Table of Contents:
  • 1. Background
  • Rationalists and empiricists
  • Reason, system, and necessity
  • René Descartes
  • Benedictus Spinoza
  • Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
  • 2. Method
  • Descartes's fresh start
  • Mathesis universalis
  • Metaphysical foundations
  • Analysis and synthesis
  • Problems with the Cartesian method
  • Spinoza and the 'geometrical order'
  • Definitions, essences, and apriorism
  • The denial of contingency, and Spinoza's grades of cognition
  • Leibniz and the 'art of combination'
  • Necessity, contingency, and Leibniz's 'rationalism'
  • Innate ideas.
  • 3. The classical background
  • Descartes on substance: God, mind, and matter
  • The asymmetry of Descartes's dualism
  • Spinoza and independent substance
  • 'God or nature'
  • The existence of uncreated substance in Descartes and Spinoza
  • Leibniz 's critique of the ontological argument
  • Leibniz and individual substance
  • The monads activity and self-containedness
  • Causality connection and the role of God
  • 4. Matter and Mind
  • Descartes's immaterialist theory of the mind
  • The problem of interaction
  • The Spinozan response
  • Mind and body in Spinoza
  • Leibniz critique of Cartesian matter
  • Leibniz's theory of the mind
  • Souls, consciousness, and transparency
  • 5. Freedom and Morality
  • Divine goodness and Cartesian freedom
  • Leibniz on liberty
  • Spinozan freedom: endeavour and rationality
  • Human nature and the good life in Descartes and Spinoza
  • Reason, faith, and the human lot.