THE RESEARCH interests of Lecturer in Philosophy Joel Schickel, who came to the College in 2005, focus on the philosophy of René Descartes and also involve the context of Descartes's conception of morality and moral psychology in Early Modern European history and culture. In his philosophical writings, Descartes is responding to philosophical, theological, political, and scientific developments of which the modern reader is often unaware. Understanding the context in which those works were written allows philosophers better to understand Descartes's complex writings. If such understanding is important for the theoretical writings concerning metaphysics (the study of what there is) and epistemology (the study of knowledge), it is also important for the works in morality and psychology.

Schickel is currently preparing two papers that serve to reassess the extent to which Descartes can be seen as a father of Modernity: "The Character of Descartes's Moral Theory and the Nature of Practical Reason" and "Descartes's Political Thought" for submission to philosophical journals. In the first, he characterizes the ethics of Descartes as a version of Renaissance Neostoicism and also explains the relationship between theoretical and practical reasoning in the philosopher's thought. Previous studies treat practical reasoning in Descartes's work as an extension of theoretical reasoning. However, Schickel attempts to show that the reverse is, in fact, the case, that theoretical reasoning is a species of practical reasoning. In the second paper, Schickel argues that although he often seems to hold conservative positions on political questions, Descartes actually held a radical egalitarian position that has deep consequences for politics. Descartes is often seen as an originator of the Modern views of knowledge and of the nature of the human person, views that are rejected by Postmodern thinkers.

In April of 2006 Schickel, who holds a B.A. and a B.S. from Calvin College in Michigan and a Ph.D. from Duke University, chaired a colloquium session entitled "Will, Intellect, and Cartesian Virtue" at the American Philosophical Association Central Division meeting in Chicago.

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Hampden-Sydney College Faculty Scholarship 2005-2008
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