Abstract

Provides an advanced overview of the issues that are informing research on the subject of British philosophy in the seventeenth century, while at the same time offering new directions for research to take. It covers the whole of the seventeenth century, ranging from Francis Bacon to John Locke and Isaac Newton. The book contains five parts: the introductory Part I examines the state of the discipline and the nature of its practitioners as the century unfolded; Part II discusses the leading natural philosophers and the philosophy of nature, including Bacon, Boyle, and Newton; Part III covers knowledge and the human faculty of the understanding; Part IV explores the leading topics in British moral philosophy from the period; and Part V concerns political philosophy. In addition to dealing with canonical authors and celebrated texts, such as Thomas Hobbes and his Leviathan, it discusses many less-well-known figures and debates from the period whose importance is only now being appreciated.