Argument and Persuasion in Descartes' Meditations

ISBN-13: 9780195399608 / Angielski / Twarda / 2010 / 248 str.

David Cunning

Opis

Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy has proven to be not only one of the canonical texts of Western philosophy, but also the site of a great deal of interpretive activity in scholarship on the history of early modern philosophy over the last two decades. David Cunning's monograph proposes a new interpretation, which is that from beginning to end the reasoning of the Meditations is the first-person reasoning of a thinker who starts from a confused non-Cartesian paradigm and moves slowly and awkwardly toward a grasp of just a few of the central theses of Descartes' system. The meditator of the Meditations is not a full-blown Cartesian at the start or middle or even the end of inquiry, and accordingly the Meditations is riddled with confusions throughout. Cunning argues that Descartes is trying to capture the kind of reasoning that a non-Cartesian would have to engage in to make the relevant epistemic progress, and that the Meditations rhetorically models that reasoning.

Recenzje

One might have thought it mearly impossible at this late date to write a new book containing a well argued, fresh perspective on fundamental features of Descarte's philosophy. With this book, David Cunning has achieved that nearly impossible feat. The accomplishment is especially remarkable give his focus on the Meditations, which is one of the most thoroughly studied works of philosophy in existance.

O autorze

David Cunning is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Iowa.