French Cartesian Scholasticism: Remarks on Descartes and the First Cartesians

I address two questions prompted by the discussion in Roger Ariew's Descartes and the First Cartesians. The first is whether the sort of scholasticization of Cartesianism to which First Cartesians draws attention is merely a matter of packaging, or whether it indicates rather a substantive connection between Cartesianism and Aristotelian scholasticism. The second question is whether the French Cartesians Ariew emphasizes played a central role in the transition from the widespread condemnation of Cartesian doctrines in France in the decades following Descartes's death to the widespread acceptance of Cartesianism within the French universities by the beginning of the eighteenth century. In response to the first question, I focus on the deviation in later Cartesianism from Descartes's own rejection of scholastic syllogistic logic. In response to the second, I offer some reasons to question the significance of the influence of the figures that Ariew highlights, and I argue that Cartesians such as Pourchot and Malebranche had a relatively greater impact on the teaching of Cartesianism in French universities in the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries.