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The Early Dutch Reception of L’HommeIn Stephen Gaukroger & Delphine Antoine-Mahut (eds.), Descartes' Treatise on Man and Its Reception, Springer. 2016.
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33Spinoza-Malebranche: à la croisée des interprétations ed. by Raffaele Carbone, et alJournal of the History of Philosophy 57 (1): 170-171. 2019.This collection includes material from the international conference, “Spinoza-Malebranche,” held in 2015, first at the Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne and subsequently at the École Normale Supérieure in Lyon. The justification for the volume, as indicated in Chantel Jaquet’s preface, is that the relations between Spinoza and Malebranche have not recently drawn the sort of attention from scholars that the relations of each to Descartes have received. Of course, there is the question of why t…Read more
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24French Cartesian Scholasticism: Remarks on Descartes and the First CartesiansPerspectives on Science 26 (5): 579-598. 2018.In a 1669 letter to his mentor Thomasius, Leibniz writes that "hardly any of the Cartesians have added anything to the discoveries of their master" insofar as they "have published only paraphrases of their leader."1 The book that is the focus of my remarks here—Roger Ariew's Descartes and the First Cartesians —shows that Leibniz was most certainly incorrect. In particular, Ariew draws attention to the fact that there was a concerted effort to present a new sort of Cartesianism that conforms to t…Read more
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133Descartes on the Metaphysics of the Material WorldPhilosophical Review 127 (1): 1-40. 2018.It is a matter of continuing scholarly dispute whether Descartes offers a metaphysics of the material world that is “monist” or “pluralist.” One passage that has become crucial to this debate is from the Synopsis of the Meditations, in which Descartes argues that since “body taken in general” is a substance, and since all substances are “by their nature incorruptible,” this sort of body is incorruptible as well. In this article I defend a pluralist reading of this passage, according to which the…Read more
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Descartes' Nativism: The Sensory and Intellectual Powers of MindDissertation, University of Notre Dame. 1988.In his 1647 Comments on a Certain Broadsheet, Descartes responded to the view of Henricus Regius that all thought is derived from sensation by making two claims: first, that even sensory ideas are broadly innate since they are produced by a mental faculty, and second, that certain notions are more narrowly innate because they cannot be derived from sense experience. Part One of my dissertation examines issues pertaining to the first claim against Regius. In Chapter 1, I contend that Descartes' a…Read more
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138Malebranche and Leibniz on the best of all possible worldsSouthern Journal of Philosophy 48 (1): 28-48. 2010.In this article I explore Leibniz's claim in the Theodicy that on the essential points Malebranche's theodicy "reduces to" his own view. This judgment may seem to be warranted given that both thinkers emphasize that evils are justified by the fact that they follow from the simple and uniform laws that govern that world which is worthy of divine creation. However, I argue that Leibniz's theodicy differs in several crucial respects from Malebranche's. I begin with a qualified endorsement of Charle…Read more
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12Efficient Causation: A History (edited book)Oup Usa. 2014.This volume is a collection of new essays by specialists that trace the concept of efficient causation from its discovery in Ancient Greece, through its development in late antiquity, the medieval period, and modern philosophy, to its use in contemporary metaphysics and philosophy of science
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62The Metaphysics of Rest in Descartes and MalebrancheRes Philosophica 92 (1): 21-40. 2015.I consider a somewhat obscure but important feature of Descartes’s physics that concerns the notion of the “force of rest.” Contrary to a prominent occasionalist interpretation of Descartes’s physics, I argue that Descartes himself attributes real forces to resting bodies. I also take his account of rest to conflict with the view that God conserves the world by “re-creating” it anew at each moment. I turn next to the role of rest in Malebranche. Malebranche takes Descartes to endorse his own occ…Read more
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39The Problem of Universals in Early Modern Philosophy (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2017.This is a collection of essays from an international group of scholars that explore the ways in which the ancient problem of universals was transformed in modern philosophy. Essays consider the various forms of "Platonism," "conceptualism" and "nominalism" in the writings of a broad range of modern thinkers.
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81Malebranche's theory of the soul: a Cartesian interpretationOxford University Press. 1996.This book offers a provocative interpretation of the theory of the soul in the writings of the French Cartesian, Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715). Though recent work on Malebranche's philosophy of mind has tended to emphasize his account of ideas, Schmaltz focuses rather on his rejection of Descartes' doctrine that the mind is better known than the body. In particular, he considers and defends Malebranche's argument that this rejection has a Cartesian basis. Schmaltz reveals that this argument no…Read more
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46Galileo and Descartes on Copernicanism and the cause of the tidesStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 51 70-81. 2015.
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116Descartes and Malebranche on mind and mind-body unionPhilosophical Review 101 (2): 281-325. 1992.
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119Platonism and Descartes' View of Immutable EssencesArchiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 73 (2): 129-170. 1991.
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26Malebranche's Cartesianism and Lockean ColorsHistory of Philosophy Quarterly 12 (4): 387-403. 1995.
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14Early Modern Cartesianisms: Dutch and French ConstructionsOxford University Press USA. 2016.There is a general sense that the philosophy of Descartes was a dominant force in early modern thought. Since the work in the nineteenth century of French historians of Cartesian philosophy, however, there has been no fully contextualized comparative examination of the various receptions of Descartes in different portions of early modern Europe. This study addresses the need for a more current understanding of these receptions by considering the different constructions of Descartes's thought tha…Read more
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14Integrating history and philosophy of science: problems and prospects (edited book)Springer Verlag. 2011.Though the publication of Kuhn's 'Structure of Scientific Revolutions' seemed to herald the advent of a unified study of the history and philosophy of science, it is a hard fact that history of science and philosophy of science have increasingly grown apart. Recently, however, there has been a series of workshops on both sides of the Atlantic (called '&HPS') to bring historians and philosophers of science together to discuss integrative approaches. This is therefore an especially appropriate tim…Read more
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5Receptions of Descartes: Cartesianism and Anti-Cartesianism in Early Modern Europe (edited book)Routledge. 2005.Receptions of Descartes is a collection of work by an international group of authors that focuses on the various ways in which Descartes was interpreted, defended and criticized in early modern Europe. The book is divided into five sections, the first four of which focus on Descartes' reception in specific French, Dutch, Italian and English contexts and the last of which concerns the reception of Descartes among female philosophers
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58Human freedom and divine creation in Malebranche, Descartes and the cartesiansBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 2 (2). 1994.
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82Descartes on CausationOup Usa. 2007.This book is a systematic study of Descartes' theory of causation and its relation to the medieval and early modern scholastic philosophy that provides its proper historical context. The argument presented here is that even though Descartes offered a dualistic ontology that differs radically from what we find in scholasticism, his views on causation were profoundly influenced by scholastic thought on this issue. This influence is evident not only in his affirmation in the Meditations of the abst…Read more
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35The Cartesian refutation of idealismBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 10 (4): 513-540. 2002.No abstract
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48PanzerCartesianer: The Descartes of Martial Gueroult’s Descartes selon l’ordre des raisonsJournal of the History of Philosophy 52 (1): 1-13. 2014.Martial Gueroult (1891–1976) Belonged to a remarkable generation of French scholars of early modern philosophy, in general, and of Descartes’s thought, in particular. This cohort includes such notable figures as Étienne Gilson (1884–1978), Jean Laporte (1a886–1948), Henri Gouhier (1898–1994), Ferdinand Alquié (1908–85), and Geneviève Rodis-Lewis (1918–2004). However, Gueroult was the only one of this group to publish a commentary devoted exclusively to Descartes’s Meditations, namely, his Descar…Read more
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96Malebranche on Descartes on mind-body distinctnessJournal of the History of Philosophy 32 (4): 573-603. 1994.This article considers Descartes's famous claim that mind and body are distinct substances from the unusual perspective of Nicolas Malebranche. In particular, it focuses on Malebranche's argument that since Cartesians feel compelled to support such a claim by appealing to their clear idea of body, they must lack access to a clear idea of soul. The main conclusion is that while such an argument does not apply directly to Descartes's discussion in the "Meditations" of mind- body distinctness, this…Read more
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14Edward Patrick Mahoney, 1932-2009Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 82 (5): 204. 2009.
Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
17th/18th Century Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy |
19th Century Philosophy |