Steven Nadler is the William H. Hay II Professor of Philosophy, Evjue-Bascom Professor in Humanities, and Weinstein-Bascom Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he has been teaching since 1988. He has been the editor of the Journal of the History of Philosophy, and President of the Central Division of the American Philosophical Association. Nadler previous publications include A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza's Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age (Princeton, 2011), The Philosopher, the Priest and the Painter: A Portrait of Descartes (Princeton, 2013), Spinoza: A Life (Cambridge, 1999/2018, winner of the Koret Jewish Book Award), Rembrandt's Jews (Chicago, 2003, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), Menasseh ben Israel: Rabbi of Amsterdam (Yale, 2018), and the graphic book Heretics! The Wondrous (and Dangerous) Beginnings of Modern Philosophy (Princeton, 2017) with his son Ben Nadler.

Tad Schmaltz is Professor of Philosophy and James B. and Grace J. Nelson Fellow at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His areas of specialization are the history of early modern philosophy, the history and philosophy of early modern science, and the relations among philosophy, science and theology in the early modern period. He has as special interests the variety of early modern "Cartesianisms"; the influence of late scholasticism on early modern thought; the nature of the "Scientific Revolution"; and early modern versions of substance-mode metaphysics, theories of mereology, and views of causation and freedom.

Delphine Antoine-Mahut is Professor of Philosophy at the ENS Lyon, France. Her research focuses on early modern philosophy, especially on the relations between metaphysics and physiology; on the historiography of early modern philosophy, in order to highlight the genesis of our current representations of modernity ; and on the various receptions of cartesianism, particularly on the crossed genesis of an official spiritualist model and an unofficial empiricist one.

• Part I: Descartes


• 1: Han van Ruler: Philosopher Defying the Philosophers: Descartes's Life and Works


• 2: Roger Ariew: What Descartes Read: His Intellectual Background


• 3: Theo Verbeek and Erik-Jan Bos: Descartes's Correspondence and Correspondents"


• 4: Lex Newman: Descartes on the Method of Analysis


• 5: Lawrence Nolan: Descartes's Metaphysics


• 6: Gary Hatfield: Mind and Psychology in Descartes


• 7: Helen Hattab: Descartes's Mechanical But Not Mechanistic Physics


• 8: Sébastien Maronne: Descartes's Mathematics


• 9: Gideon Manning: Descartes and Medicine


• 10: C. P. Ragland: Descartes on Freedom


• 11: Denis Kambouchner: Descartes and the Passions


• 12: Igor Agostini: Descartes's Philosophical Theology


• 13: Laurence Renault: Descartes's Moral Philosophy


• 14: Delphine Antoine-Mahut: Descartes, Politics and 'True Human Beings


• 15: Frédéric de Buzon: The Compendium Musicae and Descartes's Aesthetics


• Part II: The Cartesians


• 16: Claudio Buccolini: Mersenne: Questioning Descartes


• 17: Lisa Shapiro: Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia as a Cartesian


• 18: Tad M. Schmaltz: Claude Clerselier and the Development of Cartesianism


• 19: Philippe Drieux: Louis La Forge on Mind, Causality and Union


• 20: Fred Ablondi: He has created a schism in philosophy': The Cartesianism of Géraud de Cordemoy


• 21: Denis Moreau: Antoine Arnauld: Cartesian Philosopher?


• 22: Jean-Christophe Bardout: The Ambiguities of Malebranche's Cartesianism


• 23: Antonella del Prete: The Prince of Cartesian Philosophers: Pierre-Sylvain Régis


• 24: Mihnea Dobre: Jacques Rohault and Cartesian Experimentalism


• 25: Tad M. Schmaltz: Robert Desgabets and the Supplement to Descartes's Philosophy


• 26: Wiep van Bunge: The Early Dutch Reception of Cartesianism


• 27: Tad M. Schmaltz: The Curious Case of Henricus Regius


• 28: Andrea Sangiacomo: Geulincx and the Quod Nescis Principle: A Conservative Revolution


• 29: Alice Ragni: Johannes Clauberg and the Search for the Initium Philosophiae: The Recovery of (Cartesian) Metaphysics


• 30: Mitia Rioux-Beaulne: What is Cartesianisma Fontenelle and the Subsequent Construction of Cartesian Philosophy?


• 31: Sarah Hutton: Cartesianism in Britain


• 32: Giulia Belgioioso: Italy Did Not Want to Be Cartesian': And For Good Reason


• 33: Dan Arbib: 33. "The Creation of Eternal Truths: Issues and Context"


• 34: Jean-Robert Armogathe: Cartesianism and Eucharistic Physics


• 35: Marie-Frédérique Pellegrin: Cartesianism and Feminism


• Part III: The Critics


• 36: Hélène Bouchilloux: Pascal and Port-Royal


• 37: Antonia Lolordo: Gassendi as Critic of Descartes


• 38: Douglas Jesseph: Optics, First Philosophy and Natural Philosophy in Hobbes and Descartes


• 39: Jasper Reid: Henry More, Supporter and Opponent of Cartesianism


• 40: Hadley Cooney: Margaret Cavendish vs. Descartes on Mechanism and Animal Souls


• 41: Steven Nadler: Spinoza, Descartes and the 'Stupid Cartesians'


• 42: Michael W. Hickson: Simon Foucher and Anti-Cartesian Skepticism


• 43: Philippe Hamou: Locke on Cartesian Bodies and Cartesian Souls


• 44: Christia Mercer: Anne Conway's Response to Cartesianism


• 45: Jean-Pascal Anfray: Leibniz and Descartes


• 46: Todd Ryan: A Cartésien Manqué: Pierre Bayle and Cartesianism


• 47: Sophie Roux: The Condemnations of Cartesian Natural Philosophy Under Louis XIV (1661-1691)


• 48: Thomas M. Lennon: Pierre-Daniel Huet, Skeptic Critic of Cartesianism and Defender of Religion


• 49: Justin Smith: Gabriel Daniel: Descartes Through the Mirror of Fiction


• 50: Andrew Janiak: Physics and Metaphysics in Descartes and Newton