Edinburgh Critical History of Early Modern and Enlightenment Philosophy

Stephen Howard is a Research Fellow at the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt, where he leads a DFG project. He is the author of Kant’s Late Philosophy of Nature: The Opus postumum (Cambridge University Press, 2023) and articles in journals including the Southern Journal of Philosophy, the European Journal of Philosophy, Kantian Review, Kant-Studien, the British Journal for the History of Philosophy, and Perspectives on Science. He is the editor of Howard Caygill, Force and Understanding: Writings on Philosophy and Resistance (Bloomsbury, 2020) and co-edited with Rudolf Meer, a special issue of Kant-Studien. Jack Stetter is a Solmsen Fellow at the Institute for Research in the Humanities, University of Wisconsin–Madison, and a Chercheur international associé at the LLCP-EA 4008, Université Paris 8. With Charles Ramond, he is editor of Spinoza in Twenty-First Century American and French Philosophy (Bloomsbury, 2019). His articles on early modern philosophy have appeared in journals such as the Australasian Philosophical Review, the Journal of Modern Philosophy, Modern Judaism, Crisis and Critique, and the Revista Seiscentos.

Over the last years, the history of philosophy has changed rapidly, embracing new figures, new questions, and approaching texts old and new in novel ways. In this book, the editors have collected a series of essays written by the scholars who are leading the history of philosophy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in these exciting new directions. The past has never looked so fresh.

• General Editors’ Preface Howard Caygill and David WebbIntroduction: Canons, Methods, and the Critical History of PhilosophyStephen Howard and Jack StetterI. Frameworks 1. Geohistory and Philosophy in the Age of the Enlightenment Stefanie Buchenau and Stephen Gaukroger†2. European PhilosophyDelphine Antoine-Mahut and Catherine König-Pralong3. The Shifting Tides of Baconianism: A History (and Philosophy) of Historiographic CategoriesDana Jalobeanu4. Transcendental Unity in Suárez’s Metaphysical Disputations I-IVHoward CaygillII. Philosophy as a Battlefield5. The Philosophical Foundations of Women’s Rights: Nobility and DignityJacqueline Broad and Marguerite Deslauriers6. Race to Racism: A Lockean HowDwight K. Lewis Jr.7. Debates about Slavery in Early Modern Philosophy: Natural Slavery, Circumstantial Slavery, Transatlantic SlaveryJulia Jorati8. Spinoza as a Theorist of Repressive EmpowermentJulie R. Klein9. Spinoza and Kant on War and PeaceJack StetterIII. Life and Bodies10. The Anatomy of the Vegetative Soul: Early Modern Studies of Vegetation and Plant LifeFabrizio Baldassarri11. Eliminating Life: From the Early Modern Ontology of Life to Enlightenment Proto-BiologyCharles T. Wolfe12. Dominion without Domination: Modernizing Parental Authority in Hobbes and LockeMeghan Wood Robison13. English Alternatives to Dualism: Hobbes, Cavendish, ConwayTad M. SchmaltzIV. Paradigms of Knowledge14. Aspects of the Early Modern Common Notion: Herbert, Digby, CulverwellMogens Lærke15. Experience as a Foundation of Enlightened ThoughtAnik Waldow16. The Epistemology of Testimony: Locke and His CriticsKenneth L. Pearce17. Self-Cognition and IdeasVili LähteenmäkiV. Reason’s Frontiers18. Before and After: The Origin of AestheticsJ. Colin McQuillan19. The Individual and the Cosmos: Bruno, Leibniz, KantLaura E. Herrera Castillo and Stephen Howard20. Mos Geometricus and the Genetic InfiniteTzuchien Tho21. Rationalising Religion in the Enlightenment: The Legacy of SpinozaAnna TomaszewskaNotes on ContributorsIndex