Subject: Philosophy Book Title: Descartes: An Intellectual Biography
Descartes: An Intellectual Biography
Gaukroger, Stephen,
Reader in Philosophy,
University of Sydney
Print publication date: 1997
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2003 Print ISBN-13: 978-0-19-823724-2 doi:10.1093/0198237243.001.0001 |
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Abstract:
Stephen Gaukroger traces the development of Descartes's thought in the social, religious, and intellectual context of seventeenth-century Europe. Gaukroger describes Descartes's upbringing and his education at the Jesuit La Flèche collège, and shows the role these played in the development of his ground-breaking work in philosophy and science. The book details the effects of his relationships with others on his work, both through collaboration and through conflict. It discusses the history of the composition of his major works and details their structure and content. It documents the correspondence, which played a major part in the development of his thinking, both before and after publication. The book concludes, as it begins, with his correspondence with Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia on the subject of the passions.
Keywords: body, cosmology, Descartes, dualism, mathematics, metaphysics, mind, natural philosophy, optics, passions, philosophy, scepticism, science, seventeenth century, theory of method Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction
1.
‘A Learned and Eloquent Piety’
2.
An Education in Propriety 1606–1618
3.
The Apprenticeship with Beeckman 1618–1619
4.
The Search for Method 1619–1625
5.
The Paris Years 1625–1628
6.
A New Beginning 1629–1630
7.
A New System of the World 1630–1633
8.
The Years of Consolidation 1634–1640
9.
The Defence of Natural Philosophy 1640–1644
10.
Melancholia and the Passions 1643–1650
Bibliography
Index
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doi:10.1093/0198237243.001.0001
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