The Rationalists

The 17th century saw a major revolution in our ways of thinking about such issues as the method appropriate to philosphy and science, the relation between mind and body, the nature of substance, and the place of man in nature. The author focuses mainly on the three great "rationalists" Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz (while mentioning also Arnauld and Malebranche among others). He examines how they tackled these and other central problems of philosophy and aims to show how closely their ideas are related, despite the radically different philosophical systems they produced. He not only places the major thinkers in their historical and philosophical contexts, but examines the relevance of their thinking to today's major philosophical topics.