Desmond M Clarke is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the National University of Ireland, Cork. He was awarded a D.Litt from the National University of Ireland, was a Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute and a Fulbright Scholar, and is a member of the Royal Irish Academy. He is the author of a number of books on seventeenth-century philosophy, and has also translated texts of the same period from Latin and French, including Descartes and Louis de la Forge.