Jonathan Bennett engages with the thought of six great thinkers of the early modern period: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume. While not neglecting the historical setting of each, his chief focus is on the words they wrote. What problem is being tackled? How exactly is the solution meant to work? Does it succeed? If not, why not? What can be learned from its success or failure? For newcomers to the early modern scene, this clearly written work is an excellent introduction to it. Those already in the know can learn how to argue with the great philosophers of the past, treating...

First published in 1976, this book presents a view of language as a matter of systematic communicative behaviour.

Jonathan Bennett here examines the second half of the Critique of Pure Reason, the Dialectic, where Kant is concerned with problems about substance, the nature of the self, the cosmos, freedom and the existence of God. In this study of the Dialectic in English, the author aims to make accessible and intelligible to students this complex and extremely important part of Kant's great work. There are also extended comparative discussions of related work by some of the most influential of Kant's predecessors, in particular Descartes and Leibniz. As in his earlier book, Professor Bennett offers not...