From the H. More and R. Descartes Correspondence (1648–1649). More, Henry, The First Letter from H. More to R. Descartes. Scholia to the First Letter, Translated from Latin, Notes and Comments by O.Yu. Bakhvalova & A.V. Tsyb

Abstract

The publication presents the first letter of the Cambridge School leader Henry More (1614–1687) to Rene Descartes (1596–1650), opening their short-term correspondence, which took place at the end of 1648–1649 and was interrupted due to the unexpected death of the French thinker in Sweden. The corres­pondence discusses the most important problems of physics and philosophy of the 17th century: the extension of substance, the main and secondary proper­ties of substances, the understanding of space, emptiness and atoms, the limits of the divisibility of matter, the infinity of God and the world, and, finally, the recognition of the animateness of animals and the immortality of the soul. In this discussion, H. More starts from the Neoplatonic theory of the origin and the de­velopment of the world, which is based on the principle of emanation. Starting from this theophysical idea, More tries to adapt Descartes’ doctrine of two sub­stances. The translation was made from the Latin original of the classical edi­tions of C. Clerselier [Clerselier 1657] and C. Adam and P. Tannery [AT V]. H. More’s letter is translated into Russian and published for the first time. All four letters of the English participant in the correspondence are planned for pub­lication.