Fidelidade infiel: Espinosa comentador dos Princípios de Filosofia, de Descartes

Resumo

Abstract

When the Principia Philosophiae Renati Cartesii was published Spinoza had already written the Korte Verhandeling, the unfinished De Emendatione, and according to some of his letters, the first draft of the future Ethica. This means that the commentary on Descartes' Principia is the work of a philosopher already in possession of his own philosophy and that philosophy defines the way Spinoza interpreted and transformed Descartes' thought. Here we examine three aspects of such a transformation: the cause of error, the solution to the "Cartesian circle", and the passage from cogito sum to sum cogitans. In order to clarify the meaning of the Spinozian demonstrations of Cartesian concepts, we consider that their conditions must be found in two main points: 1) Spinoza's text is not a commentary on Descartes' Principia but an interpretation of the principles of Descartes' philosophy as a whole; and 2) it is the idea of order that changes from Descartes to Spinoza.