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Extrinsic Denomination and the Origins of Early Modern Metaphysics: The Scholastic Context of Descartes’s Regulae

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The Ontology, Psychology and Axiology of Habits (Habitus) in Medieval Philosophy

Part of the book series: Historical-Analytical Studies on Nature, Mind and Action ((HSNA,volume 7))

Abstract

An assessment of Descartes’s relation to his Aristotelian contemporaries in his Regulae ad directionem ingenii—and more specifically his relation to the theory of scientific habitus—has never been undertaken and is long overdue. Despite broad scholarly consensus that Descartes rejected the scholastic theory of scientific habitus in the Regulae, I will show that, in fact, he redefines a centuries-old scholastic debate about the unity of science, and that he does so by employing, not rejecting, the concept of scientific habitus. For Descartes, the sciences are collectively one in virtue of a habitus which inclines the intellect to regard all things, not as they are in reality, but rather as they are relative to the intellect alone. Descartes establishes the unity of science via what Suárez refers to as “extrinsic denomination” in Disputationes metaphysicae 44.11.64. This creates a serious problem. As he no doubt knew and as Suárez would have rightly pointed out, the extrinsic denominations that Descartes employs in the Regulae have no ontological basis in the things denominated. Descartes’s method creates, arguably for the first time, a chasm between how things can be known by the intellect and how they are in reality—i.e., between “epistemology” and “ontology”—that motivates him to pursue metaphysics after the Regulae.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    All references to AT are to the Oeuvres de Descartes, edited by Charles Adam and Paul Tannery (Descartes 1996). All references to CSM or to CSMK are to The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, edited by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch, and (for volume 3) Anthony Kenny (Descartes 1985–1991).

  2. 2.

    This is the strategy of Marion (1975).

  3. 3.

    Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae (ST) I, q. 1, art. 3 (Leonina 4: 11–12; 1997, 7–8). On the genealogy of the concept of theology as a rational science in the thirteenth century, see Chenu 1957.

  4. 4.

    See Thomas Aquinas, ST I–II, q. 54, art. 4 (Leonina 6: 344; 1997, 410–412).

  5. 5.

    See Scotus , Quaestiones super libros metaphysicorum Aristotelis VI, q. 1 (Wadding 7: 302–321; 1997, 2: 5–40), Ockham, Expositio super viii libros Physicorum, Pr., (Gál et al. 4: 3–14; 1964, 1–16), Suárez , Disputationes metaphysicae (DM) 44.11.18 (1965, 699), Conimbricenses , Commentari in universam dialecticam Aristotelis Stagaritae, cap. XXIII, q. 1 (1607, 675–680). For an overview of the medieval scholastic debate about the unity of science, see Maurer (1974). On Scotus’s concept of the unity of science, see Demange (2004; 2009a; 2009b). On Ockham’s concept of habitus and the unity of science , see Maurer (1958), Miralbell-Guerin (1990), Perini-Santos (2006, 144–159), and Pelletier (2013, 13–17, 26–38). On Suárez’s concept of the unity of science, see Doyle (1991).

  6. 6.

    Suárez, DM 44.11.69 (1965, 715).

  7. 7.

    On problems involved in the historiographical concept of the Scientific Revolution, see Shapin (1996, 3).

  8. 8.

    On Beeckman, see van Berkel (2013). On the mechanization of natural philosophy in the seventeenth century, see Garber and Roux (2013).

  9. 9.

    The literature on Suárez’s definition of metaphysics is vast and controversial. See Courtine (1990), Gracia (1991; 1993), Volpi (1993), Doyle (1997), Darge (2015).

  10. 10.

    See Beck (1952) and Marion (1975, 25–30).

  11. 11.

    Cf. Ariew 1990.

  12. 12.

    Garber (1992, 15); cf. Garber (1992, 30–63; 2001, 33–52). See also Schuster (2013, 251).

  13. 13.

    The relaxation of Aristotle’s ban on cross-generic metabasis in fourteenth-century physics (see Livesey 1982) does not, it seems to me, amount to a suspension of the ban, for two reasons: (1) fourteenth-century physicists like Grosseteste continue to distinguish sciences by reference to their object, and (2) they continue to operate according to a modified Aristotelian paradigm of subalternation. As Ariew (1990, 299) convincingly argues, both subalternation and the differentiation of sciences by object are rejected by Descartes in Regula 1.

  14. 14.

    See note 10 above.

  15. 15.

    Aristotle and Aquinas are the only two figures that Beck and Marion discuss.

  16. 16.

    See, e.g., Regula 6, AT 10: 381, 382, CSM 1: 21, 22; Regula 9, AT 10: 401, 2–5, CSM 1: 34; Regula 12, AT 10: 424, CSM 1: 47; Regula 15, AT 10: 452, CSM 1: 65.

  17. 17.

    Thomas Aquinas, Super Boetium De Trinitate, q. 5, art. 1, ad 1 (Leonina 50: 139; 1963, 15–16).

  18. 18.

    For thorough discussions of Aristotle’s ban on cross-generic metabasis, see Livesey (1982) and McKirahan (1992).

  19. 19.

    Extrinsic denomination first explicitly appears in Descartes in Meditation 6 and his First Replies (to Caterus). In the former case, Descartes defines it as a “denomination which depends on my thought (denominatio a cogitatione mea… dependens); it is quite extraneous to the things of which it is said (rebusque de quibus dicitur extrinseca).” Such denominations are not “really to be found in the things themselves (revera in rebus reperitur)” (AT 7: 85).

  20. 20.

    Doyle (1991, 327–328). On extrinsic denomination in Suárez , see Doyle (1984).

  21. 21.

    Garber (2001, 48; 1992, 15).

  22. 22.

    Schuster (2013, 251).

  23. 23.

    AT 3: 722–723; CSMK 3: 144. On the role played by the concept of eruditio and industria in Descartes’s concepts of method and science, see Kambouchner (2009) and Kambouchner (2016; provided courtesy of the author).

  24. 24.

    AT 10: 371–374; CSM 1: 16–17: “Per methodus autem intelligo regulas certas et faciles, quas quicumque exacte servaverit, nihil unquam falsum pro vero supponet, et nullo mentis conatu inutiliter consumpto, sed gradatim semper augendoscientiam, perveniet ad veram cognitionem eorum omnium quorum erit capax.”

  25. 25.

    See, e.g., Regula 6, AT 10: 384, CSM 1: 22–23; Regula 9, AT 10: 400, 401, CSM 1: 33, 34.

  26. 26.

    Cf. Kambouchner (2016): “The aim of the directio ingenii consists in making ingenium capable of reaching its own fullness; and Rules 9 and 10, which one could consider of minor epistemological significance, will be here of major importance. […] [T]he cultivated ingenium will be the most perspicacious as well as the most sagacious.” Gauvin (2011, 330) makes an excellent case for why perspicuitas and sagacitas are habitus in the Regulae.

  27. 27.

    See Heidegger (1967, 101): “Only one who has really thought through this relentlessly sober volume [Regulae ad directionem ingenii] long enough, down to its remotest and coldest corner, fulfills the prerequisite for getting an inkling of what is going on in modern science.”

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  1. University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USA

    Tarek R. Dika

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  1. Centre of Excellence in Reason and Religious Recognition, Faculty of Theology, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

    Nicolas Faucher

  2. Laboratoire d’études sur les monothéismes (UMR 8584), Villejuif Cedex, France

    Magali Roques

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Dika, T.R. (2018). Extrinsic Denomination and the Origins of Early Modern Metaphysics: The Scholastic Context of Descartes’s Regulae. In: Faucher, N., Roques, M. (eds) The Ontology, Psychology and Axiology of Habits (Habitus) in Medieval Philosophy. Historical-Analytical Studies on Nature, Mind and Action, vol 7. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00235-0_21

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