Descartes: A Biography

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Retreat and Defence (–) 

between observers and objects of perception.More seriously, he raised

the concern that Descartes’ philosophy might be a first step toward the

position endorsed by ‘atheists’, who substitute a purely material soul even

forthe operations that should be attributed to a rational soul. Having listed

many worrying features of Descartes’ philosophy, which had connotations

of what he described as the ‘heretical’ views of Calvinists, Froidmont

concluded his letter as follows: ‘what I like most about him is that he is a

Catholic and that he may hope, after this short life, to enjoy an eternal life

with us [Catholics]...which is something we cannot say about Reneri’

(i.).

Descartes tried to answer these objections without explicitly disagree-

ing with scholastic philosophy.He offered a combative defence of his

distinction between the rational souls of human beings and the kind of

explanation that would be more appropriate for animal sensations. He

even quoted various texts from the Old Testament that, he claimed, cor-

roborated his identification of the blood of an animal with its ‘soul’. He

concluded, with an obvious reference to Froidmont’s use of Scripture

against Galileo: ‘These passages [i.e., those quoted from Scripture by

Descartes] seem much clearer to me than those that are cited against cer-

tain other opinions, which some people condemn simply because they

contradict Holy Scripture, or seem to contradict it’ (i.).

Apart from the concern about making souls redundant, in animals or

in human beings, Froidmont took exception to a number of Descartes’

detailed explanations of natural phenomena, especially to the hypothetical

character of such explanations. In reply, Descartes expressed surprise at

any criticism of the one feature of his work of which he was most proud:

‘I use a style of philosophizing in which all reasoning is mathematical and

evident, and in which the conclusions are confirmed by true experiences’

(i.). He then spelled that out in more detail. Froidmont should reflect,

he thought, on what Descartes said in Part VI of theDiscourse,concerning

the assumptions used at the beginning of his scientific essays and the ways

in which they are confirmed by all the observed phenomena that they

are used to explain. If he wished, Froidmont could even transform the

Cartesian presentation into a series of syllogisms that would correspond

to the style of argument that he preferred. They would then read as follows:

If water is more fluid and freezes less easily than oil,that is a signthat the latter is

composed of parts that adhere to each other more easily, similar to the branches of