Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Books
  3. Descartes and Augustine
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
August 2010
Print publication year:
1998
Online ISBN:
9780511608995
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511608995
Subjects:
Religion, Early Modern Philosophy, Philosophy, Religion: General Interest
Information

Book description

This book is a systematic study of Descartes' relation to Augustine. It offers a complete reevaluation of Descartes' thought and as such will be of major importance to all historians of medieval, neo-Platonic, or early modern philosophy. Stephen Menn demonstrates that Descartes uses Augustine's central ideas as a point of departure for a critique of medieval Aristotelian physics, which he replaces with a new, mechanistic anti-Aristotelian physics. Special features of the book include a reading of the Meditations, a comprehensive historical and philosophical introduction to Augustine's thought, a detailed account of Plotinus, and a contextualization of Descartes' mature philosophical project which explores both the framework within which it evolved and the early writings, to show how the collapse of the early project drove Descartes to the writings of Augustine.

Reviews

‘… the best book in the English language on the Meditations … Historical scholarship does not get any better.’

David Glidden Source: Ancient Philosophy

‘… a brilliant piece of research in the history of philosophy which will surely be a work to be read and reckoned with by future students of Descartes and Augustine.’

Source: The Modern Schoolman

‘… a fresh and excitingly bold reading of Descartes … Stephen Menn’s wonderful book makes Augustine’s Fourth Century much less remote from Descartes’s seventeenth century than we had thought it was.’

Source: Philosophy in Review

Refine List

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

Contents

Contents

Metrics

Altmetric attention score

Full text views

Total number of HTML views: 0
Total number of PDF views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

Book summary page views

Total views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

Usage data cannot currently be displayed.