The Plain Truth: Descartes, Huet, and Skepticism

Erscheinungsjahr 2008
ISBN: 978-90-04-17115-2
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 170, 258 Seiten, Format (B × H): 165 mm x 246 mm, Gewicht: 590 g

Reihe: Brill's Studies in Intellectual History

The skeptic Pierre-Daniel Huet’s Censura philosophiae cartesianae (1689) is the most comprehensive, unrelenting and devastating critique of Descartes ever. It incisively captures all the issues that now interest readers of Descartes: the method of doubt, the cogito, clarity and distinctness as criteria of truth, the circularity of the Meditations, proofs of God’s existence, etc. Naturally, the work provoked great controversy among the Cartesians, who were implicated in various capacities—Nicolas Malebranche as the occasional cause of the publication, and Pierre-Sylvain Regis as the chief defender of the Cartesian camp. What emerges in this study of the controversy is a heroic, defensible Descartes. He possesses hitherto unappreciated answers to the criticisms that have bedeviled his philosophy from his time to ours.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Lennon, Thomas M

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Erkenntnistheorie
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Geschichte der Westlichen Philosophie Westliche Philosophie: 19. Jahrhundert

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Foreword
Abbreviations

I. People
1. Who was Huet?
2. The Censura: When and Why?
3. The Birth of Skepticism
4. Malebranche’s Surprising Silence
5. The Downfall of Cartesianism

II. Kinds
6. Huet a Cartesian?
7. Descartes and Skepticism: The Standard Interpretation
8. Descartes and Skepticism: The Texts

III. Thoughts
9. The Cogito: An Inference?
10. The Transparency of Mind
11. The Cogito as Pragmatic Tautology

IV. Doubts
12. The Reality of Doubt
13. The Generation of Doubt
14. The Response to Doubt

V. Rules
15. The Criterion of Truth
16. The Trump Argument

VI. Circles
17. The Simple Circularity of the Meditations
18. The Inner Circle(s)

VII. Gods
19. Gassendist Influences
20. The Objection of Objections
21. The Rejection of Intentionality

VIII. Virtues
22. Descartes’s Voice
23. Betting the Family Farm
24. The Propagation of Light
25. The Heart-Beat
26. The Moving Earth
27. Faith and Reason
28. Descartes as Methodological Academic Skeptic

Bibliography of Works Cited
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Thomas M. Lennon (Ph.D, Ohio State University, 1968) is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Western Ontario. Among his books are The Battle of the Gods and Giants: The Philosophical Legacies of Gassendi and Descartes, 1655-1715, and Reading Bayle.