Descartes

“By firmly embedding his descriptions of Descartes’ achievements in their social, political, and sometimes personal settings, Nadler gives the reader a more fully human Descartes than is found in most introductions to his philosophy. The inclusion of several portraits of Descartes and his correspondents–most in color–enhance Nadler’s humanizing approach.”– “Choice”“Steven Nadler’s outstanding biography achieves a fine balance of life, ideas and context, allowing Descartes’s philosophy to emerge from its eclectic seventeenth-century milieu in all its dazzling originality and strangeness. Lucid, compelling and unfailingly judicious, this is a marvelous new study of a magisterial modern thinker.”–Clare Carlisle Tresch, King’s College London

Steven Nadler is Vilas Research Professor and the William H. Hay II Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and his books include Think Least of Death: Spinoza on How to Live and How to Die.