312 Zur Diskussion

ZUR DISKUSSION

Descartes on Passion Reformation

By Basil e ios Krous t a llis (Corfu)

Abstract: Descartes’ account of emotion conflict in the Passions of the Soul has re-
cently been the subject of Shapiro’s essay (2003), who claims that agent evaluation of
the human good operates as an explanatory factor for the reformation of existing
mind-body associations. On the contrary, it is here argued that this passion reforma-
tion involves explicit reasoning processes, and that the tendency to promote the good
of the human being either denotes the cause and not the reason for the original
passion formation or is a specific reasoning method. Passion reformation does not
seem to be essentially related to the problem of mind-body union.

A recurring theme in the research on Descartes concerns the problem of interaction

between mind and body in his theory of dualism. While Descartes himself repeatedly
refuses to acknowledge the existence of such a problem1 (see his Letters to Elizabeth,
AT III 667–8, CSMK: 219, AT III 691–2, CSMK: 227), his answers concerning
a primitive notion of interaction, distinct from both mind and body, have fuelled
a consequent debate on the nature and the consistency of that account.2 The issue of
a ‘third’ substance or attribute in the human being that denotes the union of mind
and body is purportedly present in the Cartesian account of sense perception3, and
researchers have recently argued forcefully for and against that idea.4

1 The abbreviations to Descartes’ works are as follows:

AT: Œuvres de Descartes, Vols. I–XII, ed. Charles Adam and Paul Tannery.
Paris 1964–1976.
CSM: The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, Vols. I and II, transl. John Cot-
tingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch. Cambridge 1985.
CSMK: The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, Vol. III, transl. John Cotting-
ham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch, and Anthony Kenny. Cam-
bridge 1991.
2 Cf., e.g., Richardson 1982; Wilson 1991.
3 Starting with Cottingham 1985.
4 See e.g. Hoffman 1999, Rozemond 1999 for a positive attitude, and Kenny 1999,
Yandell 1999 for a defence of a classical interactionist reading of Descartes’ rel-
evant remarks.

Archiv f. Gesch. d. Philosophie 87. Bd., S. 312–323

© Walter de Gruyter 2005
ISSN 0003-9101
 Zur Diskussion 313

Although the Passions of the Soul [henceforth Passions] (1649) is not directed to
answer questions about mind-body interaction, but to examine the nature and func-
tion of human feelings and emotions, Descartes’ statement that he intends to study
those passions5 not as a rhetorician or a moral philosopher but as a natural philos-
opher (AT XI 326, CSM: 327), inadvertently brings forward the issue of their first
formation and their interaction with the body. The whole framework that surrounds
this statement and is expressed with one more invocation of the pineal gland as
the contact of mind and body (Passions, art. 31–38)6, makes it justified for Shapiro
(2003) to seek answers for the Cartesian union of mind and body in terms of the ac-
count of passions. Her starting point is to argue for a non-fixed account of associ-
ation between mind and body in the Passions. Although there are naturally instituted
associations, Shapiro claims that a closer study of that work gives textual evidence
that, according to Descartes, a moral agent can not only react towards the outcome of
a specific interaction, but she may actually reform that interaction, and change the
specified passion in the soul (e.g. feel courage instead of fear when confronted with a
wild animal). She argues that this reformation is not the result of a reasoning process
where the agent deliberates and examines the best reasons for pursuing or avoiding a
situation, but it is rather the outcome of a (short or long) training and habituation
period, which ends when the same repeated external stimulus ceases to cause the
associated passion (e.g. fear) but a different one (courage). This habituation, though,
does not imply a simple behaviourist process: the dynamic view of reforming mind-
body interaction is made possible by an accompanying teleological conception,
where the agent is aware of and tends to promote her own human good, which is more
than self-preservation. According to Shapiro, Descartes supports the idea of aware-
ness of one’s own good as a human agent, and that may provide a different answer to
the problem of mind and body ‘union’. Descartes’ relevant remarks should be read, in
the light of Passions, neither as denoting a simple interactionist account nor, on the
other hand as advocating a substantial unity. A moral unity would guide the associ-
ation between mind and body, activated by agent conception of the human good.
The thesis of this paper is that whereas examination of passions invokes reforma-
tion of the mind-body interaction in the Passions, unlike the previous works, never-
theless, Descartes does not separate passion reformation from rational reflection
on the existing situation, and the associated conception of the human good is part
of that explanation. Consequently, in the first part of the paper, it is argued that the
textual evidence that indicates passion reformation as a result of habituation do not
necessarily comply with Shapiro’s claim that this occurs in the absence of reasoning
processes. The paper subsequently addresses the theoretical objection, based on
Descartes’ account of sensations, that reflected reasoning belongs to a higher grade

5 As Descartes notes (Passions, art. 17), ‘passions’ is a term for either perceptions
or modes of knowledge present in us (including sensory perceptions) or, in a
more restricted sense, ‘perceptions which refer to the soul itself’ (Passions,
art. 25). It is passions in the latter sense (denoting emotions) that Descartes pri-
marily examines. For the history of passion examination, see Gaukroger 1998.
6 Cf. also Treatise on Man, AT XI 175, CSM:105–106.
314 Zur Diskussion

of passion control, which may only help to react towards but cannot change already
formed feelings and emotions. The second part discusses the conception of the
human good that Shapiro detects in Descartes’ writings, and denotes that this con-
ception has a different function when the description of the genesis and first
formation of passions is put forward (Passions, art. 107–111) than the one employed
in the account of passion reformation, which includes reasoning. It is further argued
that the tendency to promote the human good that Descartes attributes to agents is
not directly related to the problem of explaining the mind-body interaction.

I. Habituation and Reasoning

Shapiro distinguishes three types of passion reformation that may be detected in the
Passions.7 First, there is the kind of indirect interaction that the soul has after reflect-
ing on its existing feelings. According to Descartes, the soul has not complete control
over its passions, since it can only directly control the attitudes (volitions) that itself
causes, and passions are a consequence of things external to the soul (an outcome
of sense perception and/or consequent bodily functions). Nevertheless, the soul can
reflect and deliberate on the reasons that constitute those passions, and finally judge
that there are reasons to act differently than what the passions dictate. This would in-
clude the attempt to conquer the emotion of fear when seeing a large animal by not
yielding to the impulse to leave, as an outcome of the consideration that the imputed
danger can be confronted with a different reaction.
Secondly, agents can train their bodies to react differently, in the same way that
animals can be trained in similar situations. Even though dogs usually run towards a
partridge and run away when they hear someone firing at a bird, they can be “com-
monly trained so that the sight of a partridge makes them stop, and the noise they
hear afterwards, when someone fires at the bird, makes them run towards it”
(Passions, art. 50, AT XI 370, CSM I 348).
What Shapiro additionally argues as a third means of passion reaction is the case
of habituation, which moves beyond the other two ones, for it is neither a associ-
ationist response (as in the second case) nor a reaction directly dependent on the
original emotion. She brings forward some claims that Descartes makes in art. 44, 50
and 211 of the Passions. For example, in art. 44 Descartes explains the action of
meaningful speech production as a case of habituation. In order to utter a certain
sentence, agents associate what they intend to say with the meanings of the words,
and that makes them utter words and sentences easier than if they thought about all
the actual combinations of the necessary tongue and lip movements. Again, in art. 50
Descartes introduces the example of people who, after a bad taste experience in their
favourite dish, become so habituated that even the sight of that dish recalls the feeling
of repulsion. Based on the art. 211 comment that agents correct their passions “by
striving to separate within ourselves the movement of the blood and the spirits from

7 Shapiro 2003, 217ff.

 Zur Diskussion 315

the thoughts to which they are usually joined” (AT XI 486, CSM I 403), Shapiro
proposes that this passion reformation eliminates the original feeling by substituting
it with something different, not by means of reasoning but with the help of habitu-
ation. Her own example8 involves a differentiated agent reaction towards a growling
dog, which can include either standing up after considering there is no danger but
still be afraid of dogs (a case of deliberated reaction), or coming to see those dogs not
as fearful (a case of reforming the original association).
There seems to be a positive case for the existence of passion reformation, apart
from an agent reaction towards an existing feeling (something that Descartes himself
proposes as a ‘second-best’ remedy against passion control, Passions, art. 211, AT XI
487, CSM I 403). Although it initially looks that Descartes contradistinguishes be-
tween passions with bodily/external origin and agent desires, in effect the conflict
does not occur between passions and desires, but between two different desires, since
even the emotions that have their origin in the body lead to desires (the desire to leave
follows the feeling of fear), themselves a mode of the mind. The claim that other
emotions with their origin in bodily or in external stimulation produce desires, by
means of which the agent conducts her actions, is repeatedly addressed in the work
(Passions, art. 143, art. 144). The subsequent situation in passion control reveals two
contradictory desires which fight for dominion, and impel the soul “almost at one
and the same time, to desire and not to desire one and the same thing” (Passions, art.
47, AT XI 366, CSM I 346). Therefore, Descartes cannot fully relocate the source of
conflict to the body vs. soul problem, in order to advocate solely an avoidance of the
consequent actions that the passion brings. At the same time, he cannot admit that
the caused feeling (fear in the previous case) will prevail, since it is also a fact for
Descartes that “the will is by its nature so free that it can never be constrained”
(Passions, art. 41, AT XI 359, CSM I 343). Both those considerations indicate that
there needs to be a stronger way apart from bodily reaction to overcome passions, for
even the existence of an unwanted feeling would constrain the will, and would lead to
a permanent desire conflict, regardless of the subsequent corrective actions.
Nevertheless, the way of passion reformation may not be expressed as a habitu-
ation without reasoning process, as Shapiro claims. In the specific cases that she
brings forward there is not a reference to feelings or emotions reformed through ha-
bituation, but speech production is denoted in the first one (Passions, art. 44), while
the second one (Passions, art. 50) refers to sense perception. It is to be expected that
since the overall aim of Descartes is to show how passion reformation, not sensation
reformation is possible, the function of those exact cases serves to denote that further
aim. Nevertheless, the former does not necessarily imply that passion reformation
has to follow exactly in the steps of sensory perception or speech production, and so
it does not have to endorse habituation without a reasoning process. A joint reading
of art. 44 with what follows might give a different view. Immediately after the habitu-
ation example with speech (which does not include reasoning), Descartes brings for-
ward a parallelism with passions:

8 Shapiro 2003, 226–227.

316 Zur Diskussion

Our passions, too, cannot be directly aroused or suppressed by the action of our
will, but only indirectly through the representation of things which are usually
joined with the passions we wish to have and opposed to the passions we wish to
reject (Passions, art. 45, AT XI 363, CSM I 345).
He immediately goes on to the example of feeling fear, in which we must supply rea-
sons which persuade us that the danger is not great, and other considerations. Des-
cartes does not seem to distinguish between radical passion reformation (speech pro-
duction) and passion control under reasoning (emotions). On the contrary, he seems
to join the two, as two cases where effort must be applied in order to have the desired
result, possibly by different means (reasoning or other). Similarly, in art. 50, Des-
cartes parallels habituation in the case of animals, which are “devoid of reason” (AT
XI 370, CSM I 348) with human agents, who can have more success, if they employ
“sufficient training and ingenuity in training and guiding” the passions. This
contrast tacitly implies that the appropriate training will be conducted within the
sphere of reason, which human agents, unlike animals, possess. Therefore, it initially
seems that habituation is not used in contrast with reasoning, but rather denotes
passion reformation which may either include (feelings and emotions) or not include
(sensory perception) a reasoning process.
Nevertheless, notwithstanding textual evidence, it seems that there is a theoretical
obstacle to attribute complete passion reformation (and not only change of the con-
sequent reaction that the emotion brings) to reasoning processes. Shapiro notes that
reasoning in the Passions has been associated with an indirect account of interaction,
with no direct affect on the strength of the original interaction, in compliance with
Descartes’ distinction between grades of sensory perception. She brings forward the
Sixth Reply to the Objections on Meditations, in which Descartes notes that there are
three grades of sensory response, including in turn affections of the bodily organ by
an external stimulus, immediate effects produced in the mind as a result of that af-
fection, and judgements about the things external to us. In visual perception, the cor-
responding elements would include first the activation of the optic nerve, which
would lead to perception of colour and light and then judgements concerning the
size, the shape and the distance of the object accordingly (AT VII 437, CSM II
294–295). An agent can only alter the judgments about things in visual perception
but not how the things appear to be (e.g. judge that the stick bent in the water is not
bent, although it still appears bent). Shapiro parallels that account with that of di-
rect-indirect interaction in the case of passions. An agent may reason that a certain
passion is not good to pursue, but on the other hand cannot change the way she feels.
She can only deliberate and avoid the consequences of that passion.
However, it seems that in this case Shapiro equates ‘indirect’ with ‘higher-order’
process. This is evident in her statement that “it can certainly appear that the indirect
action amounts to just a mental process of critically reflecting on our perceptions of
the importance of things to us and adjusting our actions accordingly”.9 If indirect
interaction in the Passions is only a higher-order reasoning process which reflects on

9 Shapiro 2003, 219.

 Zur Diskussion 317

the lower-order ones (passion formation), then by definition it cannot contribute deci-
sively on passion reformation. Nevertheless, Descartes does not view this indirect pro-
cess only in that sense, otherwise he would not refer to a process of indirect interaction
of the body on the soul (Passions, art. 41). Although he does not clearly describe the
latter process, the two interpretations that have been advanced10 propose either that
the body causes the relevant movements relevant in order to excite the appropriate de-
sires in the soul as in their first formation or that it presents through sensory percep-
tion the objects to the soul as desirable. In neither interpretation, however, is there rea-
soning involved in the interaction, and it would be bizarre for the body in that account
to act indirectly to the mind through an exclusively mental process (reasoning).
Secondly, the indirect processing that the soul accomplishes is not limited to
reasoning either. The will to remember or imagine something is also an instance of in-
direct interaction, for the soul communicates through the pineal gland to reconstitute
the brain movements that represent the thing to remember or imagine accordingly
(Passions, art. 42, 43), and there is equally no mention of reasoning in this train of as-
sociations.
What unites those cases of indirect interaction, unlike sensory grades, is not
higher-order, but mediated processing. Mediated processing operates in the Passions
as a combination of direct processes, and not as a meta-process reflecting on the pre-
vious ones. When the soul desires to imagine, it contacts the pineal gland (direct pro-
cessing), and this in turn brings the appropriate movements that represent that object
(direct processing). Similarly, the will to speak is joined with the meaning of the in-
tended utterances, which in turn move the gland appropriately in order to produce
the corresponding movements (Passions, art. 44). The only difference in the case of
passions is an additional stage, for the will to produce a certain passion is joined with
the representation of particular things, which then moves the pineal gland, and the
corresponding gland and brain movements bring the desired passion. The role of rea-
soning about a certain passion is the initiation of that first stage, which comes
through reflection on the situation represented by the existing feeling (minimizing
the importance of the presented danger that fear evokes, Passions art. 45), not reflec-
tion on the fact of associating that feeling with bodily conditions (e.g. reflecting on
the binding of a certain brain movement to fear). As a consequence, indirect process-
ing does not necessarily entail the a priori exclusion of passion reformation, unlike
the system of sensory grades (according to the Sixth Reply account), for it does not
superimpose on an existing association, but it is only the first stage to a combination
of direct association processes. Although it is neither easy nor certain that the voli-
tion to change a certain feeling will change that feeling through reasoning11, never-

10 D’Arcy, 1996, 245.

11 Descartes states that the soul “is compelled to make an effort to consider a series of
different things, and if one of them happens to have the power to change for a mo-
ment the course of the spirits, the next one may happen to lack this power, where-
upon the spirits will immediately revert to the same course because no change has
occurred in the state of the nerves, heart and blood” (Passions, art. 47, AT XI 366,
CSM I 346). See also art. 46, for the difficulty in suppressing unwanted feelings.
318 Zur Diskussion

theless, there is no theoretical reason why reformation of passions through reasoning

may not succeed through continuous effort, as it has succeeded in the joining of in-
tended speech with the meaning of words. It does not seem, therefore, that reasoning
in the Passions can be paralleled with the third grade of sensory response in the Sixth
Reply to Objections.
The considerations above do not exhaust, but rather circumscribe the concept and
function of reasoning, which Descartes uses in his correspondence to “determine all
perfections, both of the body and the soul, which can be acquired by our conduct”
(AT IV 286-7: CSMK 265). Cottingham (1996: 212) describes reasoning as the
informed understanding of psycho-physiological causes of passions, so that reason
can neither be the result of an intellectual approach nor an attitude of will alone.
What can be attested, though, is that reasoning at least includes a kind of inner
acknowledged reflection, the one that Descartes himself describes in his letter to
Chanut (AT V 57: CSMK 23) about his recognition of the fact that he tended to love
girls with a squint. Reasoning seems to imply a reflected acknowledgement on a
practice, but, independently of its exact nature, it is necessary in the Passions to initi-
ate a habituation process that leads to a different passion.

II. The conception of the human good

Shapiro does not rest only on the specific examples to show that habituation is a rea-
soning-free process, but she also provides an explanation in terms of the human good
to support her claim. Passions help to represent how things are harmful or beneficial
to us12, but they do not accomplish that in an invariant way. People tend to misrep-
resent the importance of passions and, apart from the actual desire conflict, Shapiro
transfers that to the framework invoked by Descartes concerning the genesis and first
function of passions (Passions, art. 107–111).13 She claims that the physiological
story Descartes introduces to account for the first association of emotions with
bodily conditions is not only a causal connection. The soul is not only informed of
the bodily condition (e.g. blood abundance), but actively evaluates that condition as
good for the body, and then institutes the association between the former and the re-
sulting feeling (joy). In Shapiro’s words, “the particular states of the body in these
original instances of our passions are not merely causes of the soul’s having the feel-
ings it does. They are also reasons for the soul’s feeling the way that it does.”14 The
only disadvantage is that the soul at this point identifies its good with the good of the
body, causing sometimes awkward feelings, such as love for our blood (Passions,
art. 107). When, though, habituation takes place, agents learn to join new thoughts
to their concomitant bodily conditions. Therefore, they come to associate their good,
as Descartes mentions, with the good of their soul (art. 139), and consequently learn

12 See e.g. Passions, art. 52, 137.

13 Shapiro 2003, 233ff.
14 Shapiro 2003, 235; her italics.
 Zur Diskussion 319

to love other people. And, although Shapiro claims that there is no reasoning
involved in the transition between recognizing the good of the body and the good of
the soul, she holds that Cartesian agents in both stages express teleology by their ac-
tive evaluation of the human good, supporting in effect, a biofunctional account of
passion recognition.15
Nevertheless, there is a point of dissent here. Shapiro’s argument concerning a
teleological conception of passion genesis seems to advance too far in the direction
of conceiving the human good as an explanatory factor. Although Descartes’ ac-
count of passion genesis is not sufficiently described by Cottingham’s view that “the
causal genesis and subsequent occurrence of the passions is intimately linked to cor-
poreal events”16, since persistent reference to human good in the relevant passages
cannot go unnoticed, if production of feelings comes as a result of an evaluative at-
titude, it has to rely on an implicit general principle and intention to take the body’s
good to be valuable in order to feel the way it does. If the soul would tacitly entertain
a general maxim such as ‘do whatever is necessary to promote the bodily good’, then
its reaction to love an object would be explained as an instantiation of that principle,
and it would constitute a reason for the institution of the subsequent mind-body as-
sociation. However, Descartes’ statements support a less liberal interpretation. First,
although human good considerations are presented in the above section, the phras-
ing advanced does not go beyond attributing a causal influence of the former factor
to passion formation, since the corresponding bodily condition (lack or abundance
of nourishment) is said to typically cause and excite those passions (hatred in
Passions, art. 108, joy in art. 109). A different example is the account of love in
art. 107 of the Passions, in which Shapiro (2003: 234) notes that the soul may be
joined with the body ‘by will’ (de volonté, ‘willingly’ in the CSM translation), in order
to argue that soul is not a passive receiver of bodily information, but it rather actively
evaluates the bodily good.17 However, in that case, Descartes glosses ‘willingly’ in
art. 80 by ‘assent’ (consentement), and denotes that this restricts this attitude to the
present, and not to future application (AT XI 387, CSM I 356), constituting that
attitude only an immediate response and not a teleological tendency. He elsewhere
(Passions, art. 137) mentions that the function of passions is to make the soul ‘con-
sent’ (consentir) to the previous bodily conditions, a statement that is later explained
as an acknowledgement of bodily information (“the soul is immediately advised
about things useful to the body”, Passions, art. 137, AT XI 430, CSM I 376), but not
an active evaluation under a general principle. If that is the case, this consent that the
soul gives might be only the equivalent of sensory awareness in the case of feelings, so
that the union ‘by will’ in the case of love is another name for that kind of acknowl-
edgement.
This reading comes initially in contrast with the account of the first formation of
desires, which impel the soul “to accept things beneficial to it [the body] and to reject

15 Shapiro also mentions Simmons’ (1999) relevant work on the representational

nature of sensations.
16 Cottingham 1996, 210.
17 Shapiro 2003, 234.
320 Zur Diskussion

those harmful to it” (Passions, art. 111, AT XI 410, CSM I 367), implying that
the soul functions according to those considerations. However, closer look at that
phrase shows that consideration of the human good is the object of desire, and not its
instituting explanatory parameter. In other words, the soul takes into account
human good not in order to feel a certain way, but in order to act in a certain way in
the future according to the object of desire (promotion of the human good), produc-
ing a structure of certain bodily movements. This is also the expected outcome de-
scribed in art. 137, where already instituted feelings have the function to make the
soul “contribute to actions which may preserve the body or render it some way more
perfect”:
The soul is immediately advised about things useful to the body only through
some sort of titillation, which first produces joy within it, then gives rise to love of
what we believe to be its cause, and finally brings about the desire to acquire some-
thing that can enable us to continue in this joy, or else to have a similar joy again
later on (art. 137, AT XI 430, CSM I 376).

This sequence of feelings shows first that, although conception of good may act as
cause for all feelings, subsequent desires, which themselves follow the former institu-
tion of mind-body association, are also assigned the explanatory burden to account
for subsequent actions as promoting the bodily good. Still, even in that case, the feel-
ing of desire does not involve a general principle, but an item-specific future behav-
iour (“continue in this joy, or else to have a similar joy again later on”). Animals,
which are totally “devoid of reason” (Passions, art. 138), and therefore, cannot enter-
tain a general principle in order to institute their first feelings, nevertheless, accord-
ing to Descartes, have desires which lead them to behave in accordance with the spe-
cific thing they find avoidable or approachable. That is why they may be so easily
deceived by lures, for they associate a specific object (e.g. cheese) with a specific reac-
tion (desirable). Therefore, if the above considerations are correct, evaluation of the
human good is only a cause and not a reason for feeling.
This situation changes when the agents start considering the good in respect of the
soul, instead of their bodily good, and that evaluation may be an important factor.
However, at this time reasoning intervenes. Descartes repeatedly talks about passions
proceeding from “true knowledge”, to be distinguished from ad hoc judgements
coming from “false opinion” (Passions, art. 139, 141, 142), and this knowledge involves
reflecting abilities, since “we must use experience and reason in order to distinguish
good from evil and know their true value” (Passions, art. 138, AT XI 431, CSM I 377).
Knowledge of what is beneficial or harmful to the body or the soul is a factor that is
taken into consideration, but it is not sufficient. Descartes insists that even in the case
when e.g. love rests on less secure foundations and is therefore less beneficial than it
should be, it should still be preferred from the feeling of sadness, for it is not a matter of
more benefit or harm, but a matter of good or evil: “where we cannot avoid the risk of
being mistaken, it is always much better for us to incline towards the passions which
tend to be good than for us to incline towards the passions which relate to evil”
(Passions, art. 142, AT XI 436, CSM I 378). Another factor is the specific contrast be-
tween emotions, for the preference between joy and sadness is not judged on the same
 Zur Diskussion 321

grounds as the one between love and hatred. Therefore, the tendency to promote the
good for the human being does not seem to be the sole consideration in the reasoning
applied towards the aim of passion reformation. Whereas Shapiro tacitly implies that
what initially forms the passions is the same as what it is responsible for their reforma-
tion, namely a non-reasoned conception of the human good, it seems that Descartes
has a two-storey model. In the first instance, formation of passions and acknowledge-
ment of the bodily good involves the conception of the human good only as a cause of
feelings or specific reason for action, whereas in considering about the good of the soul
he allows the tendency to evaluate the human good as one factor necessary for passion
reformation, aim which is implemented as a reasoning process.
This distinction might parallel the one Kenny describes in the account of sen-
sations, between making a thought and having a judgment.18 In that case, the prop-
ositions “It seems to me that I see light” and “I am making (or have made the judg-
ment) that there is light” would not be equivalent, since the first denotes the internal
content of sensations, and the latter their relation to extra-mental reality. In that
analogy, awareness of the human bodily good would give the content of passions, but
not true knowledge that would come from a careful judgment over the nature of
human good promotion. However, whatever the truth of the exact parallelism is, it
may be concluded that evaluation of the human good cannot be used as a factor to
support passion reformation without reasoning process.
If that is the case, it has to be decided what the role for the human good conception
in the account of passions is and its relation with the thorny issue of mind-body
interaction. Shapiro suggests two ways in which active promotion of the human good
on the part of the agent may help describe the notion of ‘union’ between mind and
body implied by Descartes in various places.19 She proposes that the union in ques-
tion is not substantial but moral union, which operates in terms of the promotion of
the human good, and advances two different possible means of implementation. In
order to safeguard his notion of a mind-body union, Descartes could appeal not to
products of either sensory, mental or bodily processes in general, but to the associ-
ations between mental and bodily processes, which would be the modes of a human
being, a construct distinct from both mind and body. These associations, in turn,
would have to be dependent on the agent conception and tendency to promote the
human good. Alternatively, the soul could reconceive itself as united with the body
‘by will’. Although the union of mind and body would not give an intrinsic entity
(ens per se), for it would only be the joining of two distinct substances (mind and
body), reconsideration of that operation in accordance with human good evaluation
would supervene and again constitute a moral union.
However, with regard to the first conception, the associations that matter in the
evaluation of the human good are not necessarily the ones that are important for
mind-body union. Even if there were a direct, non-reasoning process that was insti-
tuted according to the tendency to promote the human good and through the will

18 Kenny 1999, 117–119. For the relation between reason and judgment, see Kenny
1998.
19 Shapiro 2003, 238 ff, and especially 242ff.
322 Zur Diskussion

to feel bravery resulted in the corresponding feeling, this would be a ‘mind-mind’ in-
teraction, and not a mind-body one. In the actual case, what defines passions refor-
mation is indirect processing which, although it is itself a sequence of direct pro-
cesses, is not equivalent to a sum of mind-body interactions. Specifically, the will to
change a certain feeling leads to reasoning, which then connects with the gland and
bodily movements, in order to bring back to the soul the intended feeling. As Willis-
ton notes with regard to desire conflict, there is one desire and a bodily movement
conflicting with another desire and its corresponding bodily movement.20 So, the
passion reformation problem seems to be indifferent to the matter of achieving a
mind-body union, and it forms a rather different issue.
In the second sense of Shapiro’s suggested union, that of the soul be joined ‘by will’
in a moral union with the body, it may be noted that Descartes uses this phrase e.g. in
the case of love, with respect also to external objects. The soul is impelled “to join
itself willingly to objects that appear agreeable to it” (Passions, art. 79, AT XI 387,
CSM I 356), and these do not include only bodily conditions, but also in a second in-
stance, external things and other people. If joining by will denoted a moral union,
agents would be morally united to other people, and constitute a distinct collective
moral entity, something that does not seem to surface in Descartes’ writings. Fur-
thermore, there is evidence that Descartes can think of agent promotion of the
human good without considering the mind-body union. He mentions in Passions,
art. 141:

It is obvious too that joy cannot fail to be good, nor sadness bad with respect to
the soul. For the discomfort which the soul receives from evil consists wholly in
the latter, and the enjoyment of the good belonging to the soul consists wholly in
the former. Thus, if we had no body, I venture to say we could not go too far in
abandoning ourselves to love and joy, or in avoiding hatred and sadness (Passions,
art. 141, AT XI 434, CSM I 378).

The possibility of a disembodied soul, which cares for its own good, although it is not
meant to denote an actual case, serves to show that Descartes conceives the matter of
passion reformation and the conception of good as distinct from the problem of
mind-body interaction.
Consequently, if the above considerations are correct, evaluation of the human
good does not give an answer to the problem of mind-body union. Descartes in the
Passions seems to acknowledge the need for passion reformation (unlike sensory
perception), but this is correlated with mediated (and not higher-order) reasoning
processes. His account of the origin of passions brings forward the proper function
of the body as a cause, but application of the human good as an explanatory prin-
ciple in the ordinary case counts as a factor among others, which operate through
rational effort. Descartes attempts to provide a principled way to reform unwanted
feelings and emotions, and his method seems to give reasoning a prominent place in
that attempt.

20 Williston 1999, 49.

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