ABSTRACT
The figure of Rene Descartes occupies a pivotal historical and epistemological position in the history and self-understanding of the West. His life and meditations – far from being the musings of an isolated mind – are a complex reflection and attempt at a resolution of powerful forces at work during his lifetime at the threshold of secularism and modernity. To engage with the historical emergence of the Cartesian world view is to engage, too, with the emergence of the state as an 'object of knowledge' and mediator of new forms of power and knowledge. From Heidegger's perspective, Cartesian philosophy is, in fact, a form of onto-theology, which posits the ground of reality in reason. For Heidegger, science – following the inaugural model of modern science laid down by Descartes – manifests 'the orientation of the onto-theological philosophy which reduces the world to manipulable objects.
