Overview

Written by a team of leading international scholars, this book examines a crucial period of philosophy from the perspective of themes and lines of thought that cut across authorial, disciplinary and national boundaries. Its fresh approach opens up new ways for specialists and students to conceptualise the history of early modern and Enlightenment thought within philosophy, politics, religious studies and literature. This critical reference work takes a problem-based approach to the history of philosophy, highlighting the continued richness and relevance of sixteenth- to eighteenth-century philosophy. The five sections of the book explore: historiography and broader structures of thought in the period; the intersection of philosophy and politics; life and the metaphysics of bodies; theories of knowledge, with a special emphasis on social epistemology; and themes that stretch the boundaries of cognition (art, cosmology, the infinite and religion).

Full Product Details

Author:   Stephen Howard (Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Philosophy) ,  Jack Stetter (Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Publisher:   Edinburgh University Press
Imprint:   Edinburgh University Press
ISBN:  

9781399519298

ISBN 10:   1399519298
Pages:   392
Publication Date:   31 December 2025
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Availability:   Not yet available  
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Table of Contents

General Editors’ Preface Howard Caygill and David Webb Introduction: Canons, Methods, and the Critical History of Philosophy Stephen Howard and Jack Stetter I. Frameworks 1. Geohistory and Philosophy in the Age of the Enlightenment Stefanie Buchenau and Stephen Gaukroger† 2. European Philosophy Delphine Antoine-Mahut and Catherine König-Pralong 3. The Shifting Tides of Baconianism: A History (and Philosophy) of Historiographic Categories Dana Jalobeanu 4. Transcendental Unity in Suárez’s Metaphysical Disputations I-IV Howard Caygill II. Philosophy as a Battlefield 5. The Philosophical Foundations of Women’s Rights: Nobility and Dignity Jacqueline Broad and Marguerite Deslauriers 6. Race to Racism: A Lockean How Dwight K. Lewis Jr. 7. Debates about Slavery in Early Modern Philosophy: Natural Slavery, Circumstantial Slavery, Transatlantic Slavery Julia Jorati 8. Spinoza as a Theorist of Repressive Empowerment Julie R. Klein 9. Spinoza and Kant on War and Peace Jack Stetter III. Life and Bodies 10. The Anatomy of the Vegetative Soul: Early Modern Studies of Vegetation and Plant Life Fabrizio Baldassarri 11. Eliminating Life: From the Early Modern Ontology of Life to Enlightenment Proto-Biology Charles T. Wolfe 12. Dominion without Domination: Modernizing Parental Authority in Hobbes and Locke Meghan Wood Robison 13. English Alternatives to Dualism: Hobbes, Cavendish, Conway Tad M. Schmaltz IV. Paradigms of Knowledge 14. Aspects of the Early Modern Common Notion: Herbert, Digby, Culverwell Mogens Lærke 15. Experience as a Foundation of Enlightened Thought Anik Waldow 16. The Epistemology of Testimony: Locke and His Critics Kenneth L. Pearce 17. Self-Cognition and Ideas Vili Lähteenmäki V. Reason’s Frontiers 18. Before and After: The Origin of Aesthetics J. Colin McQuillan 19. The Individual and the Cosmos: Bruno, Leibniz, Kant Laura E. Herrera Castillo and Stephen Howard 20. Mos Geometricus and the Genetic Infinite Tzuchien Tho 21. Rationalising Religion in the Enlightenment: The Legacy of Spinoza Anna Tomaszewska Notes on Contributors Index

Reviews

Over the last years, the history of philosophy has changed rapidly, embracing new figures, new questions, and approaching texts old and new in novel ways. In this book, the editors have collected a series of essays written by the scholars who are leading the history of philosophy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in these exciting new directions. The past has never looked so fresh.--Daniel Garber, Princeton University

Author Information

Stephen Howard is a Research Fellow at the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt, where he leads a DFG project. He is the author of Kant’s Late Philosophy of Nature: The Opus postumum (Cambridge University Press, 2023) and articles in journals including the Southern Journal of Philosophy, the European Journal of Philosophy, Kantian Review, Kant-Studien, the British Journal for the History of Philosophy, and Perspectives on Science. He is the editor of Howard Caygill, Force and Understanding: Writings on Philosophy and Resistance (Bloomsbury, 2020) and co-edited with Rudolf Meer, a special issue of Kant-Studien. Jack Stetter is a Solmsen Fellow at the Institute for Research in the Humanities, University of Wisconsin–Madison, and a Chercheur international associé at the LLCP-EA 4008, Université Paris 8. With Charles Ramond, he is editor of Spinoza in Twenty-First Century American and French Philosophy (Bloomsbury, 2019). His articles on early modern philosophy have appeared in journals such as the Australasian Philosophical Review, the Journal of Modern Philosophy, Modern Judaism, Crisis and Critique, and the Revista Seiscentos.

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