Description
Book SynopsisThis volume collects some of the seminal essays on Descartes by Daniel Garber, a pre-eminent scholar of early-modern philosophy. The unifying theme of the volume is the interconnection between Descartes' philosophical and scientific interests, and the extent to which these two sides of the Cartesian program illuminate each other.
Trade Review'This valuable collection of seminal papers, some heretofore not easily accessible, no doubt will enrich a wide audience especially students of and professionals engaged in early modern history of philosophy, ideas, or science. It enticingly shows the development of thought over time of one of the world's leading scholars of Descartes' system of philosophy.' The European Legacy
'One of the merits of these essays is that they engage with the full scope of Descartes's texts, and are sensitive to variations between Latin and French versions of the originals.' British Journal for the History of Philosophy
Table of ContentsIntroduction; Part I. Historiographical Preliminaries: 1. Does history have a future? Some reflections on Bennett and doing philosophy historically; Part II. Method, Order and Certainty: 2. Descartes and method in 1637; 3. A point of order: analysis, synthesis, and Descartes's Principles; 4. J. B. Morin and the Second Objections; 5. Descartes and experiment in the Discourse and Essays; 6. Descartes on knowledge and certainty; Part III. Mind, Body, and the Laws of Nature: 7. Mind, body, and the laws of nature in Descartes and Leibniz; 8. Understanding interaction: what Descartes should have told Elizabeth; 9. How God causes motion: Descartes, divine sustenance, and occasionalism; 10. Descartes and occasionalism; 11. Semel in Vita: the scientific background to Descartes meditations; 12. Forms and qualities in the Sixth Replies; Part IV. Larger Visions: 13. Descartes, or the cultivation of the intellect; 14. Experiment, community, and the constitution of nature in the seventeenth century.
