Tad M. Schmaltz is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan.

"Descartes on Causation is among the most important contributions to Descartes scholarship in recent times."--Richard F. Hassing, The Review of Metaphysics

"Schmaltz has produced an excellent book with much to teach us about all sorts of issues related to causation in Descartes. The breadth and depth of its scholarship is extremely impressive. I recommend it with enthusiasm to anyone interested in Descartes' metaphysics."--C. P. Ragland, Philosophical Books

"By tracing the roots and implications of Descartes's surprisingly rich and systematic metaphysics of causation, Schmaltz has given us a vivid new conception of what Descartes intended as a philosopher, where he succeeded, and where he failed."--Geoffrey Gorham, Dialogue

"Tad Schmaltz's aim, in this wonderfully detailed and intricately argued book, is to reject the tendency to move towards an occasionalist reading of Descartes, and to show how the Cartesian system permits things in the world to have a genuine, if derivative, kind of causal power...Overall, Schmaltz sees himself as partly deconstructing a standard narrative of Descartes's view of causality, namely that it replaced the scholastic framework (based on the four Aristotelian causes) with the efficient causes required for his new mechanistic physics...What Schmaltz's superbly researched study demonstrates beyond doubt is that the break made by Descartes was very far from a clean one."--John Cottingham, Journal of the History of Philosophy