As an integral part of the book entitled Death in the Andes and Kantian ethics. Ethical-political ideals of Mario Vargas Llosa and Sendero Luminoso, this text addresses a problem that, posed interrogatively, is stated as follows: "What position would Mario Vargas Llosa adopt before the Kantian ethical formalism and before a moral that, like that of Shinning Path, is, in many ways, its most antagonistic denial?" The working hypothesis, elaborated deductively from the novel Death in the Andes, is that Mario Vargas Llosa shows, through fictional language, a marked predilection for Kantian ethics. However, as in its political ethical ideology, a critical dimension is also applied to the universe from which its convictions originate, we will reflect here on certain hermeneutical keys that will help us to better understand the hypothesis.

The purpose of this study is to discuss the Cartesian relationship between rational psychology and philosophical anthropology which originates from the concept of substance. The ontological dualism between the two finite substances (res cogitans and res extensa) specifically introduced in the Metaphysical Meditations is significantly restricted in two further works, the Traité de l’homme and De passionibus animae, in which there is an explicit reference to the pineal gland as the physical contact between mind and body. In this sense, Descartes in his search for an explanation of the mind-body interaction from a physiological point of view promotes a middle ground between a rational psychology, which defines human nature solely as a soul, and a philosophical anthropology, which view human beings as a psychosomatic unity.