Lucian’s Imagines, the literary portrait of Panthea, mistress of the emperor Lucius Verus, offers rich material for resistant readings of the relation between Greek-educated subject and Roman ruler in the second century. Yet the fact that any potential critique of power in it is expressed through means provided by and consonant with Roman power makes any resistance in it difficult to pin down. This chapter compares the Imagines with another second-century literary portrait of power, the self-portrait of Marcus Aurelius, Verus’ co-emperor, in Book One of the Meditations. These portraits of fragmented identities are executed with the same combinatory technique: Panthea’s body and soul are the sum of the best picks from Greek paideia, and the emperor’s self is the sum of the exempla provided by the people in his life. But this commonality highlights, by contrast, the irreconcilability of the respective models and purposes, which makes the Imagines’ neglect of its contemporary world stand out more sharply as a sign of resistance.

Here I discuss an argument, suggested by some things that Descartes said, which appears to refute animal essentialism:

1. Suppose that being an organism is essential to me.

2. Then it is impossible for me to exist yet fail to have the features that make for being an organism.

3. If it is impossible for me to exist yet fail to have these features, and my existence is certain, for me, then it is also certain that I have these features.

4. It is certain for me that I exist.

5. But it is not certain for me that I have the features that make for being an organism.

6. 2–5 are inconsistent, so 2, and the assumption at step 1, are false. Being an organism is not essential to me.

I argue that the third premise is vulnerable to attack on the grounds that it is based on a closure principle (certainty is closed under strict implication) that, arguably, is implausible. I also argue that Premise 4 may be challenged by appealing to an account of certainty inspired by some remarks by Lichtenberg, according to which my existence is not certain for me.

This chapter focuses on the philosopher René Descartes. While Descartes is often seen as the initiator of modern habits of thinking – especially of the idea that the mind and body are distinct – here we view him as an outgrowth of Italian humanism. Descartes was educated by the Jesuits, at the time a new but influential religious order. From them, he imbibed Italian humanism’s respect for antiquity, its deep commitment to classical Latin, and most importantly its sometimes unarticulated through-line: that, to look at the world clearly, one needs to imagine oneself outside of it. But the Jesuits added something to Italian humanism: a deep respect for medieval Catholic theology, something that Descartes also took on board. His humanist education left him dissatisfied, however, laden with a feeling that it was not enough to establish a sure foundation on which could build a new way of looking at the natural world. Accordingly, he jettisoned the world of books, texts, and philology, grounding his perceptions of truth in the only thing about which he could be absolutely certain: that he existed. It is with Descartes that we can locate the beginnings of the modern separation of disciplines, as “natural philosophy” evolved into our modern natural sciences and separated itself from “philosophy” broadly conceived.