ABSTRACT

Modern Philosophy is an exploration of the ideas of six major thinkers from Descartes to Hume. It takes a fresh and engaging look at the common themes that dominate this period, as well as examining the differences in the work of the six philosophers.

Through vivid and witty prose, Richard Francks skilfully presents ideas that have informed the development of philosophy as we know it, and which present a challenge to beliefs and attitudes that most of us now share. In this work we find the source of modern philosophical inquiry - questions such as the existence of God, the Mind and Body problem, the idea of self, and the existence of the world had their birth in these texts - as well as broader questions about political and social philosophy.

Thinkers discussed:

Rene Descartes
Baruch Spinoza
Gottfried Willhelm Leibniz
John Locke
George Berkeley
David Hume

This will be ideal for anybody coming to the ideas of these philosophers for the first time.

chapter 1|8 pages

Introduction

How modern is ‘Modern’ philosophy?

part |2 pages

PART 1

chapter 2|15 pages

Material Monism or the Great Soup of Being: Descartes’ account of the natural world

Descartes’account of the natural world

chapter 3|9 pages

The possibility of atheism

Descartes and God

chapter 4|8 pages

The limits of mechanism

The place of human beings in Descartes’ world

chapter 5|16 pages

Selling the picture

Descartes’ story of doubt and discovery

part |2 pages

PART 2

chapter 6|14 pages

God, or Nature?

Spinoza’s pantheism

chapter 7|10 pages

The attribute of thought

chapter 8|14 pages

Spinoza’s ethics

Metaphysics and the life of man

part |2 pages

PART 3

chapter 9|12 pages

The Principle of Sufficient Reason

chapter 10|11 pages

The best of all possible worlds

chapter 11|10 pages

The world as explicable

chapter 12|11 pages

Matter, mind and human life

The world as monadic

part |2 pages

PART 4

chapter 13|13 pages

On living in the world

Locke on the contents of the mind

chapter 14|14 pages

Locke on nature (and our knowledge of it)

chapter 15|11 pages

The life of man

Locke’s political thought

part |2 pages

PART 5

chapter 16|14 pages

Denying the obvious

Berkeley’s radical reinterpretation of human experience

chapter 18|13 pages

On what there is

Berkeley’s virtual reality

part |2 pages

PART 6

chapter 19|13 pages

Hume’s project for a new science

What it is, how it works, and an example

chapter 20|16 pages

The failure of the project

chapter 21|5 pages

The lessons of Hume

Where do we go from here?