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Educação e Filosofia

Print version ISSN 0102-6801On-line version ISSN 1982-596X

Abstract

AGOSTINI, Igor. The question about man and II Meditation. Educação e Filosofia [online]. 2020, vol.34, n.72, pp.1141-1156.  Epub Feb 03, 2022. ISSN 1982-596X.  https://doi.org/10.14393/revedfil.v34n72a2020-59280.

In this paper I will focus on the pre-philosophical notion of ‘man’ discussed by Descartes in the Second Meditation. In spite of the attention addressed on this very point by Descartes’s contemporaries, especially by Bourdin, scholars have not much dealt with this topic. In what follows, I will argue that Descartes’s analysis of the pre-philosophical notion of ‘man’ constitutes a paradigmatic case of the procedure followed in the Second Meditation in order to attain distinction. This procedure consists in a movement by which the meditator, by regressing from a pre-philosophical notion, obtains clearness through attention, and therefore distinctness through clearness: by focusing his attention on the pre-philosophical notion of ‘man’, in which he discovers the ‘cogitatio’, the meditator makes such a notion clear; then, by internal means of separation, he makes this notion distinct as well.

Keywords : Descartes; Meditações; homem; clareza e distinção.

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