A mean book. Descartes or the dark fate of libertinisme érudit

Abstract

In this article we search the sense of some letters that Descartes exchanges with Mersenne about a “mean book” in which some emblematic theses of the so called libertinisme érudit are exposed. The correspondance of the 30’s, the period in which the philosopher is constructing his system of metaphysics, shows clearly his antagonic position against the theoretical world of libertinism, and, therefore, the philosophical importance of this intellectual movement at the very moment that the “new philosophy” is being constructed. The relevance that the metaphysics of Descartes gains in historiography of philosophy, might be the reason why that libertinisme érudit has fallen into oblivion until at least the second half of XXth century.