Pierre Bourdin against Rene Descartes: Statement of Incompatibility of Positions

The paper offers an analysis of the argument of priest P. Bourdin in his actual discussion with the philosopher R. Descartes, initiated by the response of this priest to the philosophical treatise “Meditations on the first philosophy...”. The paper also provides a historical and philosophical assessment of their positions. Particular attention is paid to the fact that Bourdin very persistently tried to clarify the conceptual basis on which Descartes rests his decision to consider the mind of a person incorporeal. In addition, Descartes considered the mind isolated from the body and independent of it so completely as to recognize it continuing to exist even after the death of the body. Since, according to Bourdin, Descartes’ efforts did not have a convincing positive result, the priest rejected this concept of the philosopher and the isolation of the mind from the body, and the immortality of the mind. This position of the church hierarch cannot but be recognized as materialistic. As a result, the paradox of the situation is established. On the question of the relationship between a person’s body and soul, the church hierarch essentially upholds a materialistic position, and one of the largest natural scientists of that time has a religiously idealistic idea of the immortality of the human soul.

Bourdin, Descartes, philosophy, metaphysical doubt, man, I, mind, body, incorporeality, death, immortality, dualism, materialistic monism