ABSTRACT

Rene Descartes is frequently described as the impetus for the knotty issue often called the mind-body problem. On the basis of his distinction between the soul or mind and body, contemporary philosophers and theologians continue to lay the blame for the denigration of the body, among other blameworthy concerns, at the feet of Descartes.1 Writing from a Christian context, Nancey Murphy describes such a position in the following manner, ‘the radical dualisms of Plato and Rene Descartes, which take the body to be unnecessary for, or even a hindrance to, full human life, are clearly out of bounds.’2 Marc Cortez, generally sympathetic to substance dualism, describes Descartes’ tradition on the mind-body as ‘widely criticised’ and unacceptable in our contemporary setting, in part, because of its ‘denigration’ of the body.3 Despite frequent rejection of Descartes’ ideas and Cartesianism generally, there have been some contemporaries working in what might be called the Cartesian tradition of philosophical anthropology. In the spirit of these recent, positive developments, I am undertaking a sympathetic treatment of Cartesianism in Christian anthropology – more specifically from a catholic reformed context in that I work broadly from a Protestant context – within its larger apostolic trajectory.4 I respond to some common concerns about Cartesianism as compatible with Christian thought and put forward the first positive theological assessment of Cartesianism in the contemporary literature.5 My objective is not to offer the reader an explicit critique of alternative anthropologies. However, I argue that Cartesianism has some advantages over them, and I note some challenges of these alternative anthropologies.