Carta Sobre El Cartesianismo (En Inglés)

LETTER ON CARTESIANISM, SENT TO AN UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT

[A II 1, p775]

     Sir

     Since you are happy for me to freely tell you my thoughts on Cartesianism, I will conceal nothing from you of what I think about it and which can be stated succinctly; and I will not put forward anything without giving or being able to give a reason for it.
     Firstly, all those who wholly fallin with the opinions of any author become enslaved, and bring suspicions of error upon themselves; for to say that Descartes is the only author who is exempt from substantial error is a supposition which is possibly true although not probable. Indeed, this attachment belongs only to those who [A II 1, p776] do not have the natural ability or the time to engage in contemplation, or who do not wishto make the effort to do so. This is why the three renowned Academies of our time, England's Royal Society, which was established first, and then the Académie Royale des Sciences in Paris and Accademia del Cimento in Florence,1 have openly declared that they do not wish to be Aristotelians or Epicureans or followers of any author whatsoever.
     Also, experience has taught me that those who areutterly Cartesian are scarcely capable of discovery; they merely take on the role of interpreters of or commentators on their master, as the Scholastic philosophers did with Aristotle. And of the many wonderful discoveries since Descartes, I do not know of any which comes from a true Cartesian. I know these gentlemen a little, and I defy them to name such a discovery from one of their number. Thisis a sign either that Descartes did not know the true method, or else that he did not bequeath it to them.
     Descartes himself had a rather limited mind. He excelled in speculations over all men, but discovered nothing useful for the life which falls under the senses and which serves in the practice of the arts. All his meditations were either too abstract, such as his metaphysics andgeometry, or too fanciful, such as his principles of natural philosophy. The only useful thing he thought he had given were his telescopes made in accordance with the hyperbolic line, with which he promised to show us animals, or parts as small as animals, on the moon.2 Unfortunately, however, he could not find workmen capable of executing his designs, and since then it has been demonstrated that theadvantage of the hyperbolic line is not as great as he had thought.
     It is true that Descartes was a great genius and that the sciences are greatly indebted to him, but not in the way the common run of Cartesians believe. I must therefore [A II 1, p777] dip into specifics and give examples of what he took from others, what he did himself, and what he left us to do, whereby it will be clearwhether I speak without knowing the facts of the matter. Firstly, his ethics is a blend of Stoic and Epicurean opinions, which wasn't very difficult to achieve since Seneca had already reconciled them very well.3 He wants us to follow reason, or else the nature of things, as the Stoics said, about which everybody will agree. He adds that we should not worry ourselves about things which are not in ourpower. This is precisely the doctrine of the Portic,4 which established the greatness and freedom of their much-vaunted wise man5 in his strength of mind to bring himself to do without things which do not depend upon us, and to endure them when they happen despite ourselves. This is why I usually term this form of ethics 'the art of patience.' The supreme good, according to the Stoics and Aristotletoo, is to act in accordance with virtue or prudence, and the resulting pleasure together with the aforementioned resolution is precisely that tranquillity of the soul or impassibility that the Stoics and Epicureans sought for and also recommended, under different names. One has only to look at the incomparable handbook of Epictetus and the Epicurean Laertius to acknowledge that Descartes did...