Cottingham John - The Cambridge Companion to Descartes

This is a further volume in a series of companions to major philosophers. Each volume contains specially commissioned essays by an international team of scholars together with a substantial bibliography and will serve as a reference work for students and nonspecialists. One aim of the series is to dispel the intimidation such readers often feel when faced with the work of a difficult and challenging thinker.

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 a group of chapters on his metaphysics: the celebrated Cogito argument, the proofs of Gods existence, the Cartesian circle and the dualistic theory of the mind and its relation to his theological and scientific views. Other chapters cover the philosophical implications of his work in algebra, his place in the seventeenth-century scientific revolution, the structure of his physics, and his work on physiology, psychology, and ethics.

New readers and nonspecialists will find this the most comprehensive and accessible guide to Descartes currently available. Advanced students and specialists will find a conspectus of recent developments in the interpretation of Descartes.

THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO

DESCARTES

OTHER VOLUMES IN THIS SERIES OF CAMBRIDGE COMPANIONS:

AQUINAS Edited by NORMAN KRETZMANN and ELEONORE STUMP

ARISTOTLE Edited by JONATHAN BARNES

FOUCAULT Edited by GARY GUTTING

FREUD Edited by JEROME NEU

HEGEL Edited by FREDERICK BEISER

HEIDEGGER Edited by CHARLES GUIGNON

HOBBES Edited by TOM SORRELL

HUME Edited by DAVID FATE NORTON

HUSSERL Edited by BARRY SMITH and DAVID WOODRUFF SMITH

KANT Edited by PAUL GUYER

LEIBNIZ Edited by NICHOLAS JOLLEY

LOCKE Edited by VERE CHAPPELL

MARX Edited by TERRELL CARVER

MILL Edited by JOHN SKORUPSKI

NIETZSCHE Edited by BERND MAGNUS

PLATO Edited by RICHARD KRAUT

SARTRE Edited by CHRISTINA HOWELLS

SPINOZA Edited by DON GARRETT

The Cambridge Companion to

DESCARTES

Edited by John Cottingham

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Cambridge University Press 1992

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First published 1992
10th printing 2005

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ISBN 978-0-521-36623-6 hardback
ISBN 978-0-521-36696-0 paperback

Transferred to digital printing 2009

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CONTENTS

CONTRIBUTORS

ROGER ARIEW is Professor of Philosophy at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University; he is translator of Martial Gueroult, Descartes Philosophy according to the Order of Reasons (19845) and Pierre Duhem, Medieval Cosmology (1985), co-translator of Leibniz: Philosophical Essays (1989), and co-editor of Revolution and Continuity: Essays in the History and Philosophy of Early Modern Science (1991).

JEAN-MARIE BEYSSADE is Professor of Philosophy at the University of ParisSorbonne. He is the author of La philosophie premire de Descartes (1979) and translator of Lentretien avec Burman (1981); since 1988 he has been Chairman of the Centre dEtudes Cartsiennes.

DESMOND CLARKE is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Vice-President at University College, Cork; he is author of Descartes Philosophy of Science (1982), Occult Powers and Hypotheses (1989), and general editor of the Classics of Philosophy and Science series, which includes his translation of Poulain de la Barre, The Equality of the Sexes (1990).

JOHN COTTINGHAM is Professor of Philosophy and Head of the Philosophy Department at the University of Reading. He is the author of Rationalism (1984), Descartes (1986), and The Rationalists (Oxford History of Western Philosophy series, 1986), editor of Descartes Conversation with Burman (1976), and co-translator of The Philosophical Writings of Descartes (198591).

DANIEL GARBER is Professor of Philosophy and Chairman of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Descartes Metaphysical Physics (1992), the co-translator of Leibniz: Philosophical Essays (1989), and the coeditor of the forthcoming Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy

STEPHEN GAUKROGER is Reader in Philosophy at the University of Sydney. He is author of Explanatory Structures (1978) and Cartesian Logic (1989), editor of Descartes: Philosophy Mathematics and Physics (1980) and The Uses of Antiquity (1991), and translator of Arnauld: On True and False Ideas (1990).

GARY HATFIELD is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of The Natural and the Normative: Theories of Spatial Perception from Kant to Helmholtz (1991) and of numerous essays on philosophy and science in the seventeenth century.

NICHOLAS JOLLEY is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, San Diego, and author of Leibniz and Locke (1984) and The Light of the Soul (1990).

LOUIS E. LOEB is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; author of From Descartes to Hume: Continental Metaphysics and the Development of Modern Philosophy (1981) and of numerous articles on the history of early modern philosophy.

JEAN-LUC MARION is Professor of the History of Classical Philosophy at the University of Paris XNanterre. He is the author of Sur lontologie grise de Descartes (1975), Sur la thologie blanche de Descartes (1981), and Sur le prisme mtaphysique de Descartes (1986), and translator (in collaboration with P. Costabel) of Ren Descartes, Rgles utiles et claires pour la direction de lesprit dans la recherche de la vrit (1977).

PETER MARKIE is Professor of Philosophy at the University of MissouriColumbia and author of Descartess Gambit (1986), and of various articles on Descartes, and on ethics and intentionality.