Christopher Wild - "Descartes' Meditative Turn" - Timothy M. Harrison

Christopher Wild will discuss Descartes' Meditative Turn: Cartesian Thought as Spiritual Practice. He will be joined in conversation by Timothy M. Harrison. A Q&A and signing will follow the discussion.

At the Co-op

RSVP HERE (Please note that your RSVP is requested but not required.)

About the Book: Why would René Descartes, the father of modern rationalist philosophy, choose "meditations"—a term and genre associated with religious discourse and practice—for the title of his magnum opus that lays the metaphysical foundations for his reform of all knowledge, including mathematics and sciences? Why did he believe that the immortality of the soul and the existence of God, which the Meditations on First Philosophy set out to demonstrate, can only be made self-evident through meditating? These are the question that Christopher Wild's book answers.

About the Author: Christopher Wild is the Peter B. Ritzma Professor of Germanic Studies, Theater & Performance Studies, and the College. He is also Associate Faculty at the Divinity School. He has published widely on the intersections of religion with literature, theater, art, and philosophy in Early Modern Europe. In particular, he is interested in the role and impact of religious thought and practice in processes and phenomena considered genuinely modern and secular. His next book examines how the reform of religious media launched by Martin Luther and others paved the way for modern media technologies and practices.

About the Interlocutor: Timothy M. Harrison is an Associate Professor in the Department of English and the John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Coming To: Consciousness and Natality in Early Modern England (University of Chicago Press, 2020) and, with Elizabeth D. Harvey (University of Toronto), John Donne’s Physics (University of Chicago Press, 2024). With Jane Mikkelson (Yale University), he is currently writing a book entitled Horizons of the Mind: Self and World in Early Modern Persian and English Poetry.