Descartes in the Classroom

Davide Cellamare, Ph.D. (2015), Radboud University Nijmegen, is FWO Senior-Postdoc at KU Leuven. He has published numerous articles on late medieval and early modern psychology (with a special focus on the institutional and confessional contexts), as well as on Cartesianism. Mattia Mantovani, Ph.D. (2018), Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, is FWO Junior-Postdoc at KU Leuven. He has published numerous articles on medieval and early modern epistemology and perception theory – with a special focus on Descartes – and on the role of diagrams in science.

"Cet imposant volume (...) illustre admirablement une des tendances marquantes des recherches cartésiennes ces trente dernières années. (...) Ce volume ne se contente pas d’apporter du grain à moudre à la petite confrérie des cartésiens: parce qu’il articule les doctrines philosophiques et les contextes sociaux où ces dernières furent enseignées et diffusées, ils soulèvent des problèmes qui sont encore les nôtres." – Sophie Roux, in: Bulletin cartésien LV 89 (2026), pp. 222-229.

• List of Figures and TablesAbbreviationsIntroductionDavide Cellamare and Mattia Mantovani1 Descartes and the ClassroomTheo Verbeek2 The Philosophical Fulcrum of Seventeenth-Century Leiden: Pedagogical Innovation and Philosophical Novelty in Adriaan HeereboordHoward Hotson3 Teaching Cartesian Philosophy in Leiden: Adriaan Heereboord (1613–1661) and Johannes De Raey (1622–1702)Antonella Del Prete4 Reassessing Johannes De Raey’s Aristotelian-Cartesian Synthesis: The Copenhagen Manuscript Annotata in Principia philosophica (1658)Domenico Collacciani5 “Let Descartes Speak Dutch”: Spinoza’s Circle Teaching CartesianismHenri Krop6 Patronage as a Means to End a University Controversy: The Conclusion of Two Cartesian Disputes at Frankfurt an der Oder (1656 and 1660)Pietro Daniel Omodeo7 Cartesian and Anti-Cartesian Disputations and Corollaries at Utrecht University, 1650–1670Erik-Jan Bos8 Between Descartes and Boyle: Burchard de Volder’s Experimental Lectures at Leiden, 1676–1678Andrea Strazzoni9 Medicine and the Mind in the Teaching of Theodoor Craanen (1633–1688)Davide Cellamare10 Cartesius Triumphatus: Gerard de Vries and Opposing Descartes at the University of UtrechtDaniel Garber11 Debating Cartesian Philosophy on Both Sides of the Channel: Johannes Schuler’s (1619–1674) Plea for libertas philosophandiIgor Agostini12 Descartes by Letter—Teaching Cartesianism in Mid-Seventeenth-Century Cambridge: Henry More, Thomas Clarke and Anne ConwaySarah Hutton13 Teaching Descartes’s Ethics in London and CambridgeRoger Ariew14 Teaching Magnetism in a Cartesian World, 1650–1700Christoph Sander15 The Anatomy of a Condemnation: Descartes’s Theory of Perception and the Louvain Affair, 1637–1671Mattia Mantovani16 Descartes’s Theory of Tides in the Louvain Classroom, 1670–1760Carla Rita Palmerino17 Traces of the Port-Royal Logic in the Louvain Logic CurriculaSteven Coesemans18 Cartesianism and the Education of WomenMarie-Frédérique Pellegrin19 Rohault’s Private Lessons on CosmologyMihnea Dobre20 French Cartesianisms in the 1690s: The Textbooks of Regis and PourchotTad M. SchmaltzBibliographyIndex