René Descartes: Dancing and Mustering Substances
Abstract
This article addresses two of the fundamental issues present in the philosophy of René Descartes (1596--1650): (i) his division into thinking and spatially extended substances, together with both substantive and methodological aspects of his understanding of their character as a unity, and (ii) his conception of the human body as a machine. I shall illustrate these topics here using the example of Descartes' own military training in the army of the Prince Maurice of Nassau and, as a contrast to this, also his work in another area of highly trained human activity - namely, human dance. In speaking about dance I will not differentiate between its diverse types (individual, dancing with a partner, group dances, ritual, folk, Latin American, typical or non-typical style, mixed, etc.). I am only interested in dance as a form of continuous, rule-governed spatial movement by human subjects. I also have pretty much the same thing in mind when speaking about military training, that is, a form of continuous, rule-governed spatial movement on the part of its protagonists.
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