Colloque

Formal and Objective Reality in Descartes and in Spinoza’s Ethics

Richard Glauser

Membre a labase

Richard Glauser

Résumé de la communication

Descartes’s conception of an idea comprises three distinct aspects. An idea’s formal reality is the reality or perfection it has as a mode of a finite thinking substance. Its material reality is the idea considered as a mental act or operation. Furthermore, an idea contains some objective reality, which is the reality of its exhibited object inasmuch as the object is presented to thought. Although Spinoza does not use the notion of material reality in discussing ideas, he does make significant use of the notions of formal and objective being or reality. Yet Spinoza’s theory of an idea in the Ethics differs remarkably, and in a great number of ways, from Descartes’s. In this paper I wish to answer the following question : Does Spinoza’s theory of ideas in the Ethics retain the cartesian meaning of ‘objective reality’, or does it imply some other sense. If the latter is the case, what transformations has the notion gone through in the hands of Spinoza ?

Résumé du colloque

Il peut être intéressant de noter la participation au colloque de l'un des plus grands spécialistes internationaux de la pensée de Descartes, M. Daniel Garber (Princeton University).