From Episteme to Áskesis: Remarks on Ethical Aspects in Cartesian Method

Abstract

From the "Cartesian moment" the ancient ethos - which, in the Greek philosophy sphere, was organically personified as an askesis in the lives of philosophers and was never dissociated from any theory of knowledge - starts to take almost exclusively the speculative form. The rational action (or practical reason) domain becomes reduced to the terms of general theories about moral philosophy, politics or law (that is to ground and organize the action in universalist terms). Contrary to these facts, this paper aims to rediscover some ethical aspects in the Cartesian method. In Descartes' writings one can note elements of practical philosophy in two different senses, more or less independent of each other: on the one hand, we find reflections on morality and ethics (which Descartes interacts with his epistemological cogitatio); on the other, it is possible to demonstrate how the methodic procedure itself is nothing other than a reorientation of the action that precedes the acquisition of knowledge and how it is a precondition to finding the truth. This in a way that the adoption of a method implied for Descartes in a conversion of the self. We conclude that the history of philosophy, as it is mainly told among us, ends up covering up some askésis aspect implied in the Cartesian method. This article intends to present a few passages from the late work of Descartes that might help us to see aspects of practical philosophy that are usually perceived as the fundamental source of all modern theoretical rationalism.