Soul and Passions: A Probe into Descartes’ Ethical Thoughts

Abstract

 The interest in passion pervades every field of research in the 17th century philosophy and even becomes the central topic of the philosophical theories of Hobbes,Descartes, Spinoza and Locke.René Descartes’Les Passions de l’âme reveals the intrinsic features of passion and its relationship with those subjects to be perceived. Getting insight into dualism of mind and body, he uncovers the sophisticated bonds between the two. In a narrow sense, passions can be deemed as a kind of perceptions connected with a man’s soul.Descartes explains what is passion from the perspective of internal dynamics of our bodies and employs both rational and objective methods to examine it. It is worth noticing that training a person to be virtuous makes the best way to remedy our passions which are always out of control. Descartes particularly concentrates on tolerance as a virtue and its function of treating other people equally to honor their free will. Though our passions are unpredictable, our soul still has the ability to control them by its power of wisdom to counter the impermanence of fate. Starting with the researches about passions, Descartes builds up his ethical system and finally proposes a kind of liberal morality aimed at respecting everyone’s free will.