DESCARTES, René.

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Les Passions de l'ame. First edition, Paris issue, of Descartes's last major philosophical treatise, "his fullest account of the interaction between soul and body, and his most significant contribution to moral philosophy" (Moriarty, p. xviii).The Passions of the Soul, Descartes's last lifetime publication, grew out of his correspondence with Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia during the 1640s. Drawing heavily on their discussion of mind-body duality and the then-unpublished Traité de l'homme, it makes the "essential distinction between the soul and the divinely-endowed seat of consciousness, will and rational thought, and the body as a machine or automaton subject to the laws of physics, and only indirectly controlled by the soul through the nerves" (Norman). Descartes locates the soul in the pineal gland, and for the first time uses the word "reflex" in connection with the action of the nervous system. "The first part of the text explains the nature of passion in general, the second describes the principal passions, and the third the further passions that derive from these; but each part ends with some definite recommendations concerning the attitudes or behaviour we should adopt in the light of the foregoing explanations" (Moriarty, p. xviii). It remains the "most extensive account of [Descartes's] behavioural physiology to be published in his lifetime... Portions of this work constitute what we have of Descartes' moral theory" (Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy). This is on

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