A Short History of Modern Philosophy: From Descartes to Wittgenstein, Second Edition (44 page)

J. Passmore's
100 Years of Philosophy,
London, 1957, concerning the period from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, is comprehensive and interesting.

1 History of philosophy and history of ideas

The literature on modern philosophy is vast. In
Modern Philosophy: An Introduction and Survey,
London, 1994, I have tried to review the entire subject as it is now conceived in the Anglo-American tradition, and to provide an effective guide to the literature. Those who prefer a shorter introduction (and who can blame them?) should read Bertrand Russell's enduring classic,
The Problems of Philosophy,
London, 1912. A sense of the subject can also be gained from reading Plato's shorter dialogues, in particular the
Gorgias
and
Theaetetus.

Anthony Flew (ed.), 4
Dictionary of Philosophy,
London, 1979, is one of the best of the many available short guides to the language of modern philosophy, while the much longer
Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
ed. Paul S. Edwards, London and New York, 1967, has retained its authoritative lead over all rival compendia. Simon Blackburn's
Dictionary of Philosophy,
Oxford, 1995, seems, on first reading, exemplary.

2 The rise of modern philosophy

Boethius's
Consolation of Philosophy
is available in the Loeb Classical Library (bilingual, Latin and English), ed. H.F.Stewart and E.K.Rand, London and New York, 1918. There is an interesting translation by Chaucer, entitled
Boece.

St Thomas Aquinas's
Summa Theologica
has been re-issued, in a scholarly bilingual edition, by Blackfriars in association with Eyre & Spottiswoode and McGraw-Hill, London and New York. The best short commentary is Anthony Kenny's
Aquinas,
in the Past Masters series, ed. Keith Thomas, Oxford, 1980.

For the other figures mentioned, see FC.Copleston,
Medieval Philosophy
London, 1952. The principal texts can be found in A.Hyman and J.J.Walsh (eds),
Philosophy in the Middle Ages,
New York, Evanston and London, 1967, which contains extracts from Aquinas as well as from the Arabic, Jewish and Christian philosophers of the pre-Thomist period.

Bacon's philosophical writings are most accessibly presented in FH. Anderson (ed.),
The New Organon and Related Writings,
New York, 1960.

3 Descartes

The standard edition of Descartes' works is
Œuvres de Descartes,
12 vols plus supplement, edited by Charles Adam and Paul Tannery, and published in Paris by Leopold Cerf, 1897-1913. English editions often quote the page numbering of this edition in the margins of the translated text.

The following English editions are acceptable:
The Philosophical Works of Descartes,
translated by E.S.Haldane and G.R.T.Ross, 2 vols, Cambridge, 1911-12, paperback edition New York, 1955.
Descartes: Philosophical Writings,
a selection translated and edited by Elizabeth Anscombe and P.T.Geach, Sunbury-on-Thames, 1954, revised edition 1970.
The Philosophical Writings of Descartes,
translated and edited by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff and Dugald Murdoch, 2 vols, Cambridge, 1985. This will no doubt become the standard English edition and should be read in preference to the above if possible. There is also a selection from the same edition, published in one volume, Cambridge, 1988. This contains everything that a newcomer to Descartes will need and has been brilliantly edited to meet the demands of today's student.

Commentaries are legion, but the following have had considerable impact on recent scholarship: Anthony Kenny,
Descartes:
4
Study of his Philosophy,
New York, 1968; Bernard Williams,
Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry,
an imaginative and insightful work, which conveys an unmatched sense of the intellectual importance of Descartes and his project; Margaret Wilson,
Descartes,
London, 1983, a thorough and careful guide to the argument. For the immediate background to Descartes' thought, see R.H.Popkin,
The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Descartes,
New York, 1968. There is also a
Cambridge Companion to Descartes,
edited by John Cottingham, Cambridge, 1992, which contains interesting articles on all aspects of Descartes' philosophy.

4 The Cartesian revolution

Father Mersenne's collection of objections to Descartes, and Descartes' replies, can be found in E.S.Haldane and G.R.T.Ross (eds),
The Philosophical Works of Descartes,
2 vols, 1911-12, paperback edition New York, 1955, and also in the edition of Descartes' philosophical writings, edited by J.Cottingham et al., Cambridge, 1985. The Port-Royal logic is available in a recent edition, tr. James Dickoff and Patricia James as
The Art of Thinking,
Indianapolis and New York, 1964. For Petrus Ramus, see W. and M.Kneale, 
The Development of Logic,
Oxford, 1962, pp. 301f. Pascal's
Pensées
are available in translations by Martin Turnell, London, 1962, and W.F.Trotter, New York, 1958, with an introduction by T.S. Eliot. Nicolas Malebranche's
Dialogues on Metaphysics and Religion
are available in a translation by Morris Ginsberg, London, 1923.

For the history of ideas covering the period from the Cartesians to the
philosophes,
see Paul Hazard,
The European Mind: 1680-1715,
tr. J.L.May, reissued London, 1973. For Diderot, Voltaire, d'Alembert and the
philosophes
in general, see Diderot,
Rameau's Nephew and Other Works,
tr. Barzun and Bowen, New York, 1956; Voltaire,
Philosophical Dictionary, 
2 vols, tr. Gray, New York, 1963 and Norman L.Torrey,
The Spirit of Voltaire,
Oxford, 1962. There is also-a useful article on the movement in D.J.O'Connor (ed.), 4
Critical History of Western Philosophy,
London, 1964, by E.A.Gellner, entitled 'French Eighteenth Century Materialism'.

5 Spinoza

The standard edition of the works of Spinoza in the original Latin is that edited by C.Gebhardt,
Spinoza Opera,
4 vols, Heidelberg, 1925.

There are several translations of the major metaphysical works available. Undeniably the best, in what will surely become the standard English-language edition of Spinoza, is that by Edwin Curley:
The Collected Works of Spinoza,
vol. 1, Princeton, 1985. (Vol. 2, containing the political works and the remainder of Spinoza's correspondence, has yet to appear.) This magisterial edition, containing all that the student needs, is complete with glossary, index and editorial apparatus, and makes the works fully access

Unfortunately Curley's edition is expensive and not very easy to obtain. The cheap and acceptable alternative is the translation of the
Ethics
by Samuel Shirley, edited with a useful and lively introduction by Seymour Feldman, and published by the Hackett Publishing Co., Indianapolis, 1992. This also contains the
Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect,
and a selection from the correspondence, both of which are of considerable importance.

The complete correspondence of Spinoza is obtainable in a translation edited by A.Wolf, London 1928, reissued 1962. The correspondence relating to the metaphysical works also occurs in Curley, where it is illuminatingly introduced by the translator. The correspondence should not be neglected, since it contains Spinoza's own attempts to make his system clear and accessible to puzzled or sceptical readers.

Among commentaries, the following might prove useful: R.Scruton,
Spinoza,
Oxford, 1986: a very short introduction, which is intended as a map of the territory; Stuart Hampshire,
Spinoza,
Harmondsworth, 1951, reprinted 1981: a path-breaking book, though now somewhat dated; Jonathan Bennett,
A Study of Spinoza's Ethics,
Cambridge, 1984: a difficult and strenuous book, which is relentlessly combative towards its subject matter; Edwin Curley,
Behind the Geometrical Method:
A
Reading of Spinoza's Ethics,
Princeton, 1988: a reworking of a previous commentary, intended in part as a response to Bennett—perhaps the most readable and accessible of the shorter commentaries; Henry Allison,
Benedict de Spinoza: An Introduction,
New Haven, 1987: also very accessible, and frequently illuminating.

Among the collections of articles now available, that edited by S.Paul Kashap, entitled
Studies in Spinoza: Critical and Interpretive Essays,
Los Angeles, 1972, is perhaps the most useful. It contains the important essay 'Spinoza and the Idea of Freedom', by Stuart Hampshire, and an essay by G.H.R.Parkinson, which is an adequate substitute for the same author's
Spinoza's Theory of Knowledge,
Oxford, 1954. The interested student would also gain much from the following two articles: Thomas Carson Mark, 'The Spinozistic Attributes',
Philosophia
7, 1977; and Ralph Walker, 'Spinoza and the Coherence Theory of Truth',
Mind
94, 1985.

6 Leibniz

Leibniz's works (most of them unpublished in his lifetime) are being issued in scholarly editions by the German Academy of Sciences, descendant of the Prussian Academy which Leibniz himself founded. Moving with exemplary slowness (due in part to the polit C.I.Gerhardt, published between 1875 and 1890. As a result, the Gerhardt edition is still widely referred to as the leading text.

There is also a famous collection of Leibniz's unpublished writings put together by the French mathematician Louis Couturat,
Opuscules et fragments inédits de Leibniz,
Paris, 1903. This was highly influential in emphasising the role that logical theory played in shaping Leibniz's metaphysics.

There have been two widely used English-language editions of the more important works: Leroy E.Loemker (ed.),
Leibniz: Philosophical Papers and Letters,
2nd edition, Dordrecht, 1969; Philip PWiener (ed.),
Leibniz Selections,
New York, 2nd edn, 1986. (The first edition of this work is unreliable.)

More useful than either of those to the student, however, is: G.W.Leibniz,
Philosophical Essays,
tr. and ed. Roger Ariew and Daniel Garber, Indianapolis and Cambridge, 1989. This contains the crucial metaphysical works, in lucid and elegant translations.

Among other important works, the following are well worth reading:
The Leibniz-Arnauld Correspondence,
tr. H.T.Mason, Manchester, 1967;
The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence,
tr. Samuel Clarke, ed. H.G.Alexander, Manchester, 1956; G.W.Leibniz,
New Essays on Human Understanding,
abridged, translated and edited by Peter Remnant and Jonathan Bennett, Cambridge, 1982. This last is an extremely useful and inexpensive book, with a marvellously succinct introduction containing a brief biography of Leibniz, a summary of several of his important theories, and a map of the
New Essays.
It has an up-to-date and lucid bibliography.

Commentaries include the following: G.H.R.Parkinson,
Logic and Reality in Leibniz's Metaphysics,
Oxford, 1965: dry, scholarly and reliable; Benson Mates,
The Philosophy of Leibniz: Logic and Language,
Oxford, 1986: accessible, interesting, occasionally misleading; C.D.Broad,
Leibniz: An Introduction,
Cambridge, 1975: posthumously published lectures— thorough, comprehensive, and a trifle out of date; Hide Ishiguro,
Leibniz's Philosophy of Logic and Language,
London, 1972: difficult, tortuous, but worth the effort. There is also a famous book by Bertrand Russell, A
Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz,
2nd edn, London, 1937. This tried to show that Leibniz's metaphysics (which Russell did not admire) was motivated by his logic (which he did). The interpretation offered was very influential, though now largely rejected.

Among collections of articles, the following can be recommended: Michael Hooker (ed.),
Leibniz: Critical and Interpretative Essays,
Minneapolis, 1983; R.S.Woolhouse (ed.),
Leibniz: Metaphysics and Philosophy of Science,
Oxford, 1981: contains a good, if undiscriminating, bibliography; Nicholas Jolley (ed.),
The Cambridge Companion to Leibniz,
Cambridge, 1994.

For the place of both Spinoza and Leibniz in the history of ideas, see A. Lovejoy's classic study,
The Great Chain of Being,
London, 1936.

7    Locke and Berkeley

Thomas Hobbes,
Leviathan,
ed. with an introduction by Michael Oakeshott, Oxford, 1947.

Editions of Locke's
Essay on the Human Understanding
are of varying quality; by far the best is that edited by Peter H.Nidditch, Oxford, 1975. This contains a useful foreword by the editor.

Because the Essay is so diffuse and repetitious, various abridgements have been attempted, among which the most popular has been that by A.S. Pringle-Pattison, Oxford, 1924.

Good introductory commentaries include Stephen Priest,
The British Empiricists,
London, 1990, and R.I.Aaron,
John Locke,
3rd edn., Oxford, 1971. More challenging are: Jonathan Bennett,
Locke, Berkeley and Hume: Central Themes,
Oxford, 1971, especially useful on the theory of meaning and ideas; J.L.Mackie,
Problems from Locke,
Oxford, 1976, which relates Locke's concerns to modern debates in metaphysics and the philosophy of science; Michael Ayers,
Locke: Epistemology and Ontology,
London, 1991: in many ways a model of scholarly research, which is also an impressive philosophical statement in its own right.

Among collections of articles, the most useful is probably V.C.Chappell (ed.),
The Cambridge Companion to Locke,
Cambridge, 1994.