Descartes' Cogito: Saved from the Great Shipwreck
Cambridge University Press, 8/21/2008
EAN 9780521037341, ISBN10: 0521037344
Paperback, 328 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English
Perhaps the most famous proposition in the history of philosophy is Descartes' cogito 'I think, therefore I am'. Husain Sarkar claims in this provocative interpretation of Descartes that the ancient tradition of reading the cogito as an argument is mistaken. It should, he says, be read as an intuition. Through this interpretative lens, the author reconsiders key Cartesian topics: the ideal inquirer, the role of clear and distinct ideas, the relation of these to the will, memory, the nature of intuition and deduction, the nature, content and elusiveness of 'I', and the tenability of the doctrine of the creation of eternal truths. Finally, the book demonstrates how Descartes' attempt to prove the existence of God is foiled by a new Cartesian Circle.
Preface
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
1. The prolegomena to any future epistemology
2. The problem of epistemology
3. The solution
cogito
4. A skeptic against reason
5. The five ways
6. Cogito
not an argument
7. The content of the cogito
8. Memory, explanation, and will
Appendices
Bibliography
Name index
Subject index.