The Nature of Cartesian Logic

Abstract

Abstract I argue that Descartes and the Cartesians are likely in agreement that logic is an ars cogitandi (that is, an art of thinking well) whose aim is to perfect the ingenium (or wit) by the exercise of its operations: ideating, judging, discoursing, and ordering. We can see that these elements are the underpinning of both the Regulae and the Discourse on Method, and thus, like Adrien Baillet and others in the seventeenth century, we can understand these two works as embodying Descartes’ “logic,” despite Descartes’ notorious anti-logic Renaissance rhetoric in both writings.