Argument and Persuasion in Descartes' Meditations

Argument and Persuasion in Descartes' Meditations
Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Total Pages : 249
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780199774470
ISBN-13 : 0199774471
Rating : 4/5 (471 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Argument and Persuasion in Descartes' Meditations by : David Cunning

Download or read book Argument and Persuasion in Descartes' Meditations written by David Cunning and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-07-23 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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. He proposes that Descartes is reflecting on what happens in philosophical inquiry: we are unclear about something, we roam about using our existing concepts and intuitions, we abandon or revise some of these, and then eventually we come to see a result as clear that we did not see as clear before. Thus Cunning's fundamental insight is that Descartes is a teacher, and the reader a student. With that reading in mind, a significant number of the interpretive problems that arise in the Descartes literature dissolve when we make a distinction between the Cartesian and non-Cartesian elements of the Meditations, and a better understanding of surrounding texts is achieved as well. This important volume will be of great interest to scholars of early modern philosophy.


Argument and Persuasion in Descartes' Meditations Related Books

Argument and Persuasion in Descartes' Meditations
Language: en
Pages: 249
Authors: David Cunning
Categories: Philosophy
Type: BOOK - Published: 2010-07-23 - Publisher: Oxford University Press

GET EBOOK

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 inte
Argument and Persuasion in Descartes' Meditations
Language: en
Pages:
Authors: David Cunning
Categories: First philosophy
Type: BOOK - Published: 2010 - Publisher:

GET EBOOK

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 int
The Oxford Handbook of Descartes and Cartesianism
Language: en
Pages: 843
Authors: Steven Nadler
Categories: Philosophy
Type: BOOK - Published: 2019-05-02 - Publisher: Oxford University Press

GET EBOOK

The Oxford Handbook of Descartes and Cartesianism comprises fifty specially written chapters on René Descartes (1596-1650) and Cartesianism, the dominant parad
The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon
Language: en
Pages: 1642
Authors: Lawrence Nolan
Categories: Philosophy
Type: BOOK - Published: 2015-01-01 - Publisher: Cambridge University Press

GET EBOOK

The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon is the definitive reference source on René Descartes, 'the father of modern philosophy' and arguably among the most important p
Transformation and the History of Philosophy
Language: en
Pages: 381
Authors: G. Anthony Bruno
Categories: Philosophy
Type: BOOK - Published: 2023-12-22 - Publisher: Taylor & Francis

GET EBOOK

From ancient conceptions of becoming a philosopher to modern discussions of psychedelic drugs, the concept of transformation plays a fascinating part in the his