The book Descartes and the First Cartesians published by Roger Ariew in 2014, like the revised and expanded version of Descartes and the Last Scholastics, published in 2011 under the title Descartes Among the Scholastics, contributes in an exemplary way to eliminating the mythologization of modernity in the history of Cartesianism, and more generally, in the history of early-modern philosophy. From one book to the next, and with the help of numerous articles in the background that develop the same critique of the mythology of the modern philosopher maintained by many commentators, Ariew patiently demonstrates that what one calls “the system of the philosophy of Descartes” constitutes neither the absolute beginning of modern philosophy nor a sealed-off and strictly internally ordered totality. In this reading Ariew opposes Descartes’ supposed status as radically distinct from all previous philosophies and wholly immune to historical determinations, an assumption which many interpreters have...
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September-October 2018
October 01 2018
Roger Ariew and “The First Cartesians”
Martine Pécharman
Martine Pécharman
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
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Martine Pécharman
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Online ISSN: 1530-9274
Print ISSN: 1063-6145
© 2018 by The Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2018
by The Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Perspectives on Science (2018) 26 (5): 548–562.
Citation
Martine Pécharman; Roger Ariew and “The First Cartesians”. Perspectives on Science 2018; 26 (5): 548–562. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/posc_a_00288
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