Cartesian Reflections PDF Download

Author: John Cottingham
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199226970
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 347

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Book Description
One of the world's leading Descartes scholars explores central areas of his philosophy, including his views on the nature of thought, the relationship between mind and body, his scientific worldview and its influence on modern thinking, the place of God in his philosophical system, and his account of the emotions and the good life.

Author: John Cottingham
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781383036084
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
John Cottingham explores central areas of his philosophy, including his views on the nature of thought, the relationship between mind and body, his scientific worldview and its influence on modern thinking, the place of God in his philosophical system, and his account of the emotions and the good life.

Author: Janet Broughton
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 144433784X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 562

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Book Description
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

Author: James Hill
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 144111310X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
Descartes' characterisation of the mind as a 'thinking thing' marks the beginning of modern philosophy of mind. It is also the point of departure for Descartes' own system in which the mind is the first object of knowledge for those who reason in an 'orderly way'. This ground-breaking book shows that the Cartesian mind has been widely misunderstood: typically treated as simply the subject of phenomenal consciousness, ignoring its deeply intellectual character. James Hill argues that this interpretation has gone hand in hand with a misreading of Descartes' method of doubt which treats it as all-inclusive and universal in scope. In fact, the sceptical arguments of the First Meditation aim to lead the mind away from the senses and towards the intellectual 'notions' that the mind has within it, and which are never the subject of doubt. Hill also places Descartes' concept of mind into the wider setting of his science of nature, showing how he wished to reveal a mental subject that would able to comprehend the new physics necessitated by Copernicus' heliocentrism.

Author: Peter Slezak
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1666923761
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 347

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Book Description
A range of seemingly unrelated problems at the forefront of controversy about consciousness, language, and vision, among others, have a deep connection with one another that has gone unnoticed. This book suggests that this mistake arises not from what is put into a theory but rather from what is missing.

Author: Jan Palkoska
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443893579
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description
It has been acknowledged that, while Descartes’s usage of the term “a priori” is at odds with the now-current Kantian meaning, it also fails to correspond to the standard Aristotelian notion. However, there is, as yet, little agreement as to the exact positive meaning Descartes associates with the term. As such, this book offers a clear and historically adequate account of this disputed issue. Descartes’s concept of apriority is interpreted as resulting from an interplay of two trends: development of a universal method of discovery based upon Descartes’s ground-breaking reinterpretation of heuristic procedures in mathematics, and a substantial transformation of the Renaissance-Aristotelian conception of scientific reasoning. This interpretation stems from a fresh and innovative account of some central and controversial topics of Descartes scholarship and from a historically-informed outline of the situation in mathematics and in philosophy of science in Descartes’s times. The book will thus contribute to a better understanding of several fundamental issues in the philosopher’s thought. It will also help to shed light upon the challenging and strangely neglected question of why Kant decided to employ the term “a priori” in a way which differs so dramatically from the once well-established Aristotelian usage.

Author: Nathan Smith
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443802506
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Descartes is well known for his decisive and spectacular break with the philosophical tradition. Indeed, on account of that break, he is frequently reputed to be the “father of modern philosophy.” This reputation, in an important sense, seems deserved. The present collection, however, attempts to reevaluate the currency of this common opinion by attending to the impact of “Cartesianism” on philosophy from its immediate epicenter in 17th century science and metaphysics up to its continuing consequences today. In a larger sense, the volume aims to contribute to efforts underway in contemporary scholarship to arrive at a more accurate and comprehensive understanding of Descartes’ philosophical achievement as such. Accordingly, the essays in Part I address the character of Descartes’ originality with respect to the foundations, method and trajectory of his philosophical project, while those in Part II focus more exclusively on the lasting challenges which issue from that originality. The range and variety of approaches assembled in the collection are intended to reflect the complexity of Descartes’ own thought. The result is a volume which will be of interest to students of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and the history of philosophy as well as contemporary phenomenology, philosophy of mind and philosophy of language.

Author: Kyoo Lee
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
ISBN: 0823261255
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Focusing on the first four images of the Other mobilized in Descartes’ Meditations—namely, the blind, the mad, the dreamy, and the bad—Reading Descartes Otherwise casts light on what have heretofore been the phenomenological shadows of “Cartesian rationality.” In doing so, it discovers dynamic signs of spectral alterity lodged both at the core and on the edges of modern Cartesian subjectivity. Calling for a Copernican reorientation of the very notion “Cartesianism,” the book’s series of close, creatively critical readings of Descartes’ signature images brings the dramatic forces, moments, and scenes of the cogito into our own contemporary moment. The author patiently unravels the knotted skeins of ambiguity that have been spun within philosophical modernity out of such clichés as “Descartes, the abstract modern subject” and “Descartes, the father of modern philosophy”—a figure who is at once everywhere and nowhere. In the process, she revitalizes and reframes the legacy of Cartesian modernity, in a way more mindful of its proto-phenomenological traces.

Author: Roger Ariew
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538184753
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 450

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Book Description
The Historical Dictionary of Descartes and Cartesian Philosophy, Third Edition, centers on Descartes’ philosophy (considered broadly to include his science and mathematics) in the context of 17th-century thought, with attention being paid to its reception. This is done through a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 400 cross-referenced entries on various concepts in Descartes’ philosophy, science, and mathematics, as well as biographical entries about the intellectual setting for Descartes’ philosophy and its reception, both with Cartesians and anti-Cartesians. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Descartes philosophy.

Author: Christopher J. Wild
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 150363860X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 453

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Book Description
Why would René 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 lifelong 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.