The Metaphysics of the Material World

Tad M. Schmaltz is Professor of Philosophy and James B. and Grace J. Nelson Fellow at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He specializes in early modern philosophy, and is the author of Malebranche's Theory of the Soul (OUP 1996), Radical Cartesianism (2002), Descartes on Causation (OUP 2008), and Early Modern Cartesianisms (OUP 2017). In addition, he has edited or co-edited Receptions of Descartes (2005), Integrating History and Philosophy of Science (2012), Efficient Causation: A History (OUP 2014), The Historical Dictionary of Descartes and Cartesian Philosophy (2015), The Problem of Universals in Early Modern Philosophy (OUP 2017), and The Oxford Handbook of Descartes and Cartesianism (OUP 2019).

Tables and Figures
Abbreviations
Acknowledgements
Prologue

1. Bayle's Narrative
1.1. Bayle's Aristotelian Critique of Spinoza
1.2. Aristotle's Metaphysics of the Material World

Part I: Suárez
2. Metaphysics and Material Modes
2.1. Analogical Metaphysics
2.2. Theory of Distinctions I
2.3. The Metaphysics of Material Modes
3. Quantity, Integral Parts and Boundaries
3.1. Quantity and Impenetrability I
3.2. Mereology and Integral Parts
3.3. Boundaries as Indivisible Constituents

Part II: Descartes
4. Metaphysical Themes from Suárez
4.1. Theory of Distinctions II
4.2. Quantity and Impenetrability II
4.3. The Metaphysics of Surfaces
5. Material Pluralism and Ordinary Bodies
5.1. The Synopsis and Bodies-Taken-In-General
5.2. Incorruptibility and the Vacuum
5.3. Ordinary Bodies, Human and Otherwise

Part III: Spinoza
6. Metaphysical Themes from Descartes
6.1. The Nature of Substance/Attributes
6.2. The Nature of Modes
6.3. From Extension to Motion-and-Rest
7. Material Monism and Bodily Parts
7.1. Modal Parts and Divisible Quantity
7.2. The Mereology of the Infinite Individual
7.3. Parts, Modes and Material Monism

Epilogue

Works cited
Index