René  Descartes 1632–1704 France, Netherlands, Sweden

Questions of 

Complete mind- body dualism. Thoughts are passions in the soul. In the Cartesian teaching the passions are good in themselves, but they must be kept in subjection to the law of moral order. What this law is he does not clearly indicate; he gives only some scattered precepts in which one may discern a noble effort to build up a Stoico-Christian system of ethics.

Assigned Reading

Commentaries

Primary sources:

• Oeuvres de Descartes, ed. by C. Adam and P. Tannery (Cerf, 1896-1913)
• The Philosophical Works of Descartes, tr. by E. S. Haldane and G. T. R. Ross. (Cambridge, 1968) 
• The Philosophical Writings of Descartes: The Correspondence, ed. by John Cottingham, et. al. (Cambridge, 1991) 
• René Descartes, Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy, tr. by Donald A. Cress (Hackett, 1999) 
• René Descartes, Discourse on Method{from eBooks}
• The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, tr. by John Cottingham Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch (Cambridge, 1985) 
• René Descartes, Philosophical Essays and Correspondence, ed. by Roger Ariew (Hackett, 2000) 
• René Descartes, The World and Other Writings, ed. by Stephen Gaukroger (Cambridge, 1998) 
• René Descartes, Discourse De La Methode / Discourse on the Method (Bilingual Edition), ed. by George Heffernan (Notre Dame, 1994) 
• René Descartes, Meditationes De Prima Philosophia / Meditations on First Philosophy (Bilingual Edition), ed. by George Heffernan (Notre Dame, 1990) 

Secondary sources:

• Richard Watson, Cogito Ergo Sum: The Life of Rene Descartes (Godine, 2002) 
• The Cambridge Companion to Descartes, ed. by John Cottingham (Cambridge, 1992) 
• Marjorie Grene, Descartes (Hackett, 1998)
• Anthony Kenny, Descartes: A Study of His Philosophy (St. Augustine, 1993) 
• Margaret Dauler Wilson, Ideas and Mechanism (Princeton, 1999) 
• Feminist Interpretations of Rene Descartes, ed. by Susan Bordo (Penn. State, 1999) 
• John Cottingham, Descartes (Routledge, 1999) 
• George Dicker, Descartes: An Analytical and Historical Introduction (Oxford, 1993) 
• Daniel E. Flage and Clarence A. Bonnen, Descartes and Method: The Search for a Method in the Meditations (Routledge, 1999) 
• Daniel Garber, Descartes Embodied: Reading Cartesian Philosophy Through Cartesian Science (Cambridge, 2001) 
• Roger Florka, Descartes's Metaphysical Reasoning (Routledge, 2001) 
• Martial Gueroult, Descartes' Philosophy Interpreted according to the Order of Reasons, tr. by Roger Ariew [in two volumes] (Minnesota, 1984)
• E. M. Curley, Descartes Against the Skeptics (Iuniverse, 1999) 
• Janet Broughton, Descartes's Method of Doubt (Princeton, 2002) 
• Descartes' Natural Philosophy, ed. by Stephen Gaukroger and John Schuster (Routledge, 2000) 
• Daniel Garber, Descartes' Metaphysical Physics (Chicago, 1992) 

Other Writings

Quotations

''But immediately upon this I observed that, whilst I thus wished to think that all was false, it was absolutely necessary that I, who thus thought, should be somewhat; and as I observed that this truth, I think, therefore I am, was so certain and of such evidence that no ground of doubt, however extravagant, could be alleged by the skeptics capable of shaking it, I concluded that I might, without scruple, accept it as the first principle of the philosophy of which I was in search.'' [Discourse on Method]

''Common sense is the best distributed commodity in the world, for every man is convinced that he is well supplied with it.'' [Discourse on Method]

''If you would be a real seeker after truth, you must at least once in your life doubt, as far as possible, all things.'' [Discourse on Method]

Mind is an entirely separate substance from the body, and, moreover, that its nature is wholly distinct from the nature of anything physical: it is an incorporeal, indivisible, non-spatial, unextended thing, which is 'entirely distinct from the body, and would not fail to be what it is even if the body did not exist' (Discourse on the Method, pt. iv).

Geographical and Historical Situation