Descartes & the Autonomy of the Human Understanding

Descartes & the Autonomy of the Human Understanding PDF Author: John Carriero
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113575229X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 191

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Book Description
This volume, originally published in 1990, delineates the transition Descartes effects from a prevalent medieval conception of understanding to a modern conception of it. Through the examination of the continuities and discontinuities between Descartes' account of the understanding and that of high scholasticism, a characterization emerges of two way in which the understanding is autonomous in Descartes' view. These two sorts of autonomy shed light on the origin of a set of related concerns that give modern philosophy its coherence, setting it apart from medieval philosophy as a distinct tradition. The first sort - the independence of the understanding of the senses - creates the modern problem of scepticism with regard to the external world. The second sort, concerning the ontological status of the mind, provides the background against which modern discussions of the mind/body problem take shape.

Descartes & the Autonomy of the Human Understanding

Descartes & the Autonomy of the Human Understanding PDF Author: John Carriero
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113575229X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 191

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume, originally published in 1990, delineates the transition Descartes effects from a prevalent medieval conception of understanding to a modern conception of it. Through the examination of the continuities and discontinuities between Descartes' account of the understanding and that of high scholasticism, a characterization emerges of two way in which the understanding is autonomous in Descartes' view. These two sorts of autonomy shed light on the origin of a set of related concerns that give modern philosophy its coherence, setting it apart from medieval philosophy as a distinct tradition. The first sort - the independence of the understanding of the senses - creates the modern problem of scepticism with regard to the external world. The second sort, concerning the ontological status of the mind, provides the background against which modern discussions of the mind/body problem take shape.

Spinoza on Human Freedom

Spinoza on Human Freedom PDF Author: Matthew J. Kisner
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139500090
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
Spinoza was one of the most influential figures of the Enlightenment, but his often obscure metaphysics makes it difficult to understand the ultimate message of his philosophy. Although he regarded freedom as the fundamental goal of his ethics and politics, his theory of freedom has not received sustained, comprehensive treatment. Spinoza holds that we attain freedom by governing ourselves according to practical principles, which express many of our deepest moral commitments. Matthew J. Kisner focuses on this theory and presents an alternative picture of the ethical project driving Spinoza's philosophical system. His study of the neglected practical philosophy provides an accessible and concrete picture of what it means to live as Spinoza's ethics envisioned.

Descartes as a Moral Thinker

Descartes as a Moral Thinker PDF Author: Gary Steiner
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
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The Philosophy of Childhood

The Philosophy of Childhood PDF Author: Gareth Matthews
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674664807
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 152

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Book Description
Adult preconceptions about the mental life of children tend to discourage a child’s philosophical bent. By exposing the underpinnings of adult views of childhood, Matthews clears the way for recognizing the philosophy of childhood as a legitimate field of inquiry and conducts us through influential models for understanding what it is to be a child.

Cartesian Reflections

Cartesian Reflections PDF Author: John Cottingham
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781383036084
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
John Cottingham explores central areas of his philosophy, including his views on the nature of thought, the relationship between mind and body, his scientific worldview and its influence on modern thinking, the place of God in his philosophical system, and his account of the emotions and the good life.

Argument and Persuasion in Descartes' Meditations

Argument and Persuasion in Descartes' Meditations PDF Author: David Cunning
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199774471
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy has proven to be not only one of the canonical texts of Western philosophy, but also the site of a great deal of interpretive activity in scholarship on the history of early modern philosophy over the last two decades. David Cunning's monograph proposes a new interpretation, which is that from beginning to end the reasoning of the Meditations is the first-person reasoning of a thinker who starts from a confused non-Cartesian paradigm and moves slowly and awkwardly toward a grasp of just a few of the central theses of Descartes' system. The meditator of the Meditations is not a full-blown Cartesian at the start or middle or even the end of inquiry, and accordingly the Meditations is riddled with confusions throughout. Cunning argues that Descartes is trying to capture the kind of reasoning that a non-Cartesian would have to engage in to make the relevant epistemic progress, and that the Meditations rhetorically models that reasoning. He proposes that Descartes is reflecting on what happens in philosophical inquiry: we are unclear about something, we roam about using our existing concepts and intuitions, we abandon or revise some of these, and then eventually we come to see a result as clear that we did not see as clear before. Thus Cunning's fundamental insight is that Descartes is a teacher, and the reader a student. With that reading in mind, a significant number of the interpretive problems that arise in the Descartes literature dissolve when we make a distinction between the Cartesian and non-Cartesian elements of the Meditations, and a better understanding of surrounding texts is achieved as well. This important volume will be of great interest to scholars of early modern philosophy.

Passions of the Soul

Passions of the Soul PDF Author: René Descartes
Publisher: Hackett Publishing
ISBN: 162466198X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
TABLE OF CONTENTS: Translator's Introduction Introduction by Genevieve Rodis-Lewis The Passions of the Soul: Preface PART I: About the Passions in General, and Incidentally about the Entire Nature of Man PART II: About the Number and Order of the Passions, and the Explanation of the Six Primitives PART III: About the Particular Passions Lexicon: Index to Lexicon Bibliography Index Index Locorum

Discourse on Method and Meditations

Discourse on Method and Meditations PDF Author: Rene Descartes
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 9780486432526
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 134

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Book Description
Two works from the father of modern philosophy. In Discourse on Method, he formulated a scientific approach comprising four principles, including to accept only what reason recognizes as "clear and distinct." In Meditations, he explores the mind/body distinction, the nature of truth and error, the existence of God, and the essence of material things.

Descartes's Metaphysical Reasoning

Descartes's Metaphysical Reasoning PDF Author: Roger Florka
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780815340355
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
First Published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The Invention of Autonomy

The Invention of Autonomy PDF Author: Jerome B. Schneewind
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521479387
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 652

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Book Description
This remarkable book is the most comprehensive study ever written of the history of moral philosophy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Its aim is to set Kant's still influential ethics in its historical context by showing in detail what the central questions in moral philosophy were for him and how he arrived at his own distinctive ethical views. The book is organised into four main sections, each exploring moral philosophy by discussing the work of many influential philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In an epilogue the author discusses Kant's view of his own historicity, and of the aims of moral philosophy. In its range, in its analyses of many philosophers not discussed elsewhere, and in revealing the subtle interweaving of religious and political thought with moral philosophy, this is an unprecedented account of the evolution of Kant's ethics.