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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Page 2
... scientific and ethical rationality have been exposed as harboring class , racial , and sexual biases . Surrounded by " isms " and barraged by openly competing frameworks of explanation , students exhibit an anxiety psychologically akin ...
... scientific and ethical rationality have been exposed as harboring class , racial , and sexual biases . Surrounded by " isms " and barraged by openly competing frameworks of explanation , students exhibit an anxiety psychologically akin ...
Page 4
... scientific and philosophic investigation , have been interpreted as serving an obsessive concern with purity and a corre- sponding desire to exorcise all the messier ( e.g. , bodily , emotional ) dimen- sions of experience from science ...
... scientific and philosophic investigation , have been interpreted as serving an obsessive concern with purity and a corre- sponding desire to exorcise all the messier ( e.g. , bodily , emotional ) dimen- sions of experience from science ...
Page 5
... scientific universe of purity , clarity , and objectivity . My focus here is on the philosophical expression of such a " flight from the feminine , " rather than the more concrete , political , and institutional dimensions chronicled by ...
... scientific universe of purity , clarity , and objectivity . My focus here is on the philosophical expression of such a " flight from the feminine , " rather than the more concrete , political , and institutional dimensions chronicled by ...
Page 6
... scientific project in general , that I have described above as a " drama of parturition . " It is my hope that the reader will come away with a recognition of not simply the fresh perspectives that a cultural reading can provide , but ...
... scientific project in general , that I have described above as a " drama of parturition . " It is my hope that the reader will come away with a recognition of not simply the fresh perspectives that a cultural reading can provide , but ...
Page 7
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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