Short Paper on Descartes

NOTE: All written assignments, including your papers and the written portion of your presentations, should be submitted to me by email (frierspr@whitman.edu) in .doc or .docx format. If neither of those formats works for you, you can send .pdfs. Do not send googledocs. You must include your first and last name as the first terms in the filename, and the rest of the filename should make clear what assignment you are turning in. (So, for instance, when Jane Doe turns in her Descartes paper, she should save the paper under the filename “jane doe descartes paper.doc”.)

Your Descartes exegetical paper should be at least 1500 words and no more than 2500 words.

For this paper, you should start with a philosophical question of interest to you. The question can be something like “Are human beings free?” or “How should a just society respond to racism?” or “What is the nature of forgiveness?” or “Does God exist?” You should then look for areas in Descartes’s philosophy where he offers philosophical resources to help address that question. In some cases, these will be obvious (e.g., “Does God exist?”); in other cases, they will not be obvious (e.g., “How should a just society respond to racism?”). Read those parts of Descartes carefully to figure out what his view is or might be on your topic, and why he holds that view. Then look for difficulties, apparent contradictions, or ambiguities in his presentation of his view. Move from your philosophical question to an exegetical or interpretive question about Descartes’s text. For instance, from “Are human beings free?” you might move on to “How can Descartes say both that ‘the will…in me’ is ‘so great…that I cannot grasp the idea of a greater faculty’ and that ‘the faculty of willing is incomparably greater in God than it is in me’ (56a)?” or “What would be the implications of ‘seeing oneself as part of a whole’ (Letter to Elizabeth, 15.9.1645) for the nature of forgiveness?” Then answer that exegetical question. (An exegetical question is a question about how to interpret a particular author, rather than a question about whether the author is correct or about the best answer to a philosophical question.) If the answer turns out to be too obvious (as, I think, one of the above questions is), then look for a harder exegetical question. In the end, you should have a thesis that develops an interpretation of Descartes in a way that provides insight into his texts and also philosophical insight into the problem that initiated your inquiry. Your thesis should refer to Descartes and his views, but the reader should leave your paper with a better perspective on the philosophical issue at hand.

For an example of an exegetical paper of this kind (though longer), see “Learning to Love: From Egoism to Generosity in Descartes” (and forgive the shameless self-promotion).