Causation and the Cartesian Mind after Geulincx

This dissertation argues that the views of the unorthodox Flemish philosopher Arnold Geulincx (1624-1669) regarding the powerlessness of the human mind - in both the physical world and even in itself - were more complex and more influential than is usually recognised. It shows that those views gave birth a lively, if short-lived, tradition, which has up to this point been almost entirely unexplored. Geulincx is perhaps best known for his striking image of the human mind as a 'mere spectator' of the 'machine' of the physical world - including the human body. As mere spectators of the world and of our own bodies, it is someone else - God, Geulincx claims - who brings about any changes among those things; we are not capable even of raising our own arms. Our actions are just volitions, which do not extend beyond our own minds. If we do appear to bring anything about, to move our bodies and things in the world, it is because God makes that happen in line with the laws of nature - and he usually does so when we will the movements in question to take place. What exactly Geulincx meant in talking about such 'actions in ourselves' is itself a complex matter, however. In particular, this dissertation argues that there are aspects of Geulincx's thought that seem to downplay our ability even to bring about these actions in ourselves - to make us not just spectators of the world, but to make us spectators of ourselves, as one of Geulincx's students would put it. Among the various ways that Geulincx's views on action and causation depart from more orthodox Cartesian approaches, this dissertation highlights Geulincx's claim that human minds are just 'modes' of the divine mind; that we only have a succession of thoughts in time owing to our being joined to a body; and that the idea of causation modelled on the motions of the physical world is entirely inappropriate for characterising the actions of the mind. Equally, the dissertation shows that Geulincx's views about the causal powers and activity of the mind were taken up in different ways by his students and followers, such as Cornelis Bontekoe (1647-1685), Johannes Flenderus (1653-1724), and in a more original way, by the controversial Caspar Langenhert (1661-c.1730). In brief, where Flenderus reinterpreted Geulincx's account of the mind in the more traditional terminology of the 'scholastic Cartesian' Johannes Clauberg, Bontekoe eliminated the ambiguity remaining in Geulincx, and explicitly extended the powerlessness of the mind into its ability to change itself; he would be accused by one critic of turning the mind into a marionette. In turn, Langenhert went on to argue for something approaching what we would nowadays call solipsism: we cannot prove that there is an external world, and God brings about the succession of thoughts in us directly, without even having to do so in accordance with the ways things happen in the physical world. Langenhert's contentious teachings - which came to an abrupt end when the government intervened - are an extension of Langenhert's previous engagement with Geulincx's work. Finally, the dissertation suggests that the teachings of Geulincx were transformed in the hands of these thinkers into an 'experimental' attitude to a still ostensibly Cartesian view of the mind.

Jaar van publicatie:2020

Toegankelijkheid:Closed