Descartes : the project of pure enquiry

by Bernard Arthur Owen Williams

Paper Book, 1978

Status

Available

Call number

190

Genres

Publication

Harmondsworth : Penguin, 1978

Description

Descartes has often been called the 'father of modern philosophy'. His attempts to find foundations for knowledge, and to reconcile the existence of the soul with the emerging science of his time, are among the most influential and widely studied in the history of philosophy. This is a classic and challenging introduction to Descartes by one of the most distinguished modern philosophers. Bernard Williams not only analyzes Descartes' project of founding knowledge on certainty, but uncovers the philosophical motives for his search. With acute insight, he demonstrates how Descartes' Meditations are not merely a description but the very enactment of philosophical thought and discovery. Williams covers all of the key areas of Descartes' thought, including God, the will, the possibility of knowledge, and the mind and its place in nature. He also makes profound contributions to the theory of knowledge, metaphysics and philosophy generally. With a new foreword by John Cottingham.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member stillatim

Bernard Williams is my kind of analytic philosopher--alert to history, cares about reality--but this is not my kind of history of philosophy book. He's up front about this: this is a book about what Descartes means today (i.e., in the 'seventies), not what he meant in the seventeenth century; and

what he 'means today' means, really, what he means when put in the context of Nagel, Frankfurt and Kenny. Well, I don't really care about those gentlemen, and there's no reason to think that this is the best way of doing history of philosophy.

But, as I said, Williams is open about what he's doing, and knows there are other ways of doing it. So, this is a good analytic look at Descartes, who is assumed to have the same problems analytic philosophers of the seventies had, which perhaps makes better points about the later philosophy than it does the earlier.

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