7 Lessons From Descartes

On Mental Health, Emotion And Desire

For years, humans have been striving to detach emotions from action. We presuppose this will ordinate us toward a good life. Descartes was different. He believed that action and emotion, used appropriately together, could provide us with the quality of life we wanted. He emphasised ‘generosity’, in his book The Passions of the Soul (1649), as being the emotion which will lead us to greater happiness.

1. The mind and the body are connected:

Your thoughts are not detached from your physiological issues, nor can your bodily function be detached from your emotions. “Pure thoughts” cannot occur as “distinct from the body”. The mind-body union is a “confused and obscure” phenomenon. 

2. The highest mode of morality comes from controlling your desires:

The “chief utility of morality” comes from controlling the strings attached to your desires. We all have “vain desires” for things that do not require our attention. If we control these, we become better people. 

3. The major obstacles to human satisfaction are bad emotions:

Emotions such as regret, remorse, repentance and resentment all pose a threat to our satisfaction. We should limit our proclivity to feel these emotions, mainly by controlling our desires. We should use the idea of divine providence - that there is an omnipotent God who ultimately has a final say on our fate - to not only limit our desires but also to accept that bad things will inevitably happen to us. 

4. Generosity is key to happiness:

“Nothing truly belongs” to us, except our “freedom to dispose” our “volitions”. We ought to be “praised or blamed for no other reason than using this freedom well or badly”. Therefore, generosity is not only key to happiness, but also to sound moral development. This has been coined as Descartes way of reverting back to old, traditional virtue.

5. Our reason matters:

If we make a mistake in our reasons for coming to a moral judgement, we ought not be criticised for this if we the action which resulted was carried out in good faith -  “It is also not necessary that our reason should be free from error; it is sufficient if our conscience testifies that we have never lacked resolution and virtue to carry out whatever we have judged the best course. So virtue by itself is sufficient to make us content in this life.”

6. We use emotion to make moral judgment - and that’s ok:

Moral judgment does not need to be a process detached from our emotions. Unlike the Stoics, Descartes encourages us to integrate our emotions to make our moral character more complete. 

7. We should resign to our emotions, not dominate them:

Again, contrary to the Stoics, Descartes thought negative emotion was inevitable - impossible to control. We cannot dominate our emotions, but we can control our desires. Only in this way can we be “lords and masters of nature.” By controlling our desires, we control emotion. “So instead of finding ways to preserve life, I have found another, much easier and surer way, which is not to fear death.”