Why to Get Rid of the Small Flitting Images: Descartes’s Optics and Some Medieval Theories of Vision

“And by this means your mind will be delivered from all those small images flitting through the air, called intentional species, which worry the imagination of Philosophers so much” – writes Descartes in his Optics (First Discourse), referring to the medieval and contemporary scholastic theories of vision. Although, at least since Gilson’s work, considerable effort has been made to put Descartes’s metaphysical views into the context of some medieval predecessors, the relationship is much less clear in the case of Descartes’s lesser known treatises, such as the Optics, or the other essays published with the Discourse on Method. This is all the more surprising as the Optics is one of those very few places where Descartes explicitly deals with the medieval theories, and develops his own theory partly in response to those. The main aim of this paper is, therefore, to elaborate on Descartes’s relation to scholastic philosophy from the view of his theory of vision, by presenting both his (relatively) detailed critique as developed in the Optics, as well as, to some extent, the target of this critique.