Reason, material objects, God, mind and body are all interrelated in Descartes' philosophy. The misapprehension of one will lead to misunderstandings in all of them. They are bound together by being part of the one God given secure universe. This allows Descartes to put forward the understanding of the universe as being one in which rational science was possible and indubitable certainty achievable. Because they are all organically related in the one meaningful system, the essential natures of these things which Descartes discovers flow into one another in their actual existence in the world. Accepting the picture of the universe as a rational place where certainty is possible, is part of what defines much of modernity as modernity. Since this is one way of ensuring certainty, modernity demands that a thing's essence should reflect its manner of existence. However this leads to modernity demanding of Descartes' philosophy that it reflect this same structure. Modernity then reads Descartes as trying to present such a picture, and consequently finds that Descartes' arguments do not work. Because Descartes' universe is God's universe, he is able to offer to humanity a very strong form of autonomy. But modernity prefers to have a less powerful form of autonomy which is independent of God, but which makes itself a servant to nature and the community of reason. This is a result of the price of entry into the rational universe through Descartes' method of doubt. As a consequence of modernity's reworking of Descartes' understanding of autonomy, and their demand that a thing's essence should exactly reflect its mode of existence, irreducible tensions develop in modernity. These are particularly obvious in the case of the relationship between science, reason and God, and between the mind and the body. This thesis addresses these tensions / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Texte remanié de: Doct. th.--Constance, 2002. / Bibliogr. p. 207-234. Index.

Zugl.: Jena, Univ., Diss., 2008

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University, 1931. / Vita.

Phenomenology has been one of the most influential and far-reaching developments in 20th Century Philosophy and has had a great impact on the disciplines of philosophy of logic and math, theory of knowledge, and theory of meaning. The most profound influence on Edmund Husserl (1859 - 1938), the founder of phenomenology, was Rene Descartes (1596 - 1650), whose radical rethinking of philosophy’s overall project provided Husserl with both the historical and conceptual point of departure for his foundation of prima philosophia. Despite this explicit and well-known influence, there is no book- length study of their thematic parallels; numerous Journal articles focus almost entirely on the phenomenological reduction and, aside from this, are fairly unsatisfactory. The purpose of the present work is to elucidate systematic convergences (and divergences) between Descartes and Husserl throughout their respective philosophical developments. This comprises explication of several central topics: 1. The parallel between 17th C. skepticism, which Descartes attempted to overthrow, and 19th C. psychologism and relativism, which Husserl reacted against. 2. The striking similarity at the level of formal ontology between Descartes' simple and complex natures and Husserl's part-whole theory. 3. A clarification of the Cartesian sense of methodical doubt and how Husserl's mistaking of this shaped the initial formulation of the reduction. 4. Convergence in the maturation of the primitive notion of intuition as "clear and distinct seeing" and "seeing of essences" for both thinkers. 5. An analysis of the modes of methodical doubt, in terms of steps in the cognitive act of doubting, and not merely in the content of that which is doubted. 6. Far-reaching divergences in that Descartes was motivated to establish with scientific certainly an entirely new world of being, whereas Husserl was concerned to disclose an entirely new sense of the world. As such, thematic convergences between Descartes and Husserl are not due to accidental intersections of interest, nor are they curiosities of the comparative method in historical research. These parallels are intrinsic and systematic due to an overarching congruence in their visions of the starting point, methodological procedures, and reaction to pseudo-scientific matters-of-fact in the founding of a genuine philosophical project.

Texte remanié de: Habilitationsschrift--Philosophische Fakultät--Münster--Universität Münster, 1990.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Michigan, 1937. / Thesis note from slip mounted on t.p. Consists of four articles; the first reprinted from Papers of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts and Letters, v. 24, pt. 4, 1938; the sencond and fourth from Hispanic review, v. 9, 1941, and v. 8, 1940, and the third from Hispania, v. 22, 1939.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University, 1926. / Vita. "A new attempt at reconstructin the conceptions of mind of Aristotle, Saint Augustine, and Descartes."--Foreword. Published also without thesis note.

Thesis--Marburg. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [91]-97).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University, 1926. / Vita. "A new attempt at reconstructin the conceptions of mind of Aristotle, Saint Augustine, and Descartes."--Foreword. Published also without thesis note.