8 - Cartesian dualism

Summary

Throughout his life Descartes firmly believed that the mind, or soul, of man (he made no distinction between the two terms) was essentially nonphysical. In his earliest major work, the Regulae (c.1628), he declared that “the power through which we know things in the strict sense is purely spiritual, and is no less distinct from the whole body than blood is distinct from bone, or the hand from the eye” (AT X 415: CSM I 42). In his last work, the Passions de l'dme (1649), he observed that the soul, although 'joined' or 'united' to the “whole assemblage of bodily organs” during life, is “of such a nature that it has no relation to extension, or to the dimensions or other properties of the matter of which the body is composed” (AT XI 351: CSM I 339). And between these chronological extremes we have the central claim of the Meditations (1641): there is a 'real' [realis) distinction between the mind and body, - in other words, the mind is a distinct and independent 'thing' (res). The thinking thing that is 'me' is “really distinct from the body and can exist without it” (AT VII 78: CSM II 54).