ABSTRACT
This introduction argues for the importance of Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655) in the history of philosophy and science, and explains why he was eclipsed by other thinkers, such as Descartes or Galileo. Gassendi was considered a major intellectual figure by his contemporaries, but his fame and influence progressively faded, due to his antiquarian philosophical style and to the terse Latin in which his works were composed. For us, the lack of both a modern critical edition and a complete translation of Gassendi’s works represent a major hurdle to the appreciation of his complex thought. The introduction argues that it is crucial to analyze Gassendi’s thought in the various connected fields upon which it touched (logic, physics, ethics) and under the diverse forms in which it appeared (correspondence, polemical works, biographies, and philological works, etc.), while always resituating it in its specific intellectual context. This introduction ends by offering an overview of the content of the book chapters, showing how they contribute to this much-needed reassessment.
