The Thoughtful Mud. Observations on the conflict between body and reason in Discards

Abstract

This article discuss some aspects inherited from the Orphic perspective in the Cartesian conception regarding the union of the soul and the body, in particular how in a cognitive adventure to reach certainty and truth, the body and what it implies would not only not contribute to such an undertaking, but would be like an obstacle, causing a tension between the body and reason. But we also propose that it is in Descartes himself that we find a way out of this tension under the modality of what he calls "moral certainty", a different kind of certainty for non-cognitive questions, useful rather for practical matters in which reason itself and rational doubts cannot be followed, and in which we are moved by the habit of believing. Likewise, the dissolution of this conflict in everyday matters would suggest an encounter between our habitual beliefs and our emotions under the forms of reasonable behavior.