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The Dreamer's Path: Descartes and the Sixteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Michael H. Keefer
Michael H. Keefer*
Affiliation:
University of Guelph
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Extract

[Descartes] ne croioit pas qu'on dût s'étonner si fort de voir que les Poëtes, même ceux qui ne font que niaiser, fussent pleins de sentences plus graves, plus sensées, & mieux exprimées que celles qui se trouvent dans les écrits des Philosophes. Il attribuoit cette merveille à la divinité de l'Enthousiasme, & à la force de l'lmagination.

— Adrien Baillet, Vie de Monsieur Des-Cartes (1691), paraphrasing Descartes's Olympica manuscript of 1619-20

Methode ist Umweg.

— Walter Benjamin, “Epistemo-Critical Prologue,” The Origin of German Tragic Drama

Jacques Derrida begins a recent reflection upon Descartes's Discours de la méthode by remarking upon the metaphor of the path, way, or road contained within the etymology of the word “method”: “methodos, metahodos, c'est-à-dire ‘suivant la route,’ suivant le chemin, en suivant le chemin, en chemin.”

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Studies
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Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 49 , Issue 1 , Spring 1996 , pp. 30 - 76
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1996

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