Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-wq484 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T13:14:40.385Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Attribute

from ENTRIES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2016

By
Alice Sowaal
Edited by
Lawrence Nolan
Alice Sowaal
Affiliation:
San Francisco State University
Lawrence Nolan
Affiliation:
California State University, Long Beach
Get access

Summary

For Descartes, thinking is an attribute of mind, extension is an attribute of body, and God's attributes include absolute infinitude, necessary existence, immutability, eternality, omniscience, omnipotence, and benevolence. However, simply listing the attributes of Cartesian substances cannot do justice to Descartes’ theory, which is complex and requires one to grasp the complementary notions of substance and mode. The precise meaning of “attributes” is also in need of careful scrutiny. Descartes sometimes speaks of attributes as modes (and vice versa), while in other places he draws additional, finer distinctions between attributes as kinds of modes, namely as modes of thought (i.e., as ways of thinking about a substance). Overall, the payoff of drawing these delineations is rich, as Descartes’ account of attributes plays a central role in his rationalism, metaphysics, and epistemology; such distinctions are also useful in resolving purported problems with his philosophy.

Descartes distinguishes attributes from modes (both are kinds of affection) and substances (things) (AT VIIIA 22, CSM I 208). Substances are independent: God is the primary substance because he alone is absolutely independent; mind and body are secondary substances because they depend on God, but are independent of each other. All affections depend on God or on things that depend on God (AT VIIIA 22–24, CSM I 208–10).

Though Descartes sometimes collapses the distinction between attributes and modes (AT VIIIA 26, CSM I 211; AT VIIIA 30, CSM I 215; AT IV 349, CSMK 280), the passage in Principles where he assigns the terms “attribute” and “mode” specific meaning are particularly important. Here Descartes holds that whereas the word “mode” is used when we think of a substance as modified, “attribute” is used when we think of a substance as general, that is, as unmodified (unchanging). Given this, Descartes writes that God has attributes but no modes because it is unintelligible to regard God as modified (AT VIIIA 26, CSM I 211).

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon , pp. 38 - 44
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2015

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bracken, Harry. 1964. “Some Problems of Substance among the Cartesians,” American Philosophical Quarterly 1: 129–37.Google Scholar
Curley, Edwin. 1986. “Analysis in the Meditations: The Quest for Clear and Distinct Ideas,” in Essays on Descartes’ Meditations, ed. Rorty, A. O.. Berkeley: University of California Press, 153–76.Google Scholar
Curley, Edwin. 1978. Descartes against the Skeptics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gewirth, Alan. 1998. “Clearness and Distinctness in Descartes,” in Descartes, ed. Cottingham, J.. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 79–100.Google Scholar
Hoffman, Paul. 2002. “Descartes's Theory of Distinction,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 64: 57–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kenny, Anthony. 1968. Descartes: A Study of His Philosophy.New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Lennon, Thomas. 2005. “The Rationalist Conception of Substance,” in A Companion to Rationalism, ed. Nelson, A.. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 12–30.Google Scholar
Lennon, Thomas. 1993. The Battle of the Gods and Giants: The Legacy of Descartes and Gassendi. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murdoch, Dugald. 1993. “Exclusion and Abstraction in Descartes’ Metaphysics,” Philosophical Quarterly 43: 38–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, Alan. 2013. “Conceptual Distinctions and the Concept of Substance in Descartes,” Protosociology 30: 192–205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, Alan. 2008. “Cartesian Innateness,” in A Companion to Descartes, ed. Broughton, J. and Carriero, J.. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 319–33.Google Scholar
Nelson, Alan. 2005a. “Proust and the Rationalist Conception of the Self,” in A Companion to Rationalism, ed. Nelson, A.. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 399–407.Google Scholar
Nelson, Alan. 2005b. “The Rationalist Impulse,” in A Companion to Rationalism, ed. Nelson, A.. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 3–11.Google Scholar
Nolan, Lawrence. 2005. “The Ontological Argument as an Exercise in Cartesian Therapy,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 35: 521–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nolan, Lawrence. 1998. “Descartes’ Theory of Universals,” Philosophical Studies 89: 161–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nolan, Lawrence. 1997. “Reduction and Nominalism in Descartes's Theory of Attributes,” Topoi, 10: 129–40.Google Scholar
Rogers, Brian, and Nelson, Alan. Forthcoming. “Descartes’ Logic and the Paradox of Deduction,” in The Gods and Giants of Early Modern Philosophy, ed. Easton, P.. Leiden: Brill.
Shein, Noa. 2009. “The False Dichotomy between Objective and Subjective Interpretations of Spinoza's Theory of Attributes,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 17: 505–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Kurt. 2010. Matter Matters: Metaphysics and Methodology in the Early Modern Period.Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sowaal, Alice. 2011. “Descartes's Reply to Gassendi: How We Can Know All of God, All at Once, but Still Have More to Learn about Him,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 19: 419–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sowaal, Alice. 2005. “Idealism and Cartesian Motion,” in A Companion to Rationalism, ed. Nelson, A.. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 250–61.Google Scholar
Sowaal, Alice. 2004. “Cartesian Bodies,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 34: 217–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wells, Norman. 1966. “Descartes on Distinction,” in The Quest for the Absolute, ed. Adelmann, F. J.. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 104–34.Google Scholar
Wilson, Margaret. 1978. Descartes.New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Attribute
  • Edited by Lawrence Nolan, California State University, Long Beach
  • Book: The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon
  • Online publication: 05 January 2016
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511894695.016
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Attribute
  • Edited by Lawrence Nolan, California State University, Long Beach
  • Book: The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon
  • Online publication: 05 January 2016
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511894695.016
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Attribute
  • Edited by Lawrence Nolan, California State University, Long Beach
  • Book: The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon
  • Online publication: 05 January 2016
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511894695.016
Available formats
×