Principles of Philosophy. Author’s Letter to the Translator (Preface).

For many years the intellectual activities of the Society of Jesus were dismissed as wholly conservative, as their Ratio studiorum clung to a Ptolemaic–Aristotelian world‐picture despite the rising...

Descartes has often been called the 'father of modern philosophy'. His attempts to find foundations for knowledge, and to reconcile the existence of the soul with the emerging science of his time, are among the most influential and widely studied in the history of philosophy. This is a classic and challenging introduction to Descartes by one of the most distinguished modern philosophers. Bernard Williams not only analyzes Descartes' project of founding knowledge on certainty, but uncovers the philosophical (...) motives for his search. With acute insight, he demonstrates how Descartes' _Meditations _are not merely a description but the very enactment of philosophical thought and discovery. Williams covers all of the key areas of Descartes' thought, including God, the will, the possibility of knowledge, and the mind and its place in nature. He also makes profound contributions to the theory of knowledge, metaphysics and philosophy generally. With a new foreword by John Cottingham. (shrink)

I argue that Descartes' Second Causal Proof of God in the Third Meditation evidences, and commits him to, the belief that time is "strongly discontinuous" -- that is, that there is actually a gap between each consecutive moment of time. Much of my article attempts to reconcile this interpretation, the "received view," with Descartes' statements about time, space, and matter in his other writings, including his correspondence with various philosophers.

Descartes and the last Scholastics: objections and replies -- Descartes and the Scotists -- Ideas, before and after Descartes -- The Cartesian destiny of form and matter -- Descartes, Basso, and Toletus: three kinds of Corpuscularians -- Scholastics and the new astronomy on the substance of the heavens -- Descartes and the Jesuits of La Fleche: the Eucharist -- Condemnations of Cartesianism: the extension and unity of the universe -- Cartesians, Gassendists, and censorship -- The (...) cogito in the seventeenth century. (shrink)

Excerpt from Rene Descartes Descartes zieht sich in die Niederlande zuruck. Naheres uber die dortigen Zustande. 2. Verwerfung aller dog matiscben Voraussetzungen. Allgemeine metaphysische Grundlegung. 3. Es fehlt ihr noch die systematische Durch bildung. 4. Beschaftigung mit den mannigfachsten natur wissenschaftlichen Problemen. Heitere Stimmung des Philo 80phen. 5. Ausarbeitung einer Weltbildungstheorie. Die Grunde, weswegen das _werk nicht veroffentlicht wird. 6. Uber Descartes' Beurteilung der wissenschaftlichen Ver dienste Galileis 7. Liebesverhaltnis zwischen Descartes und einer Hollanderin. 8. Herausgabe (...) einer Reihe wissenschaft licher Werke. Charakteristik der Abhandlung uber die Methode. 9 Die Dioptrik. Technische Begabung des Philo 80phen. 10. Uber die Meteore. Ll. Geometrie. Uber die Ausdehnung und Grenzen der mathematischen Wissenschaft. Hohere Analysis. Descartes' Verhaltnis zu den abstrakten Problemen der Mathematik. Unvollkommenheit der Natur philosophie. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

I discuss Descartes’ metaphysics of selfhood, and relevant parts of contemporary philosophy regarding the first person. My two main concerns are the controversy that surrounds Descartes’ conception of conscientia, mistranslated as ‘consciousness’, and his conception of selfhood and its essential connection to conscientia. ‘I’-thoughts give rise to the most challenging philosophical questions. An answer to the questions concerning the peculiarities of the first person, self-identification and self-ascription, is to be found in Descartes’ notion of conscientia. His conception (...) of selfhood insightfully informs his conception of personhood. I offer a unified account of selfhood, conscientia, the first person, and personhood anchored in the self’s authority of reason and autonomy of freedom. (shrink)

Descartes’s Method: The Formation of the Subject of Science provides a systematic interpretation of Descartes’s method in Rules for the Direction of the Mind and related texts. The book reconstructs Descartes’s method in its entirety and concretely demonstrates both the efficacy of the method in the sciences as well as the unity of the method from Rules for the Direction of the Mind (1620s) to Principles of Philosophy (1644). The principal thesis of the book is that (...) class='Hi'>Descartes’s method is a problem-solving cognitive disposition (or habitus) that can be actualized in a variety of well-defined ways, depending always on the nature of problem. The book divides into five parts and eleven chapters. Parts I–II (Chapters 1–4) develop an interpretation of the historical and conceptual foundations of Descartes’s method (its operations and acquisition), while the remainder of the book (Parts III–V, which include Chapters 5–11) demonstrates the fruits of the method in solutions to problems in the sciences (above all, mathematics and optics). (shrink)

Aristotelian metaphysics is a change in the form of metaphysics, which seems to be extraneous to it but in reality co‐determines it in the most intimate way. Descartes’ Meditations are intellectual exercises that extend over six days. On almost every new day, a reference is made to the results or intermediary results of the previous day, or the spiritual experiences of the last days. This division into days, as well as the physical back‐references, mentioned in the First Meditation and (...) repeated in the Third, the repetitions, the monologue form, and other elements, point to the fact that Descartes’ Meditations must be understood within the tradition of philosophy in the sense of spiritual exercises. The knowledge of God must be considered as the highest stage of freedom. Descartes himself described the true path to the truth as the path a facilioribus ad difficiliora [from easier to more difficult things]. (shrink)

Descartes claims in the Discourse on Method (1637) to have devised a morale par provision in 1619-20, but, later, in the Conversation with Burman (1648), he divulged that he “does not like writing on ethics”, asserts that his morale was hastily written immediately before the publication of the Discourse, and, even more striking, adds that he was “compelled” to include this content due to “people like the Schoolmen.” These facts have led commentators to be skeptical whether Descartes created (...) his morale during his early philosophy as he claims in Part 3 of the Discourse. In response, I argue that the Ancient and Renaissance skeptical traditions contain a version of his provisional morality and that Descartes was most likely aware of this tradition during his early philosophy. Further, there is compelling evidence that Descartes adopted a ‘lived morale’ during this period. Last, I show that he endorsed his provisional morality during his mature philosophy and, based on this evidence, I conclude that he held his morale throughout his philosophical career, from the Rules for the Direction of the Mind (1620s) to the Passions of the Soul (1648). (shrink)

RésuméCet article explore les liens entre le recours à la véracité de Dieu et les notions de certitude «métaphysique» et «morale» chez Descartes. Pour cela, je montre le rôle qu'elles jouent dans sa preuve de l'existence du monde extérieur, sa position sur l'existence d'autres esprits et celle sur l'«animal-machine». Descartes se sert de la véracité de Dieu dans le premier cas, maispas dans le deuxième ni le troisième. Je suggere que c'est parce que faire à nouveau appel à (...) la véracité de Dieu dans le cas des autres esprits aurait mis en péril sa doctrine de l'animal-machine. Je conclus en me penchant sur des passages de Descartes qui pourraient sembler incompatibles avec l'inter prétation que je fais du rôle important quejoue la certitude morale dans sa philosophic. (shrink)

RésuméCet article explore les liens entre le recours à la véracité de Dieu et les notions de certitude «métaphysique» et «morale» chez Descartes. Pour cela, je montre le rôle qu'elles jouent dans sa preuve de l'existence du monde extérieur, sa position sur l'existence d'autres esprits et celle sur l'«animal-machine». Descartes se sert de la véracité de Dieu dans le premier cas, maispas dans le deuxième ni le troisième. Je suggere que c'est parce que faire à nouveau appel à (...) la véracité de Dieu dans le cas des autres esprits aurait mis en péril sa doctrine de l'animal-machine. Je conclus en me penchant sur des passages de Descartes qui pourraient sembler incompatibles avec l'inter prétation que je fais du rôle important quejoue la certitude morale dans sa philosophic. (shrink)

Keine ausführliche Beschreibung für "Descartes und die Philosophie" verfügbar.

Descartes is notorious for holding a strong anti-vacuist position. On his view, according to the standard reading, empty space not only does not exist in nature, but it is logically impossible. The very notion of a void or vacuum is an incoherent one. Recently Eric Palmer has proposed a revisionist reading of Descartes on empty space, arguing that he is more sanguine about its possibility. Palmer makes use of Descartes’ early correspondence with Marin Mersenne, including his commentary (...) on Galileo’s Two New Sciences. I argue that Palmer’s reading is mistaken, and that it relies on an understandable but faulty inference—i.e., that if Descartes considers the implications of an opposing view, he must find it at least coherent. Descartes, as I show from his correspondence and other texts, uses a variety of persuasive strategies, and levels charges of different logical strength, against positions which he takes to be incoherent. Thus we cannot infer from the fact that Descartes argues, e.g., that something is a superfluous theoretical entity, that he admits that entity’s coherence. He often chooses to argue a weaker thesis against an opponent so that he can use an argument to which the opponent is more likely to agree. (shrink)

This volume takes cue from the idea that the thought of no philosopher can be understood without considering it as the result of a constant, lively dialogue with other thinkers, both in its internal evolution as well as in its reception, re-use, and assumption as a starting point in addressing past and present philosophical problems. In doing so, it focuses on a feature that is crucially emerging in the historiography of early modern philosophy and science, namely the complexity in the (...) production of knowledge. The book explores the applicability of this approach to a long-considered armchair philosopher, namely René Descartes, who is now more and more understood as a full-blown scientist, networker, and intellectual éminence grise rather than as the mere philosopher of the cogito, as well as the originator of different ‘Cartesianisms’ which encompassed many ideas and approaches for long captured by dichotomic historiographical categories as rationalism and empiricism, or speculative and experimental philosophy. The essays gathered in the volume aim to address the ways in which Descartes’s philosophy evolved and was progressively understood by scientists, philosophers, and intellectuals from different contexts and eras, either by considering direct interlocutors of Descartes such as Isaac Beeckman and Elisabeth of Bohemia, early modern thinkers who developed upon his ideas and on particular topics as Nicolas Malebranche or Thomas Willis, those who adapted his overall methodology in developing new systems of knowledge as Johannes Clauberg and Pierre-Sylvain Régis, and contemporary thinkers from continental and analytic traditions like Emanuele Severino and Peter Strawson. (shrink)

Was Descartes a Cartesian Dualist? In this controversial study, Gordon Baker and Katherine J. Morris argue that, despite the general consensus within philosophy, Descartes was neither a proponent of dualism nor guilty of the many crimes of which he has been accused by twentieth century philosophers. In lively and engaging prose, Baker and Morris present a radical revision of the ways in which Descartes' work has been interpreted. Descartes emerges with both his historical importance assured and (...) his philosophical importance redeemed. (shrink)

Dans le prolongement de son précédent livre, Descartes à la lumière de l'évidence, Françoise Pochon-Wesolek examine les grands thèmes majeurs de la métaphysique cartésienne, que sont le Cogito et Dieu. Elle tente de restaurer la pensée de Descartes par la critique des interprétations qu'on a pu en faire à partir de concepts appartenant à des pensées ultérieures. Elle s'oppose entre autres à la thèse d'un Descartes, proche de Kant, construisant une philosophie où la question de l'être disparaît (...) au profit d'un sujet, principe de tout, assimilé à un entendement soumettant tout à sa juridiction et faisant de Dieu un simple étant objectivé. Elle ne reconnaît pas dans la pensée de Descartes le développement d'une onto-théo-logie. Elle rapproche au contraire la démarche de Descartes de celle de Platon et y repère la même quête philosophique comme amour de la sagesse. Car c'est l'eros et le sentiment de sa propre imperfection qui sont les vrais guides qui nous ouvrent à ce qui nous habite, sans que nous en ayons toujours conscience, l'Idée du parfait éternel, qu'on appelle aussi Dieu. Elle fait aussi apparaître dans le Cogito comme un écho du "connais-toi toi-même" socratique. (shrink)

In this work I argue that Descartes was not a trialist by showing that the main tenets of trialist interpretations of Descartes's theory of substance are either not supported by the text or are not sufficient for establishing the trialist interpretation.

Descartes has often been called the 'father of modern philosophy'. His attempts to find foundations for knowledge, and to reconcile the existence of the soul with the emerging science of his time, are among the most influential and widely studied in the history of philosophy. This is a classic and challenging introduction to Descartes by one of the most distinguished modern philosophers. Bernard Williams not only analyzes Descartes' project of founding knowledge on certainty, but uncovers the philosophical (...) motives for his search. With acute insight, he demonstrates how Descartes' _Meditations _are not merely a description but the very enactment of philosophical thought and discovery. Williams covers all of the key areas of Descartes' thought, including God, the will, the possibility of knowledge, and the mind and its place in nature. He also makes profound contributions to the theory of knowledge, metaphysics and philosophy generally. With a new foreword by John Cottingham. (shrink)

Centuries ago, Descartes and Locke initiated a foundational debate in epistemology over the relationship between knowledge, on the one hand, and practical factors, on the other. Descartes claimed that knowledge and practice are fundamentally separate. Locke claimed that knowledge and practice are fundamentally united. After a period of dormancy, their disagreement has reignited on the contemporary scene. Latter-day Lockeans claim that knowledge itself is essentially connected to, and perhaps even constituted by, practical factors such as how much is (...) at stake, how important the situation is, or how one should act. Latter-day Cartesians claim, by contrast, that knowledge is entirely constituted by truth-related factors such as truth, belief, and evidence. Each side has supported its case with claims about patterns in ordinary behavior and knowledge judgments. Lockeans argue that these patterns are best explained by positing a fundamental and direct link between knowledge and practical factors. Cartesians argue that the patterns can be equally well explained by positing an indirect link, entirely mediated by the traditional factors of truth, belief, and evidence, thereby rendering the Lockean hypothesis unnecessary. We argue that Cartesians are right about some practical factors, in particular stakes and how important a situation is, which have, at best, a modest indirect relationship to knowledge. However, Lockeans are right about actionability: whether a person should pursue a course of action is unquestionably very powerfully and directly connected to knowledge. (shrink)

Descartes's concept of the mind, as distinct from the body with which it forms a union, set the agenda for much of Western philosophy's subsequent reflection on human nature and thought. This is the first book to give an analysis of Descartes's pivotal concept that deals with all the functions of the mind, cognitive as well as volitional, theoretical as well as practical and moral. Focusing on Descartes's view of the mind as intimately united to and intermingled (...) with the body, and exploring its implications for his philosophy of mind and moral psychology, Lilli Alanen argues that the epistemological and methodological consequences of this view have been largely misconstrued in the modern debate. Informed by both the French tradition of Descartes scholarship and recent Anglo-American research, Alanen's book combines historical-contextual analysis with a philosophical problem-oriented approach. It seeks to relate Descartes's views on mind and intentionality both to contemporary debates and to the problems Descartes confronted in their historical context. By drawing out the historical antecedents and the intellectual evolution of Descartes's thinking about the mind, the book shows how his emphasis on the embodiment of the mind has implications far more complex and interesting than the usual dualist account suggests. (shrink)

Descartes has often been called the 'father of modern philosophy'. His attempts to find foundations for knowledge, and to reconcile the existence of the soul with the emerging science of his time, are among the most influential and widely studied in the history of philosophy. This is a classic and challenging introduction to Descartes by one of the most distinguished modern philosophers. Bernard Williams not only analyzes Descartes' project of founding knowledge on certainty, but uncovers the philosophical (...) motives for his search. With acute insight, he demonstrates how Descartes' _Meditations _are not merely a description but the very enactment of philosophical thought and discovery. Williams covers all of the key areas of Descartes' thought, including God, the will, the possibility of knowledge, and the mind and its place in nature. He also makes profound contributions to the theory of knowledge, metaphysics and philosophy generally. With a new foreword by John Cottingham. (shrink)

On a pris l'habitude de voir en l'analyse un instrument logique de décomposition et de clarification des concepts, confirmant du même coup l'évaluation critique qu'en a donnée Kant : l'analyse est un procédé stérile qui ne contribue en rien à l'expansion et au renouvellement des connaissances. Soulignant la cohérence de ses emplois historiques, le présent ouvrage cherche au contraire à rétablir l'analyse en sa fonction inventive : de l'Antiquité au XVII siècle, la méthode analytique constitue, en effet, une solution aux (...) insuffisances de la déduction logique ; s'appuyant sur la construction et le déchiffrement des figures, elle offre une voie à la fois détournée et probante pour la résolution des problèmes. Descartes est l'héritier de cette tradition, mais il est aussi, à maints égards, l'artisan de la conception moderne de l'analyse dont il a fait la voie privilégiée de la connaissance de soi dans les Méditations métaphysiques. Accomplissement heuristique de "l'ordre des raisons" mais aussi aventure temporelle inscrite dans la durée féconde de la méditation, l'analyse se révèle alors l'instrument d'une raison radicalement inventive. (shrink)

" Il est à remarquer en tout ce que j'écris que je ne suis pas l'ordre des matières mais seulement celui des raisons, c'est-à-dire que je n'entreprends point de dire en un même lieu tout ce qui appartient à une matière, à cause qu'il me serait impossible de la bien prouver y ayant des raisons qui doivent être tirées de bien plus loin les unes que les autres, mais en raisonnant par ordre, a facilioribus ad difficiliora, j'en déduis ce que (...) je puis, tantôt pour une matière, tantôt pour une autre, ce qui est à mon avis le vrai chemin pour bien trouver et expliquer la vérité. " (Descartes à Mersenne, 24 décembre 1640). " Si l'ordre analytique est le seul à procurer la démonstration valable de la philosophie, si les Méditations qui se développent rigoureusement selon cet ordre, permettent seules de comprendre à coup sûr l'ensemble de la doctrine, il n'y a pas d'autre méthode pour comprendre les Méditations elles-mêmes que de mettre en évidence cet ordre par lequel seul elles démontrent leur vérité. " (Martial Gueroult). (shrink)

Descartes understood the subject matter of physics (or natural philosophy) to encompass the whole of nature, including living things. It therefore comprised not only nonvital phenomena, including those we would now denominate as physical, chemical, minerological, magnetic, and atmospheric; it also extended to the world of plants and animals, including the human animal (with the exception of those aspects of the human mind that Descartes assigned to solely to thinking substance: pure intellect and will). Descartes wrote extensively (...) on physiology and on the physiology and psychology of the senses. This chapter examines the notions of *physiology* and *psychology* in medical and natural philosophical works of Descartes' day; follows his efforts to bring physiology into his mechanistic idiom; considers the relation between physiology of the animal machine and psychological functions that yield functionally appropriate behavior; goes into his physiology and psychology of vision; and elaborates the tension in Descartes' works between his metaphysically supported micro-corpuscularism and his discussion of the animal machine as an organic unity comprising various functionally and teleologically characterized systems. The chapter draws on Descartes' works in both metaphysics and natural philosophy, including his Treatise on Man (originally published as L'Homme, 1664). (shrink)

This book is a systematic study of Descartes' theory of causation and its relation to the medieval and early modern scholastic philosophy that provides its proper historical context. The argument presented here is that even though Descartes offered a dualistic ontology that differs radically from what we find in scholasticism, his views on causation were profoundly influenced by scholastic thought on this issue. This influence is evident not only in his affirmation in the Meditations of the abstract scholastic (...) axioms that a cause must contain the reality of its effects and that conservation does not differ in reality from creation, but also in the details of the accounts of body-body interaction in his physics, of mind-body interaction in his psychology, and of the causation that he took to be involved in free human action. In contrast to those who have read Descartes as endorsing the "occasionalist" conclusion that God is the only real cause, a central thesis of this study is that he accepted what in the context of scholastic debates regarding causation is the antipode of occasionalism, namely, the view that creatures rather than God are the causal source of natural change. What emerges from the defense of this interpretation of Descartes is a new understanding of his contribution to modern thought on causation. (shrink)

Descartes is widely portrayed as the arch proponent of “the epistemological transparency of thought” (or simply, “Transparency”). The most promising version of this view—Transparency-through-Introspection—says that introspecting (i.e., inwardly attending to) a thought guarantees certain knowledge of that thought. But Descartes rejects this view and provides numerous counterexamples to it. I argue that, instead, Descartes’s theory of self-knowledge is just an application of his general theory of knowledge. According to his general theory, certain knowledge is acquired only through (...) clear and distinct intellection. Thus, in his view, certain knowledge of one’s thoughts is acquired only through clear and distinct intellection of one’s thoughts. Introspection is a form of intellection and it can be clear and distinct. Ordinarily, however, introspection isn’t clear and distinct but is instead confused with dubitable perceptions of bodies. To make introspection clear and distinct, we need to “sharply separate” it from all perceptions of bodies by doubting all perceptions of bodies. Without such radical doubt, introspection remains confused and we lack certain knowledge not just of the specific features of our thoughts, but even of the minimal claim that a thought exists. Far from being the high priest of Transparency, Descartes is radically opposed to it. (shrink)

Mit Descartes' 'Meditationen' setzt eine neue Epoche der Philosophie ein: ohne sie keine 'Kritik der reinen Vernunft', keine 'Wissenschaftslehre' und keine 'Phänomenologie des Geistes'. F.-W. v. Herrmann liest die 'Meditationen' mit phänomenologischem Blick und unter Beachtung der ihnen eigentümlichen Grundhaltung der 'Cartesianischen Epoché': als Grundlegung einer Metaphysik des Selbstbewusstseins aus dem Selbstbewusstsein. Er stellt die Lektüre der sechs Meditationen unter den Leitgedanken der Endlichkeit des Selbstbewusstseins und des Problems der Transzendenz. Denn das endliche Selbstbewusstsein vollzieht sich in einem Gefüge (...) dreifachen Transzendierens. Durch diese Metaphysik des Selbstbewusstseins wird Descartes zum entscheidenden Wegeröffner der großen Metaphysiken der Neuzeit von Spinoza über Leibniz, Kant, Fichte, Schelling bis zu Hegel - und darüber hinaus im 20. Jahrhundert zum Wegbereiter der Transzendentalen Phänomenologie Edmund Husserls. (shrink)

In this book, Ben-Yami reassesses the way Descartes developed and justified some of his revolutionary philosophical ideas. The first part of the book shows that one of Descartes' most innovative and influential ideas was that of representation without resemblance. Ben-Yami shows how Descartes transfers insights originating in his work on analytic geometry to his theory of perception. The second part shows how Descartes was influenced by the technology of the period, notably clockwork automata, in holding life (...) to be a mechanical phenomenon, reducing the soul to the mind and considering it immaterial. Ben-Yami explores the later role of the digital computer in Turing's criticism of Descartes' ideas. The last part discusses the Meditations: far from starting everything afresh without presupposing anything that can be doubted, Descartes' innovations in the dream argument, the cogito and elsewhere are modifications of old ideas based upon considerations issuing from his separately developed theories, formed under the influence of the technology, mathematics and science of his age. (shrink)

Descartes has often been called the 'father of modern philosophy'. His attempts to find foundations for knowledge, and to reconcile the existence of the soul with the emerging science of his time, are among the most influential and widely studied in the history of philosophy. This is a classic and challenging introduction to Descartes by one of the most distinguished modern philosophers. Bernard Williams not only analyzes Descartes' project of founding knowledge on certainty, but uncovers the philosophical (...) motives for his search. With acute insight, he demonstrates how Descartes' _Meditations _are not merely a description but the very enactment of philosophical thought and discovery. Williams covers all of the key areas of Descartes' thought, including God, the will, the possibility of knowledge, and the mind and its place in nature. He also makes profound contributions to the theory of knowledge, metaphysics and philosophy generally. With a new foreword by John Cottingham. (shrink)

I. Grundprobleme des Cartesianismus: Descartes' Wahrheitsbegriff. Die Idee der "Einheit der Wissenschaft" in der Philosophie Descartes'.--II. Descartes und sein Jahrhundert: Descartes und Corneille. Descartes' "Recherche de la vérité par la lumière naturelle". Descartes und Königin Christina von Schweden.

Why would Rene Descartes, the father of modern rationalist philosophy, choose "meditations" -- a term and genre associated with religious discourse and practice -- for the title of his magnum opus that lays the metaphysical foundations for his reform of all knowledge, including mathematics and sciences? Why did he believe that the immortality of the soul and the existence of God, which the Meditations on First Philosophy set out to demonstrate, can only be made self-evident through meditating? These are (...) the question that Christopher Wild's book answers. Descartes discovered the "foundations of a marvelous science" through a dramatic conversion in southern Germany in the winter of 1619. The spiritual and cognitive exercises, derived from ancient philosophy and the Christian meditative tradition, which Descartes deployed in the Meditations, enable readers to discover metaphysical truths with the same degree of self-evidence with which Descartes did during his own conversion. Descartes' meditative turn, Wild argues, brings to a culmination a life-long preoccupation with the practice or craft of thinking, known as Cartesian method. By joining meditation to method the Meditations becomes the founding document for a Cartesian "art of turning," a new practice of both thought and life. (shrink)

Descartes’ theory of the passions has important connections to his view that nonhuman animals are automata. In this paper, I show how critics of animal automatism exploited these connections. I int...

This volume brings together some of the best articles on Descartes published in the last fifty years. Edited by the renowned Descartes specialist John Cottingham, the selection covers the full range of Descartes's thought, including chapters on the central issues in Cartesian metaphysics, the relationship between mind and body, human nature and the passions, and the structure of scientific explanation.

Life and works -- Cartesian doubt -- Cogito ergo sum -- Sum res cogitans -- Ideas -- The idea of god -- The ontological argument -- Reason and intuition -- Matter and motion zoo -- Mind and body.

Descartes est aujourd'hui malmené dans l'opinion. Accusé d'indifférence morale envers les animaux, d'apologie de la toute-puissance technicienne, de mépris de la vie affective au nom d'une raison omnipotente, de plagiat grossier du cogito de saint Augustin, de réduction de la philosophie à une suite de savoirs dogmatiquement ordonnés, ne finit-il pas par ramener la diversité naturelle à l'espace géométrique? N'encourage-t-il pas le conformisme moral le plus docile à travers l'alibi d'une « morale par provision »? Cela fait beaucoup de (...) chefs d'accusation. Sont-ils pour autant justifiés? Cet ouvrage montre que la pensée de Descartes est plus complexe que ce que l'on rapporte. (shrink)

The Descartes Dictionary is an accessible guide to the world of the seventeenth-century philosopher René Descartes. Meticulously researched and extensively cross-referenced, this unique book covers all his major works, ideas and influences, and provides a firm grounding in the central themes of Descartes' thought. The introduction provides a biographical sketch, a brief account of Descartes' philosophical works, and a summary of the current state of Cartesian studies, discussing trends in research over the past four decades. The (...) A-Z entries include clear definitions of the key terms used in Descartes' writings and detailed synopses of his works. Also included are entries noting philosophical influences, of both figures that influenced Descartes and those that he in turn influenced. For anyone reading or studying Descartes, rationalism, or modern philosophy more generally, this original resource provides a wealth of useful information, analysis, and criticism. Including clear explanations of often complex terminology, The Descartes Dictionary covers everything that is essential to a sound understanding of Descartes' philosophy. (shrink)

Relatively compact biography of the seventeenth-century French philosopher is determined to reverse the slander of scandal in vogue among Descartes' recent biographers and to modify the view of his intellectual development.

Il pense, donc il est : sérieux, solitaire, méditatif et de noir vêtu, Descartes est depuis des siècles l'incarnation de la raison triomphante et du génie français. Tant de limpidité et d'éclat a éclipsé l'homme même, qui demeure très méconnu : fils d'un temps d'incertitude? père de la philosophie moderne? Qui était vraiment René Descartes et qu'en reste-t-il aujourd'hui, au-delà des idées reçues et de la référence obligée? Mettant en lumière les contradictions du philosophe, Françoise Hildesheimer brosse le (...) portrait d'un homme fort éloigné du mythe officiel. On le veut rationnel, on ne l'imagine pas rêvant ; c'est pourtant sur trois songes que Descartes a fondé son projet d'une science universelle qui devait faire de lui le nouvel Aristote. Il a côtoyé de très près les courants déviants de l'époque, avant de s'établir en Hollande en 1628 pour concevoir son système, dévoilé au fil du Discours de la méthode, des Méditations métaphysiques, des Principes de la philosophie et des Passions de l'âme. Sa vie durant, Descartes a balancé entre désir de reconnaissance officielle et soif d'incognito ; il invitait le monde entier à débattre de ses théories, mais n'aimait guère la contestation ; il affectionnait le repos, et n'a cessé de voyager, sans jamais s'établir durablement ; lui qui se tenait éloigné du pouvoir a fini ses jours, en 1650, à la cour de la reine Christine de Suède. Curieux paradoxe que cet obsédé du secret, ce maniaque du brouillage des pistes, se soit consacré corps et âme à la quête de la Vérité et à l'étude de la lumière... (shrink)