The Discrimination between Mind and Soul in the Works of Descartes
The ancient philosophical concepts of"mind"and"soul"have different meanings and references,but Descartes'writings appeared to use them interchangeably.However,a careful examination of the various contexts in which these two terms appeared in Descartes'texts revealed that he primarily used"mind"(mens/esprit)to refer to the entity that enabled one to engage in thinking and that can be completely separated from the body,and"soul"(anima/ame)to refer to the entity that was bound to and interacted with the body.Descartes introduced a revolutionary perspective by adopting a mechanistic view of the body.Unlike the ancients,who believed that the soul animated the body,he no longer regarded the soul as a divine and eternal power,and he even tried to explain how the soul drove the body as if he were demonstrating the functioning of a machine,which led him to reduce the soul almost to a material organ.But Descartes did not dare to deviate from the classical rationalist view of life and values,and ultimately did not allow the soul,which directed the actions of the body,to be truly decoupled from the mind,which was engaged in cognition,and pretended to respond to the Church's call for proof of the immortality of the soul.This cautious stance led to the conflation of the terms"mind"and"soul"in his writings.
Descartesmind-body viewsoulmindimmortality of the soul
万方数据
