Descartes Reinvented

This study rehabilitates unpopular views in analytic philosophy, serving as an interpretation of unreconstructed Cartesianism.

Tom Sorell (Author)

9780521851145, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 11 July 2005

204 pages
23.5 x 16 x 2.4 cm, 0.42 kg

"Sorrell's interpretations are careful and, by and large, sound, given the intention with which they are offered. Were one of my historicophobic colleagues to ask why Descartes...should be worth studying, I would, without misgivings, direct him to Descarte Reinvented." - Dennis Des Chene, Washington University in Saint Louis

In this study, Tom Sorell seeks to rehabilitate views that are often instantly dismissed in analytic philosophy. His book serves as a reinterpretation of Cartesianism and responds directly to the dislike of Descartes in contemporary philosophy. To identify what is defensible in Cartesianism, Sorell starts with a picture of unreconstructed Cartesianism, which is characterized as realistic, antisceptical but respectful of scepticism, rationalist, centered on the first person, dualist, and dubious of the comprehensiveness of natural science and its supposed independence of metaphysics. Bridging the gap between history of philosophy and analytic philosophy, Sorell also shows for the first time how some contemporary analytic philosophy is deeply Cartesian, despite its outward hostility to Cartesianism.

1. Radical doubt and inner space
2. Knowledge, the self and internalism
3. The belief in foundations
4. Conscious experience and the mind
5. Reason, emotion and action
6. Anthropology, misogyny, and anthropocentrism
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Western philosophy: c 1600 to c 1900 [HPCD], History of Western philosophy [HPC], Philosophy [HP]