«Accomodare la teologia alla mia maniera di filosofare» Descartes sui rapporti tra la filosofia e la teologia

The aim of this paper is to analyze the relationship between philosophy and theology in Descartes’ writings. Descartes' opinions evolve over time, under the pressure of factors deriving from both the historical context and the development of its philosophical thinking. A careful reading of these factors allows to modify current interpretations, which tend to read Descartes’ statements as neutral and pacific. Refusing to make philosophy a merely propaedeutic discipline and ancillary to theology, Descartes not only claims full independence of natural philosophy and metaphysics from revelation but, depending on the various contexts, he attributes to philosophy a large field in which it prevails somehow over theology.