founded not on the basis of his own writings, but a subsequent critical interpretation, which developed and began to dominate his work after his death. Descartes’ Treatise on Man, published posthumously in two rival editions, Florentius Schuyl’s Latin translation De Homine (1662), and Claude Clerselier’s Traité de l’ homme, has proved particularly problematic. The surviving manuscript copies of the Treatise on Man left no illustrations, leaving both editors the daunting task of producing a set of images to accompany and clarify the fragmented text. In this intriguing case, the images can be seen to have spoken louder than the text which they illustrated. This paper assesses Schuyl’s choice to represent Descartes’ Man in a highly stylized manner, without superimposing Clerselier’s intentions onto De Homine.

Princess Elisabeth and the Problem of Mind-Body Interaction

Hypatia ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 59-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah Tollefsen
Keyword(s):  
Rene Descartes ◽  
Body Interaction ◽  
René Descartes

This paper focuses on Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia's philosophical views as exhibited in her early correspondence with Rene Descartes. Elisabeth's criticisms of Descartes's interactionism as well as her solution to the problem of mind-body interaction are examined in detail. The aim here is to develop a richer picture of Elisabeth as a philosophical thinker and to dispel the myth that she is simply a Cartesian muse.

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