Kierkegaard, the “treatise of desperation” and the medicina mentis

Abstract

Espinosa, Locke, Berkeley and Hume wrote extensive or short treatises in order to propose mending human understanding or similar projects. Alexander Koyré, while explaining Descartes, stated that such texts should be included under “treatises of method” and this stands also for those ones disguised as essays, inquiries, discourses etc. Praising method used to come together with a lack of confidence in abuses of reason, because human spirit could be suffering under prejudices, “idols” and delusions. Such treatises were efforts of a certain medicina mentis [mind healing]; in this way, a treatise was supposed to be like a therapeutic treatment. Koyré, late in XXth century seems to exaggerate by saying that Montaigne’s essays should be called a “treatise of desperation” and this calls our attention, because French editors and translator had given the same title to an important Kierkegaard’s work, which means originally simply “Sickness to death”. It deals with hope and despair, but Kierkegaard’s irony is also in a book that may not be a proper treatise.