Descartes: Belief, Scepticism and Virtue

Davies explores neglected areas of Descartes' philosophy, such as his thoughts on virtue, and questions whether or not this will call for a reassessment of Descartes' role in western philosophy.

Richard Davies is Professor of the History of Philosophy at the University of Bergamo, Italy.

Acknowledgements

viii

List of abbreviations

ix

Introduction

1

(1)

Motivation

1

(3)

The plot

4

(3)

References

7

(2)

PART I Structures

9

(30)

Intellectual virtues

11

(28)

Some structures of virtue

11

(6)

Virtues, skills and habits

17

(7)

Doxastic rectitude

24

(8)

Rectitude, reliability and responsibility

32

(3)

The relations of credulity to scepticism

35

(4)

PART II Excess

39

(106)

Reason and virtue in the Passions

41

(13)

Ethics and epistemology

41

(2)

Descartes' intellectualist ethics

43

(11)

The vice of credulity

54

(24)

The discovery of credulity

54

(2)

What Descartes says he has noticed in Meditations I

56

(2)

Strategies for discovering one's credulity

58

(15)

Responding to the discovery of credulity

73

(5)

The control of credulity

78

(25)

Error and theodicy

78

(5)

The perfection of the faculty for judging

83

(4)

The role of the intellect in the earlier writings

87

(4)

Intellect and will

91

(7)

Descartes' respectability

98

(5)

Reason, assent and eternal truth

103

(42)

Reason and light

103

(5)

Grades of assent

108

(15)

The unconditioned will and conditional assent

123

(11)

Recapitulation

134

(1)

Doxastic Pelagianism

135

(10)

PART III Defect

145

(54)

The modes of scepticism

147

(23)

Locating scepticism

147

(3)

Modes and modishness

150

(5)

A scepticism to live by

155

(10)

Retreat to method

165

(5)

The form of scepticism

170

(29)

Standards

170

(4)

Standard-defeaters in the Meditations

174

(14)

Demonic powers

188

(7)

How scepticism is a vice

195

(4)

PART IV The mean

199

(92)

Tota methodus

201

(18)

Direction and method

201

(2)

The first precept -- evidence

203

(4)

The second precept -- analysis

207

(3)

The third precept -- order

210

(3)

The fourth precept -- reconstruction

213

(3)

The precepts viewed as correctives

216

(3)

Rectitude and science

219

(29)

Virtue and method

219

(5)

What rectitude requires

224

(8)

The shape of completed science

232

(16)

What rectitude permits

248

(20)

Moral certainty

248

(6)

The irrelevance of experience

254

(6)

Admonitions

260

(8)

What rectitude forbids

268

(23)

What might be false

268

(1)

What we have grounds for thinking is false

269

(22)

Afterword

291

(2)

Notes

293

(26)

Bibliography

319

(24)

Index of primary texts

343

(13)

General index

356

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Descartes: Belief, Scepticism and Virtue

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