Theological Origins of Modernity

336 notes to pages 187–193
69. Lachterman, “Descartes and the Philosophy of History,” 38.
70. AT 10:82; CSM 3:13. Th is is not to say that it is fi ctional but that it can only be proposed
by means of a fi ction for it would otherwise be condemned and prohibited
by the authorities.
71. AT 4:486–92; CSM, 3:292–95.
72. AT 6:23–24; CSM 1:122–23.
73. G. W. F. Hegel, Sämmtliche Werke, ed. Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel,
20 vols. (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1970), 12:524.
74. Descartes to Mersenne, May 6, 1630, May 27, 1638. AT 1:148, 2:138.
75. For all of his discussion of theology, Descartes says almost nothing about salvation,
damnation, or a life aft er death.
76. Discourse, AT 6:61–63; CSM 1:142–43.
77. AT 10:362; CSM 1:10–11.
78. AT 10:359; CSM 1:9.
79. AT 10:368; CSM 1:14.
80. Even for Aristotle, deduction depends upon the knowledge of fi rst principles
which are known by intuition (nous).
81. AT 10:368–70; CSM 1:15.
82. AT 10:421–27; CSM 1:46–49.
83. AT 10:419–20; CSM 1:44–45.
84. On the role of imagination in Descartes see Jacob Klein, Greek Mathematical
Th ought and the Origins of Algebra, trans. Eva Brann (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press,
1968), 197–211, 293–309; and Dennis Sepper, Descartes’ Imagination: Proportion,
Image, and the Activity of Th inking (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 2004).
85. Burman, AT 5:176–77. On this point see Stanley Rosen, “A Central Ambiguity in
Descartes,” in Cartesian Essays: A Collection of Critical Studies, ed. Bernd Magnus
and James B. Wilbur (Th e Hague: Nijhoff , 1969), 24.
86. AT 10:420; CSM 1:45.
87. Descartes rejects here a science that determines only what is likely. Such a science
is not concerned with probability in the modern sense. Our notion of probability
as it is understood within mathematical statistics helps us determine degrees of
doubtfulness or probability. Th is idea was unknown in Descartes’ time. On the
development of the modern notion of probability, see Ian Hacking, Th e Emergence
of Probability (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975) and Lorraine
Daston, Classical Probability in the Enlightenment (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1995).
88. Dunn, “A Great City,” 100–101.
89. Although the Meditations presents itself as the inner dialogue of an isolated man,
it is really part of a dialogical interaction with some of the most noted thinkers of
the time. On the centrality of the Objections and Replies to Descartes’ thinking,
see Jean-Luc Marion, “Th e Place of the Objections in the Development of Cartesian
Metaphysics,” in Descartes and his Contemporaries: Meditations, Objections,
and Replies, ed. Roger Ariew and Marjorie Grene (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1995), 7–20.