Claude Perrault, the Forgotten Herald of Modern Thought: Beyond Rationalism Through Rationalism

The seventeenth century is commonly associated with the Cartesian worldview. This article shows how Claude Perrault, through his investigations into music and sound, dismantled the Cartesian dualism that was dominant in his day, and proposed a radically new philosophy in its place. The article has two main parts. The first provides an overview of how seventeenth-century music theory adopted the Enlightenment spirit of rationalism and scientific inquiry, and explores the shortcomings of applying that approach to music. The rest of the article then demonstrates how, in sharp contrast to the dominant Cartesian model, Perrault argued that the entire body is organically involved in not only perception, but also cognition. This radical view aligns far more closely with recent findings in modern science as well as with recent developments in fields such as psychology and phenomenology. By focusing on the concrete example of Perrault, the article seeks to show that seventeenth-century rationalism already contained within itself the seeds of non-Cartesian thought that would ultimately germinate into a range of later philosophies and movements, from Schopenhauerian philosophy to developments in contemporary psychology.