Historical Dictionary of Descartes and Cartesian Philosophy

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 of Descartes among the Scholastics, Descartes and the First Cartesians, and the editor and translator such works as Descartes, Philosophical Essays and Pascal, Pensées.Dennis Des Chene is professor of philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the author of Physiologia: Philosophy of Nature in Descartes and the Aristotelians; Life’s 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 of Squaring the Circle: The War between Hobbes and Wallis and Berkeley’s Philosophyof Mathematics. He is the editor and translator of Berkeley’s De Motu and The Analyst and the editor of the forthcoming three-volume Hobbes’s 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 Malebranche’s 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 forthcoming Efficient 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 La querelle d’Utrecht; Descartes and the Dutch: Early Reactions to Cartesianism(1637–1650); and Spinoza’s Theologico-political Treatise: Exploring the “Will of God.” He is the editor of Descartes et Regius: Autour de l’explication de l’esprit and Johannes Clauberg (1622–1665) and Cartesian Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century.

This second edition, revised by Ariew and four coauthors, provides both beginning and expert researchers with a more complete presentation of essential information on the philosopher's writings, concepts, and findings. The dictionary offers over 300 cross-referenced entries to provide an excellent foundation for exploring the historical context of Descartes's reception and the concepts essential to understanding the development of the Cartesian perspective. The biographical information presented on Descartes and his contemporaries is particularly well done, offering readers substantial new background information that will help clarify how he was regarded by other intellectuals of his day. The bibliography section provides a well-researched selection of sources for pursuing additional topics not covered in this single, concise volume. Both Cartesian and anti-Cartesian views on a myriad of issues and topics are treated, and this updated reference work will be a valuable addition to all libraries. Most collection managers will not need to retain the previous edition. Summing Up: Recommended. All academic and general audiences.

• Editor’s Foreword Jon WoronoffPrefaceReader’s NoteChronologyIntroductionTHE DICTIONARYBibliographyAbout the Authors