The seventeenth century saw a major revolution in our ways of thinking about such issues as the method appropriate to philosophy and science, the relation between mind and body, the nature of substance, and the place of humanity in nature. While not neglecting the lesser but still influential figures, such as Arnauld and Malebranche, John Cottingham focuses primarily on the three great "rationalists": Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz. He examines how they approached central problems of philosophy, and shows how closely their ideas are related, despite the radically different philosophical...

The question What is the meaning of life? is one of the most fascinating, oldest and most difficult questions human beings have ever posed themselves. In an increasingly secularized culture, it remains a question to which we are ineluctably and powerfully drawn. In this work, John Cottingham assesses some of the most influential attempts to explain it, ranging from the bleak existentialist view to the religious demand that human beings amount to something more than Pascal's imbecile worms of the earth. He asks what is involved in the disenchantment of the natural world by science, and argues...

Descartes s Meditations on First Philosophy, published in Latin in 1641, is one of the most widely studied philosophical texts of all time, and inaugurates many of the key themes that have remained central to philosophy ever since. In his original Latin text Descartes expresses himself with great lucidity and elegance, and there is enormous interest, even for those who are not fluent in Latin, in seeing how the famous concepts and arguments of his great masterpiece unfold in the original language. John Cottingham s acclaimed English translation of the work is presented here in a facing-page...

Today countless people struggle with belief - not just religious belief, but any belief at all. John Cottingham, a philosopher of searing intellectual honesty, examines our society's struggle with the concept of belief.

Religious belief is not just about abstract intellectual argument; it also impinges on all aspects of human life. John Cottingham's Philosophy of Religion opens up fresh perspectives on the philosophy of religion, arguing that the detached neutrality of much of contemporary philosophizing may be counterproductive hardening us against the receptivity required for certain kinds of important evidence to become salient. This book covers all the traditional areas of the subject, including the meaning of religious claims, the existence of God and the relation between religion and morality, as well...

Religious belief is not just about abstract intellectual argument; it also impinges on all aspects of human life. John Cottingham's Philosophy of Religion opens up fresh perspectives on the philosophy of religion, arguing that the detached neutrality of much of contemporary philosophizing may be counterproductive hardening us against the receptivity required for certain kinds of important evidence to become salient. This book covers all the traditional areas of the subject, including the meaning of religious claims, the existence of God and the relation between religion and morality, as well...