Philosophy in the 17th & 18th Centuries

Reading

Texts

Descartes, Rene : Discourse on the method & Meditations on First Philosophy, 1637, 1641. (Descartes’ Selected Philosophical Writings ed.Cottingham, Stoothoff & Murdoch, Cambridge, 1998, CUP; cheaper: the Penguin edition, Discourse on Method and the Meditations, translated and introduced by F.E.Sutcliffe, about £7)

Locke, John : An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 1690. (Everyman ed. London 1961 Dent, about £7)

Berkeley, George. : Principles of Human Knowledge, 1710 (Penguin edition Ed R.S. Woolhouse, Harmondsworth, 1988, about £7)

Hume, David : An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 1748. (Ed. Eric Steinberg, 2nd ed. Indianapolis, 1993, Hackett. Or OUP Paperback. About £6.

Kant, Immanuel : A Critique of Pure Reason, Everyman, about £7.

As a student of philosophy you may like to acquire personal copies of these works. They are among the finest productions of Western philosophical thinking. Cheap - but actually not at all nasty - editions (indicated above) have been ordered from the bookshop.

But do note - all these texts are also freely available on the Internet (and remember that electronic versions can be 'searched' so much more easily than paper ones). The course web pages point to these, and I have collected some basic ones there.

To help you understand the texts, and to place them in context, I am recommending two books, which together cover the course as a whole. I see these as backing up the lectures. They are:

John Cottingham: The Rationalists, No 4 of History of Western Philosophy, Oxford, 1988, OPUS. About £8.

Roger Woolhouse: The Empiricists, No 5 of History of Western Philosophy, Oxford, 1988, OPUS. About £7.

For copyright reasons these are not available on the Internet. They are in the library, in multiple copies, but you will probably find them useful enough to buy.

The following I recommend as also well worth buying if resources are there:

Kenny, Anthony, ed., The Oxford Illustrated history of Western Philosophy, Oxford, 1994. OUP About £15.

Scruton, Roger: A Short History of Modern Philosophy, London, 1984, Routledge. About £9.

For background or further detailed study of texts and issues:

Bennett, Jonathan: Locke, Berkeley, Hume: Central Themes, Oxford, 1971, OUP.

Berman, David: George Berkeley, Oxford, 1994, Clarendon.

Chappell, Vere (ed): Locke, Oxford Readings in Philosophy, 1998, OUP. About £12.

Cottingham, John (ed): Descartes, Oxford Readings in Philosophy, 1998, OUP. About £12.

Cottingham, John: Descartes, Oxford, 1986, Blackwell.

Gardner, Sebastian, Routledge Philosophy Guidebook Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason, London, 1999, Routledge. About £9.

Gaukroger, S: Descartes: An Intellectual Biography, Oxford, 1997, OUP. About £16.

Jolley, Nicholas: The Light of the Soul, Oxford, 1998, OUP About £14.

Kenny, Anthony, Aquinas on Mind, Routledge, 1994. About £14.

Kenny, Anthony: Descartes - a study of his philosophy, Bristol, 1995 (1st pub. 1968), Thoemmes.

Lowe, Jonathan, Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Locke on Human Understanding, London, 1995, Routledge. About £9.

Mackie, J.L.: Problems from Locke, Oxford, 1997, OUP.

Neiman, Susan: The Unity of Reason, Oxford, 1997, OUP. About £12.

Rogers, G.A.J. (ed) : Locke’s Philosophy, Oxford, 1994, Clarendon.

Scruton, Roger, Kant, Past Masters, OUP. About £6.

Stewart, M.A., ed.: Studies in Seventeenth-Century European Philosophy, Oxford, 1997, OUP. About £35 (only in hardback.).

Strawson, Peter: The Bounds of Sense, 1968, London, Methuen.

Woolhouse, R.S.: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, London, 1993, Routledge.