ABSTRACT
Chapter 1 concerns what Descartes has to say about value. Pursuing this topic (about which scholars have written very little so far) will pave the way for much of what will be argued for later in the book. The chapter contains extensive discussions of Descartes’s distinctions between considering the goodness “of each thing … in itself without reference to anything else” and considering “goodness … in relation to ourselves” (letter of 20 November 1647 to Queen Christina of Sweden; CSMK, 324); and between different senses and substantive conceptions of the highest good (Sections 1.2–1.6). The two final sections of the chapter are devoted to Descartes’s view on evil (Section 1.7), which he conceives of as a lack or absence of goodness, and to his account of how we acquire knowledge of good and evil (Section 1.8).
