Abstract

Gassendi holds both that we only have ideas of material things and that we know – by faith and, at least in later works, by reason as well – that the mind is immaterial. I examine the account of the mind provided in Gassendi’s Objections to the Meditations and show how Gassendi’s two theses can be rendered compatible. Indeed, the two theses, taken together, exemplify Gassendi’s account of the scope and limits of human understanding.