Overview

"""Modern"" philosophy in the West is said to have begun with Bacon and Descartes. Their methodological and metaphysical writings, in conjunction with the discoveries that marked the seventeenth-century scientific revolution, are supposed to have interred both Aristotelian and scholastic science and the philosophy that supported it. But did the new or ""modern"" philosophy effect a complete break with what preceded it? Were Bacon and Descartes untainted by scholastic influences? The theme of this book is that the new and traditional philosophies have much more in common than the orthodox account suggests. The contributors consider not only modernity in metaphysics and the sciences but also the claims of Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Spinoza to have invented ""modern"" ethics and politics. These two aspects of ""modernity"" in philosophy are connected for the first time. The book offers a broad view of the early modern philosophers, covering not only the much-studied major figures but also relatively neglected writers: Mersenne, Gassendi, White, and Sergeant."

Full Product Details

Author:   Professor Tom Sorell
Publisher:   Oxford University Press
Imprint:   Clarendon Press
Dimensions:   Width: 14.00cm , Height: 2.70cm , Length: 21.00cm
Weight:   0.612kg
ISBN:  

9780198239536

ISBN 10:   019823953
Pages:   362
Publication Date:   01 February 1993
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Undergraduate ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   To order  
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Table of Contents

"Part 1 Overviews: scepticism and modernity, Richard H. Popkin; the vitality and importance of early modern Aristotelianism, Christia Mercer. Part 2 ""Modern"" method, metaphysics, music, and theology: Francis Bacon, authority, and the moderns, Julian Martin; Mersenne and modern learning - the debate over music, David Allen Duncan; ""torn between two obligations"" - the compromise of Thomas White, Beverly Southgate; ancients, moderns, and the history of philosophy - Gassendi's Epicurean project, Margaret J. Osler; a new start? Cartesian metaphysics and the emergence of modern philosophy, John Cottingham; tradition and novelty - Descartes and some Cartesians, Theo Verbeek; the contagious communication of strong imaginations - history, modernity and scepticism in the philosophy of Malebranche, Thomas M. Lennon; Leibniz - modern, scholastic, or Renaissance philosopher?, Stuart Brown; Locke, Sergeant, and scientific method, Pauline Phemister. Part 3 Modernity in morals and politics: the question of Machiavelli's modernity, A.J. Parel; morals and modernity in Descartes, Tom Sorell; Spinoza the stoic, Susan James; Hobbes - ancient and modern, M.M. Goldsmith."

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