A collection of more than 30 specially commissioned essays, this volume surveys the work of the 17th-century philosopher-scientist commonly regarded as the founder of modern philosophy, while integrating unique essays detailing the context and impact of his work.

Notes on Contributors x List of Abbreviations xiv Introduction xv Part I The Intellectual Context 1 1 Life and Works 3Stephen Gaukroger 2 Aristotelian Natural Philosophy: Body, Cause, Nature 17Dennis Des Chene 3 Descartes and Augustine 33Catherine Wilson 4 Descartes and the Legacy of Ancient Skepticism 52Casey Perin Part II Mathematics and Natural Philosophy 67 5 Descartes and Galileo: Copernicanism and the Metaphysical Foundations of Physics 69Michael Friedman 6 Explanation as Confirmation in Descartes’s Natural Philosophy 84Ernan Mcmullin 7 Descartes and Mathematics 103Paolo Mancosu 8 Descartes’s Optics: Light, the Eye, and Visual Perception 124Margaret J. Osler Part III Epistemology and Metaphysics 143 9 Descartes’s Method 145Murray Miles 10 Descartes’s Use of Doubt 164David Owens 11 Self-Knowledge 179Janet Broughton 12 Descartes on True and False Ideas 196Deborah J. Brown 13 Clear and Distinct Perception 216Sarah Patterson 14 Causation Without Intelligibility and Causation Without God in Descartes 235Michael Della Rocca 15 Descartes on Substance 251Vere Chappell 16 Descartes and the Metaphysics of Extension 271C. G. Normore 17 The Role of God in Descartes’s Philosophy 288John Cottingham 18 The Cartesian Circle and the Foundations of Knowledge 302John Carriero 19 Cartesian Innateness 319Alan Nelson 20 Descartes on the Will in Judgment 334Lex Newman 21 Omnipotence, Modality, and Conceivability 353Lilli Alanen 22 Descartes’s Dualism 372Marleen Rozemond 23 The Union and Interaction of Mind and Body 390Paul Hoffman 24 Animals 404Gary Hatfield 25 How to Engineer a Human Being: Passions and Functional Explanation in Descartes 426Amy M. Schmitter 26 Descartes’s Ethics 445Lisa Shapiro Part IV Descartes’s Legacy 465 27 Descartes’s Legacy in the Seventeenth Century: Problems and Polemic 467Thomas M. Lennon 28 Contemporary Reactions to Descartes’s Philosophy of Mind 482Quassim Cassam 29 Descartes and the Phenomenological Tradition 496Wayne M. Martin 30 Our Debt to Descartes 513Barry Stroud Index 526

"Good companions fulfill two more duties - they provide better ways of understanding the familiar and they also defamiliarise it by encouraging newslants and alerting us to relatively ignored issues: this companion does both ….A most attractive and wide-ranging addition to its field." (Reference Reviews, Issue 6 2008) With more than 30 newly commissioned essays, A Companion to Descartes details in unparalleled depth the work of the seventeenth-century philosopher-scientist commonly regarded as the founder of modern philosophy. Alongside discussion of his seminal contributions to our understanding of skepticism,mind-body dualism, self-knowledge, innate ideas, substance, causality, God,and the nature of animals, the volume provides in several essays a uniqueorientation to the intellectual, religious, and scientific contexts that were important to Descartes's work. Concluding with discussions of the impact of Descartes's work on subsequent generations of philosophers, the essays in this volume offer fresh and distinctive scholarly perspectives on this giant of the history of modern thought.

"Good companions fulfil two more duties - they provide better ways of understanding the familiar and they also defamiliarise it by encouraging new slants and alerting us to relatively ignored issues: this companion does both.... A most attractive and wide-ranging addition to its field." (Reference Reviews, Issue 6 2008)