The dream of philosophy: A deconstruction of Reason

This dissertation takes as its particular problematic the relationship between philosophy (as Reason) and dreams in Descartes and Leibniz in the inaugural moments of philosophical modernity. Philosophy in the modern epoch, as the discourse of reason on Reason, has traditionally sought to exclude the dream as other than reason. Certainly, this is the (excluded) space of the dream in Descartes' first Meditation. And yet, were it not for the mirabilis Scientia fundamenta discovered in three dreams during the night of 10 November 1619, Descartes' philosophy as such might not have been possible, even though the dream is, like madness, excluded from a reasonable philosophy in the Discourse and the Meditations. Leibniz, too, has dreamed of philosophy; the relation between philosophy and the concept of the dream is the subject of an extant fragment from the Demonstrationes Catholicae, and occurs elsewhere in Leibniz' texts as a problem for both metaphysics and epistemology. My dissertation reinscribes the marginal dreams of Descartes and Leibniz at the "center" of Rationalist philosophy--Reason.;I unfold the historical and philosophic background of modernity for this postmodern reading by examining the status of the dream in general in relation to philosophy. Out of this context, a deconstructive strategy is developed to recover the particular textual relations between dreams and reason in Descartes and Leibniz.;In the conclusion, I address the implications of the readings ventured in the central chapters, and while drawing some general conclusions on the possibility of the "Philosophy of Dreams" as a discipline within and without philosophy, I also suggest some openings through which further readings of this nature might proceed.