Join Amazon Prime and ship Two-Day for free and Overnight for $3.99. Already a member? Sign in.

Quantity:

More Buying Choices

34 used & new from $17.95

Have one to sell? Sell yours here

Search inside another edition of this book

Tell the Publisher! I�d like to read this book on Kindle Don�t have a Kindle? Get yours here.

Descartes's Dualism (Paperback)

by Marleen Rozemond (Author)
Key Phrases: third principal attribute, hylomorphic interpretation, primae qualitates, Real Distinction Argument, Second Meditation, Sixth Replies (more...)

4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)

List Price:	$27.50
Price:	$27.50 & this item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping. Details
	o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.

Only 2 left in stock--order soon (more on the way).

Want it delivered Friday, July 17? Choose One-Day Shipping at checkout. Details

19 new from $17.95 15 used from $21.95

Also Available in:	List Price:	Our Price:	Other Offers:
Hardcover	$66.50	$66.50	11 used & new from $25.00

Frequently Bought Together

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

The Philosophical Writings of Descartes: Volume 2

by Rene Descartes

$33.29

The Philosophical Writings of Descartes (Volume 3: The Correspondence (Paperback))

by Rene Descartes

5.0 out of 5 stars (1) $40.49

Descartes' Metaphysical Physics (Science and Its Conceptual Foundations series)

by Daniel Garber

$38.00

SPINOZA (Routledge Philosophers)

by Michael Della Rocca

5.0 out of 5 stars (1) $25.15

Descartes Embodied: Reading Cartesian Philosophy through Cartesian Science

by Daniel Garber

$36.99

› Explore similar items

Editorial Reviews

Review
[Descartes's Dualism is] a thorough and careful study of Descartes's account of the mind/soul.
--Stephen Gaukroger (Time Literary Supplement )

[Descartes's Dualism] is a brilliant book. Rozemond provides an excellent articulation of the dualism of Descartes. Her analytic skills are very high, and her references to the medieval background of Descartes's theory of knowledge are crisp and secure...Rozemond's interest in the medievals also leads to a most informative, and rare, presentation of the influence of the doctrine of transubstantiation on discussions of substance and sense qualities. Among the many books on Descartes, this one ranks with a mere handful in terms of the highest worth.
--M. A. Bertman (Choice )

[Rozemond's] discussion of the scholastic context of Descartes' arguments is exceedingly clear and informative, and should be read by anyone who really wishes to understand the context and meaning of Descartes' argument.
--John Barresi (Journal of Consciousness Studies )

Product Description

Descartes, an acknowledged founder of modern philosophy, is identified particularly with mind-body dualism--the view that the mind is an incorporeal entity. But this view was not entirely original with Descartes, and in fact to a significant extent it was widely accepted by the Aristotelian scholastics who preceded him, although they entertained a different conception of the nature of mind, body, and the relationship between them. In her first book, Marleen Rozemond explicates Descartes's aim to provide a metaphysics that would accommodate mechanistic science and supplant scholasticism.

Her approach includes discussion of central differences from and similarities to the scholastics and how these discriminations affected Descartes's defense of the incorporeity of the mind and the mechanistic conception of body. Confronting the question of how, in his view, mind and body are united, she examines his defense of this union on the basis of sensation. In the course of her argument, she focuses on a few of the scholastics to whom Descartes referred in his own writings: Thomas Aquinas, Francisco Suárez, Eustachius of St. Paul, and the Jesuits of Coimbra. This new systematic account of Descartes's dualism amply demonstrates why he still deserves serious study and respect for his extraordinary philosophical achievements.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

Paperback: 304 pages
Publisher: Harvard University Press (September 30, 2002)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0674009681
ISBN-13: 978-0674009684
Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.7 x 0.7 inches
Shipping Weight: 13 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,583,668 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Inside This Book (learn more)
Browse and search another edition of this book.

Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
third principal attribute, hylomorphic interpretation, primae qualitates, view that sensation, wax passage, other substantial forms, argument from elimination, mechanistic qualities, term ens, mixture analogy, sensible qualities, one principal attribute, presuppose extension, union with the body, view that thought, ens per accidens, argument for dualism, incorporeal mind, skeptical strategy, incomplete substance, view that the soul, incorporeal entity, pure intellection, corporeal properties, mechanistic properties

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Real Distinction Argument, Second Meditation, Sixth Replies, Fourth Replies, Attribute Premise, Independence Thesis, Coimbra Commentators, Meditations Descartes, Theological Argument, Essentialist Argument, Essentialist Premise, Regius Descartes, Regius of January, Third Meditation, Lateran Council, Margaret Wilson, Natural Institution, Principles Descartes, Certain Broadsheet, Elizabeth of May, Paul Hoffman

New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats

Citations (learn more)

This book cites 34 books:

The Cambridge Companion to Descartes (Cambridge Companions to Philosophy) by John Cottingham in Back Matter (1), Back Matter (2), and Back Matter (3)
Innate Ideas by P. Stephen in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Great Books in Philosophy) by John Locke in Front Matter, and Back Matter
The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy by C. B. Schmitt in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
Renaissance Philosophy (Penguin Classics) by Trans. and Ed. Jill Kraye in Back Matter

See all 34 books this book cites

Books on Related Topics (learn more)

Western Philosophy by John Cottingham

Discusses:

Philosophical Essays and Correspondence by Rene Descartes

Discusses:

The Philosophical Writings of Descartes by Rene Descartes

Discusses:

Learning from Six Philosophers by Jonathan Bennett

Discusses:

Tag this product

(What's this?)

Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items.

Help others find this product — tag it for Amazon search

No one has tagged this product for Amazon search yet. Why not be the first to suggest a search for which it should appear?

Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store

If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store. Learn more

Customer Reviews

1 Review

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

Average Customer Review

4.0 out of 5 stars (1 customer review)

Share your thoughts with other customers:

Create your own review

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Descartes and the Scholastics Revisted, July 12, 2007

By	Steven M. Duncan (Bellevue, WA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Marleen Rozemond's Descartes' Dualism is a solid piece of scholarship but primarily of interest for Descartes scholars. In recent years, a discernible trend in Descartes scholarship has been to argue that Descartes is less innovative and revolutionary than has previously been supposed and to attempt to root his distinctive teachings (and to solve the problems evoked by those teachings) in those of the Scholastics to whose views he was exposed in his youth. One aspect of this view has been a tendency to reinterpret Descartes' doctrine of the mind/body relation, sketched in the sixth meditation and discussed in his letters, most prominently in his first two letters to Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia by attempting to show that Descartes held a hylomorphic conception of the human person rather than the traditional substance dualist account. Rozemond's conclusion is that, despite Descartes' use of scholastic terminology (e.g. he refers to the soul as the form of the body) Descartes is not a hylomorphist and remains committed to substance dualism largely because of his overriding commitment to the metaphysical picture dictated by the New Science. I myself am in complete agreement with Rozemond on this point, which after all is the mainstream position in the history of Descartes scholarship.

Although much has been written about what Descartes should have said to Elizabeth about the notorious interaction problem, rather less attention has been paid to what Descartes actual tells her, which is that the way in which body influences mind and mind influences body is a mystery that we have no prospect of understanding, since it is both unique and irreducible: for us, at least, the concept of mind/body interaction is a simple one not further analyzable into parts or explicable in terms of some sort of intervening mechanism. Nevertheless, since sound philosophy establishes that the mind and the body are separate substances of incompatible natures and experience testifies to the fact of mind/body interaction in no uncertain terms, we must simply accept mind/body interaction as a fact. Although Descartes does his best to circumscribe the mystery by localizing it to a single point in the brain (the pineal gland) the fact remains that he has no account of mind/brain interaction to offer and sees no need to offer one. Anyone who has followed the philosophy of mind since Descartes' time is in a position to confirm his view about this; every theory about the relation of mind and body breaks down precisely at the point where this mystery is addressed.

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review

› See all customer reviews...

.jsOffDisplayBlock { display: block; } .jsOffDisplayInline { display: inline; } .jsOffVisibility { visibility: visible; } .jsOnDisplayBlock { display: none; } .jsOnDisplayNoneBlock { display: block; } .jsOnDisplayNoneInline { display: inline; } .jsOnDisplayInline { display: none; } .jsOnVisibility { visibility: hidden; } .jsOnDisplayBlock { display: none; } .jsOnDisplayInline { display: none; } .jsOnVisibility { visibility: hidden; }