The Cambridge Companion to Descartes by John Cottingham

ISBN: 9780521366960

Cambridge University Press | 25 September 1992

Paperback | 456 pages

Second hand, good condition

Descartes occupies a position of pivotal importance as one of the founding fathers of modern philosophy; he is perhaps the most widely studied of all philosophers. In this authoritative collection, an international team of leading scholars in Cartesian studies present the full range of Descartes’ extraordinary philosophical achievement. His life and the development of his thought, as well as the intellectual background to and reception of his work, are treated at length. At the core of the volume are chapters on his metaphysics, including the celebrated “Cogito” argument, the proofs of God’s existence, the “Cartesian circle,” and the dualistic theory of mind and its relation to his theological and scientific views. Other chapters explore the philosophical implications of his work in algebra, his role in the seventeenth-century scientific revolution, the structure of his physics, and his contributions to physiology and psychology.