Descartes's Metaphysical Reasoning
Author: Roger Florka
Publisher: Psychology Press
Published: 2001
Total Pages: 136
ISBN-13: 9780815340355
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFirst Published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Posts
Self, Reason, and Freedom
Author: Andrea Christofidou
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013
Total Pages: 277
ISBN-13: 0415501067
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book sheds new light on the role of freedom in Descartes' thought and defends the theory of an internal relation between freedom and reason in his metaphysics.
Meditations on First Philosophy & Other Metaphysical Writings
Author: René Descartes
Publisher: Arcturus Publishing
Published: 2021-01-15
Total Pages: 381
ISBN-13: 1398809985
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe Meditations on First Philosophy is one of Descartes's best-known works and one of the most influential philosophical texts ever written, this treatise offers Descartes' metaphysical views on the relationship between the mind and thought, the nature of reality and how accumulated knowledge and our experiences affect us. First published in 1641, the work consists of six meditations on the following topics: the dubiousness of thoughts and assumptions - as Descartes puts it, 'what can be called into doubt'; the nature of the human mind; the existence of God; truth versus falsehood; the essence of material things and, finally, the difference between mind and body. For anyone interested in the study of philosophy, this is an essential and illuminating read. This volume also includes the great philosopher's Discourse on the Method, a brilliant discussion of reasoning and experimentation which helped establish the foundations of the scientific process, a selection of enlightening essays from his Principles of Philosophy and a classic introduction by Frank Sewall.
Reason, Will and Sensation
Author: John Cottingham
Publisher:
Published: 2023
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 9781383013382
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThese essays by leading scholars offers a reassessment of Descartes's philosophy. Three central and closely connected areas of his thought are explored: the nature of reason and truth, the relation between the will and the intellect, and the role of the senses in the development of knowledge.
Discourse on Method
Author: René Descartes
Publisher: Broadview Press
Published: 2020-08-10
Total Pages: 92
ISBN-13: 1554813174
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe Discourse on the Method for Reasoning Well and for Seeking Truth in the Sciences offers a concise presentation and defense of René Descartes’s method of intellectual inquiry — a method that greatly influenced both philosophical and scientific reasoning in the early modern world. Descartes’s timeless writing strikes an uncommon balance of novelty and familiarity, offering arguments concerning knowledge, science, and metaphysics (including the famous “I think, therefore I am”) that are as compelling in the twenty-first century as they were in the seventeenth. Ian Johnston’s new translation of the original French text is modern, clear, and thoroughly annotated, ideal for readers unfamiliar with Descartes’s intellectual context. An approachable introduction engages both the historical and the philosophical aspects of the text, helping the reader to understand the concepts and arguments contained therein.
The Metaphysics of the Material World
Author: Tad M. Schmaltz
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 2019
Total Pages: 313
ISBN-13: 0190070226
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn The Metaphysics of the Material World, Tad M. Schmaltz traces a particular development of the metaphysics of the material world in early modern thought. The route Schmaltz follows derives from a critique of Spinoza in the work of Pierre Bayle. Bayle charged in particular that Spinoza's monistic conception of the material world founders on the account of extension and its "modes" and parts that he inherited from Descartes, and that Descartes in turn inherited from late scholasticism, and ultimately from Aristotle. After an initial discussion of Bayle's critique of Spinoza and its relation to Aristotle's distinction between substance and accident, this study starts with the original re-conceptualization of Aristotle's metaphysics of the material world that we find in the work of the early modern scholastic Su�rez. What receives particular attention is Su�rez's introduction of the "modal distinction" and his distinctive account of the Aristotelian accident of "continuous quantity." This examination of Su�rez is followed by a treatment of the connections of his particular version of the scholastic conception of the material world to the very different conception that Descartes offered. Especially important is Descartes's view of the relation of extended substance both to its modes and to the parts that compose it. Finally, there is a consideration of what these developments in Su�rez and Descartes have to teach us about Spinoza's monistic conception of the material world. Of special concern here is to draw on this historical narrative to provide a re-assessment of Bayle's critique of Spinoza.
Self, Reason, and Freedom
Author: Andrea Christofidou
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-01-03
Total Pages: 277
ISBN-13: 1136183914
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFreedom and its internal relation to reason is fundamental to Descartes’ philosophy in general, and to his Meditations on First Philosophy in particular. Without freedom his entire enquiry would not get off the ground, and without understanding the rôle of freedom in his work, we could not understand what motivates key parts of his metaphysics. Yet, not only is freedom a relatively overlooked element, but its internal relation to reason has gone unnoticed by most studies of his philosophy. Self, Reason, and Freedom: A New Light on Descartes’ Metaphysics, by defending freedom’s internal relation to reason, sheds new light on Descartes’ metaphysics and restores the often dismissed Fourth Meditation to the core of his metaphysics as he conceived it. Implicit in that relation is a rejection of any authority external to reason. Andrea Christofidou shows how this lends strength and explanatory force to Descartes’ enquiry, and reveals his conception of the unity of the self and of its place in the world. Self, Reason, and Freedom: A New Light on Descartes’ Metaphysics is essential reading for students and scholars of Descartes and anyone studying seventeenth-century philosophy.
Meditations on First Philosophy
Author: René Descartes
Publisher:
Published: 2000
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 9780941736121
DOWNLOAD EBOOKBetween Two Worlds
Author: John Carriero
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2009
Total Pages: 538
ISBN-13: 0691135614
DOWNLOAD EBOOKBetween Two Worlds is an authoritative commentary on--and powerful reinterpretation of--the founding work of modern philosophy, Descartes's Meditations. Philosophers have tended to read Descartes's seminal work in an occasional way, examining its treatment of individual topics while ignoring other parts of the text. In contrast, John Carriero provides a sustained, systematic reading of the whole text, giving a detailed account of the positions against which Descartes was reacting, and revealing anew the unity, meaning, and originality of the Meditations. Carriero finds in the Meditations a nearly continuous argument against Thomistic Aristotelian ways of thinking about cognition, and shows more clearly than ever before how Descartes bridged the old world of scholasticism and the new one of mechanistic naturalism. Rather than casting Descartes's project primarily in terms of skepticism, knowledge, and certainty, Carriero focuses on fundamental disagreements between Descartes and the scholastics over the nature of understanding, the relation between the senses and the intellect, the nature of the human being, and how and to what extent God is cognized by human beings. Against this background, Carriero shows, Descartes developed his own conceptions of mind, body, and the relation between them, creating a coherent, philosophically rich project in the Meditations and setting the agenda for a century of rationalist metaphysics.
Discourse on the Method
Author: René Descartes
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 1996-01-01
Total Pages: 400
ISBN-13: 9780300067736
DOWNLOAD EBOOKDescartes' ideas not only changed the course of Western philosophy but also led to or transformed the fields of metaphysics, epistemology, physics and mathematics, political theory and ethics, psychoanalysis, and literature and the arts. This book reprints Descartes' major works, Discourse on Method and Meditations, and presents essays by leading scholars that explore his contributions in each of those fields and place his ideas in the context of his time and our own. There are chapters by David Weissman on metaphysics and psychoanalysis, John Post on epistemology, Lou Massa on physics and mathematics, William T. Bluhm on politics and ethics, and Thomas Pavel on literature and art. These essays are accompanied by others by David Weissman and by Stephen Toulmin that introduce the idea of intellectual lineages, discuss the period in which Descartes wrote, and reexamine the premises of his philosophy in light of contemporary philosophical, political, and social thinking.
