Reading Descartes otherwise : blind, mad, dreamy, and bad / Kyoo Lee.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lee, Kyoo.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Descartes, René, 1596-1650. Meditationes de prima philosophia.

Descartes, René.

Physical Description:

xi, 219 pages ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Fordham University Press, [2013]

Summary:

Focusing on the first four images of the Other mobilized in Descartes' Meditations-namely, the blind, the mad, the dreamy, and the bad-Reading Descartes Otherwise casts light on what have heretofore been the phenomenological shadows of "Cartesian rationality." In doing so, it discovers dynamic signs of spectral alterity lodged both at the core and on the edges of modern Cartesian subjectivity.

Calling for a Copernican reorientation of the very notion of "Cartesianism," the book's series of close, creatively critical readings of Descartes' signature images brings the dramatic forces, moments, and scenes of the cogito into our own contemporary moment The author patiently unravels the knotted skeins of ambiguity that have been spun within philosophical modernity out of such clichés as "Descartes, the abstract modern subject" and "Descartes, the father of modern philosophy"-a figure who is at once everywhere and nowhere. In the process, she revitalizes and reframes the legacy of Cartesian modernity, in a way more mindful of its proto-phenomenological traces. Book jacket.

Contents:

Preamble I If Descartes Remains Overread and Underexplored... 1

Preamble II Descartes Needs Rereading 6

A Stage Setup: Reframing "Jeux Descartes" 14

Scene 1 Blind Vision: A Photographic Touch 46

Scene 2 Elastic Madness: An Allegorical Comedy 83

Scene 3 Philopoetic Somnambulism: An Imaginary Freedom 116

Scene 4 Cornered Reflection: With and around an Evil Genius 149.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 183-213) and index.

ISBN:

9780823244843

0823244849

9780823244850

0823244857

OCLC:

785077497