The Matter of Mind: Reason and Experience in the Age of Descartes (review)

Immediately setting the tone, the author begins with a statement that is characteristically bold, sweeping, and, as it later turns out, somewhat overblown: 'The following book sets out to topple a tenacious idol to which most accounts of the early modern West pay homage' (p. 3). While the first chapter of The Matter of Mind provides a detailed analysis of Descartes's Méditations sur la philosophie première (first published in Latin in 1641), the other five chapters are devoted to Boileau, Pascal, Molière, Corneille, and the painter Nicolas Poussin. In the process, Christopher Braider's stated objective of decentring Descartes's dualist separation of mind and body as the underpinning concept of modern rationality evolves into broader commentaries on seventeenth-century literature and painting. Braider does often return to his main theme, which depicts Cartesianism, much like classicism itself, as a locus of conflict and contestation, rather than as the triumphant emergence of what Michel Foucault would later call an epistémè: 'the Cartesian ideal of disembodied rationality that is supposed to have dominated the major representatives of Classical French culture was never as uniformly victorious as period proponents or latter-day antagonists have a common stake in asserting' (p. 153). Instead of Descartes's systematic formulation of abstract reason, Braider posits Montaigne's experience-based scepticism as having permeated early modern thought. In this respect, the author of Discours de la méthode (1637) seems less than central to what Braider nevertheless calls in his subtitle the 'Age of Descartes'. Similarly, Braider insists, the Cartesian cogito was not a dominant or foundational model during the seventeenth century: 'For all its self-conscious intellectualism, the fundamental matter of French classical culture was the body rather than the mind' (p. 33). Throughout his book, even as as he extends his investigations beyond the issue of Descartes's putative centrality to the intellectual life of the early modern period, Braider displays an impressive level of erudition. Less felicitously, he also indulges in peremptory pronouncements that grow wearisome and could benefit from some degree of nuance. Thus Corneille's Le Cid (1637) is proclaimed to be 'conspicuously neo-feudal and so signally anti-monarchic' (p. 17). The play certainly exalts a flamboyant hero from an idealized feudal past and expresses reservations as to the development of royal absolutism, but is it anti-monarchic? In other instances, the author's assertions have the advantage of being both vivid and engaging: 'Rather like sex à califourchon, the enjambment enacts the figure's hermaphroditic transgressiveness, itself in turn the figure of its subversion of rational sense' (p. 210). As his self-reflexive note of caution indicates, Braider appears to be well aware of the potentially irritating rhetorical consequences of his parti pris: 'I hope the excesses I commit will be more faithful, or at least less egregious, than those I try to avoid' (p. 39). Whether he succeeded in toppling the idol of Cartesian dualism will be for each reader to judge. All of them will most likely be impressed with the intellectual range and critical acumen displayed by Braider throughout this highly stimulating study.