Reading le monde as pedagogy and fable

pp. 425-451

in: John Schuster, Descartes-agonistes, Berlin, Springer, 2013

Abstract

This chapter explicates the opening sections of Le Monde. It is particularly concerned with their non-Scholastic rhetoric and organization, given their having been written in the vernacular, in honnête hommestyle. It also explores why some core elements of the system are presented in the form of a fable. This chapter clears the ground for our further analysis of Le Monde, so that we can appreciate both the systematicity it displays, and the genealogy of some of its key concepts in Descartes' earlier physico-mathematical strivings and results. To that end, special attention is paid to Descartes' curious cosmogonical fable, his matter theory cumtheory of elements, and the initial delineation of the vortex theory. A number of these topics in Le Mondeare revisited in  Chap. 12, which examines their alteration and articulation in the Principia philosophiae, as part of the daring, new systematizing strategy of that mature natural philosophical text.