The Blackwell Guide to the Modern Philosophers

This guide brings together eighteen original interpretations of the modern philosophers from Descartes to Nietzsche. The contributors succeed brilliantly in placing their figures within a rich historical, cultural, and philosophical context, noting some of the important ways in which their ideas and arguments were shaped by the intellectual currents of the time, and how they in turn shaped subsequent philosophical debate.

List of Contributors vii Preface x 1 René Descartes (1596-1650) 1 Gary Hatfield 2 Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) 28 A. P. Martinich 3 Benedict de Spinoza (1632-77) 43 Don Garrett 4 Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715) 61 Steven Nadler 5 G. W. Leibniz (1646-1716) 78 Donald Rutherford 6 John Locke (1632-1704) 101 Martha Brandt Bolton 7 George Berkeley (1685-1753) 127 George Pappas 8 David Hume (1711-76) 148 David Fate Norton 9 Thomas Reid (1710-96) 179 Ernest Sosa and James Van Cleve 10 Jean – Jacques Rousseau (1712-88) 201 N. J. H. Dent 11 Immanuel Kant (1724-18047) 223 Patricia Kitcher 12 Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) 259 Ross Harrison 13 G. W. F. Hegel (1770-1831) 278 Stephen Houlgate 14 Søren Kiekegaard (1813-55) 306 C. Stephen Evans 15 Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) 326 Christopher Janaway 16 John Stuart Mill (1806-73) 343 Wendy Donner and Richard Fumerton 17 Karl Marx (1818-83) 370 Terrell Carver 18 Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) 390 Richard Schacht Select Bibliography 412 Index 415