Routledge History of Philosophy Volume IV

Routledge History of Philosophy
Volume IV
The philosophy discussed in this volume covers a period of three hundred and fifty
years, from the middle of the fourteenth century to the early years of the
eighteenth century: the birth of modern philosophy. The chief topics are
Renaissance philosophy and seventeenth-century rationalism—in particular
Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz. The volume does not deal with these
movements exclusively, but places them within a wider intellectual context. It
considers the scholastic thought with which Renaissance philosophy interacted;
it also considers the thought of seventeenth-century philosophers such as Bacon,
Hobbes and Gassendi, who were not rationalists but whose thought elicited
responses from the rationalists. It considers, too, the important topic of the rise of
modern science in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and its relations to the
philosophy of the period.
This volume provides a broad, scholarly introduction to this period for
students of philosophy and related disciplines, as well as some original
interpretations of these authors. It includes a glossary of technical terms and a
chronological table of philosophical, scientific and other cultural events.
G.H.R.Parkinson is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, University of Reading.
His numerous books include works on Spinoza, Leibniz, Wittgenstein and
Lukács; he is also the General Editor of An Encyclopaedia of Philosophy
(Routledge, 1988).