Antonio Damasio's error

Antonio Damasio writes that Descartes's error (this is the title of his book) is that first we are, (we have a body, we are biological beings) and only then we think. According to Damasio, Descartes error was also that he thought he could radically separate mind from body.

But Descartes was very cautious, more than Damasio. Descartes--as we can see thanks to the reading line by line by Marcial Gueroult--believed that

"La connaissance de mon existence ne pouvant être que strictement intellectuelle, il en résulte que ma nature ne peut être conçue que comme pure intelligence et, par conséquence, comme pur esprit." (Marcial Gueroult, "Descartes selon l'ordre des raisons", t 1, p. 65).

Damasio's error : we cannot point to an Error in Descartes without speaking to him.

Because Descartes posed by his own words --as Lacan precisely says--"cogito sum". Descartes perhaps forgot he first of all-- said. Descartes had to say this.

So, in the same line, only speaking with Descartes it would be possible to "knot" Descartes's error.

Daniel Cohen, economist, and Aldo schiavone, Roman Law professor

Daniel Cohen has written some remarquable books. The last one (2009) is "La prosperite du vice" (Albin Michel, Paris). It is a sober description, a sort of history of economy, beginning with the invention of agriculture, till today, when we are in the global era, the era of "virtual capitalism", when the capital is in research and developpement, publicity, fashion, and finances. Rich countries have their hand firmly grasping immaterial production.

Among his references: Aldo Schiavone's "The end of the past" (1996), Harvard translation (2000), a history of the fall of the Roman Empire. for Schiavone--cf http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldo_Schiavone- the Roman Empire fell because it gradually transformed its economy, from a purely agriculture-based one, where aristocracy has its roots, its legitimacy and its legend, to a slave-labor economy, where the bulk of wealth is produced by slaves, ruining the small landowners, forcing them to enroll in the army, the conquering machine which produced more prisoners, more slaves, till this cycle is broken when the war stops to be a conquering war and begins to be oinly defensive.

The most striking about the excelent Schiavone is that he fails to grasp, even remotely, the relationship between philosophy and slavery, so precisely pointed by Lacan: philosophy is the appropiation, in a certain moment of history, by the master of the craft and artisanal know how of the slave.