The plain truth : Descartes, Huet, and skepticism / / by Thomas M. Lennon.

• Superior document: Brill's studies in intellectual history, v. 170
• Author: Lennon, Thomas M.
• Year of Publication: 2008
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Language: English
• Series: Brill's studies in intellectual history ; v. 170.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (272 p.)
• Notes: Description based upon print version of record.

The skeptic Pierre-Daniel Huet’s Censura philosophiae cartesianae (1689) is the most comprehensive, unrelenting and devastating critique of Descartes ever. It incisively captures all the issues that now interest readers of Descartes: the method of doubt, the cogito , clarity and distinctness as crit...

Table of Contents

• People
• Who was Huet?
• The Censura : why and when?
• The birth of skepticism
• Malebranche's surprising silence
• The downfall of Cartesianism
• Kinds
• Huet a Cartesian?
• Descartes and skepticism : the standard interpretation
• Descartes and skepticism : the texts
• Thoughts
• The cogito : an inference?
• The transparency of mind
• The cogito as pragmatic tautology
• Doubts
• The reality of doubt
• The generation of doubt
• The response to doubt
• Rules
• The criterion of truth
• The trump argument
• Circles
• The simple circularity of the Meditations
• The inner circle(s)
• Gods
• Gassendist influences
• The objections of objections
• The rejection of intentionality
• Virtues
• Descartes's voice
• Betting the family farm
• The propagation of light
• The heart-beat
• The moving earth
• Faith and reason
• Descartes as methodological academic skeptic.