A collection of more than 30 specially commissioned essays, this volume surveys the work of the 17th-century philosopher-scientist commonly regarded as the founder of modern philosophy, while integrating unique essays detailing the context and impact of his work.

"Good companions fulfill two more duties - they provide better ways of understanding the familiar and they also defamiliarise it by encouraging newslants and alerting us to relatively ignored issues: this companion does both ....A most attractive and wide-ranging addition to its field."
(Reference Reviews, Issue 6 2008)

With more than 30 newly commissioned essays, A Companion to Descartes details in unparalleled depth the work of the seventeenth-century philosopher-scientist commonly regarded as the founder of modern philosophy. Alongside discussion of his seminal contributions to our understanding of skepticism,mind-body dualism, self-knowledge, innate ideas, substance, causality, God,and the nature of animals, the volume provides in several essays a uniqueorientation to the intellectual, religious, and scientific contexts that were important to Descartes's work. Concluding with discussions of the impact of Descartes's work on subsequent generations of philosophers, the essays in this volume offer fresh and distinctive scholarly perspectives on this giant of the history of modern thought.