46. - Descartes’s Principles of Philosophy

Summary

The DPP, along with CM, is the only work Spinoza published under his own name in his lifetime (1663). Evidence that Spinoza oversaw the publication is found in his letters to Lodewijk Meyer, Ep12a and Ep15. Meyer’s preface to the DPP is careful and explicit to claim that the DPP contains Spinoza’s presentation of Descartes’ Principles and that it does not necessarily represent Spinoza’s own beliefs (cf. Ep13, Ep15). Of the identified differences, Meyer claims that Spinoza disagrees with Descartes’s position on the substantiality of the soul, the distinction between the will and intellect, that the soul may withhold judgment, and that some concepts surpass human understanding (229–30; cf. Ep21, Ep31). Spinoza, despite the claim otherwise to present only Descartes’s thought, often tells readers that he finds that he “think[s] Descartes was too intelligent to have meant” what he otherwise claimed in his work (DPP1p7s).