Descartes' letters

In the last twenty or so years, there has been a trend, increasingly viable especially in the Anglophone world, in the study of Descartes towards regarding his intellectual milieu as a source of significant input for the understanding of his philosophical work. In this note, I wish to take account of one significant contribution to this trend, which is the proceedings of a conference held at Perugia, Italy, in October 1996 concerned with a range of aspects of the 'Intellectual Biography of Rene Descartes through his Correspondence'. To the best of my knowledge, this was the first time that a whole international conference has been dedicated to the letters, and I aim to follow up three among the many issues arising out of it. The first is an instance of recurrent puzzles that are set by the textual tradition of the letters. The second concerns the highly controversial doctrine of the movement of the Earth. And the third touches briefly on some broader questions about the literary status of Descartes' letters.