Historical Dictionary of Descartes and Cartesian Philosophy

Descartes is perhaps most closely associated with the title, the Father of Modern Philosophy. Generations of students have been introduced to the study of philosophy through a consideration of hisMeditations on First Philosophy. His contributions to natural science is shown by the fact that his physics, as promulgated by the Cartesians, played a central role in the debates after his death over Isaac Newtons theory of gravitation. Descartes also made major contributions to the field of analytic geometry; we still speak today of Cartesian coordinates and the Cartesian product.

This second edition ofHistorical Dictionary ofDescartes and Cartesian Philosophy covers the history through a chronology, an introductory essay, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 300 cross-referenced entries on various concepts in Descartes philosophy, science, and mathematics, as well as biographical entries about the intellectual setting for Descartes philosophy and its reception, both with Cartesians and anti-Cartesians. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Descartes.

Roger Ariew, Professor and Chair, Department of Philosophy, University of South Florida, works on the reception of Descartes' philosophy and science in seventeenth-century France. He is the author ofDescartes among the Scholastics, Descartes and the First Cartesians, and the editor and translator such works asDescartes, Philosophical Essays and Pascal, Pensées.

Dennis Des Chene is professor of philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the author ofPhysiologia: Philosophy of Nature in Descartes and the Aristotelians;Lifes Form,Late Aristotelian Conceptions of the Soul; and Spirits and Clocks:Machine and Organism in Descartes.

Douglas M. Jesseph is professor of philosophy at the University of South Florida. He is the author ofSquaring the Circle: The War between Hobbes and WallisandBerkeleys Philosophyof Mathematics. He is the editor and translator ofBerkeleys De Motu and The Analyst and the editor of the forthcoming three-volumeHobbess Mathematical Works.

Tad M. Schmaltz is professor of philosophy and James B. and Grace J. Nelson Fellow at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is the author of Malebranches Theory of the Soul: A Cartesian Interpretation, Radical Cartesianism: The French Reception of Descartes and Descartes on Causation. He is also the editor of Receptions of Descartes: Cartesianism and Anti-Cartesianism in Early Modern Europe, and of the forthcomingEfficient Causation: A History, for the Oxford Philosophical Concepts series.

Theo Verbeek is emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Utrecht. He is the author of Laquerelle dUtrecht; Descartes and the Dutch: Early Reactions to Cartesianism(16371650);andSpinozas Theologico-political Treatise: Exploring the Will of God. He is the editor ofDescartes et Regius: Autour de lexplication de lesprit and Johannes Clauberg (16221665) andCartesian Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century.

Editors Foreword Jon Woronoff
Preface
Readers Note
Chronology
Introduction
THE DICTIONARY
Bibliography
About the Authors