Within the framework of the NWO-research project Decoding Descartes, Erasmus School of Philosophy (ESPhil) is organizing an international conference on 7 and 8 June 2022 under the title New Readings of Descartes. During the conference, members of the Decoding Descartes project team will present their reinterpretations and reappraisals of René Descartes (1596–1650), arguably one of the least understood philosophers in the Western tradition (see Decoding Descartes; Han van Ruler, Food for Thought). Various international speakers will contribute their own ‘new readings’ of Descartes’s mathematics, logic and argumentation, as well as present and discuss the newly found manuscripts of Descartes’s Regulae and L’homme. Finally, new interpretations will be presented of the dissemination of Descartes’s philosophy through epistolary exchanges, and a new and an unsuspected audience for Descartes’ work will be revealed: late seventeenth-century astrologers.

The conference will be held in the Polak Building at the Campus Woudestein of Erasmus University Rotterdam on 7 and 8 June 2022. Attending the conference is free but registration in advance is appreciated. You can register by writing to Erik-Jan Bos (bos__at__esphil.eur.nl).

For the programme, scroll down, or download it here. You can also download the conference poster.

Programme New Readings of Descartes

A Decoding Descartes Conference

Tuesday 7 June Morning Session 

Chair: Wiep van Bunge                                  Room: Polak 1-10

09h30     Opening by Wiep van Bunge (EUR)

09h45     Han van Ruler (EUR) — Descartes’ Search for Science and the Transformation of Philosophy

10h45     Coffee/tea

11h15    Doğukan Öztürkoğlu (EUR) — Descartes’ Transcendental Philosophy and the Making of Modernity

12h00     Sébastien Maronne (Université Toulouse III – Paul Sabatier) — Descartes’ Four Geometries

Afternoon Session

Chair: Han van Ruler                                       Room: Polak 1-10                                      

14h00     Roger Ariew (University of South Florida, Tampa) — Lost in Translation: Descartes’ Logic

15h00     Élodie Cassan (UMR 5317, CNRS, ENS de Lyon) — Forming the Habit of Thinking Well: Descartes’ Reshaping of the Act of Reasoning

15h45     Coffee/tea

16h00     Rodolfo Garau (ERC Early Modern Cosmology (GA725883), Ca’ Foscari University, Venice) —
Moving away from the Margins: Cartesian Cosmology and Late Seventeenth Century Astrologers — and Especially in Peter Megerlin’s Astrologia Cartesiana (ASHB1530)

Wednesday 8 June

Chair: Doğukan Öztürkoğlu                          Room: Polak 2-04

09h30     Richard Serjeantson (Trinity College, Cambridge) — TBA

10h15     Erik-Jan Bos (EUR)   —  An Unknown Latin Manuscript Translation of L’Homme

11h00     Coffee/tea

11h30     Paolo Rossini (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow, EUR) — Epistolary Discussions: The Role of Correspondence in the Dissemination of Descartes’ Philosophy