Descartes and Augustine

Stephen Menn demonstrates Descartes' use of the central ideas of Augustine.

Stephen Menn (Author)

9780521012843, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 28 January 2002

434 pages
22.8 x 15.3 x 2.2 cm, 0.57 kg

'… a fresh and excitingly bold reading of Descartes … Stephen Menn's wonderful book makes Augustine's Fourth Century much less remote from Descartes's seventeenth century than we had thought it was.' Philosophy in Review

This book is a systematic study of Descartes' relation to Augustine. It offers a complete reevaluation of Descartes' thought and as such will be of major importance to all historians of medieval, neo-Platonic, or early modern philosophy. Stephen Menn demonstrates that Descartes uses Augustine's central ideas as a point of departure for a critique of medieval Aristotelian physics, which he replaces with a new, mechanistic anti-Aristotelian physics. Special features of the book include a reading of the Meditations, a comprehensive historical and philosophical introduction to Augustine's thought, a detailed account of Plotinus, and a contextualization of Descartes' mature philosophical project which explores both the framework within which it evolved and the early writings, to show how the collapse of the early project drove Descartes to the writings of Augustine.

Introduction
1. Descartes and the history of philosophy
2. Descartes' project for a new philosophy
Part I. Augustinian Wisdom: 3. Plotinus
4. Augustine
Part II. Descartes' Metaphysics: 5. The design of the Meditations
6. Isolating the soul and God
7. Theodicy and Method
8. From God to bodies
9. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Philosophy of religion [HRAB], Western philosophy: Medieval & Renaissance, c 500 to c 1600 [HPCB]