Janet Broughton & John Carriero 
A Companion to Descartes 

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.

* Covers the full range of historical and philosophical
perspectives on the work of Descartes

* Discusses his seminal contributions to our understanding of
skepticism, mind-body dualism, self-knowledge, innate ideas,
substance, causality, God, and the nature of animals

* Explores the philosophical significance of his contributions to
mathematics and science

* Concludes with a section on the impact of Descartes’s work on
subsequent philosophers

Table of Content

Notes on Contributors x

List of Abbreviations xiv

Introduction xv

Part I The Intellectual Context 1

1 Life and Works 3
Stephen Gaukroger

2 Aristotelian Natural Philosophy: Body, Cause, Nature 17
Dennis Des Chene

3 Descartes and Augustine 33
Catherine Wilson

4 Descartes and the Legacy of Ancient Skepticism 52
Casey Perin

Part II Mathematics and Natural Philosophy 67

5 Descartes and Galileo: Copernicanism and the Metaphysical Foundations of Physics 69
Michael Friedman

6 Explanation as Confirmation in Descartes’s Natural Philosophy 84
Ernan Mcmullin

7 Descartes and Mathematics 103
Paolo Mancosu

8 Descartes’s Optics: Light, the Eye, and Visual Perception 124
Margaret J. Osler

Part III Epistemology and Metaphysics 143

9 Descartes’s Method 145
Murray Miles

10 Descartes’s Use of Doubt 164
David Owens

11 Self-Knowledge 179
Janet Broughton

12 Descartes on True and False Ideas 196
Deborah J. Brown

13 Clear and Distinct Perception 216
Sarah Patterson

14 Causation Without Intelligibility and Causation Without God in Descartes 235
Michael Della Rocca

15 Descartes on Substance 251
Vere Chappell

16 Descartes and the Metaphysics of Extension 271
C. G. Normore

17 The Role of God in Descartes’s Philosophy 288
John Cottingham

18 The Cartesian Circle and the Foundations of Knowledge 302
John Carriero

19 Cartesian Innateness 319
Alan Nelson

20 Descartes on the Will in Judgment 334
Lex Newman

21 Omnipotence, Modality, and Conceivability 353
Lilli Alanen

22 Descartes’s Dualism 372
Marleen Rozemond

23 The Union and Interaction of Mind and Body 390
Paul Hoffman

24 Animals 404
Gary Hatfield

25 How to Engineer a Human Being: Passions and Functional Explanation in Descartes 426
Amy M. Schmitter

26 Descartes’s Ethics 445
Lisa Shapiro

Part IV Descartes’s Legacy 465

27 Descartes’s Legacy in the Seventeenth Century: Problems and Polemic 467
Thomas M. Lennon

28 Contemporary Reactions to Descartes’s Philosophy of Mind 482
Quassim Cassam

29 Descartes and the Phenomenological Tradition 496
Wayne M. Martin

30 Our Debt to Descartes 513
Barry Stroud

Index 526

About the author

Janet Broughton is Professor of Philosophy and Dean of Arts and Humanities at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of Descartes’s Method of Doubt(2002).

John Carriero is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has published widely in early modern philosophy.