A Companion to Descartes
Edited by Janet Broughton and John Carriero A collection of more than 30 specially commissioned essays, this volume surveys the work of the 17th-century philosopher-scientist commonly regarded as the founder of modern philosophy, while integrating unique essays detailing the context and impact of his work.
- Covers the full range of historical and philosophical perspectives on the work of Descartes
- Discusses his seminal contributions to our understanding of skepticism, mind-body dualism, self-knowledge, innate ideas, substance, causality, God, and the nature of animals
- Explores the philosophical significance of his contributions to mathematics and science
- Concludes with a section on the impact of Descartes's work on subsequent philosophers
Table of ContentsNotes on Contributors X
List of Abbreviations XIV
Introduction XV
PART I THE INTELLECTUAL CONTEXT 1
1 STEPHEN GAUKROGER - Life and Works 3
2 DENNIS DES CHENE - Aristotelian Natural Philosophy: Body, Cause, Nature 17
3 CATHERINE WILSON - Descartes and Augustine 33
4 CASEY PERIN - Descartes and the Legacy of Ancient Skepticism 52
PART II MATHEMATICS AND NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 675 MICHAEL FRIEDMAN - Descartes and Galileo: Copernicanism and the Metaphysical Foundations of Physics 69
6 ERNAN MCMULLIN - Explanation as Confi rmation in Descartes’s Natural Philosophy 84
7 PAOLO MANCOSU - Descartes and Mathematics 103
8 MARGARET J. OSLER - Descartes’s Optics: Light, the Eye, and Visual Perception 124
PART III EPISTEMOLOGY AND METAPHYSICS 1439 MURRAY MILES - Descartes’s Method 145
10 DAVID OWENS - Descartes’s Use of Doubt 164
11 JANET BROUGHTON - Self-Knowledge 179
12 DEBORAH J. BROWN - Descartes on True and False Ideas 196
13 SARAH PATTERSON - Clear and Distinct Perception 216
14 MICHAEL DELLA ROCCA - Causation Without Intelligibility and Causation Without God in Descartes 235
15 VERE CHAPPELL - Descartes on Substance 251
16 C. G. NORMORE - Descartes and the Metaphysics of Extension 271
17 JOHN COTTINGHAM - The Role of God in Descartes’s Philosophy 288
18 JOHN CARRIERO - The Cartesian Circle and the Foundations of Knowledge 302
19 ALAN NELSON - Cartesian Innateness 319
20 LEX NEWMAN - Descartes on the Will in Judgment 334
21 LILLI ALANEN - Omnipotence, Modality, and Conceivability 353
22 MARLEEN ROZEMOND - Descartes’s Dualism 372
23 PAUL HOFFMAN - The Union and Interaction of Mind and Body 390
24 GARY HATFIELD - Animals 404
25 AMY M. SCHMITTER - How to Engineer a Human Being: Passions and Functional Explanation in Descartes 426
26 LISA SHAPIRO - Descartes’s Ethics 445
PART IV DESCARTES’S LEGACY 46527 THOMAS M. LENNON - Descartes’s Legacy in the Seventeenth Century: Problems and Polemic 467
28 QUASSIM CASSAM - Contemporary Reactions to Descartes’s Philosophy of Mind 482
29 WAYNE M. MARTIN - Descartes and the Phenomenological Tradition 496
30 BARRY STROUD - Our Debt to Descartes 513
Index 526
Blackwell Publishing, Blackwell Companions to Philosophy, Hardback with protective cover, english, 542 pages
