
Contents
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1. The Fifth Objections and its Sequels 1. The Fifth Objections and its Sequels
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2. Overview of the Debate 2. Overview of the Debate
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3. Clear and Distinct Perception 3. Clear and Distinct Perception
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4. The Eternal Truths and the Immaterial Intellect 4. The Eternal Truths and the Immaterial Intellect
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5. God 5. God
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6. The Real Distinction 6. The Real Distinction
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7. Conclusion 7. Conclusion
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References References
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37 Gassendi as Critic of Descartes
Get accessAntonia LoLordo is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Virginia and coeditor of the Journal of Modern Philosophy. Her publications include Mary Shepherd’s Essays on the Perception of an External Universe (Oxford University Press, 2020), Locke’s Moral Man (Oxford University Press, 2012), and Pierre Gassendi and the Birth of Early Modern Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 2007), as well as papers on a variety of topics on seventeenth- to nineteenth-century European philosophy.
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Published:09 May 2019
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Abstract
Pierre Gassendi is best known today as a critic of Descartes. This chapter surveys Gassendi’s Objections to the Meditations, Descartes’s Reply, and Gassendi’s Counter-Objections in the Disquisitio Metaphysica. The central theme of this debate is methodology. Gassendi thinks that the methodology of the Meditations is hopeless: nobody can genuinely clear their mind of preconceived opinions, and if they did, they would not have discovered new foundations for the sciences, but instead be trapped in a state of suspended judgment. Gassendi’s critique is not entirely fair to Descartes, and Descartes’s reply fails to take seriously the main points of the critique.
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