Abstract

Descartes is identified as a defender of the pure idea, especially in contrast to Hobbes. The objective of my contribution is to discuss this historiographical cliché by combining an internalist approach to the Cartesian corpus (the _Treatise on Man_, the _Optics_, and the _Objections_ and _Replies_) and a reception study of Cartesianism by La Forge. Three results emerge: as (1) the debate between Descartes and Hobbes employs two distinct conceptions of the material idea; and (2) Cartesianism is obliged to take the arguments of materialists seriously in order to preserve the specificity of the material, Cartesian definition of the idea; and (3) Cartesianism should therefore be reintroduced in the history of modern-day materialism and anthropology as an essential component and no longer simply a ghostly antagonist.