Descartes, l'expérience et la raison.

Is it legitimate to consider Descartes’ philosophy sub specie experientiæ? It is well known that Descartes’ philosophy was traditionally interpreted as a priori philosophy and a system structured on the order of reasons rather than on the data of experience. However, classical literature as well as contemporary voices underline the importance of this concept in his thought, if considered in its thematic richness and in its dialectic relationship with the notion of reason. Despite the traditional dinstinctions between empiricism and rationalism, and despite some statements made by Descartes himself which would have created an irreducible divorce between reason and experience, a reading of Cartesian texts which follows the exercise of reason more than the deductive order indicates the notion of experience as a fundamental one in his philosophy: in metaphysics, in scientific knowledge, in moral philosophy and in anthropology. In metaphysics, which is a performative experience of truth, a certain experience of the presence of the clear and simple idea, whose representation coincides with the thing itself; in scientific knowledge, which is an experience of certainty and an instrument of validation of hypothetical model; in moral philosophy, which is an experience of infinity of liberty; in anthropology, where the experience “très évidente” of the union of soul and body is foundamental. And even the metaphysical figures of hyperbolic doubt – deceptive God and evil genius – are not intellectual experiments about the origin and status of human reason? Are they not paradoxical but “inevitable” experiences of modern philosophy, which affirms and conquers the autonomy of reason by questioning its origin?