This history of early modern Western philosophy takes its inspiration from Kant's claim that the battle between the metaphysics of matter and that of spirit is the principal axis around which modern philosophy up to his time, in all its aspects, has revolved. The empiricist-materialist trend that dominates in England is first examined in the progressively unfolding works of Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Adam Smith. A contrasting and competing dialectic develops in the rationalist/spiritualist trend in the continental philosophy of Descartes, Leibniz, and Rousseau. Framing this history is the background context of the philosophy and science of Aristotle and the challenges to the traditional paradigm presented by the revolutionary sciences of Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton.
James Lawler is professor of philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo.
Details
First Published: 25 May 2006
13 Digit ISBN: 9781580462211
Pages: 584
Size: 9 x 6
Binding: Hardback
Imprint: University of Rochester Press
Series:
Rochester Studies in PhilosophySubject:
PhilosophyBIC Class: HP
Details updated on 04 Feb 2012
Contents
- 1 Hobbes on Morality and the Modern Science of Motion
- 2 Freedom as the Realization of Desire
- 3 Leviathan: The Making of a Mortal God
- 4 John Locke: Underlaborer of the New Sciences
- 5 Locke on the Freedom of the Human Spirit
- 6 From Berkeley to Hume: the Radicalization of Empiricism
- 7 Hume's Science of the Dynamics of the Passions
- 8 Adam Smith Deciphers the Invisible Hand of the Market
- 9 Contradictions of Economic Life
- 10 I Think: Descartes' Foundation of Modern Science
- 11 God and the Good Society
- 12 Leibniz's Discovery of Universal Freedom
- 13 The Best of All Possible Worlds
- 14 Justifying God's Ways: Kant's Progress from Leibniz through Pope to Rousseau
- 15 Rousseau's Reasoning of the Heart
