From the Animal Instinct to the Mind’s Acknowledgement of the (In)Commoda in Descartes

Preview this chapter:

From the Animal Instinct to the Mind’s Acknowledgement of the (In)Commoda in Descartes, Page 1 of 1

< Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/10.1484/M.DESCARTES-EB.5.123382/M.DESCARTES-EB.5.132891-1.gif

This chapter studies the relationship between the animal instinct and the human soul. If instinct is sufficient to ensure the preservation of the body, why should it be necessary for nature to institute a way to signify to the mind the disadvantages that the body to which it is united suffers, thanks to the perceptions of the senses? To answer, I first analyse the concept of (in)commodum, mobilised both in the physiological texts and in Descartes’s first philosophy. I then show that, in the first case, it is mobilised in connection with the survival of the body, while in the second it intervenes to describe the preservation of health. The conclusion is therefore twofold. There is, in Descartes, a concept of commodum that is derived from his physiology and transposed into his metaphysics as well as a demanding conceptualization of the notion of “health”.