Alan Nelson is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Irvine. He is a leading scholar of the great philosophical systems of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and has published widely on rationalism in the history of philosophy and in the philosophy of science.

“Addressing topics from epistemology and metaphysics to ethics and psychology, it is the most compete treatment of the subject known to me.” “I can recommend this book without hesitation.” (Philosophy In Review) "This companion is large indeed, but the size fits the largeness of its subjects; and it does succeed in its 25 articles in covering that subject . . . A job well done. Recommended." (Choice)

• List of Contributors ix Acknowledgments xiList of Abbreviations xiiIntroduction xivPart I The Core of Rationalism 11 The Rationalist Impulse 3Alan Nelson2 The Rationalist Conception of Substance 12Thomas M. Lennon3 Rationalist Theories of Sense Perception and Mind–Body Relation 31Gary Hatfield4 Rationalism and Education 61David CunningPart II The Historical Background 835 Plato’s Rationalistic Method 85Hugh H. Benson6 Rationalism in Jewish Philosophy 100Steven Nadler7 Early Modern Critiques of Rationalist Psychology 119Antonia LoLordo8 Rationalism and Method 137Matthew J. Kisner9 Cartesian Imaginations: The Method and Passions of Imagining 156Dennis L. SepperPart III The Heyday of Rationalism 17710 Descartes’ Rationalist Epistemology 179Lex Newman11 Rationalism and Representation 206Kurt Smith12 The Role of the Imagination in Rationalist Philosophies of Mathematics 224Lawrence Nolan13 Idealism and Cartesian Motion 250Alice Sowaal14 Leibniz on Shape and the Cartesian Conception of Body 262Timothy Crockett15 Leibniz on Modality, Cognition, and Expression 282Alan Nelson16 Rationalist Moral Philosophy 302Andrew Youpa17 Spinoza, Leibniz, and the Rationalist Reconceptions of Imagination 322Dennis L. Sepper18 Kant and the Two Dogmas of Rationalism 343Henry E. AllisonPart IV Rationalist Themes in Contemporary Philosophy 36119 Rationalism in the Phenomenological Tradition 363David Woodruff Smith20 Rationalist Elements of Twentieth-Century Analytic Philosophy 379Paul Livingston21 Proust and the Rationalist Conception of the Self 399Alan Nelson22 Rationalism in Science 408David Stump23 Rational Decision Making: Descriptive, Prescriptive, or Explanatory? 425Jonathan Michael Kaplan24 What is a Feminist to do with Rational Choice? 450Mariam Thalos25 Rationalism in the Philosophy of Donald Davidson 468Richard N. ManningIndex 488