Abstract

Mind/body distinction, mental vs. bodily habits, discontinuous time: these major postulates of Descartes' philosophy are mutually reinforcing, in ways the dissertation establishes. Yet Descartes also developed a sense of mind-body unity, of the fusion of mental and bodily habits, and of a continuous, cumulative and creative time. These 'minor' themes of Descartes' philosophy were taken up and progressively enriched by Maine de Biran, Henri Bergson, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Read as a philosophical lineage, these later thinkers conceived of a 'body-subject' that, by virtue of the personal and social habits it acquires and modifies, is able to responsibly engage in traditions it continues, renews, and overturns