A Companion to Rationalism
Blackwell Companions to Philosophy
1. Edition November 2005
528 Pages, Hardcover
Wiley & Sons Ltd
Short Description
In this Companion, a cast of established and rising stars in philosophy lays out the historical roots, the celebrated expressions, the controversies, and the contemporary determinations of rationalist thought. The volume opens with essays examining the nature of the rationalist impulse to philosophize, and the distinction between rationalism and empiricism. The focus of the remainder of the volume is on the "golden age" of rationalism in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The material is organized chronologically, and various philosophical methods and viewpoints are represented throughout.
This book is a wide-ranging examination of rationalist thought in philosophy from ancient times to the present day.
* Written by a superbly qualified cast of philosophers.
* Critically analyses the concept of rationalism.
* Focuses principally on the golden age of rationalism in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.
* Also covers ancient rationalism, nineteenth-century rationalism, and rationalist themes in recent thought.
* Organised chronologically.
* Various philosophical methods and viewpoints are represented.
Acknowledgments.
List of Abbreviations.
Introduction.
Part I: The Core of Rationalism.
1. The Rationalist Impulse (Alan Nelson).
2. The Rationalist Conception of Substance (Thomas M. Lennon).
3. Rationalist Theories of Sense Perception and Mind-Body Relation (Gary Hatfield).
4. Rationalism and Education (David Cunning).
Part II: The Historical Background.
5. Plato's Rationalistic Method (Hugh H. Benson).
6. Rationalism in Jewish Philosophy (Steven Nadler).
7. Early Modern Critiques of Rationalist Psychology (Antonia LoLordo).
8. Rationalism and Method (Matthew J. Kisner).
9. Cartesian Imaginations: The Method and Passions of Imagining (Dennis L. Sepper).
Part III: The Heyday of Rationalism.
10. Descartes' Rationalist Epistemology (Lex Newman).
11. Rationalism and Representation).
12. The Role of the Imagination in Rationalist Philosophies of Mathematics (Lawrence Nolan).
13. Idealism and Cartesian Motion (Alice Sowaal).
14. Leibniz on Shape and the Cartesian Conception of Body (Timothy Crockett).
15. Leibniz on Modality, Cognition, and Expression (Alan Nelson).
16. Rationalist Moral Philosophy (Andrew Youpa).
17. Spinoza, Leibniz, and the Rationalist Reconceptions of Imagination (Dennis L. Sepper).
18. Kant and the Two Dogmas of Rationalism (Henry E. Allison).
Part IV: Rationalist Themes in Contemporary Philosophy.
19. Rationalism in the Phenomenonological Tradition (David Woodruff Smith).
20. Rationalist Elements of Twentieth-Century Analytic Philosophy (Paul Livingston).
21. Proust and the Rationalist Conception of the Self (Alan Nelson).
22. Rationalism in Science (David Stump).
23. Rationality Decision making: Descriptive, Prescriptive, or Explanatory (Jonathan Michael Kaplan).
24. What is a Feminist to do with Rational Choice? (Mariam Thalos).
25. Rationalism in the Philosophy of Donald Davidson (Richard N. Manning).
Index
"This companion is large indeed, but the size fits the largeness of its subjects; and it does succeed in its 25 articles in covering that subject . . . A job well done. Recommended." (Choice)