A Companion to Descartes

Blackwell Companions to Philosophy This outstanding student reference series offers a comprehensive and authoritative survey of philosophy as a whole. Written by today's leading philosophers, each volume provides lucid and engaging coverage of the key figures, terms, topics, and problems of the field. Taken together, the volumes provide the ideal basis for course use, representing an unparalleled work of reference for students and specialists alike. Recent titles published in the series: A Companion to HeideggerEdited by Hubert L. Dreyfus and Mark A. Wrathall A Companion to NietzscheEdited by Keith Ansell Pearson A Companion to SocratesEdited by Sara Ahbel-Rappe and Rachana Kamtekar A Companion to Kant Edited by Graham Bird A Companion to Plato Edited by Hugh H. Benson With 30 newly commissioned essays, A Companion to Descartes details in unparalleled depth the work of the seventeenth-century philosopher-scientist commonly regarded as the founder of modern philosophy. Alongside discussion of his seminal contributions to our understanding of skepticism, mind-body dualism, self-knowledge, innate ideas, substance, causality, God, and the nature of animals, the volume provides in several essays a valuable orientation to the intellectual, religious, and scientific contexts that were important to Descartes's work. Concluding with discussions of the impact of Descartes's work on subsequent generations of philosophers, this volume offers fresh and distinctive scholarly perspectives on this giant of the history of modern thought.