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  3. Descartes's Meditations
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    • Publisher:
      Cambridge University Press
      Publication date:
      05 June 2012
      20 November 2003
      ISBN:
      9780511805004
      9780521809818
      9780521007665
      DOI:
      https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511805004
      Dimensions:
      (216 x 138 mm)
      Weight & Pages:
      0.5kg, 284 Pages
      Dimensions:
      (216 x 138 mm)
      Weight & Pages:
      0.36kg, 284 Pages
      • Series:
      Cambridge Introductions to Key Philosophical Texts
      Subjects:
      Philosophy: General Interest, Philosophy
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    Series:
    Cambridge Introductions to Key Philosophical Texts
    Subjects:
    Philosophy: General Interest, Philosophy
    Information

    Book description

    In this introduction to a classic philosophical text, Catherine Wilson examines the arguments of Descartes' famous Meditations, the book which launched modern philosophy. Drawing on the reinterpretations of Descartes' thought of the past twenty-five years, she shows how Descartes constructs a theory of the mind, the body, nature, and God from a premise of radical uncertainty. She discusses in detail the historical context of Descartes' writings and their relationship to early modern science, and at the same time she introduces concepts and problems that define the philosophical enterprise as it is understood today. Following closely the text of the Meditations and meant to be read alongside them, this survey is accessible to readers with no previous background in philosophy. It is well-suited to university-level courses on Descartes, but can also be read with profit by students in other disciplines.

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    Contents

    Contents
    References
    Further reading
    Modern surveys of Descartes's life and work
    Boros, Gábor, René Descartes' Werdegang: Der allgütige Gott und die Wertfreie Natur. Würzburg, Königshausen & Neumann, 2001
    Cottingham, John, Descartes, Oxford, Blackwell, 1986
    Gaukroger, Stephen, Descartes: An Intellectual Biography, Oxford, Clarendon, 1995
    Rodis-Lewis, Geneviève, Descartes, biographie, Paris, Calman-Levy, 1995. English translation by Jane Marie Todd, Descartes: His Life and Thought, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1998
    Sorell, Tom, Descartes, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1987
    Studies of the Meditations
    Broughton, Janet, Descartes' Method of Doubt, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2002
    Curley, Edwin, Descartes Against the Skeptics, Oxford, Blackwell, 1978
    Gueroult, Martial, Descartes selon l'ordre des raisons, Paris, Aubier, 1953. English translation by Roger Ariew, Descartes's Philosophy Interpreted According to the Order of Reasons, 2 vols., Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1984
    Kenny, Anthony, Descartes: A Study of his Philosophy, New York, Random House, 1968
    Miles, Murray, Insight and Inference, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1999
    Sarka, Husain, Descartes' Cogito: Saved from the Great Shipwreck, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003
    Williams, Bernard, Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry, Sussex, Harvester, 1978
    Wilson, Margaret, Descartes, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978
    Special studies of Descartes
    Almog, Joseph, What am I?: Descartes and the Mind–Body Problem, New York, Oxford University Press, 2002
    Ariew, Roger and Green, Marjorie, Descartes and his Contemporaries: Meditations, Objections and Replies, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1995
    Baker, Gordon and Morris, Katherine J., Descartes's Dualism, London, Routledge, 1996
    Caton, Hiram, The Origins of Subjectivity, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1973
    Clarke, Desmond, Descartes's Philosophy of Science, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1982
    Des Chene, Dennis, Spirits and Clocks: Machine and Organism in Descartes, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2001
    Frankfurt, Harry, Demons, Dreamers, and Madmen, Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill, 1970
    Garber, Daniel, Descartes Embodied: Reading Descartes through Cartesian Science, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2001
    Gilson, Étienne, Discours de la méthode, texte et commentaire, Paris, J. Vrin, 1962
    Grosholz, Emily, Cartesian Method and the Problem of Reduction, Oxford, Clarendon, 1991
    Nadler, Steven, “Descartes's Demon and the Madness of Don Quixote,” Journal of the History of Ideas 58 (1997), pp. 41–55
    Röd, Wolfgang, Die innere Genesis des cartesianischen Systems, Munich, E. Reinhardt, 1964
    Rozemond, Marlene, Descartes's Dualism, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1998
    Schouls, Peter, Descartes and the Enlightenment, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 1989
    Verbeek, Theo, Descartes and the Dutch: Early Reactions to Cartesian Philosophy (1637–1650), Carbondale, IL, University of Illinois, 1992
    Collections of essays
    Cottingham, John, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Descartes, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992
    Gaukroger, Stephen, Schuster, John and Sutton, John, eds., Descartes's Natural Philosophy, London, Routledge, 2000
    Moyal, G. J. D., ed., René Descartes, Critical Assessments, 4 vols., London, Routledge, 1991
    Rorty, Amélie, ed., Essays on Descartes's Meditations, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1986
    Articles
    Baker, Gordon P. and Morris, Katherine J., “Descartes Unlocked,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 1 (1993), pp. 5–27
    Bennett, Jonathan, “Descartes's Theory of Modality,” Philosophical Review 103 (1994), pp. 639–67
    Boros, Gábor, “Ethics in the Age of Automata,” History of Philosophy Quarterly 18 (2001), pp. 139–54
    Harrison, Peter, “Descartes on Animals,” Philosophical Quarterly 42 (1992), pp. 219–27
    Hatfield, Gary. “Force (God) in Descartes' Physics,” Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 10 (1979), pp. 113–40
    Hintikka, Jaako, “Cogito Ergo Sum: Inference or Performance?” Philosophical Review 71 (1962), pp. 3–32
    Jacquette, Dale, “Descartes' Lumen Naturale and the Cartesian Circle,” Philosophy and Theology 9 (1996), pp. 273–320
    Kaufman, Dan, “Descartes on the Objective Reality of Materially False Ideas,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 81 (2002), pp. 385–408
    Kennington, Richard, “The Finitude of Descartes's Evil Genius,” Journal of the History of Ideas 32 (1971), pp. 441–6
    Kim, Jaegwon, “How Can My Mind Move My Limbs? Mental Causation from Descartes to Contemporary Physicalism,” Philosophical Exchange 30 (1999–2000), pp. 5–16
    Loeb, Louis, “Is There Radical Dissimulation in Descartes' Meditations?” in Essays on Descartes' Meditations, ed. Amélie Oksenberg Rorty, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986
    Menn, Stephen, “Descartes and Some Predecessors on the Divine Conservation of Motion,” Synthèse 83 (1990), pp. 215–38
    Newman, Lex, “Descartes on Unknown Faculties and our Knowledge of an External World,” Philosophical Review 103 (1994), pp. 489–531
    Popkin, Richard, “Skepticism at the Time of Descartes,” Dialogos 69 (1997), pp. 243–253
    Scott, David, “Occasionalism and Occasional Causation in Descartes's Philosophy,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 38 (2000), pp. 5–16
    Shapiro, Lisa, “Princess Elizabeth and Descartes: The Union of Soul and Body and the Practice of Philosophy,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 7 (1999), pp. 503–20
    Simmons, Alison, “Sensible Ends: Latent Teleology in Descartes' Account of Sensation,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 39 (2002), pp. 49–75
    Voss, Stephen, “Scientific and Practical Certainty in Descartes,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 67 (1993), pp. 569–85
    The seventeenth-century background to the Meditations
    Buchdahl, Gerd, Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Science, Oxford, Blackwell, 1969
    Burtt, E. A., The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1932 (repr. 1972)
    Rogers, John, The Matter of Revolution: Science, Poetry and Politics in the Age of Reason, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1996
    Shapin, Steven, The Scientific Revolution, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1996
    Willey, Basil, The Seventeenth-Century Background: Studies of the Thought of the Age in Relation to Poetry and Religion, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986

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