Descartes' deontological turn : reason, will, and virtue in the later writings /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:	Naaman Zauderer, Noa.
Imprint:	Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Description:	xii, 224 p. ; 24 cm.
Language:	English
Subject:	Descartes, René, -- 1596-1650. Descartes, René, -- 1596-1650. Will. Will.
Format:	Print Book
URL for this record:	http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/8271505

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ISBN:	9780521763301 (hardback) 0521763304 (hardback)
Notes:	Includes bibliographical references and index.
Summary:	"This book offers a new way of approaching the place of the will in Descartes' mature epistemology and ethics. Departing from the widely accepted view, Noa Naaman-Zauderer suggests that Descartes regards the will, rather than the intellect, as the most significant mark of human rationality, both intellectual and practical. Through a close reading of Cartesian texts from the Meditations onward, she brings to light a deontological and non-consequentialist dimension of Descartes' later thinking, which credits the proper use of free will with a constitutive, evaluative role. She shows that the right use of free will, to which Descartes assigns obligatory force, constitutes for him an end in its own right rather than merely a means for attaining any other end, however valuable. Her important study has significant implications for the unity of Descartes' thinking, and for the issue of responsibility, inviting scholars to reassess Descartes' philosophical legacy"-- "This book offers a new way of approaching the place of the will in Descartes' mature epistemology and ethics. Departing from the widely accepted view, Noa Naaman-Zauderer suggests that Descartes regards the will, rather than the intellect, as the most significant mark of human rationality, both intellectual and practical. Through a close reading of Cartesian texts from the Meditations onward, she brings to light a deontological and non-consequentialist dimension of Descartes' later thinking, which credits the proper use of free will with a constitutive, evaluative role. She shows that the right use of free will, to which Descartes assigns obligatory force, constitutes for him an end in its own right rather than merely a means for attaining any other end, however valuable. Her important study has significant implications for the unity of Descartes' thinking and for the issue of responsibility, inviting scholars to reassess Descartes' philosophical legacy"--

Table of Contents:

Preface
List of abbreviations
Introduction
1. Looking inward: truth, falsehood, and clear and distinct ideas
1. Interpreting the nature of clear and distinct perceptions
2. Objective reality in the Third Meditation
3. Objective being and representation in the First Replies
4. True and false ideas
5. Clarity and distinctness
6. Materially false ideas
2. Error in judgment
1. Error as a misuse of free will
2. Error as privation
3. The dual metaphysical status of error
4. The causal analysis of error
5. The normative query: God and human proneness to error
6. Error as privation: alternative interpretations
7. Error and rationality
3. Free will
1. Free will in the Fourth Meditation
2. Cartesian indifference
3. The two-way power of the will
4. Descartes' conception of human freedom
5. Article 37 of the Principles
6. The 1645 letter to Mesland
4. Free will and the likeness to God
1. In the image and likeness of God
2. The dissimilarity thesis
3. The human experience of freedom and the incomprehensibility of God
4. The likeness to God revisited
5. From intellectual to practical reason
1. Descartes' apparent ambivalence
2. Judgments concerning matters of faith
3. The morale par provision
4. The four morale maxims
6. Descartes' deontological ethics of virtue
1. The unity of virtue
2. Virtue as the right use of the will
3. Virtue, the supreme good, and happiness
4. Virtue as self-mastery in the Passions of the Soul
5. Cartesian generosity
References
Index

Descartes' deontological turn : reason, will, and virtue in the later writings /

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