ABSTRACT
Descartes insists that we are aware of ourselves as embodied because our passions present us thus to ourselves. We have passions for our good and on them depend the goods of this life. Nonetheless it is crucial to our happiness that we be masters of our passions and it is the virtue which Descartes starts out terming magnanimitas but ends by calling generosité which is the key to such mastery. Generosité involves a mixture of passions but is itself not a passion but a condition of our wills directed at the pursuit of our chief good which is willing well and the contentment that comes from being aware that we are doing so. There is, however, an ambiguity in the notion of willing well. Since out wills are untrammelled, understood one way willing well that is, willing to do good is entirely up to us. However, we are wont to mistake the good, and so, understood another way, whether we will well is not entirely in our power. Descartes’ conception of generosité navigates between these and provides his revaluation of Machiavelli’s concept of virtue. For Descartes generosité lies at the centre of our own lives enabling the mastery not only of our passions but of our fear of death and, because the generous person finds each person’s freedom of will estimable and assumes in others the determination to will well she recognizes in herself it provides too a crucial dimension of our lives with others.
