Here is a presentation on Descartes's Rationalism, Dualism and how Cartesian Dualism can be applied in Emily Dickinson's The Brain—is wider than the Sky

1. Philosophy for Literature (EN 1431)
Module 2
Enlightenment and After
Rene Descartes - Rationalism- Mind/ Body Dualism-
Emily Dickinson- The Brain is Wider than the Sky

2. Age of Enlightenment
● The Enlightenment was a period from the late 17th century into the 18th century
where new ideas about government, personal freedom and religious beliefs began
to develop in Europe.
● The Age of Enlightenment was influenced by the growth in scientific knowledge that
began in the mid-17th century.
● People looked for reasons why things happened the way they did. Modern chemistry
and biology grew out of this questioning and the existing knowledge about
astronomy and physics was greatly improved.
● Using the power of the press, Enlightenment thinkers like John Locke, Isaac Newton,
and Voltaire questioned accepted knowledge and spread new ideas about openness,
investigation, and religious tolerance throughout Europe and the Americas.

3. Age of Enlightenment: Themes
● Skepticism - Skepticism is doubt about an established fact or belief. Enlightenment
thinkers questioned religious dogmas and commonly held beliefs about the nature
of political power. Political power in Europe had traditionally been thought to derive
from the divine right of kings. In other words, rulers ruled because God willed it to be
that way.
● Reason - Valuing reason over faith was another hallmark of the Enlightenment.
Attacking superstitious beliefs and basing philosophical opinions on rational ideals
was the basis of the writings of the great Enlightenment thinkers.
● Individualism - Developing one's own talents to the highest degree and living life for
one's own sake rather than for the sake of the state or the church was another
important ideal valued by Enlightenment thinkers.

4. Themes
● Liberty - Political, economic, and social freedom were major concepts
explored by Enlightenment writers. This was important because 17th century
Europe was ruled by powerful monarchs who set limits on the individual
liberties of the peoples that they ruled.
● Secularism - Many, but not all, Enlightenment thinkers were extremely critical
of religion. Some rejected Christianity altogether and adopted a religious
belief system known as Deism.
● Deism maintains that God and nature are one in the same and that the
best way to know God is to study nature in a rational and empirical way.

5. Rene Descartes (1596-1650)
● René Descartes (1596-1650) was a French mathematician, natural scientist,
and philosopher, best known by the phrase 'Cogito ergo sum' ('I think
therefore I am’)
● He published works on optics, coordinate geometry, physiology, and
cosmology.
● He is mostly remembered as the "father of modern philosophy”
● He lived in a time preceding the Age of Enlightenment, which was a
period of revolutionary ideas in government, individual freedom, and
religious beliefs.
● While not a direct participant in the Enlightenment, Descartes' legacy
would be his influence on those who contributed to the scientific, political,
and social changes throughout this age, an age of reason

6. Major Works
● The Discourse on the Method (in French, 1637)
● The Meditations on First Philosophy (in Latin, 1641, 2nd ed. 1642);
● The Principles of Philosophy, (in Latin, 1644);
● The Passions of the Soul, (in French, 1649).
● Letters (in Latin and French, 1657–67);
● World, or Treatise on Light, (in French, 1664)
● Treatise on Man (in French, 1664),
● The Rules for the Direction of the Mind (in Latin, 1701

7. Rationalism
● Before Descartes' assertion on the concept of doubt and the
transition into rationalism, Aristotelean philosophy and
scholasticism dominated Western thought.
● Descartes initiated a break from this traditional ideology to one
based on an individual's own power of reason.
● In this way of thinking, the old concept of empiricism where
knowledge was acquired by the senses or experience was shown to
be unreliable.
● Science placed a strong emphasis on observation, experimentation,
and reason.
● Descartes used these to question everything that he had been taught
to believe and motivate his search for truth.

8. Rationalism
● Simply, Rationalism is the philosophical doctrine that holds the view that
knowledge is derived from reason rather than experience. Reason is the
ultimate source of knowledge.
● According to Descartes.
○ Knowledge is derived from intuition and deduction rather than sensory
perceptions.
○ Knowledge can be attained a priori ( prior to experience)
○ The ideas or concepts that constitutes mind’s ability to think are innate.
○ To him all humans are born with knowledge due to the higher power of
God.
○ Thus knowledge about a particular thing is innate. When you read about
something, it the knowledge with in you that unfolds.
● Descartes also introduced methodical scepticism: a systematic process of
being skeptical about (or doubting) the truth of one's beliefs. Through this
process one can understand the ultimate truth,

9. Cogito, Ergo Sum: I think, therefore I am
● To Descartes, our senses aren’t always trustworthy and he understood
"certainty" as the primary characteristic of valid knowledge.
● He finds reasons to think it is possible that his sense-perception is misleading
(he could be dreaming) and that his beliefs in the most basic truths of
mathematics are wrong (he could be deceived by an evil genius or demon).
● Still, even if he doubts such obvious things, he cannot doubt that he exists
● Because the process of thinking itself makes his existence real. One cannot
doubt his own existence if he can think about it. Thus, Cogito, Ergo Sum.
● The cogito, as the statement is occurs in his, Discourse on Method, Part 4

10. Cartesian Dualism/ Mind- Body Dualism
● Dualism, simply put, is the belief that something is composed of
two fundamentally different components.
● Cartesian Dualism deals specifically with the dual existence of man.
● In Meditations on First Philosophy, first published in 1641, Descartes
attempts to demonstrate his idea that an individual is composed of
two separate entities: the mind and body.
○ Matter: The physical stuff that walks, talks, and plays the
accordion.(The body)
○ Mind: The nonphysical substance (sometimes equated with the
soul) that thinks, doubts, and remembers
● The mind-body problem concerns the relationship between these
two sets of properties.

11. Cartesian Dualism/ Mind- Body Dualism
● Descartes believed that the essential property of ‘matter’ is that it is
spatially extendable and the essential property of ‘mind’ is that it can
think.
● The physical stuff (like chairs, bodies, rocks) that are extended in the
space are called ‘res extensa’, which is what our bodies are made of.
● The mental stuff (like ideas, thoughts) which takes up no physical space
are called ‘res cognita’ which is what our minds are made of.
● For Descartes the existence of body can be doubted, but the existence of
mind cannot be doubted (cogito ergo sum)
● So they must have separate properties and they are different things.
● There fore it is possible for one to exist without the other.

12. Cartesian Dualism/ Mind- Body Dualism
● Descartes believed in the existence of God.
● To him God is the only substance that is absolute, i.e. a thing that does not
depend on anything else for its existence.
● Everything else including the mind and the body depends on God for its
existence even though both mind and body are independent of each
other (relative substances).
● If mind and body are independent of each other, how does it work
together?
MIND
GOD
BODY
Absolute
substance
Relative
Substance
Relative
Substance

13. Cartesian Dualism/ Mind- Body Dualism
● For solving this problem, he gives the theory of Interactionism.
● which says that mind and body react to each other through ‘Pineal
Gland’ that is located in the brain and it is the seat of the soul.
● The pineal gland is a small endocrine gland that is located in the
center of the brain.
● If a person wants to move/ do something, signals from the mind
will reach the pineal gland and the body acts up on these signals.
● Most of Descartes’ theories about mind/body dualism was later
challenged by other schools of philosophy.

14. The Brain—is Wider Than The Sky
The Brain — is wider than the Sky —
For — put them side by side —
The one the other will contain
With ease — and You — beside —
The Brain is deeper than the sea —
For — hold them — Blue to Blue —
The one the other will absorb —
As Sponges — Buckets — do —
The Brain is just the weight of God —
For — Heft them — Pound for Pound —
And they will differ — if they do —
As Syllable from Sound —
Emily Dickinson

15. The Brain—is wider than the Sky
● “The Brain—is wider than the Sky—” was written by the 19th-century
American poet Emily Dickinson.
● In the poem, the speaker praises the human mind’s capacity to imagine,
perceive, and create, ultimately suggesting that the mind is boundless in
its potential—and that this boundlessness links humanity to God.
● In Emily Dickinson’s vocabulary the word brain, mind, self, and soul are
often used interchangeably.
● Throughout the three stanzas of the poem, Dickinson creates three
comparisons.
● She says that the brain is wider than the sky, deeper than the sea, and
almost the same as the weight of God.
● By speaking about the brain in this way, she is trying to convey the organ’s
great ability. It is unlimited, unlike the sky and sea, and has comparable
power to God’s.

16. Stanza 1
The first stanza contrasts the brain/mind with the sky claiming that the
brain is wider because it can think about the sky and at the same time
can think about the person who is thinking about the sky, and it can
perform this operation easily. She describes how the brain has an
infinite capacity to explore the world. There are no limits to the
brain/mind. The poet says that the width of the sky is not known; it is
unlimited, thus the "mind" is even beyond unlimited—it being "wider.“
It is the mind, after all that, entertains the thought that is labeled "sky."
And while the mind is thinking "sky," it also has the marvelous ability to
retain thoughts of "you," the reader, listener, audience—whoever might
be hearing this lyric.

17. Stanza 2
The second stanza opens with yet another comparison. It contrasts the
brain with the sea asserting that the brain can take in the sea as a
sponge sucks up a bucket of water, once again referencing the vast
thinking ability of the brain/mind. Here, Dickinson mirrors the first
stanza exactly by using the next line to set the point of her
comparison. She says, The human mind is deeper than the ocean. If
you were to hold them up next to each other—the blue of the mind
next to the blue of the ocean—the mind would be able to soak up the
entire ocean, just like sponges can soak up whole buckets of water. By
using simile, the poet tries to get across the point that the depths of
mind is unfathomable.

18. Stanza 3
In the third stanza the poet says, The human mind weighs almost as
same as God. If you were to lift them both up, and compare the weight
of each, any minor difference between the two will only be like the
difference between a single part of speech and sound itself. The last
two lines suggest that maybe there isn’t so much of a difference after
all. If they differ at all it is only as syllables and sounds differ. This last
line is the most complicated in the poem. It compares the human
brain to syllables and God’s energy, his power, to sound. This suggests,
that the brain has a structure to it, as syllables do, although it is not
limited. God on the other hand is pure sound without structure. Sound
has the capacity to become anything. The speaker does not claim that
the brain/mind and God are the exact same; but the difference is
rather like a syllable being part of sound, but cannot encompass all
that sound.

19. Mind/body in Brain is Wider than the Sky
In her poem, Dickinson removes brain as an organ from its context.
She depicts the brain as having an existence apart from the body; it
stands on its own as a separate object. Descartes, while discussing
mind/body dualism argues that, body has a materialistic existence.
Similarly mind also exists own its own. Descartes compared the
material body to a machine that performed its functions according to
the laws of nature. In contrast, the mind was not governed by the laws
of nature. In Emily Dickinson’s poem we can observe a similar
attitude. Dickinson compares the brain with the sky, the sea and god.
She says that the brain is superior to the sky and the sea, because it is
the brain that contains the idea of the sky and the sea.

20. Mind/body in Brain is Wider than the Sky
These stanzas suggest that if the brain is capable of imagining what is
sea and what is sky, the brain contains both the sea and the sky. The
sea and sky refers to the outer world. The brain, being the container of
thoughts about this outside world, represents the abstract and inner
world. The poem adheres to the Cartesian philosophy of dualism. Like
Descartes, Dickinson also believes in the absolute existence of God.
This can be understood from her comparison of God to sound. Sound,
unlike syllable, is limitless and encompass everything. To conclude,
the poem Brain is Wider than the Sky can easily be read as Dickinson’s
own interpretation of Descartes’ mind/body dualism.

21. Useful Links
● https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCKP0kjPLh4&t=581s
(Rationalism and Min/body Dualism in Malayalam)
● https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5p8bXkGBu8&t=92s
(Rationalism)
● https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HHzt-mCCUE (Dualism of
Mind and Body)

22. Thank You
Arya R Krishnan
Department of English
KSMDB College
Sasthamcotta