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Descartes and Capitalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Ian Hamnett
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In a pace-setting paper recently published in New Blackfriars, Fergus Kerr argues that Cartesian assumptions and presuppositions have entered so deeply into the thinking of the West that even those who profess to follow other traditions of thought can often be found to be working within the Cartesian paradigm. Here I hope to develop just one of the many lines of inquiry to which Father Kerr has pointed, arguing that there is a convergence between Cartesian anthropology on the one hand and the productive relations of capitalism on the other. Beyond this, I shall try to suggest that this convergence can tentatively be documented so as to form a real part of the “history of ideas” in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, rather than left as no more than an abstract, analytical congruence or aptness of fit.

The theoretical argument is straightforward and can be concisely stated. Thomist anthropology and psychology propose a unitary conception of man and of the relationship between soul and body. Kerr pertinently reminds us (p. 255) of Aquinas’s commentary on I Corinthians 15, and quotes his memorable reference to the soul as pars corporis humani. This unity is found in all living things, in vegetables, for example, and in “brutes”; the rational soul in man, moreover, is no exception to this unitary principle. A corollary of this is that, as Kenny puts it, “a human being is not something that has a body; it is a body, a living body of a particular kind”.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 66 , Issue 775 , January 1985 , pp. 8 - 14
Copyright
Copyright © 1985 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 “The need for philosophy in theology today”, New Blackfriars, Vol. 65, no. 768, June 1984, pp. 248–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Among many references to anima as forma corporis see S. Th. Ia, 3, 2 arg.; IaIIae, 51, 1, co,; IIIa, 75, 6, ad 2. The thesis here is directly Aristotelian. Aquinas elsewhere refers to Augustine's phrase (in De Trinitate) “tota in toto” in order to describe the relationship between the soul and the parts of the body: S Th. Ia, 8, 2 ad 3; IIIa, 46, 7 co.

3 Kenny, A., Aquinas, O.U.P. 1980, p. 48.Google Scholar

4 Viz., vested rights under a contract, etc. I am not referring to “human rights” or “natural rights” in the loose modern sense.

5 The location of the soul in the pineal gland has often been derided, both then and now. An acephalous child that lived four days was taken to refute the hypothesis: Redbill, S.X., “Pediatrics”, inDebus, A.G. (ed.), Medicine in 17th Century England, U. of California 1974, p. 246Google Scholar. See also the discussion of Willis at the conclusion of this paper. A more sympathetic appraisal is in Reise, W. and Hoff, E. C., “A history of the doctrine of cerebral localisation”, J. Hist. Med. Vol. 5, 1950, pp. 50–71Google Scholar, and J. Hist. Med. Vol. 6, 1951, pp. 439–70Google Scholar.

6 Quoted in Reise, W., “Descartes as a psychotherapist”, Medical History, Vol. 10, 1966, p. 239Google Scholar n. 7. See also Grange, Kathleen, ‘The ship symbol as key to former theories of the emotions”, Bull. Hist. Med. Vol. 36, 1962, pp. 512–23Google ScholarPubMed.

7 J. Locke, Of Civil Government, II, sections 27–28. The emphasis is added, but the inverted commas are original.

8 See for example W.W. Buckland and A.D. McNair, Roman Law and Common Law, or Buckland, A Text‐Book of Roman Law, both C.U.P., several editions.

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11 Discourse on Method, in Philosophical Works of Descartes, trans. E.S. Haldane and G.R.T. Ross, Vol. 1, C.U.P. 1911, pp. 115–8, and other passages in Regan, T. and Singer, P. (ed.s), Animal Rights and Human Obligations, Prentice‐Hall 1976, pp. 60–6Google Scholar.

12 Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de Port‐Royal, Cologne, 1738Google Scholar

13 Of the considerable literature, I mention only Rosenfield, L.C., From Beast‐Machine to Man‐Machine: The Theme of the Animal Soul in French Letters from Descartes to La Me/trie, O.U.P. 1940Google Scholar, revd ed. Octagon Books (New York) 1968; and Campbell, B., “La Mettrie: the robot and the automaton”, J. Hist. Ideas Vol. 31, 1970, pp. 555–72CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

14 See Nicolson, M., “The early stages of Cartesianism in England”, Studies in Philology, Vol. 26, 1929, pp. 356–74Google Scholar.

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17 Goethe's novel Die Wahlverwandschaften (tr. Elective Affinities, Penguin 1971)Google Scholar was published in 1809 and is the source for later usage in history and sociology. For Weber's use of the concept, see Howe, R. H., “Max Weber's elective affinities. Am. J. Sociol. Vol 84, 1978, pp. 366–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 art. cit. p. 369.

19 F. Valadcz, “Anatomical Studies at Oxford and Cambridge”, in Debus op. cit.

20 Macpherson, C.B., The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism, O.U.P. 1962Google Scholar.