Descartes Reinvented

Description

In this study, Thomas Sorell seeks to rehabilitate views that are highly unpopular in analytic philosophy and often instantly dismissed. His book serves as an interpretation, if not outright revision, of unreconstructed Cartesianism and responds directly to some of the critique of contemporary philosophy. To identify what is defensible in Cartesianism, Sorell starts with a picture of unreconstructed Cartesianism, which is characterized as realistic; anti-skeptical but respectful of skepticism; rationalist; centered on the first person; dualist; and dubious of the comprehensiveness of natural science and its supposed independence of metaphysics. Bridging the gap between history of philosophy and analytic philosophy, Sorell also shows, for the first time, how some contemporary analytic philosophy is deeply Cartesian.

Tom Sorell is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Essex. He is the author of six books, including Descartes (1987), Scientism (1991), and Moral Theory and Anomaly (2000).

"Sorrell's interpretations are careful and, by and large, sound, given the intention with which they are offered. Were one of my historicophobic colleagues to ask why Descartes...should be worth studying, I would, without misgivings, direct him to Descarte Reinvented." - Dennis Des Chene, Washington University in Saint Louis