PHI 8330 Descartes's Thinking
This course examines not just Descartes’s thought (i.e., his philosophy) but also his way and conception of thinking (cogitatio, pensée). Far from being a textbook rationalist, he was a man as steeped in Renaissance humanism and medieval meditative techniques as in the methods of modern mathematical and mechanical science. The course explores this Descartes on the basis of his writings and letters from his earliest notebooks to the masque he wrote for performance at the court of Queen Christina of Sweden.