1st Edition

Descartes and the Autonomy of the Human Understanding

By John Carriero Copyright 1990
262 Pages
by Routledge

262 Pages
by Routledge

262 Pages
by Routledge

This volume, originally published in 1990, delineates the transition Descartes effects from a prevalent medieval conception of understanding to a modern conception of it. Through the examination of the continuities and discontinuities between Descartes’ account of the understanding and that of high scholasticism, a characterization emerges of two way in which the understanding is autonomous in... Read more

Part 1: The Doctrine of Abstraction and Withdrawal From the Senses  1. Introductory Remarks  2. Sensory Foundations  3. High Scholastic Teaching on Cognition  4. Sensory Foundations Reconsidered  5. The Dreaming Hypothesis  6. The Analogy with Painting  7. The Ground of the Intelligibility of the Dreaming Hypothesis  8. The Evil Genius Hypothesis  9. The Evil Genius Hypothesis and the Doctrine of the Creation of Eternal Truths  10. Cartesian Foundations  Part 2: A Mind Better Known than Body  1. Introductory Remarks  2. High Scholastic Teaching on How the Soul Knows Itself  3. Beginning the Second Meditation  4. The Cogito  5. Essence  6. The Imagination’s Role in Knowledge of the Mind  7. Powers and Acts  8. The Specific Nature of the Understanding  9. Mind and Body

Biography

John Carriero is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles.