Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1646–1716)

By Garber, Daniel

Leibniz was one of the central figures of seventeenth-century philosophy, indeed, one of the central intellectual figures of his age. Born and educated in Germany, he travelled to ...

Helmont, Franciscus Mercurius van (1614–98)

By Brown, Stuart

Although he lived in the seventeenth century, van Helmont belongs more to late Renaissance than to modern intellectual culture. He was a larger-than-life figure who, in his prime, ...

Boutroux, Émile (1845–1921)

By Gil, Didier
Translated by Stern, Robert

The French philosopher Émile Boutroux wanted to reestablish metaphysics in the face of a growing tendency towards materialism, but without rejecting the natural sciences. He hoped to achieve ...

Cockburn, Catharine (1679–1749)

By Hutton, Sarah

Catharine Cockburn (Catharine Trotter) was a British moral philosopher who turned to philosophy after a successful career as one of the first woman playwrights. She wrote no substantial ...

Fardella, Michelangelo (c.1646–1718)

By Floridi, Luciano

Fardella was one of the first and most famous Italian Cartesians. Influenced by Malebranche and Leibniz, he rejected materialism in metaphysics, and endorsed a strongly Augustinian form of ...

Amo, Anton Wilhelm (c.1703–56)

By Wright, John S.

The first European-trained African philosopher, Amo pursued a scholarly career in jurisprudence and then in rationalist psychology, logic, and metaphysics. He trained at Halle, Wittenberg and Jena universities, ...

Monad

By McDonough, Jeffrey K.; Nguyen, Tran (Jen)

Monads serve as the metaphysical foundations of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s mature metaphysics. In doing so they play a metaphysical role similar to the metaphysical role of atoms in ...

Clandestine literature

By McKenna, Antony

Clandestine philosophical (anti-Christian) literature of the seventeenth century circulated in manuscript form until its publication by the philosophes in the later eighteenth century. Since research began, the ...

Contingency

By Walker, Ralph C.S.

People are often puzzled about the apparent contingency of the world. To say that something happens contingently is to say that it might not have happened, and to ...

Eberhard, Johann August (1739–1809)

By Allison, Henry E.

A German philosopher and theologian, Eberhard was trained in the rationalist tradition of Christian Wolff, but was also influenced by the more empirical ‘popular philosophy’ of the Enlightenment. ...

Gödel, Kurt (1906–78)

By Dawson, John W.

The greatest logician of the twentieth century, Gödel is renowned for his advocacy of mathematical Platonism and for three fundamental theorems in logic: the completeness of first-order logic; ...

Lomonosov, Mikhail Vasil’evich (1711–65)

By Jones, Gareth

Endowed with scientific and literary genius, Lomonosov was a product and proponent of Russia’s eighteenth-century Westernization. He was trained under Christian Wolff, the philosophic luminary of German pietism, ...

Unity of science

By Cat, Jordi

How should our scientific knowledge be organized? Is scientific knowledge unified and, if so, does it mirror a unity of the world as a whole? Or is it ...

Introspection, psychology of

Introspection is the process of directly examining one’s own conscious mental states and processes. Since the seventeenth century, there has been considerable disagreement on the scope, nature and ...

Conway, Anne (c.1630–79)

By Hutton, Sarah

Anne Conway (née Finch) was the most important of the few English women who engaged in philosophy in the seventeenth century. Her reputation derives from one work published ...

Elisabeth of Bohemia (1618–80)

By O'Neill, Eileen

Elisabeth of Bohemia, Princess Palatine, exerted an influence on seventeenth-century Cartesianism via her correspondence with Descartes. She questioned his accounts of mind–body interaction and free will, and persuasively ...

Knutzen, Martin (1713–51)

By Laywine, Alison

Martin Knutzen was a follower of Christian von Wolff. His work is the result of an effort to reconcile Wolff’s system, more persuasively than Wolff himself had, with ...

Masham, Damaris (1658–1708)

By Hutton, Sarah

Damaris Cudworth, who became Lady Masham on her marriage to Sir Francis Masham in 1685, was an English moral philosopher who published two short treatises on moral philosophy. ...

Cordemoy, Géraud de (1626–84)

By Nadler, Steven

Géraud de Cordemoy was, by profession, first a lawyer, then a tutor to the Grand Dauphin, first son of Louis XIV. But he was also one of the ...

Du Châtelet-Lomont, Gabrielle-Émilie (1706–49)

By Walters, Robert L.

The name of this aristocratic woman, a true intellectual with a passion for mathematics, philosophy and science, is linked to that of Voltaire, whose life and interests she ...

Fénelon, François de Salignac de la Mothe (1651–1715)

By Riley, Patrick

Fénelon is best-known for his utopian political novel Aventures de Télémaque fils d’Ulysse (Telemachus, Son of Ulysses) (1699), which contrasts the rustic simplicity of Greek antiquity with the ...

La Forge, Louis de (1632–66)

By Nadler, Steven

Louis de la Forge, a medical doctor by profession, was an important champion of Cartesian philosophy in mid-seventeenth century France. Through his work on the first published edition ...

Lambert, Johann Heinrich (1728–77)

By Zoller, Gunter

Lambert was a German mathematician, physicist, astronomer and philosopher, who was among the leading figures of German intellectual life in the late eighteenth century. As a practising scientist, ...

Régis, Pierre-Sylvain (1632–1707)

By Lennon, Thomas M.

Régis helped to define and disseminate Cartesianism. He proselytized on its behalf, defended it against its critics and innovators, and wrote the systematic textbook for which Descartes had ...

Aesthetics, in modern philosophy

By Costelloe, Timothy M.

The term aesthetics is derived linguistically from the Greek term meaning sensitive or sentient. It is first used to designate a particular area of philosophical inquiry in ...