Descartes' Treatise on Man and its Reception

This edited volume features 20 essays written by leading scholars that provide a detailed examination of L'Homme by René Descartes. It explores the way in which this work developed themes not just on questions such as the circulation of the blood, but also on central questions of perception and our knowledge of the world.

Coverage first offers a critical discussion on the different versions of L'Homme, including the Latin, French, and English translations and the 1664 editions. Next, the authors examine the early reception of the work, from the connection of L'Homme to early-modern Dutch Cartesianism to Nicolas Steno's criticism of the work and how Descartes' clock analogy is used to defend two different conceptions of the articulation between anatomical observations and functional hypotheses.

The book then goes on to explore L'Homme and early-modern anthropology as well as the how the work has been understood and incorporated into the works of scientists, physicians, and philosophers over the last 150 years.

Overall, readers will discover how the trend over the last few decades to understand human cognition in neuro-physiological terms can be seen to be not something unprecedented, but rather a revival of a way of dealing with these fundamental questions that was pioneered by Descartes.

Inhalt

General Introduction.- I. Editions and Translations of l'Homme.- The History of the Text of l'Homme.- A New Edition of l'Homme.- Why Read L'Homme in the 1664 Edition?.- Towards a Critical Edition of L'Homme. About Some Variants.- On English Editions and Translations.- II. The Early Reception of l'Homme.- The Early Dutch Reception of L'Homme.- The Reception of Treatise of Man in Naples: From Tommaso Cornelio to Giambattista Vico.- Cartesian Professors of Medicine in Leuven.- Machine and Communication. About Similar Behaviour of Corporal Machines from Descartes to La Forge.- Body Without Soul in La Forge Remarks on L'Homme.- The Position of Anthropology in Descartes' "Traité de la lumière".- Anthropology and Anatomy. Nicolas Steno's Reading of L'Homme.- The Art of Cartesianism: The Illustrations of Clerselier's Edition of Descartes's Traité de l'homme (1664).- III. L'Homme and Early-Modern Anthropology.- Hume's Treatise of Human Nature: A Question of Natural or Moral Philosophy?.- A Comparative Reading of Descartes' Traité de l'Homme and Spinoza's [Abrégé de Physique].- Hobbes.- Enlightenment Criticisms of Descartes' Anthropology.- IV. L'Homme Today.- L'Homme in Psychology and Neuroscience.- L'Homme in Biology, Medicine and Philosophy.- The Embodied Descartes: Contemporary Readings of **L'Homme.