Descartes: A Biography

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 Descartes: A Biography

understood as feelings that a subject passively experiences because of

information that is transmitted to the brain from relevant stimuli.

This suggests a distinction between primitive or primary emotions and

others that are either more complex or that result from combinations of

simple emotions. This approach also relied on a distinction between some

emotions that are innate in human beings from birth, and others that are

learned or acquired in some way. For good measure, Descartes included

atthis stage of his discussion a comment on the function of the passions.

He thought of them as dispositions, built into our nature, which help us

to seek things that are naturally good for us and to avoid things that are

naturally harmful. ‘The function of all the passions consists in this alone:

they dispose the soul to choose things which nature determines are ben-

eficial to us and to persist in this choice. Besides, the same movement of

spirits which usually causes such emotions disposes the body to the move-

ments which implement those choices’ (xi.).Despite Descartes’

famous objection about not reading God’s wishes from nature, he was

evidently relying on a teleological account of human nature at this point.

He thought of human nature as being equipped with innate guides to what

is harmful or beneficial, and, as he had explained in theMeditations,he

thought of the senses as having a function that is accommodated to that

design.

This natural teleology has to be exploited even in the youngest children,

atbirth. Otherwise their survival would be at risk. Descartes thinks of

the newborn baby as having a set of innate dispositions that protect the

child and guide it naturally during its early years. Feelings of pain help

it avoid harmful things, and feelings of pleasure guide it to things which,

forthe most part, are beneficial. This inbuilt guidance system would not

be enough for survival unless it were reinforced by some kind of internal

motivation toward the satisfaction of primitive needs. The emotions or

passions serve this function. Descartes thinks of love, for example, as

being one of the most basic emotions, which becomes operational as soon

as a child begins to be fed.

It seems to me that the first passions that our soul had, when it began to be joined to

our body, must have occurred when some blood, or some other juice which entered

the heart, was a more appropriate food than usual for maintaining the heat in the heart

which is the principle of life. This caused the soul to join itself willingly to this food,

that is, it loved it. At the same time, the spirits flowed from the brain to the muscles that

were able to press or agitate the parts of the body from which that food had come to