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The paper examines the areas devoted to Descartes – especially his Fourth Meditation – in the lesson on The Philosophical Concept of Will that Ricœur gave in 1967. By analyzing Ricœur’s claim that the cartesian philosophy of will represents a turning point within the tradition, the author aims to underline the interpretative shifts that testify to the influence of new mediations, namely Heidegger and Gueroult, but also and particularly to a critical distance that Ricœur displays towards Descartes far more obviously than in the « Philosophy of Will », a distance that is connected to a turning point in his thinking. With this objective in mind, the paper unfolds following three stages of Ricœur’s reading of Descartes : a) the phenomenological core ; b) the will and order of reason ; c) will and cogito.