Bernard Williams is my kind of analytic philosopher--alert to history, cares about reality--but this is not my kind of history of philosophy book. He's up front about this: this is a book about what Descartes means today (i.e., in the 'seventies), not what he meant in the seventeenth century; and what he 'means today' means, really, what he means when put in the context of Nagel, Frankfurt and Kenny. Well, I don't really care about those gentlemen, and there's no reason to think that this is the best way of doing history of philosophy.

But, as I said, Williams is open about what he's doing, and knows there are other ways of doing it. So, this is a good analytic look at Descartes, who is assumed to have the same problems analytic philosophers of the seventies had, which perhaps makes better points about the later philosophy than it does the earlier. ( )