James Street Fulton, “The Cartesianism of Phenomenology,” The Philosophical Review, Vol. XLIX (1940), pp. 285–308

Abstract

In this excellent paper written with much historical comprehension and philosophical penetration, Dr. Fulton discusses Husserl’s claim that phenomenology may be characterized as a Neo-Cartesianism, although nearly all of the doctrinal content of Cartesianism is rejected, and this because of a radical development given to certain Cartesian themes. Is this “doctrinal content” truly accessory, so that, when it is dismissed, the real and essential principles of Cartesian philosophy become all the more manifest and may be set forth even more explicitly than they are in the form in which Descartes brought them out himself? Or is the “doctrinal content” so closely connected with the general orientation of Descartes’ thought that, when those “Cartesian themes” which Husserl retains and endeavors to develop are considered in the light of Descartes’ supreme philosophical aspirations, they cannot be separated from that “doctrinal content”?