Descartes and the First Cartesians

Introduction: Logic and Methodology in the Early Modern Period

“…In a nutshell, in such traditional interpretations of the genesis and the development of early modern philosophy, as those provided by d'Alembert in his Discours Préliminaire de l'Encyclopédie (1751) or by Hegel in his Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie, the frequent stress put on the figures of Bacon, Descartes, Locke or Kant, is accompanied by an insistance on the respective merits of Novum Organum, Discours de la méthode, Méditations Métaphysiques, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and the Kritik der Reinen Vernunft. But the entrenchment of these major books in the field of logic is generally disregarded, while it is acknowledged by their authors and by their contemporary readers, either directly or indirectly (see Rossi 1957;Jardine 1974;Buickerood 1985;Gaukroger 1989;Serjeantson 2006;Ariew 2006Ariew , 2014Serjeantson 2008;Savini 2011;Cassan 2015a;Petrescu 2018;Schuurman 2001Schuurman , 2003Pécharman 2016b;Sgarbi 2013Sgarbi , 2016Lu-Adler 2018). As a result, the significance of the role taken by logic towards philosophical modernity is still commonly downplayed, while being crucial to its building.…”

Hobbes on the Order of Sciences: A Partial Defense of the Mathematization Thesis

“…Mordecai Feingold, for example, shows that those who accepted the primacy of mathematics in natural philosophy were “a divisive clique that had little in common with the interests and concerns of the generality of membership” of the Royal Society (, 78). Roger Ariew, for another example, shows that the varieties of Cartesianism demonstrate that the adoption of mathematical techniques was not central even to those who accepted a good deal of Cartesian metaphysics (, chap. 4.3).…”

Spinoza and the Logical Limits of Mental Representation

“…For example, Suárez seems to deny the possibility of inconsistent volitions insofar as one cannot will an impossible object (DM 23.6.18). 14 Curley (C I 223; 302f), Freudenthal (1887: 108),Ariew (2014: 167), Appuhn (1964, diPoppa (2013: 311), andViljanen (2008), among others, all agree that Spinoza knew Suárez's work, even if only indirectly. 15 SeeMelamed (2000),Peterman (2015),Gueroult (1973), and Schliesser (2018) for how number, which Spinoza lists as a being of…”