Prof. Cottingham is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Reading, as well as a Professorial Research Fellow of Heythrop College, University of London, and an Honorary Fellow of St. John’s College, Oxford, where he started out as an undergraduate. He is also Editor of Ratio, the international journal of analytic philosophy. His principal research interests are in early-modern philosophy (especially Descartes), moral philosophy, and the philosophy of religion. He has published eleven books as sole author, including Descartes, The Rationalists, Philosophy and the Good Life, and On the Meaning of Life. Among his recent books are The Spiritual Dimension (2005), which deals with central themes in the philosophy of religion, and Cartesian Reflections (2008), a collection of his papers on Descartes.
The following is the text of a seminar paper given by Prof. John Cottingham at the Thomas More Institute on Wednesday 29 February 2011.*