The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy

The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy offers a uniquely comprehensive and authoritative overview of early-modern philosophy written by an international team of specialists. As with previous Cambridge histories of philosophy the subject is treated by topic and theme, and since history does not come packaged in neat bundles, the subject is also treated with great temporal flexibility, incorporating frequent reference to medieval and Renaissance ideas. The basic structure of the volumes corresponds to the way an educated seventeenth-century European might have organised the domain of philosophy. Thus, the history of science, religious doctrine, and politics feature very prominently. The narrative that unfolds begins with an intellectual world dominated by a synthesis of Aristotelianism and scholastic philosophy, but by the end of the period the mechanistic or ‘corpuscularian’ philosophy has emerged and exerted its full impact on traditional metaphysics, ethics, theology, logic, and epistemology.

• The only comprehensive and authoritative survey of seventeenth-century philosophy • Broad interdisciplinary readership including history of ideas, history of science, and religious studies as well as philosophy • Important appendices include biographies of seventeenth-century thinkers and bibliographies

Volume I: Part I. The Context of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy: 1. The institutional setting Richard Tuck; 2. The intellectual setting Stephen Menn; 3. European responses to non-European philosophy: China David E. Mungello; Part II. Logic, Language and Abstract Objects: 4. Logic in the seventeenth century: preliminary remarks and the constituents of the proposition Gabriel Nuchelmans; 5. Proposition and judgement Gabriel Nuchelmans; 6. Deductive reasoning Gabriel Nuchelmans; 7. Method and the study of nature Peter Dear; 8. Universals, essences, and abstract entities Martha Bolton; 9. Individuation Udo Thiel; Part III. God: 10. The idea of God Jean-Luc Marion; 11. Proofs of the existence of God Jean-Robert Armogathe; 12. The Cartesian dialectic of creation Thomas M. Lennon; 13. The relation between theology and philosophy Nicholas Jolley; 14. The religious background of seventeenth-century philosophy Richard Popkin; Part IV. Body and the Physical World: 15. Body and the physical world: scholastic background Alan Gabbey and Roger Ariew; 16. The occultist tradition and its critics Brian Copenhaver; 17. Doctrines of explanation in late scholasticism and in the mechanical philosophy Steven Nadler; 18. New doctrines of body and its powers, place, and space Daniel Garber, John Henry, Lynn Joy and Alan Gabbey; 19. Knowledge of the existence of body Charles McCracken; 20. New doctrines of motion Alan Gabbey; 21. Laws of nature John R. Milton; 22. The mathematical realm of nature Michael Mahoney; Part V. Spirit: 23. Soul and mind: life and thought in the seventeenth century Daniel Garber; 24. Knowledge of the soul Charles McCracken; 25. Mind-body problems Daniel Garber and Margaret Wilson; 26. Personal identity Udo Thiel; 27. The passions in metaphysics and the theory of action Susan James; Volume 2: Part VI. The Understanding: 28. The cognitive faculties Gary Hatfield; 29. Theories of knowledge and belief Michael Ayers; 30. Ideas and objective being Michael Ayers; 31. Probability and evidence Lorraine Daston; 32. Scepticism Charles Larmore; 33. Determinism and human freedom Robert Sleigh Jr,Vere Chappell and Michael Della Rocca; 34. Conceptions of moral philosophy Jill Kraye; 35. Divine/natural law theories in ethics Knud Haakonssen; 36. Reason, the passions, and the good life Susan James.

‘To anyone conditioned by their philosophical education to see 17th century philosophy as narrowly preoccupied with puzzles in the ‘theory of knowledge’ the richness and diversity of these volumes will be a welcome surprise. The book as a whole is an unrivalled scholarly resource for those wishing to enhance their understanding of the many complex facets of early modern philosophy and its origins.’ – Times Literary Supplement

‘This is an encyclopaedic history of the philosophical ideals central to the great change in Western philosophy from spiritualist scholasticism to materialist mechanism … I applaud the editors of this volume and Cambridge University Press for conceiving of and publishing this hard-core book.’ – International Studies in Philosophy

‘From the chapter titles alone it is evident that this volume will become essential reading for historians of science, as well as for anyone interested in the history of philosophy, logic, psychology, theology and ethics. The standard of presentation across this spectrum is very high … and there will be few readers who will not find their knowledge extended, their curiosity satisfied or stimulated to further enquiry … destined to become the standard work in this field for many years to come.’ – Renaissance Quarterly

‘This volume reflects an underlying purpose in freeing the history of philosophy from an excessive preoccupation with the concerns of analytical philosophy, and a concern to substitute instead a picture of the subject as an educated European of the century would have understood it.’ – Political Studies

‘The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy is an outstanding collection that will be a standard reference work for some time to come and which will be an important point of call for anyone wanting to chart their way through the philosophy of one of the most exciting and significant centuries of all.’ – Metascience