Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with the support of the philosophy department at King's College London and the LM, online at historyof philosophy.net.

Today's episode, less cheer, more knowledge, Dickhart's Ethics.

We tend to assume that the great philosophers had something original and important to say

on all of the central areas of the subject. From Plato and and important to say on all of the

central areas of the subject. From Plato and Aristotle, who wrote on metaphysics,

the soul, knowledge, ethics, and political philosophy, down to Kant, who followed up the epistemological

inquiry of his critique of pure reason, with two further critiques on morality and aesthetics,

many of the most famous thinkers have been

systematic generalists. But this isn't always the case. Confucius or Kongsi has some claim

to be the most influential philosopher of Chinese history, yet the analects mostly stick to ethical

questions. It was left to the Neo-Confusions to extend the project to

cosmology and metaphysics. My personal favorite philosopher, Avicenna, was the reverse.

Spectacularly innovative in logic, psychology, and metaphysics. He wrote little about ethics,

and what he did write was, by his standards, rather derivative. Descartes is often seen in similar terms.

By far the most well-known and widely discussed parts of his work are those we've discussed

so far, his physics, his skeptical method, his cogito argument, and his arguments for

God's existence, and of course his dualism.

By comparison, he said very little about ethical issues.

This is something he admitted himself. In a letter to Pierre Channut,

Descartes explains that he has deliberately steered clear of this topic,

since it would have attracted even more controversy than his daring views on physics.

Shanut served as a go-between for Descartes, helping to arrange an invitation for him to the

...