ABSTRACT
Historians of science and intellectual historians perceive Descartes as having laid the groundwork for eighteenth-century medical materialism, which saw mental activity, moral character, and personality as functions of the human body and its interactions with the physical environment.1 To historians of philosophy, by contrast, Descartes is the founder of the idealistic and skeptical tradition in modern philosophy. Perhaps, the stature of canonical philosophers is reflected in the degree to which they can be misinterpreted. But which is the misinterpretation?
