Descartes An Intellectual Biography

Author : Stephen Gaukroger
Publisher : Clarendon Press
ISBN 13 : 0191519545
Total Pages : 522 pages
Book Rating : 4.43/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Descartes: An Intellectual Biography written by Stephen Gaukroger and published by Clarendon Press. This book was released on 1995-03-30 with total page 522 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: René Descartes (1596-1650) is the father of modern philosophy, and one of the greatest of all thinkers. This is the first intellectual biography of Descartes in English; it offers a fundamental reassessment of all aspects of his life and work. Stephen Gaukroger, a leading authority on Descartes, traces his intellectual development from childhood, showing the connections between his intellectual and personal life and placing these in the cultural context of seventeenth century Europe. Descartes' early work in mathematics and science produced ground breaking theories, methods, and tools still in use today. This book gives the first full account of how this work informed and influenced the later philosophical studies for which, above all, Descartes is renowned. Not only were philosophy and science intertwined in Descartes' life; so were philosophy and religion. The Church of Rome found Galileo guilty of heresy in 1633; two decades earlier, Copernicus' theories about the universe had been denounced as blasphemous. To avoid such accusations, Descartes clothed his views about the relation between God and humanity, and about the nature of the universe, in a philosophical garb acceptable to the Church. His most famous project was the exploration of the foundations of human knowledge, starting from the proof of one's own existence offered in the formula Cogito ergo sum, `I am thinking therefore I exist'. Stephen Gaukroger argues that this was not intended as an exercise in philosophical scepticism, but rather to provide Descartes' scientific theories, influenced as they were by Copernicus and Galileo, with metaphysical legitimation. This book offers for the first time a full understanding of how Descartes developed his revolutionary ideas. It will be welcomed by all readers interested in the origins of modern thought.

Author : Geneviève Rodis-Lewis
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780801486272
Total Pages : 292 pages
Book Rating : 4.70/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Descartes written by Geneviève Rodis-Lewis and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This major intellectual biography illuminates the personal and historical events of Descartes's life, from his birth and early years in France to his death in Sweden, his burial, and the fate of his remains. Concerned not only with historical events but also with the development of Descartes's personality, Rodis-Lewis speculates on the effect childhood impressions may have had on his philosophy and scientific theories. She considers in detail his friendships, particularly with Isaac Beeckman and Marin Mersenne. Primarily on the basis of his private correspondence, Rodis-Lewis gives a thorough and balanced discussion of his personality. The Descartes she depicts is by turns generous and unforgiving, arrogant and open-minded, loyal in his friendships but eager for the isolation his work required. Drawing on Descartes's writings and his public and private correspondence, she corrects the errors of earlier biographies and clarifies many obscure episodes in the philosopher's life.

Author : Steven M. Nadler
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691157308
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.06/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Philosopher, the Priest, and the Painter written by Steven M. Nadler and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A unique combination of philosophy, biography, and art history. The philospher, the priest, and the painter investigates the remarkable individuals and the circumstances behind a small portrait.

Author : Stephen Gaukroger
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780521005258
Total Pages : 270 pages
Book Rating : 4.56/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Descartes' System of Natural Philosophy written by Stephen Gaukroger and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-03-18 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Towards the end of his life, Descartes published the first four parts of a projected six-part work, The Principles of Philosophy. This was intended to be the definitive statement of his complete system of philosophy. Gaukroger examines the whole system, and reconstructs the last two parts from Descartes' other writings.

Author : Stephen Gaukroger
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 1405150378
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.78/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Blackwell Guide to Descartes' Meditations written by Stephen Gaukroger and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-04-15 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Consisting of twelve newly commissioned essays and enhanced by William Molyneux’s famous early translation of the Meditations, this volume touches on all the major themes of one of the most influential texts in the history of philosophy. Situates the Meditations in its philosophical and historical context. Touches on all of the major themes of the Meditations, including the mind-body relation, the nature of the mind, and the existence of the material world.

Author : Desmond M. Clarke
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780521823012
Total Pages : 532 pages
Book Rating : 4.13/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Descartes: A Biography written by Desmond M. Clarke and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-03-06 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: René Descartes is best remembered today for writing 'I think, therefore I am', but his main contribution to the history of ideas was his effort to construct a philosophy that would be sympathetic to the new sciences that emerged in the seventeenth century. To a great extent he was the midwife to the Scientific Revolution and a significant contributor to its key concepts. In four major publications, he fashioned a philosophical system that accommodated the needs of these new sciences and thereby earned the unrelenting hostility of both Catholic and Calvinist theologians, who relied on the scholastic philosophy that Descartes hoped to replace. His contemporaries claimed that his proofs of God's existence in the Meditations were so unsuccessful that he must have been a cryptic atheist and that his discussion of skepticism served merely to fan the flames of libertinism. This is the first biography in English that addresses the full range of Descartes' interest in theology, philosophy and the sciences and that traces his intellectual development through his entire career.

Author : Maria Rosa Antognazza
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 623 pages
Book Rating : 4.11/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Leibniz written by Maria Rosa Antognazza and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 623 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Geneviève Rodis-Lewis
Publisher : Comstock Publishing Associates
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 296 pages
Book Rating : 4.82/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Descartes written by Geneviève Rodis-Lewis and published by Comstock Publishing Associates. This book was released on 1998 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Relatively compact biography of the seventeenth-century French philosopher is determined to reverse the slander of scandal in vogue among Descartes' recent biographers and to modify the view of his intellectual development.

Author : Richard A. Watson
Publisher : David R. Godine Publisher
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 392 pages
Book Rating : 4.34/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Cogito, Ergo Sum written by Richard A. Watson and published by David R. Godine Publisher. This book was released on 2002 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It was Descartes (1596-1650), says Watson (philosophy, Washington U., St. Louis), who established (or perhaps discovered) the rules of Reason, the foundation on which science and philosophy have been constructed since his time. He explores the life of the mathematician and philosopher, for readers who have no background in either field, but would l

Author : A.P. Martinich
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1135180792
Total Pages : 282 pages
Book Rating : 4.99/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Hobbes written by A.P. Martinich and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-01-11 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) was the first great English philosopher and one of the most important theorists of human nature and politics in the history of Western thought. This superlative introduction presents Hobbes' main doctrines and arguments, covering all of Hobbes' philosophy. A.P. Martinich begins with a helpful overview of Hobbes' life and work, setting his ideas against the political and scientific background of seventeenth-century England. He then introduces and assesses, in clear chapters, Hobbes' contributions to fundamental areas of philosophy: epistemology and metaphysics, in particular Hobbes' materialism and determinism and his relation to Descartes ethics and political philosophy, concentrating on Hobbes' most famous work, Leviathan, and the theory of the social contract it advances philosophy of science, logic and language, considering Hobbes' theory of nominalism and his writing on rhetoric and the uses of language; religion, examining Hobbes' analyses of revelation, prophets and miracles. The final chapter considers the legacy of Hobbes' thought and his influence on contemporary philosophy.