ABSTRACT
Debates in Modern Philosophy: Essential Readings and Contemporary Responses provides an in-depth, engaging introduction to important issues in modern philosophy. It presents 13 key interpretive debates to students, and ranges in coverage from Descartes' Meditations to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.
Debates include:
- Did Descartes have a developed and consistent view about how the mind interacts with the body?
- Was Leibniz an idealist, or did he believe in corporeal substances?
- What is Locke's theory of personal identity?
- Could there be a Berkeleian metaphysics without God?
- Did Hume believe in causal powers?
- What is Kant's transcendental idealism?
Each of the thirteen debates consists of a well known article or book chapter from a living philosopher, followed by a new response from a different scholar, specially commissioned for this volume. Every debate is prefaced by an introduction written for those coming upon the debates for the first time and followed by an annotated list for further reading. The volume starts with an introduction that explains the importance and relevance of the modern period and its key debates to philosophy and ends with a glossary that covers terms from both the modern period and the study of the history of philosophy in general.
Debates in Modern Philosophy will help students evaluate different interpretations of key texts from modern philosophy, and provide a model for constructing their own positions in these debates.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|30 pages
The Cartesian Circle
part II|34 pages
Descartes on Mind-Body Interaction
part III|26 pages
Making Sense of Spinoza's Ethics
part IV|26 pages
The Appeal of Occasionalism
part V|26 pages
Did Leibniz Believe in Corporeal Substances?
part VI|28 pages
The Role of Mechanism in Locke's Essay
part VII|26 pages
Locke on Personal Identity
part VIII|30 pages
Idealism Without God
part IX|26 pages
Hume on Causation
part X|32 pages
Hume on Miracles
part XI|34 pages
Defending the Synthetic A Priori
part XII|24 pages
What Is Transcendental Idealism?
part XIII|31 pages
Why Read the History of Philosophy?