c CUNYB/Clarke December, :
Metaphysics in a Hornet’s
Nest (–)
There are few people who can understand metaphysics.A
the beginning of the year, Descartes was still living in Sant-
poort. He had given up the idea of publishing a selection of objections
and replies to theEssays, and had been working instead for some weeks on
what he described as ‘An Essay on Metaphysics’. Although this was not
his first incursion into metaphysics, it represented a significant departure
from what he had been doing during the previous decade and a return
to a project that had been deferred since.Inthat year he had writ-
ten to Father Gibieuf, a theologian and member of the Oratory in Paris,
that he would hold him to his promise to correct ‘a little treatise’ that he
hoped to complete within two or three years.Descartes had evidently
intended to contribute to the anti-libertine literature, in which the names
of Mersenne and Garasse were so prominent, and to write about atheism
and the human soul. The following year,,hetold Mersenne that he
had worked on almost nothing apart from metaphysics for nine months
after arriving in the United Provinces – adding, on that occasion, that it
would not be appropriate to publish anything about metaphysics until he
first saw how his projected book on physics was received.
Since his ‘physics’ [i.e.,The World] was never published, he had no
indication from its success or otherwise of how his metaphysical specula-
tions might be received when he returned to the project in. During
the intervening years, he had tried to avoid theological disputes as much
as possible, especially after.That implied avoiding metaphysics too,
because he understood the term ‘metaphysics’ as denoting questions about
the nature of the human soul and the existence of God. Although Descartes
argued that one could discuss these questions without appeal to revela-
tion or religious belief, it was difficult in practice to say anything about