Product Description: French philosophy in the latter half of the seventeenth century was dominated by reactions to Descartes. So influential was his philosophical legacy that it was practically impossible to write or discuss philosophy without taking a position in regard to the Cartesian worldview...read more

Product Description: Many kinds of Cartesian views are treated by these papers: the views that Descartes held, views from our perspective on those views, views on Descartes held by his early critics and followers, and views that are Cartesian in outlook (not for nothing is Descartes still regarded as the father of modern philosophy...read more

Product Description: The skeptic Pierre-Daniel Huet's "Censura philosophiae cartesianae" (1689) is the most comprehensive, unrelenting and devastating critique of Descartes ever. It incisively captures all the issues that now interest readers of Descartes: the method of doubt, the cogito, clarity and distinctness as criteria of truth, the circularity of the Meditations, proofs of God's existence, etc...read more

Pierre Bayle (1647-1706) has been described by Richard Popkin as the key intellectual figure at the outset of the eighteenth century. Examinations of libraries from the period show him to have been by far the most successful author of the century, and his Historical and Critical Dictionary is in fact the philosophy best-seller of all time. The concepts, distinctions, and arguments found in his work were so widely adopted by later authors that Bayle came to be known as the 'Arsenal of the Enlightenment'. Despite his universally acknowledged importance, however, there has been from his own time to the present much disagreement about how Bayle is to be interpreted.The title of this work is deliberately ambiguous, reflecting the multiple levels on which its argument is conducted. One aim is to indicate how a reading of Bayle might be made possible – how the initial impenetrability of his writings and their world might be overcome. On another level, the book offers an interpretation of Bayle's writings. Finally, it is a record of the author's own thoughts upon reading Bayle – what he finds himself thinking about as he looks at Bayle and his world.This work is a critical but sympathetic treatment of this neglected thinker. It will engage anyone interested in the history of modern philosophy, the history of ideas, literary criticism, and the history of seventeenth-century French culture.

Product Description: Malebranche is now recognized as a major figure in the history of philosophy, occupying a crucial place in the Rationalist tradition of Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz. The Search after Truth is his first, longest and most important work; this volume also presents the Elucidations that accompanied its third edition, the result of comments that Malebranche solicited on the original work and an important repository of his theories of ideas and causation...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)