Descartes' Deontological Turn: Reason, Will, and Virtue in the Later Writings Book

Preface ix

List of abbreviations xii

Introduction 1

1 Looking inward: truth, falsehood, and clear and distinct ideas 10

1 Interpreting the nature of clear and distinct perceptions 12

2 Objective reality in the Third Meditation 17

3 Objective being and representation in the First Replies 22

4 True and false ideas 28

5 Clarity and distinctness 38

6 Materially false ideas 46

2 Error in judgment 61

1 Error as a misuse of free will 64

2 Error as privation 74

3 The dual metaphysical status of error 78

4 The causal analysis of error 79

5 The normative query: God and human proneness to error 86

6 Error as privation: alternative interpretations 89

7 Error and rationality 95

3 Free will 101

1 Free will in the Fourth Meditation 101

2 Cartesian indifference 104

3 The two-way power of the will 109

4 Descartes' conception of human freedom 115

5 Article 37 of the Principles 124

6 The 1645 letter to Mesland 126

4 Free will and the likeness to God 131

1 In the image and likeness of God 131

2 The dissimilarity thesis 132

3 The human experience of freedom and the incomprehensibility of God 137

4 The likeness to God revisited 144

5 From intellectual to practical reason 149

1 Descartes' apparent ambivalence 149

2 Judgments concerning matters of faith 154

3 The morale par provision 160

4 The four morale maxims 165

6 Descartes' deontological ethics of virtue 178

1 The unity of virtue 379

2 Virtue as the right use of the will 183

3 Virtue, the supreme good, and happiness 185

4 Virtue as self-mastery in the Passions of the Soul 191

5 Cartesian generosity 198

References 205

Index 213