Patricia Easton
Associate Professor of Philosophy
Philosophy Department
School of Arts and Humanities
Claremont Graduate University
121 East Tenth Street
Claremont, CA 91711
Tel.: 909.621.8612
Fax: 909.607.1221
Email: Patricia.Easton@cgu.edu
Professor Easton received her B.A. in Psychology and Philosophy, with honors, from Glendon College, York University in 1987. She received her M.A. (1988) and Ph.D. (1993) from the University of Western Ontario. From 1993 to 1995 she taught philosophy at the University of Toronto as a visiting lecturer. She also taught at the University of Western Ontario for one year and in 1995 she joined the Philosophy Department at Claremont Graduate University.
Professor Easton specializes in the history of modern philosophy, particularly the philosophy of René Descartes and the Cartesians of the seventeenth century. Her interests also include the philosophy of mind, the history of science, and the history of philosophy. Her current research centers on the writings of Robert Desgabets (1610-1678), whose Cartesianism represents an important challenge to traditional conceptions of the Cartesian philosophy. As a recipient of the Borchard Scholar-in-Residency Grant, she spent the fall of 2000 in France working on an extended study of Desgabets's writings. She also directed and edited
The Descartes Web Site that features seventeenth-century French and English editions of Descartes' work,
The Passions of the Soul.
At CGU she teaches courses and seminars in early modern philosophy. She has also taken part in team-teaching
transdisciplinary courses at CGU.
More Information for Professor Easton
List of Publications
Books
The Descartes's Web Site: Passions de L'Ame and Passions of the Soul, a modernized edition, directed and edited by Patricia Easton (May 2000) URL = http://beta.cgu.edu/philosophy/descartes/
A modern web-edition of Descartes's last work, Passions de L'Ame (Paris, 1649) and the first English translation of the work, Passions of the Soul (London, 1650). The French text was modernized by Andre Gombay and edited by Patricia Easton; the English text was modernized and edited by Patricia Easton.
Logic and the Workings of the Mind: The Logic of Ideas and Faculty Psychology in Early Modern Philosophy, North American Kant Society Studies in Philosophy Series (Atascadero: Ridgeview Publishing,1997)
A collection of critical essays by various authors; I edited the volume and co-wrote the introduction with Lorne Falkenstein.
The Cartesian Empiricism of François Bayle, with Thomas M. Lennon (New York: Garland Press, 1992)
Bibliographia Malebranchiana: An Annotated Bibliography of the Malebranche Literature into 1989, with Thomas M. Lennon and Gregor Sebba, Journal of the History of Philosophy Monograph Series ( Carbondale & Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992)
Articles
"Cartesian Matter: Desgabets's Indefectibility Thesis," edited by T. M. Schmaltz, Receptions of Descartes:Cartesianism and Anti-cartesianism in Early Modern Europe (Routledge, 2004)
"Robert Desgabets: A Cartesian?" in A Companion to Early Modern Philosophy, edited by S. Nadler (Blackwell, 2002)
"Robert Desgabets," in The Electronic Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Spring 2001 edition, Edward N. Zalta, general editor, Alan Nelson, early modern editor, URL =http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/desgabets/
"Antoine Le Grand," in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Summer 2001 edition, Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/legrand/
"Robert Desgabets," in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. by E. Craig (London: Routledge, 1998)
"Antoine LeGrand," in: Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. by E. Craig (London: Routledge, 1998
"Jacques Rohault," Biographical Appendix in The Cambridge History of Seventeenth Century Philosophy, ed. by M. Ayers and D. Garber, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) v. 2, p. 1460.
"Samuel Sorbiére," in: ibid., p. 1464.
"Rorty's History-of-philosophy-as-story-of-progress," in Etudes Maritainiennes/Maritainian Studies, XI (1995), pp.85-97.
Reviews
Thomas M. Lennon, editor. Cartesian Views: Papers Presented to Richard A. Watson. Leiden: Brill, 2003 forthcoming in The Journal of the History of Philosophy.
Margaret Cavendish, Observations upon Experimental Philosophy Edited by Eileen O'Neill. (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, 2001) in The Philosophical Quarterly> , January 2004, vol. 54, no. 214: 175-77.
Elmar J. Kremer and Michael J. Latzer, editors. The Problem of Evil in Early Modern Philosophy. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001) in Journal of the History of Philosophy, October 2003, Vol. XLI(4): 559-560.
Julien Offray de la Mettrie, Man Machine and Other Writings, translated and edited by Ann Thomson (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996) in: Dialogue, 38:3 (1999) pp. 627-630.
Margaret J. Osler, Divine Will and the Mechanical Philosophy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994); in The Journal of the History of Philosophy 34:4(1996), pp. 614-616.
Nicholas Malebranche, Treatise on Ethics, translated by Craig Walton (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993); in Canadian Philosophical Reviews, 33:4 (1995), pp. 44-46.
Nicolas Malebranche, Treatise on Nature & Grace, translated by Patrick Riley (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992) and Nicolas Malebranche, Philosophical Selections, edited by Steven Nadler (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1992) in: The Journal of the History of Philosophy, 32:4 (1994), pp. 147-150
Invited Talks
"Who Was the 'Good Cartesian': The Debate between Malebranche and Desgabets on Eternal Truths," The University of Calgary, June 6-9, 2002
"Cartesian Matter: Desgabets's Indefectibility Thesis," April 4-7, 2002 Duke conference, "Receptions of Descartes.:
"Exorcizing demons with Cartesian mechanism: the Cartesian Physician, François Bayle," October 31, 2001, Claremont Discourse Series, Claremont, CA
"Some Problems with the Cartesian Theory of Matter," invited speaker to the Southern California Philosophy Conference, October 27-28, 2001, University of California, Irvine, California.
"A Cartesian Argument Against Innate Ideas," Invited speaker, Annual Southern California Early Modern Conference, California State University at Long Beach, June 20-21, 1999.
"Descartes on the Unholy Union of Mind and Body," Invited speaker, Department of Philosophy University of California at San Diego, January 30, 1998.
"The Continuity of Method in Descartes: The Case of the Passions of the Soul," Invited speaker, Department of Philosophy, University of California at Irvine, May 30, 1997.
Dissertation Workshop, "Deciding when enough is enough: How to balance researching and writing a dissertation," University of California at Irvine, January 31, 1997.
Cartesian Science: The Metaphysics and Physics of Blood Transfusion," Science, Technology, and Society Colloquium, Claremont Colleges, November 6, 1996.
"Descartes's Mechanism and the Birth of Psychiatry: François Bayle (1622-1709)," Descartes Conference, Claremont Graduate School, Claremont, California, March 30, 1996.
"Descartes Project: Electronic AT Edition of Descartes's Oeuvres Completes," Descartes Electronic Workshop, Claremont Graduate School, Claremont, California, March 29, 1996.
"A Workshop on the Philosophy of Robert Desgabets," (Invited workshop presentation, Claremont Graduate School, February 2, 1995.)
"Rorty's History-of-philosophy-as-story-of-progress," (Invited paper given to the Maritain Society, Canadian Philosophical Association Conference, Calgary, June 9, 1994.)
"Problems interpreting Descartes's texts: Descartes's empiricist interpreters." (Invited workshop presentation given at The University of Toronto, Resources for Descartes Scholarship," Conference, April 15-17, 1994.)
"A Cartesian Argument Against Innate Ideas." (Invited paper, Canadian Society for the History of Science, Joint Session at the Canadian Philosophical Association Conference, June 1993; invited paper, Early Modern Philosophy Group, University of Toronto, Feb 1994; revised version, department of philosophy, McGill University, March 31, 1994.)
"Desgabets on the Cartesian Soul." (Invited paper, philosophy department, York University, Toronto, March 1993; a refereed paper also read at the Canadian Philosophical Association Conference, June 1993.)
"Robert Desgabets: A Lost Chapter in the History of Blood Transfusion" (Invited paper, Institute for the History of Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto, November 19, 1992.)