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Full Idea
Descartes sees passions not as opinions, but as functional devices that the Creator has designed for us to help preserve the body-soul substantial union.
Gist of Idea
For Descartes passions are God-given preservers of the mind-body union
Source
report of René Descartes (The Passions of the Soul [1649]) by Charles Taylor - Sources of the Self §8
Book Ref
Taylor,Charles: 'Sources of the Self' [CUP 1992], p.150
A Reaction
I wonder what Descartes would have made of the theory of evolution?