The Relation between Physics and Metaphysics in Descartes and The Early French Cartesians

The Relation between Physics and Metaphysics in Descartes and The Early French Cartesians

Mihnea Dobre, Descartes and Early French Cartesianism: Between Metaphysics and Physics (Bucharest: Zeta Books, 2017), ISBN: 978-606-697-041-9, 422 pp.

Grigore VIDA

Descartes and Early French Cartesianism: Between Metaphysics and Physics (“Foundations of Modern Thought” series; Bucharest: Zeta Books, 2017) is Mihnea Dobre’s doctoral thesis, defended quite a while ago, in 2010. Since then, Dobre has continued to deepen his research into French Cartesianism, with a special focus on the problems raised by historiographical categories like rationalism, empiricism and various other “-isms”; among other things, he has co-edited in 2013 an important collection of essays on “Cartesian Empiricisms”. The present volume is concerned with the relation between metaphysics and physics in Descartes and his early French followers; it’s a big topic, involving many ramifications and difficult interpretative challenges. Dobre keeps tight to the subject and tries to hold a balance between the French and the Anglo-Saxon scholarship on Descartes, though he is clearly more influenced by the latter one

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