Abstract

The point of departure of this article is a lexical analysis, extended to the entire Cartesian corpus, focusing on the lemmas respectus and relatio and their adjectival forms. Starting from here, the article addresses Descartes’ doctrine of the relation, in so far as it is developed in the Regulae ad directionem ingenii. In this writing, two notions of ‘relation’ emerge: on the one side, the notion of respectus, that Descartes employes in the epistemological reflection of the first twelwe rules; on the other side, the notion of relatio, which is the object, especially of the last four rules. The analysis developed in the article shows that the two notions are distinct and different. The first (respectus), whose nature is mainly noetic, is related to the Cartesian topic of the ordo, which constitutes the sequential disposition of knowledge in connection with the unity of the mens; the second (relatio), on the contrary, has a more technical meaning, and concerns the function of the numerical unity, which is the term of reference in the construction of mathematical proportions.