Author: René Descartes
Book title: Les Passions de l’âme (Passions of the Soul)
No. of braille volumes: 3
No. of pages in braille issue: 302
Publisher of the book in black print: Dereta [Deh-rettah]
Place and year of publishing: Belgrade, 2023
No. of pages in black print: 118
About the book:
René Descartes became recognizable in the world’s philosophical and spiritual heritage by the famous phrase Cogito, ergo sum – I think, therefore I am. According to Descartes, everything that is accepted as true must be tested by reason. Passions of the Soul is Descartes’ last philosophical treatise, completed in 1649 and dedicated to Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia. The passions that Descartes writes about in modern times evolve into emotions. In this eternal philosophical question, about which Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Hobbes wrote… Descartes avoids moralising and psychological perspectives, Aristotle’s theses, but also Stoic Christian interpretation, writing this treatise as a response to an acute philosophical concern. According to Descartes, passions are fundamentally good, but their abuse or their excess should be avoided. This research of Descartes, according to some later philosophers and historians, clearly shows a scientific view of the perceptions of the cognitive mind in Western society.