Life after Death: The Figures in Posthumous Editions of Descartes's
De L'Homme

Friday, November 1, 2002
1:30 pm
Ballantine Hall 003

Two editions of Descartes’s De L’Homme were published in the 1660s, over a decade after Descartes’s death: Florent Schuyl’s Renatus Descartes De Homine (1662) and Claude Clerselier’s L’Homme de René Descartes (1664). Besides the fact that the first was in Latin and the second in French, the major difference between these editions is the images, or figures, that illustrate the text. Only three of Descartes’s autograph figures remained; the rest had to be recreated from what Descartes said about them in the text. This left quite a bit of latitude for interpretation, and Clerselier attributed his decision to produce an entirely new edition of treatise to his dissatisfaction with Schuyl’s figures. My aim in this paper is to show what was wrong with Schuyl’s figures according to Clerselier and how he corrected Schuyl’s “mistakes” in the figures he commissioned by Gérard van Gutschoven and Louis De La Forge. My contention is that, underlying Clerselier’s explicit critique of the inappropriateness of Schuyl’s figures to the intentions expressed by Descartes in the text of the treatise, was his concern for the effect of Schuyl’s figures on the philosopher’s posthumous legacy.

L’Homme is a treatise about life, and Clerselier, described by one contemporary as the high priest of the Cartesian “sect”, was determined to promote the reputation of the recently deceased Descartes. While it seems obvious in retrospect that Descartes should have become one of the canonical figures of the history of philosophy and of literature, his premature death significantly damaged his credibility among contemporaries, for in the Discourse on method (1637), he had proclaimed the prolongation of human life to be the ultimate benefit of his new philosophy. I will argue that Schuyl’s figures –whether intentionally or not— highlighted the irony of Descartes’s optimism; his beautiful anatomical sketches foreground human mortality, while his landscapes remind the reader of the fleeting nature of time and of the inevitability of death. In contrast, Clerselier develops Descartes’s comparison of man’s body to a machine and in so doing, diverts the reader’s attention away from death. Because a machine, unlike a body, does not live, it does not die either. The schematic figures commissioned by Clerselier resemble those in an operating manual. By mechanizing the human body, Clerselier not only followed Descartes’s intentions, he drew attention away from the author’s dead body to promote the immortality of his disembodied “thought”.

If you have a disability and need assistance, special arrangements can be made to accommodate most needs. Contact Isabel Piedmont at (812) 855-5458 or ipiedmon@indiana.edu

For more information on the HPS Fall 2002 Colloquium Series.