Descartes dualism as a principle of his Natural Philosophy

Abstract

The authors will seek to show that the Western imaginary on the Cartesian philosophy as a "dualism" that has not been overcome and that is responsible for the rupture, between cultured mankind and nature is at odds with Descartes's true concerns. At the dawn of modern Philosophy, with Descartes, a still metaphysical dualism between "two modes of the same substance" is transformed into a gnoseological dua-lism between, on the one hand, a subject of the scientific knowledge (the epistemic subject), and, on the other hand, systems to be explained: The human body and the nature, i.e., systems of biochemical and physical concepts. Therefore, Descartes's philosophy carries within itself the philosophical content of all inquiries that preceeded it, and it becomes the core from which the several paths and tendencies of the criticism of knowledge and of the Philosophy of Science spring.