The Cambridge Companion to Early Modern Philosophy

The Cambridge Companion to Early Modern Philosophy is a comprehensive introduction to the central topics and changing shape of philosophical inquiry in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It explores one of the most innovative periods in the history of Western philosophy, extending from Montaigne, Bacon and Descartes through Hume and Kant. During this period, philosophers initiated and responded to major intellectual developments in natural science, religion, and politics, transforming in the process concepts and doctrines inherited from ancient and medieval philosophy. In this Companion, leading specialists examine early modern treatments of the methodological and conceptual foundations of natural science, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, logic and language, moral and political philosophy, and theology. A final chapter looks forward to the philosophy of the Enlightenment. This will be an invaluable guide for all who are interested in the philosophical thought of the early modern period.

• Relates the emergence of early modern philosophy to contemporary developments in the natural sciences, religion and politics • Organises subject matter by area rather than by individual philosopher • Broadens understanding of the scope of early modern philosophy as well as the limitations of received interpretative categories such as ‘Rationalist’ and ‘Empiricist’

Introduction Donald Rutherford; 1. Innovation and orthodoxy in early modern philosophy Donald Rutherford; 2. Knowledge, evidence, and method Stephen Gaukroger; 3. From natural philosophy to natural science Denis Des Chene; 4. Metaphysics Nicholas Jolley; 5. The science of mind Tad Schmaltz; 6. Language and logic Michael Losonsky; 7. The passions and the good life Susan James; 8. The foundations of morality: virtue, law, and obligation Stephen Darwall; 9. Theories of the state A. John Simmons; 10. Theology and the God of the philosophers Thomas M. Lennon; 11. Scholastic schools and early modern philosophy M. W. F. Stone; 12. Towards enlightenment: Kant and the sources of darkness J. B. Schneewind.