The study of natural law theories in the early Enlightenment continues to be one of the most fruitful areas of research in early modern intellectual history. In recent years there have been substantial reassessments of Grotius, Pufendorf, Thomasius 1 and the whole university-based tradition associated with the Fruhaujklarung. The appeal of the discourse of natural jurisprudence to groups and individuals operating outside conventional educational and political structures - such as the Huguenot diaspora - has also been highlighted? Moreover the contextual understanding of the work of...

This book is intended for scholars and students in humanities, history, Jewish studies, philosophy, Christian theology, and for those concerned with the roots of anti-Semitism and with the need for toleration and intercultural pluralism. The book combines the development of German philosophy from the Enlightenment to Idealism, and from Idealism to the revolutionary turning-point of the mid-nineteenth century with the Jewish question.

The revival of ancient Greek scepticism in the 16th and 17th centuries was of the greatest importance in changing the intellectual climate in which modern science developed, and in developing the attitude that we now call "The scientific outlook." Many streams of thought came together contributing to various facets of this crucial development. One of the most fascinating of these is that of "constructive scepticism," the history of one of whose forms is traced in this study by Prof. Van Leeuwen. The sceptical crisis that arose during the Renaissance and Refor mation challenged the fundamental...

This book offers a new type of working tool for Cartesian studies. It presents the literature of the last 160 years in alphabetical order (Part Two), combined with a systematic analytical survey (Part One) and a detailed topical index to the whole (Part Three). This organization makes it possible to turn bibliogra phy from a repository of references into a workshop of research. The system atic survey of Part One and the topical index of Part Three, together, offer a mise au point of Descartes studies over their full historical and topical range. The results have often been surprising and...

The solitary and erudite figure of Pierre Bayle occupies a position of particular interest in French letters; we are pleased to recognize in his thought the germ of the ideas which reached their fulfillment in the eighteenth century. His own age does not seem to have been quite ready to receive him. Forced into exile by the Catholics, he was censured and harassed by the Protestants in Holland. It is to be expected that his outspoken enemies would have declared him a danger to religion and morality; yet to his more moderate contemporaries, too, he was sometimes a "problem," and one senses an...

Ludwig Heinrich von Nicolay (1737-1820) is virtually unknown in our time. Yet at the close of the eighteenth century he enjoyed a considerable reputation as a German poet of the French neo-classical orientation. He was esteemed as tutor to the Russian Emperor Paul I, as Russian State Counciller, and as President of the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences. Moreover he was a friend of the most prominent eighteenth century minds that left their imprints on modern thought. As such a man, Nicolay may be studied from several points of view, as a writer, as an educator and as an intellectual. My...

By the time of Immanuel Kant, Berkeley had been called, among other things, a sceptic, an atheist, a solipsist, and an idealist. In our own day, however, the suggestion has been advanced that Berkeley is better understood if interpreted as a realist and man of common sense. Regardless of whether in the end one decides to treat him as a sub jective idealist or as a realist, I think it has become appropriate to inquire how Berkeley's own contemporaries viewed his philosophy. Heretofore the generally accepted account has been that they ignored him, roughly from the time he published the...