Distinzione reale e unione sostanziale. Lo statuto del soggetto in Cartesio

The essay aims to examine the status of the subject in Descartes from the point of view of the problem of the coexistence of the doctrines of union and the distinction of body and soul. After a brief reconstruction of the interpretative tendencies that prevailed in Cartesian literature, the essay analyses the positions of Descartes after the release of the Meditationes de prima Philosophia, both in the Responses to the Objections of Gassendi and Arnauld, and in the letters to Regius and to Princess Elisabeth. The analysis of two paragraphs of Principia Philosophiae confirms that Descartes, in the final phase of his philosophical production, conceived the subject as originally immersed in an opaque and obscure psychic dimension, from which he never definitively frees himself. The conclusions show that Cartesian thought is a crossroads of different paths, including that of decentralized subjectivity and open to otherness.