{"id":34708,"date":"2025-12-08T05:51:39","date_gmt":"2025-12-08T05:51:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drdavidcring.net\/descartes-ideas\/?p=34708"},"modified":"2025-12-08T06:31:21","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T06:31:21","slug":"contemporary-global-descartes-studies-2019-by-oleh-khoma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drdavidcring.net\/descartes-ideas\/orientation\/contemporary-global-descartes-studies-2019-by-oleh-khoma\/","title":{"rendered":"“Contemporary Global Descartes Studies” (2019) by Oleg Khoma"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Translated by ChatGPT 5.1 from Ukrainian into American English<\/mark><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Sententiae<\/a><\/em> 38:2 (2019), 112\u2013115
https:\/\/doi.org\/10.22240\/sent38.02.112
ISSN 2075-6461. Sententiae<\/em>, Volume 38, no. 2 (2019)<\/a>: 112\u201315.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oleg<\/a> Khoma<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

CONTEMPORARY GLOBAL DESCARTES STUDIES<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Review of Nadler, Steven. et al. (2019). The Oxford Handbook of Descartes and Cartesianism<\/u><\/span><\/a><\/em> \"An<\/a>. Oxford: Oxford University Press<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

[Edited<\/strong> with sections deleted; bold<\/strong> and bold italic<\/em><\/strong> not in original]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The editors set themselves the goal of presenting the Cartesian century in all its rich diversity. They aim to offer a multifaceted picture of the development of thought, focusing not only on Descartes\u2019s own doctrine but also on the fate of this doctrine within seventeenth\u2011century Cartesianism, on its reception in various countries, and on the critical re\u2011interpretations it underwent at the time\u2014re\u2011interpretations that, in fact, shaped the face of contemporary philosophy. This points to the triumph of new approaches to the study of Descartes\u2019s philosophy that became decisive after the 1950s (in particular, they can be formulated in the form of four \u201cMarion principles,\u201d<\/strong> which underlie the methodological conception of, among other things, the journal Sententiae<\/em> itself and which, we are convinced, possess universal applicability in contemporary history\u2011of\u2011philosophy research).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Already in 2007<\/strong>, Jean\u2011Luc Marion, in outlining the main tendencies in Descartes scholarship<\/strong>, concluded that even then the chief tendency was its globalization.<\/strong> Today this process has only intensified. Marion noted a kind of \u201cinternational division of labor\u201d in Descartes studies, inasmuch as new research centers brought with them problematics that had been practically absent in the French research milieu<\/em><\/strong>. As a result, a fruitful international research context has arisen. According to Marion, Anglo\u2011American philosophers contributed issues of dualism, language, and the status of ideas (Cartesian topics in general became one of the reference points for analytic philosophy)<\/strong>; Italian scholars<\/strong> contributed questions concerning mathesis<\/em> and natural philosophy<\/strong>; and German scholars<\/strong> contributed criticism, the transcendental, and questions concerning being and the structure of metaphysics.<\/strong> Of course, these themes do not remain isolated within the contexts in which they first appear. They spread into other contexts, becoming the subject of productive international discussions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From 1960 to 1996<\/strong>, the number of recorded publications in Descartes studies<\/strong> amounted to 4,402<\/strong>, of which 1,745 were in English versus 1,334 in French<\/strong>. Since then, the global annual number of such publications has steadily increased. The number of English\u2011language researchers of Descartes (primarily in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom) has long exceeded the number of those studying Cartesianism in France.<\/strong> However, this is not a matter of shifting some \u201cgeographical center\u201d of discovery in this field away from France toward the Anglo\u2011Saxon world; rather, it is a matter of the formation of international research networks that are progressively losing the very notion of a \u201ccenter.\u201d Whereas in the 1970s the major discoveries in Descartes scholarship were, as a rule, made only in France (or in research groups tied to the French tradition and oriented toward publishing their results in French<\/strong>\u2014Italians, Dutch, and so on), today English\u2011language literature dominates this area.\u00b9<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The French themselves increasingly participate in large international (and, indeed, English\u2011language) research projects, since this is the shortest path to recognition beyond the borders of their own country. Of course, among national research communities of Descartes scholars the French one is still the strongest in terms of content and the most numerous (although there are not significantly fewer Descartes scholars in the United States<\/strong>), but even so, it already constitutes a minority compared to the worldwide community of those who study Descartes and Cartesianism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

. . . . The contributors do not include Jean\u2011Luc Marion, today\u2019s leading Descartes specialist, nor Vincent Carraud, Jean\u2011Marie Beyssade, Kim Sang Ong\u2011Van\u2011Cung, and other well\u2011known French researchers. Yet among the contributors there are also several authoritative American scholars who are absent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my view, the main factor in this list is not so much the statistics as the geography: an English\u2011language handbook\u2014a project of a world\u2011famous British publisher (and thus intended for use anywhere in the world where people can read English)\u2014written by representatives of eight countries. Another feature of globalization is also worth noting: the English\u2011language authors, who dominate this project, are historians of philosophy in a fully traditional sense. They are not oriented, as one might have expected, toward so\u2011called \u201canalytic history of philosophy.\u201d Instead, they know Latin and French well, they actively consult original texts\u00b2 and earlier research traditions\u2014in other words, they correspond rather poorly to the model of \u201crational reconstruction\u201d described by Rorty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is also worth mentioning the new approach to textbooks in the history of philosophy<\/strong> that has become nearly dominant in today\u2019s academic world. Of course, both new and old \u201csingle\u2011author\u201d textbooks continue to be published, marked by varying degrees of compilatory character. Unsurprisingly, the main criticism of textbooks<\/strong> has focused precisely on their typically derivative nature<\/em><\/strong>, since it is unlikely that one, two, or even three authors can be equally strong specialists not only in world philosophy as a whole but even, for example, in such a fragment as \u201cmodern philosophy.\u201d As a result, they often reproduce ideas, stereotypes, and clich\u00e9s that circulated before them<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part II. & III. omitted:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I. Descartes<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Han van Ruler, \u201cA Philosopher Who Challenges Philosophers: The Life and Works of Descartes.\u201d
Roger Ariew, \u201cWhat Did Descartes Read? His Intellectual Background.\u201d
Theo Verbeek, Erik\u2011Jan Bos, \u201cThe Correspondence and Correspondents of Descartes.\u201d
Lex Newman, \u201cDescartes on the Method of Analysis.\u201d
Lawrence Nolan, \u201cDescartes\u2019s Metaphysics.\u201d
Gary Hatfield, \u201cMind and Psychology in Descartes.\u201d
Helen Hattab, \u201cDescartes\u2019s Physics: Mechanical but Not Mechanistic.\u201d
S\u00e9bastien Maronne, \u201cDescartes\u2019s Mathematics.\u201d
Gideon Manning, \u201cDescartes and Medicine.\u201d
Scott Ragland, \u201cDescartes on Freedom.\u201d
Denis Kambouchner, \u201cDescartes and the Passions.\u201d
Igor Agostini, \u201cDescartes\u2019s Philosophical Theology.\u201d
Laurence Renault, \u201cDescartes\u2019s Moral Philosophy.\u201d
Delphine Antoine\u2011Mahut, \u201cDescartes, Politics, and \u2018Real Men\u2019.\u201d
Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric de Buzon, \u201cThe Compendium of Music<\/em> and Descartes\u2019s Aesthetics.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u00b9 I would emphasize that what is at issue here is not merely a wave of publications but intellectual leadership as such. Naturally, important discoveries in Descartes studies had already been made earlier by English\u2011language philosophers (for example, Denis<\/a> Kambouchner<\/a> has shown that the priority of English\u2011language philosophers in studying the Meditations as meditations<\/em>\u2014as a sequence of spiritual exercises practiced by the Jesuit order and serving as a model for the very genre of metaphysical Meditations proposed by Descartes\u2014remained unchallenged from the 1960s up to the work of Christian Belin<\/a>, the first of whose studies was published in 2000). But today, if you want to learn about the year\u2019s main discoveries in Descartes scholarship, it does not matter from which body of research you begin\u2014English\u2011language or French\u2011language: both are absolutely indispensable for such an analysis. English\u2011language studies have now reached a level that guarantees a high degree of argumentative rigor and originality (for example, among this year\u2019s works one should single out Samuel<\/a> Stoner<\/a>\u2019s article, which originally identifies Descartes\u2019s Evil Genius with the Meditator<\/a> of the First Meditation in order to explain why the Evil Genius is \u201calmost omnipotent\u201d rather than fully omnipotent (the imagination easily allows us to portray him in any way we like) and why he does not doubt the truths of logic and mathematics [Stoner 2019<\/a>]. One should also mention the long\u2011running discussion in English\u2011language literature on Descartes\u2019s so\u2011called \u201ctrialism<\/a>\u201d (a notion introduced by John Cottingham in 1985), in particular its criticism in the work of Lawrence Nolan (“Cartesian Trialism on Trial: The Conceptualist Account of Descartes\u2019 Human Being<\/a>“), Marleen Rozemond (Descartes’ Dualism<\/a><\/em> 1998), Dan Kaufman (“Descartes on Composites, Incomplete Substances, and Kinds of Unity<\/a>” 2008), and Eugenio E. Zaldivar (“Was Descartes a Trialist?<\/a>” MA Thesis, University of Florida, 2005). Cottingham explains and defends his trialism interpretation in “Descartes, the Synoptic Philosopher<\/a>” 2006 (an overview published as Chapter 1 of Cartesian Reflections<\/em> 2006). [References added<\/strong>.]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b2 Such recourse has become commonplace in English\u2011language research. For a Descartes study\u2014even in such a citadel of the \u201canalytic spirit\u201d as Mind<\/em>\u2014it is now entirely natural to set as its goal the elucidation of Descartes\u2019s use of the verbs cognoscere<\/em>, scire<\/em>, and the noun scientia<\/em> \u201cas three distinct epistemic levels\u201d within the unfolding of the meditative process [see Clark 2019]. This means that the era of citing Descartes exclusively from English translations is receding into the past<\/strong>, and I hope irreversibly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b3 Required especially for those just beginning to study Descartes. Naturally, not even the best textbook can replace the primary texts. However, when approaching those texts, a beginner who is familiar with a modern\u2011type textbook will save a great deal of time, already having a general picture and not having to reinvent the wheel at every step. And when it comes to scholars and experts, reading such textbooks is important for them as well, since it gives them an opportunity to assess their own approaches against the background of a synthesized presentation by leading participants in contemporary debates. Textbooks of the new type now function as carriers of theses in scholarly discussion rather than as repositories of worn\u2011out clich\u00e9s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Translated by ChatGPT 5.1 from Ukrainian into American English Sententiae 38:2 (2019), 112\u2013115https:\/\/doi.org\/10.22240\/sent38.02.112ISSN 2075-6461. Sententiae, Volume 38, no. 2 (2019): 112\u201315. Oleg Khoma CONTEMPORARY GLOBAL DESCARTES STUDIES Review of Nadler, Steven. et al. (2019). The Oxford Handbook of Descartes and Cartesianism . Oxford: Oxford University Press [Edited with sections deleted; bold and bold italic not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34721,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-orientation"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/drdavidcring.net\/descartes-ideas\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/SIX_9DD31809-9079-4436-B26E-B468FD1CBF5C-scaled.jpeg","author_info":{"info":["Dr. David C. Ring"]},"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/drdavidcring.net\/descartes-ideas\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/SIX_9DD31809-9079-4436-B26E-B468FD1CBF5C-scaled.jpeg",2560,1429,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/drdavidcring.net\/descartes-ideas\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/SIX_9DD31809-9079-4436-B26E-B468FD1CBF5C-150x84.jpeg",150,84,true],"medium":["https:\/\/drdavidcring.net\/descartes-ideas\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/SIX_9DD31809-9079-4436-B26E-B468FD1CBF5C-300x167.jpeg",300,167,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/drdavidcring.net\/descartes-ideas\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/SIX_9DD31809-9079-4436-B26E-B468FD1CBF5C-768x429.jpeg",768,429,true],"large":["https:\/\/drdavidcring.net\/descartes-ideas\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/SIX_9DD31809-9079-4436-B26E-B468FD1CBF5C-1024x572.jpeg",800,447,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/drdavidcring.net\/descartes-ideas\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/SIX_9DD31809-9079-4436-B26E-B468FD1CBF5C-1536x857.jpeg",1536,857,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/drdavidcring.net\/descartes-ideas\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/SIX_9DD31809-9079-4436-B26E-B468FD1CBF5C-2048x1143.jpeg",2048,1143,true],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/drdavidcring.net\/descartes-ideas\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/SIX_9DD31809-9079-4436-B26E-B468FD1CBF5C-1200x800.jpeg",1200,800,true],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/drdavidcring.net\/descartes-ideas\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/SIX_9DD31809-9079-4436-B26E-B468FD1CBF5C-870x570.jpeg",870,570,true],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/drdavidcring.net\/descartes-ideas\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/SIX_9DD31809-9079-4436-B26E-B468FD1CBF5C-600x900.jpeg",600,900,true],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/drdavidcring.net\/descartes-ideas\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/SIX_9DD31809-9079-4436-B26E-B468FD1CBF5C-600x600.jpeg",600,600,true]},"category_info":"Orientation<\/a>","tag_info":"Orientation","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drdavidcring.net\/descartes-ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drdavidcring.net\/descartes-ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drdavidcring.net\/descartes-ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drdavidcring.net\/descartes-ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drdavidcring.net\/descartes-ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34708"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/drdavidcring.net\/descartes-ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34708\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34736,"href":"https:\/\/drdavidcring.net\/descartes-ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34708\/revisions\/34736"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drdavidcring.net\/descartes-ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drdavidcring.net\/descartes-ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drdavidcring.net\/descartes-ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drdavidcring.net\/descartes-ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}