The essays in this volume form a commentary on Descartes' Meditations. Following the sequence of the meditational stages, the authors analyze the function of each stage in transforming the reader, to realize his essential nature as a rational inquirer, capable of scientific, demonstrable knowledge of the world. There are essays on the genre of meditational writing, on the implications of the opening cathartic section of the book on Descartes' theory of perception and his use of skeptical arguments; essays on the theory of ideas and their role of Descartes' reconstructive analytic method; essays on the proofs for the existence of God, on the role of the will in the formation and malformation of judgments; and the essays on the foundations of the science of extension and on Descartes' account of the union of mind and body.
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Essays on Descartes' Meditations
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Table of contents
- Contents
- Preface
- Chronology
- General Bibliography
- 1. The Structure of Descartes’ Meditations
- 2. The Naive Narrator: Meditation in Descartes’ Meditations
- 3. The Senses and the Fleshless Eye: The Meditations as Cognitive Exercises
- 4. Semel in vita: The Scientific Background to Descartes’ Meditations
- 5. Descartes and the Metaphysics of Doubt
- 6. Descartes and the Problem of Other Minds
- 7. Analysis in the Meditations: The Quest for Clear and Distinct Ideas
- 8. The Theory of Ideas
- 9. The Second Meditation and the Essence of the Mind
- 10. Meaning and Objective Being: Descartes and His Sources
- 11. Is There Radical Dissimulation in Descartes’ Meditations?
- 12. On the Complementarity of Meditations III and V: From the “General Rule” of Evidence to “Certain Science”
- 13. The Essential Incoherence of Descartes’ Definition of Divinity
- 14. Can I Be the Cause of My Idea of the World? (Descartes on the Infinite and Indefinite)
- 15. The Idea of the True God in Descartes
- 16. Confused and Obscure Ideas of Sense
- 17. Will and the Theory of Judgment
- 18. Objectum Purae Matheseos: Mathematical Construction and the Passage from Essence to Existence
- 19. The Status of Necessity and Impossibility in Descartes
- 20. Descartes: “All Things Which I Conceive Clearly and Distinctly in Corporeal Objects Are in Them”
- 21. Why Was Descartes a Foundationalist?
- 22. Cartesian Passions and the Union of Mind and Body
- Contributors
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Yes, you can access Essays on Descartes' Meditations by Amélie Oksenberg Rorty in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Philosophy & Ethics & Moral Philosophy. We have over 1.5 million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.