The Flight to Objectivity: Essays on Cartesianism and CultureThe Flight to Objectivity offers a new reading of Descartes' Meditations informed by cultural history, psychoanalytic and cognitive psychology, and feminist thought. It focuses not on Descartes' arguments as "timeless," culturally disembodied events, but on the psychological drama and imagery of the Meditations explored in the context of the historical instability of the seventeenth century and deep historical changes in the structure of human experience. The study includes textual and cultural material that together comprise a gradually unfolding psychocultural reading of the Meditations. Descartes' famous doubt, and the ideal of objectivity which conquered that doubt, are considered as philosophical expressions of a cultural "drama of parturition" from the medieval universe, a process that generated new forms of experience, new cultural anxieties, and ultimately, new strategies for control and mastery of an utterly changed and alien world. Themes that figure prominently in recent literature on seventeenth-century philosophy and science--the birth of the mind as "mirror of nature," and the "masculine" nature of modern science, the "death of nature"--are explored with reference to Descartes as a pivotal figure in the birth of modernity. |
From inside the book
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... Descartes's Meditations 75 Six The Cartesian Masculinization of Thought and the Seventeenth - Century Flight From the Feminine 97 Notes 119 Bibliography 133 Index 141 Acknowledgements This study was first conceived more than six years vii.
... Descartes's Meditations 75 Six The Cartesian Masculinization of Thought and the Seventeenth - Century Flight From the Feminine 97 Notes 119 Bibliography 133 Index 141 Acknowledgements This study was first conceived more than six years vii.
Page 1
... Descartes's resolute and disconcertingly positive interpretation has become a standard textbook anecdote , a symbol of the seventeenth - century rationalist project . That project , in the official story told in most philosophy and ...
... Descartes's resolute and disconcertingly positive interpretation has become a standard textbook anecdote , a symbol of the seventeenth - century rationalist project . That project , in the official story told in most philosophy and ...
Page 3
... Descartes's Meditations . A good deal of discussion in these pages , accord- ingly , is devoted to a close ... Descartes . First , I do not believe that one can adequately identify , interpret , or appreciate philosophical arguments so ...
... Descartes's Meditations . A good deal of discussion in these pages , accord- ingly , is devoted to a close ... Descartes . First , I do not believe that one can adequately identify , interpret , or appreciate philosophical arguments so ...
Page 5
... Descartes's correspondence and other works , but focusing largely on certain themes in the Meditations . My aim is not to provide a running com- mentary on every argument in the text . It is the instability and transitional quality of ...
... Descartes's correspondence and other works , but focusing largely on certain themes in the Meditations . My aim is not to provide a running com- mentary on every argument in the text . It is the instability and transitional quality of ...
Page 6
... Descartes's philosophical control . Rather , as I will argue , the decision to doubt , once put into effect , calls ... Descartes is a central figure . - Although the essays in this volume are relatively self - contained and may be read ...
... Descartes's philosophical control . Rather , as I will argue , the decision to doubt , once put into effect , calls ... Descartes is a central figure . - Although the essays in this volume are relatively self - contained and may be read ...
Contents
Introduction | 7 |
The Pervasiveness of Cartesian Anxiety or Taking Cartesian Doubt Seriously | 19 |
The Epistemological Insecurity of the Cartesian Era | 39 |
The Emergence of Inwardness | 51 |
Individuation and Locatedness A Cultural Drama of Parturition | 65 |
Purification and Transcendence in Descartess Meditations | 81 |
The Cartesian Masculinization of Thought and the SeventeenthCentury Flight From the Feminine | 103 |
Notes | 125 |
Bibliography | 139 |
Other editions - View all
The Flight to Objectivity: Essays on Cartesianism and Culture Susan R. Bordo No preview available - 1987 |
Common terms and phrases
argued argument Barfield Baxandall become believe birth body C.S. Lewis Carol Gilligan Carolyn Merchant Cartesian anxiety Cartesian doubt child childhood clear and distinct clearly and distinctly cogito cogito ergo sum cognitive conceived conception consciousness context cultural Descartes Descartes's described developmental theory distinct perceptions dominant drama of parturition dream Easlea emergence emotional epistemological error essay Evelyn Fox Keller Evil Genius experience experiential exploration external faculty female feminine feminist gender historical human imagery images imagination inner intellectual knower knowledge locatedness male medieval medieval universe Meditations Middle Ages mind modern science modes mother nature notion object one's Owen Barfield perceive perspective painting philosophical Piaget Plato possibility problem of evil psychocultural psychological pure purification purity reality reason reconstruction Renaissance res cogitans res extensa Richard Rorty Rorty says scientific sense separation seventeenth century soul space suggests things thinking tion transcendence truth understanding universe visual women