Soul /machine

Abstract

Th e mechanicalism of New Time is explained in the article not as one of the new European philosophical approaches but as an example of philosophical thinking in itself — initial thinking. Th e author considers Descartes’ cogito as the origin of new European philosophy and renewed version of Plato’s art of reversion. Th e conceptual structure of New Time mechanicalism is established by Cartesian 125 distinction of the body and soul. It is free from stable hierarchy of essences or from formal order of defi nition (Porphyry’s tree). Historically metaphysical frames of New Time mechanicalism, according to the author, are introduced by Descartes and Kant. Th ese frames include the process of transformation of cogito from the phenomenological reduction procedure that denies the question of images’ analogy to the real things to transcendental unity of apperception that is the unity of function, not a substance. Th is process is a transition from the metaphysics of substance to the metaphysics of representation where both forms of metaphysics preserve the fundamental aporia of the beginning.

Keywords:

Mechanicalism, Descartes, thinking, extension, body, soul, natural light, Kant, representation