Rene Descartes The Passions Of The Soul

“Cogito ergo sum,” or in layman 's terms, “I think therefore I am.” This statement is possibly one of the most famous latin quotes of all times, said by René Descartes himself. Descartes was one the great french philosophers, mathematicians and scientists in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Outlandish to some and inventive to others, his theories shaped the way we view psychology today and set him apart from other philosophers and scientists at that time. Maybe an oddity to us humans now, but at the time his work was revolutionary and extraordinary. Descartes was an exceptional man, who wrote many engaging and thought provoking books. The excerpt of his work, The Passions of the Soul was an especially engaging and laborious passage to read. The focal point of the fragment assigned to read for this essay, mainly focused on the body, the mind and how animal spirits are the driving force of the human anatomy. He answers a series of several questions relating to his work on mind and body dualism, and goes into depth on each question so that the reader gets a philosophical understanding of his theories.

The amount of work psychologists have done in the past few hundreds years is definitely noticeable when reading works like Descartes’. The apparent measures of difference between the sixteenth century, to now into the twenty-first century, is astonishing. As stated above, Descartes answered a series of several questions. The first question in the passage was asking Descartes (1649) about the principal of the functions of the mind and body (Descartes, 1649, p. 10). In his answer to the inquiry, he says something I find especially