Descartes
Subtitle: An Analytical And Historical Introduction
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Usa
Published: Apr 11, 2013
Language: eng
Format: paperback
Number of pages: 344
ISBN-13: 9780195380323
Description: This new edition of Georges Dicker's commentary on Descartes's masterpiece, Meditations on First Philosophy, features a new chapter on the fourth meditation and improved treatments of the famous cogito ergo sum and the notorious problem of the Cartesian Circle, among numerous other improvements and updates. Clear and accessible, it serves as an introduction to Descartes's ideas for undergraduates and as a sophisticated companion to his Meditations for advanced readers. The volume provides a thorough discussion of several basic issues of epistemology and metaphysics elicited from the main themes and arguments of the meditations. It also delves into the work's historical background and critical reception. Dicker offers his own assessments of the Cartesian doubt, the cogito, the causal and ontological proofs of God's existence, Cartesian freedom and theodicy, Cartesian Dualism, and Descartes's views about the existence and nature of the material world. The commentary also incorporates a wealth of recent Descartes scholarship, and incalculates - but does not presuppose - knowledge of the methods of contemporary analytic philosophy.
Notes: Source title: Descartes: An Analytical And Historical Introduction