Descartes's Theory of Action

Erscheinungsjahr 2006
ISBN: 978-90-04-15205-2
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 142, 310 Seiten, Format (B × H): 168 mm x 239 mm, Gewicht: 726 g

Reihe: Brill's Studies in Intellectual History

This volume has a single goal: to argue that Descartes’s most fundamental discovery is not the epistemological subject, but rather the underlying free agent without whom no epistemological subject is possible. This fresh interpretation of the Cartesian “cogito” is defended through a close reading of Descartes’s masterpiece, the Meditations. Special attention is paid to the historical roots of Descartes’s interest in free agency, particularly his close ties to the French School of spirituality. Three aspects of Descartes’s personal evolution are considered: his aesthetic evolution from Baroque concealment to Classicism, his political evolution from feudal nostalgia to modern secularism, and his spiritual evolution from Stoic wisdom to active engagement in the world through the scientific project.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Davenport, Anne

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Philosophie: Allgemeines, Methoden

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface

1. Spiritual Directors and Spiritual Action
2. Passion and Action in Rule XII
3. The Insights of Orthopraxy
4. A Discourse on Resolve
5. Tempus ad Agendum: the Time to Act
6. Basic Action Revisited
7. I Refrain, Therefore I am
8. Induction and Infinity
9. Action and Individuation
10. Beyond Obedience and Indifference
11. Is Free Agency Required for the Perception of Truth?
12. Agency and the Order of Nature

Bibliography
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Anne A. Davenport, Ph.D. (1998) in History of Science, Harvard University, is Assistant Professor of Humanities in the Honors Program at Boston College. She has published works on Early Modern theories of the infinite, on Descartes as philosopher of Action and on the theological turn in phenomenology.