A distinguished philosopher offers a novel account of experience and reason, and develops our understanding of conscious experience and its relationship to thought: a new reformed empiricism. The role of experience in cognition is a central and ancient philosophical concern. How, theorists ask, can our private experiences guide us to knowledge of a mind-independent reality? Exploring topics in logic, philosophy of mind, and epistemology, Conscious Experience proposes a new answer to this age-old question, explaining how conscious experience contributes to the rationality and content of empirical beliefs. According to Anil Gupta, this contribution cannot be determined independently of an agent's conceptual scheme and prior beliefs, but that doesn't mean it is entirely mind-dependent. While the rational contribution of an experience is not propositional-it does not, for example, provide direct knowledge of the world-it does authorize certain transitions from prior views to new views. In short, the rational contribution of an experience yields a rule for revising views. Gupta shows that this account provides theoretical freedom: it allows the observer to radically reconceive the world in light of empirical findings. Simultaneously, it grants empirical reason significant power to constrain, forcing particular conceptions of self and world on the rational inquirer. These seemingly contrary virtues are reconciled through novel treatments of presentation, appearances, and ostensive definitions. Collectively, Gupta's arguments support an original theory: reformed empiricism. He abandons the idea that experience is a source of knowledge and justification. He also abandons the idea that concepts are derived from experience. But reformed empiricism preserves empiricism's central insight: experience is the supreme epistemic authority. In the resolution of factual disagreements, experience trumps all.

As with all of Kant's writings, this has become an important piece of philosophy that is an important read for any student or thinker today.

Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) was one of the most important philosophers of all time; he was also one of the most radical and controversial. The story of Spinoza's life takes the reader into the heart of Jewish Amsterdam in the seventeenth century and, with Spinoza's exile from Judaism, into the midst of the tumultuous political, social, intellectual, and religious world of the young Dutch Republic. This new edition of Steven Nadler's biography, winner of the Koret Jewish Book Award for biography and translated into a dozen languages, is enhanced by exciting new archival discoveries about his family background, his youth, and the various philosophical, political, and religious contexts of his life and works. There is more detail about his family's business and communal activities, about his relationships with friends and correspondents, and about the development of his writings, which were so scandalous to his contemporaries.

Descartes's Meditations on First Philosophy remains one of the most widely studied works of Western philosophy. This volume is a refreshed and updated edition of John Cottingham's bestselling 1996 edition, based on his translation in the acclaimed three-volume Cambridge edition of The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. It presents the complete text of Descartes's central metaphysical masterpiece, the Meditations, in clear, readable modern English, and it offers the reader additional material in a thematic abridgement of the Objections and Replies, providing a deeper understanding of how Descartes developed and clarified his arguments in response to critics. Cottingham also provides an updated introduction, together with a substantially revised bibliography, taking into account recent literature and developments in Descartes studies. The volume will be a vital resource for students reading the Meditations, as well as those studying Descartes and early modern philosophy.

'What can you say to a man who tells you he prefers obeying God rather than men, and that as a result he's certain he'll go to heaven if he cuts your throat?' Voltaire's Pocket Philosophical Dictionary, first published in 1764, is a major work of the European Enlightenment. It is also a highly entertaining book: this is no 'dictionary' in the ordinary sense, nor does it treat 'philosophy' in the modern meaning of the term. It consists of a sequence of short essays or articles, arranged in alphabetical order, and covering everything from Apocalypse and Atheism to Tolerance and Tyranny. The unifying thread of these articles is Voltaire's critique of established religion: ridicule of established dogma, attacks on superstition, and pleas for toleration. Witty and ironic, this is very much a work of combat, part of Voltaire's high-profile political struggle in the 1760s to defend the victims of religious and political intolerance. This new translation is based on the definitive French text, and reprints the edition that provoked widespread controversy and condemnation. In his Introduction Nicholas Cronk considers the work's continuing relevance to modern debates about religious intolerance and its consequences. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

The first modern biography of William Robertson, a key figure of the Scottish EnlightenmentA prominent figure in the Scottish Enlightenment, William Robertson differed from his contemporaries, such as Voltaire, Hume and Gibbon, because he used the critical tools of the Enlightenment to strengthen religion, not to attack it. As an historian, he helped shape 18th-century historiography. As a minister of the Church of Scotland, he sought to make the church fit for a polite age. And, as principal of the University of Edinburgh, he presided over a flourishing of intellectual inquiry in the midst of the Enlightenment. But despite his European fame, he was a controversial figure. Drawing extensively on his unpublished correspondence, Jeffrey Smitten captures both the man and his work in his own words. By foregrounding Robertson's religious outlook, Smitten gives us a more contextualised and nuanced interpretation of Robertson's motives, intentions and beliefs than we have had before.Key Features:Includes new biographical information drawn from archival sources and from all Robertson's largely unpublished correspondenceDiscusses Robertson's works, published and unpublishedAssesses Robertson's achievement based on fresh consideration of all facets of his career as minister, historian and principal

Salomon Maimon was one of the most important and influential Jewish intellectuals of the Enlightenment. This is the first English translation of his principal work, first published in Berlin in 1790. "Essay on Transcendental Philosophy" presents the first English translation of Salomon Maimon's principal work, originally published in Berlin in 1790. This book expresses his response to the revolution in philosophy wrought by Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason". Kant himself was full of praise for the book and it went on to exercise a decisive influence on the course of post-Kantian German idealism. Yet, despite his importance for the work of such key thinkers as Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, Maimon never achieved the prominence he deserved. Today interest in Maimon's work is increasing rapidly, thanks in large part to prominent acclaim by Gilles Deleuze. This long-overdue translation brings Maimon's seminal text to an English-speaking audience for the first time. The text includes a comprehensive introduction, a glossary, translator's notes and a full bibliography. It also includes translations of correspondence between Maimon and Kant and a letter Maimon wrote to a Berlin journal clarifying the philosophical position of the Essay, all of which bring alive the context of the book's publication for the modern reader.

French painting of Louis XV's reign (1715-74), generally categorized by the term rococo, has typically been understood as an artistic style aimed at furnishing courtly society with delightful images of its own frivolous pursuits. Instead, this book shows the significance and seriousness underpinning the notion of pleasure embedded in eighteenth-century history painting. During this time, pleasure became a moral ideal grounded not only in domestic life but also defining a range of social, political, and cultural transactions oriented toward transforming and improving society at large. History, painting, and the seriousness of pleasure in the age of Louis XV reconsiders the role of history painting in creating a new visual language that presented peace and happiness as an individual's natural rights in the aftermath of Louis XIV's bellicose reign (1643-1715). In this new study, Susanna Caviglia reinvestigates the artistic practices of an entire generation of painters born around 1700 (e.g. Francois Boucher, Charles-Joseph Natoire, and Carle Vanloo) in order to highlight the cultural forces at work within their now iconic images.

"The SCM Briefly" series is made up of short, accessible volumes which summarize books by philosophers and theologians, books that are commonly used on theology and philosophy A level (school leaving) and Level One undergraduate courses. Each "Briefly" volume includes line by line analysis and short quotes to give students a feel for the original text. In addition each book begins with a contextualizing introduction about the writer and his writings, and a glossary of terms follows the summary to help students with definitions of philosophical terms.

Originally published in 1963. Perhaps the most generative ethical question of eighteenth-century France was how to live a virtuous and happy life at the same time. During the Age of Enlightenment, Christianity fell out of vogue as the dominant and authoritative moral code. In place of Christianity's emphasis on sin and redemption in light of a supposed afterlife, present happiness became recognized as an appropriate end goal among French Enlightenment thinkers. French intellectuals struggled to find equilibrium between nature (a person's individual goals and needs) and culture (the political, economic, and social organization of humans for a collective good). Enlightenment discourse generated a unique cultural moment in which thinkers addressed the problems of humans' moral coexistence through the dichotomy of nature and culture. Lester Crocker addresses these questions in an overview of ethical thought in eighteenth-century France.

In tracing the history of the anti-mercantilist movement, the author shows that many of the ideas and attitudes associated with eighteenth century philosophes were first formulated in the anti-mercantilist criticism. Originally published in 1965. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Allen W. Wood presents the first book-length systematic exposition in English of Fichte's most important ethical work, the System of Ethics (1798). He places this work in the context of Fichte's life and career, of his philosophical system as conceived in the later Jena period, and in relation to his philosophy of right or justice and politics. Wood discusses Fichte's defense of freedom of the will, his grounding of the moral principle, theory of moral conscience, transcendental deduction of intersubjectivity, and his conception of free rational communication and the rational society. He develops and emphasizes the social and political radicalism of Fichte's moral and political philosophy, and brings out the philosophical interest of Fichte's positions and arguments for present day philosophy. Fichte's Ethical Thought defends the position that Fichte is a major thinker in the history of ethics, and the most important figure in the history of modern continental philosophy in the past two centuries.

David Hume was a highly original thinker. Nevertheless, he was a writer of his time and place in the history of philosophy. In this book, M. A. Stewart puts Hume's writing in context, particularly that of his native Scotland, but also that of British and European philosophy more generally. Through meticulous research Stewart brings to life the circumstances by means of which we can get a deeper understanding of Hume's writings on the nature and reach of human reason, the foundation of morals, and, especially, on the philosophy of religion. Stewart pays particular attention to Hume's intellectual development, beginning with his education at the College of Edinburgh, the writing of his Treatise of Human Nature, and his subsequent philosophical responses to criticisms of that book. He argues that Hume's scepticism set him at odds with the Christian Stoicism of Scottish contemporaries including that of Francis Hutcheson - and shows that this conflict played a major role in his failure to obtain the Edinburgh Moral Philosophy Chair in 1745. Stewart's detailed study of the physical character of Hume's surviving manuscripts in Chapters 8 and 9 provides the best available dating of his early 'Essay on Modern Chivalry', his 'Early Fragment on Evil' and the periods of composition of his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Other chapters compare Hume's theory of abstraction with that of Locke and Berkeley, provide the 17th and 18th century philosophical context of the central argument of his essay 'Of miracles', and consider the 18th and 19th century reception of his writings in England and Ireland.

Dugald Stewart's Empire of the Mind recasts the cultivation of a democratic intellect in the late Scottish Enlightenment. It comprises an intellectual history of what was at stake in moral education during a transitional period of revolutionary change between 1772 and 1828. Stewart was a child of the Scottish Enlightenment, who inherited the Scottish philosophical tradition of teaching metaphysics as moral philosophy from the tuition of Adam Ferguson and Thomas Reid. But the Scottish Enlightenment intellectual culture of his youth changed in the aftermath of the French Revolution. Stewart sustained the Scottish school of philosophy by transforming how it was taught as professor of moral philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. His elementary system of moral education fostered an empire of the mind in the universal pursuit of happiness. The democratization of Stewart's didactic Enlightenment-the instruction of moral improvement-in a globalizing, interconnected nineteenth-century knowledge economy is examined in this book.

This book proposes a new and systematic interpretation of the mental nature, function and structure, and importance of the imagination in Book 1, 'Of the Understanding', of Hume's Treatise of Human Nature. The proposed interpretation has deeply revisionary implications for Hume's philosophy of mind and for his naturalism, epistemology, and stance to scepticism. The book remedies a surprising blindspot in Hume scholarship and contributes to the current, lively philosophical debate on imagination. Hume's philosophy, if rightly understood, gives suggestions about how to treat imagination as a mental natural kind, its cognitive complexity and variety of functions notwithstanding. Hume's imagination is a faculty of inference and the source of a distinctive kind of idea, which complements our sensible representations of objects. Our cognitive nature, if restricted to the representation of objects and of their relations, would leave ordinary and philosophical cognition seriously underdetermined and expose us to scepticism. Only the non-representational, inferential faculty of the imagination can put in place and vindicate ideas like causation, body, and self, which support our cognitive practices. The book reconstructs how Hume's naturalist inferentialism about the imagination develops this fundamental insight. Its five parts deal with the dualism of representation and inference; the explanation of generality and modality; the production of causal ideas; the production of spatial and temporal content, and the distinction of an external world of bodies and an internal one of selves; and the replacement of the understanding with imagination in the analysis of cognition and in epistemology.

A thorough examination of the influence of David Hume's work early American political thought. This book explores the reception of David Hume's political thought in eighteenth-century America. It presents a challenge to standard interpretations that assume Hume's thought had little influence in early America. Eighteenth-century Americans are often supposed to have ignored Hume's philosophical writings and to have rejected entirely Hume's "Tory" History of England. James Madison, if he used Hume's ideas in Federalist No. 10, it is commonly argued, thought best to do so silently -- open allegiance to Hume was a liability. Despite renewed debate about the impact of Hume's political ideas in America, existing scholarship is often narrow and highly speculative. WereHume's works available in eighteenth-century America? If so, which works? Where? When? Who read Hume? To what avail? To answer questions of that sort, this books draws upon a wide assortment of evidence. Early American bookcatalogues, periodical publications, and the writings of lesser-light thinkers are used to describe Hume's impact on the social history of ideas, an essential context for understanding Hume's influence on many of the classic texts of early American political thought. Hume's Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects, was readily available, earlier, and more widely, than scholars have supposed. The History of England was read most frequently ofall, however, and often in distinctive ways. Hume's History, which presented the British constitution as a patch-work product of chance historical developments, informed the origins of the American Revolution and Hume's subsequent reception through the late eighteenth century. The 326 subscribers to the first American edition of Hume's History [published in Philadelphia in 1795/96] are more representative of the History's friendly reception in enlightened America than are its few critics. Thomas Jefferson's latter-day rejection of Hume's political thought foreshadowed Hume's falling reputation in nineteenth-century America. MARK G. SPENCER is Associate Professor of History at Brock University where he holds a Chancellor's Chair for Research Excellence. His books include Hume's Reception in Early America [2002], Utilitarians and Their Critics in America, 1789-1914 [2005], andUlster Presbyterians in the Atlantic World [2006].

This volume collects the private letters and published epistles of English women philosophers of the early modern period (c. 1650-1700). It includes the correspondences of Margaret Cavendish, Anne Conway, Damaris Cudworth Masham, and Elizabeth Berkeley Burnet. These women were the interlocutors of some of the best-known intellectuals of their era, including Constantijn Huygens, Walter Charleton, Henry More, Joseph Glanvill, John Locke, Jean Le Clerc, and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Their epistolary exchanges range over a wide variety of philosophical subjects, from religion, moral theology, and ethics to epistemology, metaphysics, and natural philosophy. For the first time in one collection, the philosophical correspondences of these women have been brought together to be appreciated as a whole. Women Philosophers of Seventeenth-Century England is an invaluable primary resource for students and scholars of these neglected women thinkers. It includes original introductory essays for each woman philosopher, demonstrating how her correspondences contributed to the formation of her own views as well as those of her better-known contemporaries. It also provides detailed scholarly annotations to the letters and epistles, explaining unfamiliar philosophical ideas and defining obscure terminology to help make the texts accessible and comprehensible to the modern reader. This collection and its companion volume, Women Philosophers of Eighteenth-Century England (forthcoming), provide valuable historical evidence that women made substantial contributions to the formation and development of early modern thought and reflect the intensely collaborative and gender-inclusive nature of philosophical discussion in the early modern period.

Catharine Macaulay was a celebrated republican historian, whose account of the reasons for the seventeenth-century English Revolution, the parliamentary period, and its aftermath was widely read by the mothers and fathers of American Independence and by central players in the French Revolution. As well as publishing her eight volume history, spanning the period from the accession of James I to the Glorious Revolution of 1688, she wrote political pamphlets, offered a sketch of a republican constitution for Corsica, advocated parliamentary reform, and published a response to Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France. Her Letters on Education of 1790 made a decisive impact on the thought of Mary Wollstonecraft, and her Treatise on the Immutability of Moral Truth opposed the skeptical and utilitarian attitudes being developed by Hume and others. This volume brings together for the first time all the available letters between her and her wide-ranging correspondents, who include George Washington, John Adams, Abigail Adams, Mercy Otis Warren, James Otis, Benjamin Rush, David Hume, James Boswell, Thomas Hollis, John Wilkes, Horace Walpole, Mary Wollstonecraft, Jacques-Pierre Brissot de Warville, and many other luminaries of the eighteenth-century enlightenment. It includes an extended introduction to her life and works and offers a unique insight into the thinking of her friends and correspondents during the period between 1760 and 1790, the crucible for the development of modern representative democracies. The Correspondence of Catharine Macaulay will appeal to scholars of philosophy, political thought, women's studies, and eighteenth-century history, as well as those interested in the development of democratic ideas.

Human, All Too Human marks the beginning of what is often called Nietzsche's middle or positivist period (which ends with the conclusion of Book IV of The Gay Science). It initiates some important features that become permanent in his work, such as his experiments in multiple writing styles within one work, his self-representation as a psychologist, his genealogical excavations of morality and his appeal to fellow Europeans to overcome the parochialism and antagonism of nationalism. Ruth Abbey shows Nietzsche to be more receptive to the Enlightenment tradition than he is typically taken to be. She assumes no knowledge of the text or of Nietzsche. She maps her chapters onto those of Nietzsche's text, allowing you to read the guide alongside the book. Altogether, she opens up Human, All Too Human for new readers, while more experienced Nietzsche scholars will appreciate the new perspective.

This volume presents twelve original essays, by an international team of scholars, on the relation of John Locke's thought to Descartes and to Cartesian philosophers such as Malebranche, Clauberg, and the Port-Royal authors. The essays, preceded by a substantial introduction, cover a large variety of topics from natural philosophy to religion, philosophy of mind and body, metaphysics and epistemology. The volume shows that in Locke's complex relationship to Descartes and Cartesianism, stark opposition and subtle 'family resemblances' are tightly intertwined. Since the turn of the twentieth century, the theory of knowledge has been the main comparative focus. According to an influential historiographical conception, Descartes and Locke form together the spearhead in the 'epistemological turn' of early modern philosophy. In bringing together the contributions to this volume, the editors advocate for a shift of emphasis. A full comparison of Locke's and Descartes's positions should cover not only their theories of knowledge, but also their views on natural philosophy, metaphysics, and religion. Their conflicting claims on issues such as cosmic organization, the qualities and nature of bodies, the substance of the soul, and God's government of the world, are of interest not only in their own right, to take the full measure of Locke's complex relation to Descartes, but also as they allow a better understanding of the continuing epistemological debate between the philosophical heirs of these thinkers.

Thomas Hobbes and John Locke sit together in the canon of political thought but are rarely treated in common historical accounts. This book narrates their intertwined careers during the Restoration period, when the two men found themselves in close proximity and entangled in many of the same political conflicts. Bringing new source material to bear, In the Shadow of Leviathan establishes the influence of Hobbesian thought over Locke, particularly in relation to the preeminent question of religious toleration. Excavating Hobbes's now forgotten case for a prudent, politique toleration gifted by sovereign power, Jeffrey R. Collins argues that modern, liberal thinking about toleration was transformed by Locke's gradual emancipation from this Hobbesian mode of thought. This book investigates those landmark events - the civil war, Restoration, the popish plot, the Revolution of 1688 - which eventually forced Locke to confront the limits of politique toleration, and to devise an account of religious freedom as an inalienable right.