Descartes

Descartes (1637)

 * Challenges many suppositions of classical rhetoric that no one else had ever challenged – no one had challenged epidoxa in the same way – rhetoric live in epidoxa so what do you do when someone (Descartes) says you can’t know anything.
 * In modernity, Descartes won – he has become epidoxa
 * **“bon sens” – good sense is not Vico’s common sense – it the ability to draw practical conclusions; **there are no ungrounded assumptions – they don’t exist – for Vico community can’t exist without them
 * JDS axiom – “French intellectuals are ALWAYS rebelling agains their own education.” From Descartes on – the New Critics, Derrida spent most of his career deconstructing the Enlightenment/Descartes. Foucault just makes shit up – his sources are old fashioned, out of date, and he just extrapolates from there –he is impervious to modern history. It’s “crudely Freudian.” Every generation has to kill the father. British/ Italians, Germans don’t have an incredible father hang up.
 * Descartes was one of the greatest mathematical minds in the world – gave us analytical geometry – geometry without diagrams –no visual. This is what Vico has against him – he did away with visual images – depriving people of symbols even in math – cleaning it up just like in linguistics.
 * **Descartes wants to make it all “logical” – a continual process of distinction (not similarity like Vico) **
 * Fro Descartes there is NO audience – we all have the same reason so all audience is the same.
 * Did not even take his own sense impressions as valid – memory meant nothing to him and wanted no part of “rhetorical memory”
 * No passion; reason alone is completely persuasive