2nd Edition

A New Modern Philosophy The Inclusive Anthology of Primary Sources

Edited By Gwendolyn Marshall, Susanne J. Sreedhar Copyright 2023
    842 Pages
    by Routledge

    842 Pages
    by Routledge

    The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are arguably the most important period in philosophy’s history, given that they set a new and broad foundation for subsequent philosophical thought. Over the last decade, however, discontent among instructors has grown with coursebooks’ unwavering focus on the era’s seven most well-known philosophers—all of them white and male—and on their exclusively metaphysical and epistemological concerns.  While few dispute the centrality of these figures and the questions they raised, the modern era also included essential contributions from women—like Margaret Cavendish, Elisabeth of Bohemia, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Émilie Du Châtelet—as well as important non-white thinkers, such as Anton Wilhelm Amo, Julien Raimond, and Ottobah Cugoano. At the same time, there has been increasing recognition that moral and political philosophy, philosophy of the natural world, and philosophy of race—also vibrant areas of the seventeenth and ighteenth centuries—need to be better integrated with the standard coverage of metaphysics and epistemology.

    The second edition of A New Modern Philosophy: The Inclusive Anthology of Primary Sources addresses—in one volume—these valid criticisms. Weaving together multiple voices and all of the era’s vibrant areas of debate, this volume sets a new agenda for studying modern philosophy. It includes a wide range of readings from 36 thinkers, integrating essential works from all of the canonical writers along with the previously neglected philosophers. Editors Gwendolyn Marshall and Susanne Sreedhar provide an introduction for each author that sets the thinker in his or her time period as well as in the longer debates to which the thinker contributed. Study questions and suggestions for further reading conclude each chapter. At the end of the volume, in addition to a comprehensive subject index, the book includes 13 Syllabus Modules, which will help instructors use the book to easily set up different topically structured courses, such as "The Citizen and the State," "Mind and Matter," "Education," "Theories of Perception," or "Metaphysics of Causation."

    And an eResource offers a wide range of supplemental online resources, including essay assignments, exams, quizzes, student handouts, reading questions, and scholarly articles on teaching the history of philosophy.

    Key Updates to the Second Edition:

    • Provides an expanded table of contents and the addition of new chapters on Galileo and Sor Juana Ines De La Cruz
    • Expands readings and coverage in chapters on Spinoza and Descartes
    • Offers improved Syllabus Modules at the back of the book
    • Includes a new Student Introduction
    • Updates bibliographic information

    Editors’ Introduction
    Introduction for Students
    Bibliography of Sources

    1. Montaigne, Michel (1533-1592)
         a. Apology for Raymond Sebond (published 1578)

    2. Bacon, Francis (Lord Verulam) (1561-1626)
         a. New Organon (published 1620)

    3. Galilei, Galileo (1564-1642)
         a. The Assayer (1623)

    4. Descartes, René (1596-1650)
         a. Discourse on Method (published 1637)
         b. Meditations on First Philosophy (published 1641)
         c. "Antoine Arnauld’s Objections to the Meditations" (written 1641)
         d. "The Correspondence Between Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia and Descartes" (written 1643)
         e. Passions of the Soul (published 1649)

    5. Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679)
         a. Leviathan (published 1651)

    6. Cavendish, Margaret (1623-1673)
         a. Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy (published 1668)

    7. Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
         a. The Wager (published 1670)

    8. Spinoza, Baruch (1632-1677)
         a. A Theological-Political Treatise (published 1670)
         b. Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (published 1677)
         c. Ethics (published 1677)

    9. Boyle, Robert (1627-1692)
         a. The Excellence and Grounds of the Mechanical Philosophy (published 1674)

    10. Malebranche, Nicolas (1638-1715)
         a. Search After Truth (published 1674)

    11. Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1646-1716)
         a. Discourse on Metaphysics (published 1686)
         b. A New System of Nature (published 1695)
         c. New Essays on Human Understanding (completed 1704, published 1765)
         d. Monadology (published 1714)
         e. Letters to Samuel Clarke (written 1715)

    12. Newton, Isaac (1642-1727)
         a. Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, or Principia (published 1687)

    13. Locke, John (1632-1704)
         a. Essay Concerning Human Understanding (published 1689)
         b. Second Treatise of Government (published 1690)

    14. Conway, Anne (1631-1679)
         a. The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy (published 1690)

    15. de la Cruz, Sor Juana Inés (1648-1695)
         a. "Response of the Poet to the Very Eminent Sor Filotea de la Cruz" (written 1691)

    16. Astell, Mary (1668-1731)
         a. A Serious Proposal to the Ladies (published 1694)
         b. Some Reflections on Marriage (published 1700)

    17. Masham, Damaris Cudworth (1659-1708)
         a. Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Virtuous or Christian Life (published 1705)

    18. Mandeville, Bernard (1670-1733)
         a. The Grumbling Hive (published 1705)
         b. An Enquiry into the Origin of Moral Virtue (published 1723)

    19. Berkeley, George (1685-1753)
         a. Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous (published 1713)

    20. Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de la Bréde (1689-1755)
         a. Persian Letters (published 1721)

    21. Butler, Joseph (1692-1752)
         a. Fifteen Sermons (published 1726)

    22. Amo, Anton Wilhelm (1703-1759)
         a. The Absence of Sensation and the Faculty of Sense in the Human Mind and their Presence in our Organic and Living Body (published 1734)

    23. Hume, David (1711-1776)
         a. A Treatise of Human Nature (published 1738)
         b. Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (published 1748)
         c. Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (published 1751)
         d. Of the Original Contract (published 1748)

    24. Émilie Du Châtelet (1706-1749)
         a. Foundations of Physics (published 1740)

    25. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712-1778)
         a. A Discourse on the Origin and Foundation of the Inequality Among Mankind (published 1755)
         b. The Social Contract (published 1762)

    26. Reid, Thomas (1710-1796)
         a. Inquiry into the Human Mind (published 1764)
         b. Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (published 1785)

    27. Condorcet, Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis of (1743 –1794)
         a. Reflections on Negro Slavery (published 1781)
         b. On the Admission of Women to the Rights of Citizenship (published 1790)
         c. Outlines of an Historical View of the Progress of the Human Mind (published 1795)

    28. Kant, Immanuel (1724-1804)
          a. Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (published 1783)

    29. de Gouges, Olympe (1748 –1793)
         a. Reflections on Negroes (published 1788)
         b. Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen" (published 1791)
         c. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789)

    30. Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)
          a. Reflections on the Revolution in France (published 1790)

    31. Paine, Thomas (1737-1809)
         a. Rights of Man (published 1791)

    32. Raimond, Julien (1744–1801)
         a. Observations on the Origin and Progress of Prejudice by White Settlers Against People of Color
           
     (published 1791)

    33. Cugoano, Ottobah (1757 –1792?)
         a. Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery (1791)

    34. Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)
          a. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (published 1792)

    Sample Syllabus Modules

    Biography

    Gwendolyn Marshall is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Florida International University. She is the author of The Spiritual Automaton: Spinoza’s Science of the Mind (2013) and the editor of Margaret Cavendish’s Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy (2016). Her current research and teaching concerns early modern philosophy of mind and matter, as well as transgender issues in contemporary philosophy.

    Susanne Sreedhar is Professor of Philosophy and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Boston University. She is the author of Hobbes on Resistance: Defying the Leviathan (2010). Her current research is on notions of gender in early modern social contract theory.

    Praise for the First Edition:

    "This abundance of diverse thinkers, texts, and themes strikingly sets this anthology apart, and well worth special note is the exceptional number of writings by women philosophers and philosophers of color. . . . This is an exciting time for the history of modern philosophy, and the well-priced, well-intentioned, and commendably ambitious A New Modern Philosophy: The Inclusive Anthology of Primary Sources is a welcome and exciting addition to it."
    Susan Mills in Teaching Philosophy

    "This rich anthology of primary readings, with its inclusion of texts by women philosophers and philosophers of color, as well as topics rarely studied in survey courses of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophy, is a superb and highly welcome new resource for teaching early modern thought."
    Steven Nadler, University of Wisconsin-Madison

    "This new anthology by Sreedhar and Marshall reflects the most recent scholarly advancements by including an impressively diverse range of figures who tackled a myriad of fascinating and important philosophical topics in the early modern period. Students who read it, and instructors who teach it, will obtain a far more accurate picture of early modern philosophy than those using standard textbooks."
    Andrew Janiak, Duke University