Abstract

The principle unifying this valuable collection of essays, all previously published, is that properly to understand Descartes’s philosophical project we must place his work in its historical context. The collection opens, accordingly, with the essay, “Does History Have a Future?”, in which Garber contrasts his context-sensitive approach to the history of philosophy with another that looks to history as a storehouse of possible truth. Though he does not deny the interest of this latter, comparatively ahistorical approach, he argues that a precipitate focus on truth tends not only to distort understanding, but to deprive us of what is perhaps more useful and important, namely, new questions. For, Garber reminds us, it is not so much the truth of a past philosopher’s views, much less their falsity that causes us to reflect on our own beliefs, it is the fact that smart people took seriously views often very different from ours.