Comments on a Certain Broadsheet deserves an Internet version in its entirety but as far as I have been able to ascertain, there is none. A gap which should be filled immediately as its connection to blogging is crystal clear! I hesitate then to comment on Descartes's Comment until all readers have easy access to this provocative piece of philosophy and this brilliant piece of literature. In order to motivate someone out there to launch a complete version of the Comments script, DesCartes ceremoniously begins, "A few days ago, I received pamphlets attacking me." And later, with respect to one of these pamplets, "it expresses opinion which I judge to be positively harmful and mistaken. It is issued in the form of a broadsheet which can be affixed to church doors, and may thus strike the eye of any chance reader." Please, someone, upload a version of this too often neglected piece of popular philosophy to the WWW.

Its formal connection to blogging is not all that recommends this facinating piece. Descartes write of his principal critic: "In the third article he pronouces judgement upon me." It is unusual for a philosopher's sense of humour to eclipse his or her serious writing especially when one considers the humourous style did not really gain popullar acceptance until the 20th century. Nevertheless, the discerning reader will be able to detect an overall jaunty ridiculing tone in Descartes's response to his all too earnest critics in this defense. "What could be more perverse than to ascribe to a writer views which he reports simply in order to refute? What could be more foolish than to pretend that during the interval in which such views are being stated, pending their refutation, they are doctrines of the writer, and hence that someone who mentions the arguments of athiests is temporarily an athiest?" And later in the piece,once more referring to hs critic, "At the end, he adds the following sentence taken from one of my writings, 'No one acquires a great reputation for piety more easily than the superstitiuous or hypocritical person.' What he means by this I cannot see, unless his reference to hypocracy has to do with his frequently resorting to irony, though I hardly think he can acquire a great reputation for piety that way."

Of utmost interest in the piece is Descartes's effort to correct the impression many of his critics had of his concept of "innate"ideas. (Locke should have paid more attention!). "This is the same sense as that in which we say that generosity is 'innate' in certain families, or that certain diseases such as gout or stones are innate in others: it is not so much that the babies of such families suffer from these diseases in their mother's womb, but simply that they are born with a certain 'faculty' or tendency to contract them." Are we hearing a bit Bacon sizzling here or Mill foreshadowed?

Perhaps. Comments on a Certain Broadsheet is a wonderful window on the editorial Descartes; the Descartes responding on the fly to a hot newspaper type critical commentary on his most famous work, The Meditations. It deserves attention especially in a world where blogging is considered a new form of critical expression.