Reading Descartes otherwise; blind, mad, dreamy, and bad.

9780823244850

Reading Descartes otherwise; blind, mad, dreamy, and bad.

Lee, Kyoo.

Fordham University Press

2013

219 pages

$24.00

B1854

Lee (philosophy, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY) presents a fascinating study of four figures of alterity that appear at the very beginning of Descartes' Meditations: blindness, madness, dreaminess, and badness. She focuses on these figures because they appear at the beginning of Descartes' text and are quickly passed over. She argues that there is a "manifold Descartes" that can be found in Descartes' writing itself and offers the reader a kind of phenomenological reading of Meditations that reveals this. The effect is a revision of what Cartesianism really means. To that end, her writing style is both philosophically rigorous, yet full of panache that conveys an enthusiasm for the project.

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