Gassendi’s objections to Descartes’s meditations on first philosophy in their philosophical context

Abstract

The quarrel between Pierre Gassendi and René Descartes has been treated generally from the Cartesian perspective, but our work focuses on Gassendi’s philosophy instead. In this sense, we want to find a more comprehensive way to integrate the internal logic that articulated Gassendi’s objections. We will try to show the contemporary reception and the logic of his philosophical assumptions or the strategy that operates under these objections. Besides, we will explain the contemporary reception of this polemic and the main critical issues adopted by Gassendi about “method” and “substance”. To accomplish these tasks, we will study Gassendi's objections to the Meditations on first philosophy, as well as the Disquisitio metaphysica seu dubitationes et instantiae adversus Renati Cartesii metaphysicam et responsa, a work published by Gassendi in 1644.