Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Series
  3. Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy

Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy expands the range, variety and quality of texts in the history of philosophy that are available in English. The series includes texts by familiar names (such as Descartes and Kant) and also by less well-known authors. Wherever possible, texts are published in complete and unabridged form, and translations are specially commissioned for the series. Each volume contains a critical introduction together with a guide to further reading and any necessary glossaries and textual apparatus. The volumes are designed for student use at undergraduate and postgraduate level and will be of interest not only to students of philosophy, but also to a wider audience of readers in the history of science, the history of theology and the history of ideas.

  • General Editors: Karl Ameriks, University of Notre Dame, Indiana, Desmond M. Clarke, University College, Cork

Refine search

Refine search

Content type:
Publication date:
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

73 results in Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy

Page 4 of 4

Heine: 'On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany'
  • Edited by Terry Pinkard
  • Translated by Howard Pollack-Milgate
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    06 September 2007
  • This volume presents a colourful and entertaining overview of German intellectual history by a central figure in its development. Heinrich Heine (1797–1856), famous poet, journalist, and political exile, studied with Hegel and was personally acquainted with the leading figures of the most important generation of German writers and philosophers. In his groundbreaking History he discusses the history of religion, philosophy, and literature in Germany up to his time, seen through his own highly opinionated, politically aware, philosophically astute, and always ironic perspective. This work, and other writings focussing especially on Heine's rethinking of Hegel's philosophy, are presented here in a new translation by Howard Pollack-Milgate. The volume also includes an introduction by Terry Pinkard which examines Heine both in relation to Hegel and Nietzsche and as a thinker in his own right.

Giordano Bruno: Cause, Principle and Unity
  • And Essays on Magic
  • Giordano Bruno
  • Edited by Richard J. Blackwell, Robert de Lucca
  • Introduction by Alfonso Ingegno
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    26 November 1998
  • Giordano Bruno's notorious public death in 1600, at the hands of the Inquisition in Rome, marked the transition from Renaissance philosophy to the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century. In his philosophical works he addressed such delicate issues as the role of Christ as mediator and the distinction, in human beings, between soul and matter. This volume presents new translations of Cause, Principle and Unity, in which he challenges Aristotelian accounts of causality and spells out the implications of Copernicanism for a new theory of an infinite universe, and of two essays on magic, On Magic and A General Account of Bonding, in which he interprets earlier theories about magical events in the light of the unusual powers of natural phenomena.

Melanchthon: Orations on Philosophy and Education
  • Melanchthon
  • Edited by Sachiko Kusukawa
  • Translated by Christine F. Salazar
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    22 April 1999
  • Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560), humanist and colleague of Martin Luther, is best known for his educational reforms, for which he earned the title Praeceptor Germaniae (the Teacher of Germany). His most influential form of philosophical writing was the academic oration, and this volume, first published in 1999, presents a large and wide-ranging selection of his orations and textbook prefaces translated into English. They set out his views on the distinction between faith and reason, the role of philosophy in education, moral philosophy, natural philosophy, astronomy and astrology, and the importance of philosophy to a true Christian, as well as his views on Classical philosophical authorities such as Plato and Aristotle and on contemporaries such as Erasmus and Luther. Powerfully influential in their time, inspiring many Protestant students to study philosophy, mathematics and natural philosophy, they illuminate the relationship between Renaissance and Reformation thought.

Hume: Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
  • And Other Writings
  • Edited by Dorothy Coleman
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    12 April 2007
  • David Hume's Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, first published in 1779, is one of the most influential works in the philosophy of religion and the most artful instance of philosophical dialogue since the dialogues of Plato. It presents a fictional conversation between a sceptic, an orthodox Christian, and a Newtonian theist concerning evidence for the existence of an intelligent cause of nature based on observable features of the world. This edition presents it together with several of Hume's other, shorter writings about religion, and with brief selections from the work of Pierre Bayle, who influenced both Hume's views on religion and the dialectical style of the Dialogues. The volume is completed by an introduction which sets the Dialogues in its philosophical and historical contexts.

Leibniz: New Essays on Human Understanding
  • 2nd edition
  • G. W. Leibniz
  • Edited by Peter Remnant, Jonathan Bennett
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    07 November 1996
  • In the New Essays on Human Understanding, Leibniz argues chapter by chapter with John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding, challenging his views about knowledge, personal identity, God, morality, mind and matter, nature versus nurture, logic and language, and a host of other topics. The work is a series of sharp, deep discussions by one great philosopher of the work of another. Leibniz's references to his contemporaries and his discussions of the ideas and institutions of the age make this a fascinating and valuable document in the history of ideas. The work was originally written in French, and the version by Peter Remnant and Jonathan Bennett, based on the only reliable French edition (published in 1962), first appeared in 1981 and has become the standard English translation. It has been thoroughly revised for this series and provided with a new and longer introduction, a chronology on Leibniz's life and career and a guide to further reading.

Locke on Toleration
  • Edited by Richard Vernon
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    19 August 2010
  • John Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration (1689) is one of the most widely-read texts in the political theory of toleration, and a key text for the liberal tradition. However, Locke also defended toleration more extensively in three subsequent Letters, which he wrote in response to criticism by an Anglican cleric, Jonas Proast. This edition, which includes a new translation of the original Letter, by Michael Silverthorne, enables readers to assess John Locke's theory of toleration by studying both his classic work and essential extracts from the later Letters. An introduction by Richard Vernon sets Locke's theory in its historical context and examines the key questions for contemporary political theorists which arise from this major work in the history of political thought.

Moses Mendelssohn: Philosophical Writings
  • Moses Mendelssohn
  • Edited by Daniel O. Dahlstrom
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    01 May 1997
  • Mendelssohn's Philosophical Writings, published in 1761, bring the metaphysical tradition to bear on the topic of 'sentiments' (defined as knowledge or awareness by way of the senses). Mendelssohn offers a nuanced defence of Leibniz's theodicy and conception of freedom, an examination of the ethics of suicide, an account of the 'mixed sentiments' so central to the tragic genre, a hypothesis about weakness of will, an elaboration of the main principles and types of art, a definition of sublimity and analysis of its basic forms, and, lastly, a brief tract on probability theory, aimed at rebutting Hume's scepticism. This volume also includes the essay 'On Evidence in Metaphysical Sciences', selected in 1763 by the Berlin Royal Academy of Sciences over all other submitted essays, including one by Kant, as the best answer to the question of whether metaphysical sciences are capable of the same sort and degree of evidence as mathematics.

Nietzsche: Untimely Meditations
  • 2nd edition
  • Friedrich Nietzsche
  • Edited by Daniel Breazeale
  • Translated by R. J. Hollingdale
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    06 November 1997
  • The four short works in Untimely Meditations were published by Nietzsche between 1873 and 1876.They deal with such broad topics as the relationship between popular and genuine culture, strategies for cultural reform, the task of philosophy, the nature of education, and the relationship between art, science and life. They also include Nietzsche's earliest statement of his own understanding of human selfhood as a process of endlessly 'becoming who one is'. As Daniel Breazeale shows in his introduction to this new edition of R. J. Hollingdale's translation of the essays, these four early texts are key documents for understanding the development of Nietzsche's thought and clearly anticipate many of the themes of his later writings. Nietzsche himself always cherished his Untimely Meditations and believed that they provide valuable evidence of his 'becoming and self-overcoming' and constitute a 'public pledge' concerning his own distinctive task as a philosopher.

Schleiermacher: Lectures on Philosophical Ethics
  • Friedrich Schleiermacher
  • Edited by Robert B. Louden
  • Translated by Louise Adey Huish
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    21 November 2002
  • This 2002 book was the first English translation of Friedrich Schleiermacher's mature ethical theory. Situated between the better-known positions of Kant and Hegel, Schleiermacher's ethics represents an under-explored and singular option within the rich and creative tradition of German idealism. Schleiermacher is known to English readers primarily as a theologian and hermeneuticist, but many German scholars have argued that it is in fact his philosophical work in ethics that constitutes his most outstanding intellectual achievement. The lectures, which were not published in his lifetime, are thought to span the years 1812–17 and address such topics as ethics as a descriptive science, ethics as a study of the action of reason on nature, and doctrines of goods, virtue, and duties. This volume presents them in an accessible new translation by Louise Adey Huish, together with an introduction by Robert Louden that sets them in context and assesses their achievement.

Kierkegaard: Concluding Unscientific Postscript
  • Edited and translated by Alastair Hannay
  • Published online:
    26 February 2010
    Print publication:
    28 May 2009
  • Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript is a classic of existential literature. It concludes the first and richest phase of Kierkegaard's pseudonymous authorship and is the text that philosophers look to first when attempting to define Kierkegaard's own philosophy. Familiar Kierkegaardian themes are introduced in the work, including truth as subjectivity, indirect communication, the leap, and the impossibility of forming a philosophical system for human existence. The Postscript sums up the aims of the preceding pseudonymous works and opens the way to the next part of Kierkegaard's increasingly tempestuous life: it can thus be seen as a cornerstone of his philosophical thought. This volume offers the work in a new and accessible translation by Alastair Hannay, together with an introduction that sets the work in its philosophical and historical contexts.

Samuel Clarke: A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God
  • And Other Writings
  • Samuel Clarke
  • Edited by Ezio Vailati
  • Published online:
    07 January 2010
    Print publication:
    13 April 1998
  • Samuel Clarke was by far the most gifted and influential Newtonian philosopher of his generation, and A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, which constituted the 1704 Boyle Lectures, was one of the most important works of the first half of the eighteenth century, generating a great deal of controversy about the relation between space and God, the nature of divine necessary existence, the adequacy of the Cosmological Argument, agent causation, and the immateriality of the soul. Together with the other texts presented in this edition, it also provides the best introduction to Clarke's philosophical views, which, in addition to their intrinsic interest, are historically important for the light they shed both on the philosophical positions within the Newtonian circle and on the exchange between Clarke and Leibniz, the most famous philosophical controversy of the eighteenth century.

Descartes: The World and Other Writings
  • René Descartes
  • Edited by Stephen Gaukroger
  • Published online:
    17 December 2009
    Print publication:
    26 November 1998
  • Descartes' The World offers the most comprehensive vision of the nature of the world since Aristotle, and is crucial for an understanding of his later writings, in particular the Meditations and Principles of Philosophy. Above all, it provides an insight into how Descartes conceived of natural philosophy before he started to reformulate his doctrines in terms of a sceptically driven epistemology. Of its two parts, the Treatise on Light introduced the first comprehensive, quantitative version of a mechanistic natural philosophy, supplying a theory of matter, a physical optics, and a cosmology. The Treatise on Man provided the first comprehensive mechanist physiology. This volume also includes translations of material important for an understanding of the work: related sections from the Dioptrics and the Meteors, and an English translation of the complete text of The Description of the Human Body.

Anne Conway: The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy
  • Anne Conway
  • Edited by Allison P. Coudert, Taylor Corse
  • Published online:
    18 November 2009
    Print publication:
    18 April 1996
  • Anne Conway was an extraordinary figure in a remarkable age. Her mastery of the intricate doctrines of the Lurianic Kabbalah, her authorship of a treatise criticising the philosophy of Descartes, Hobbes, and Spinoza, and her scandalous conversion to the despised sect of Quakers indicate a strength of character and independence of mind wholly unexpected (and unwanted) in a woman at the time. Translated for the first time into modern English, her Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy is the most interesting and original philosophical work written by a woman in the seventeenth century. Her radical and unorthodox ideas are important not only because they anticipated the more tolerant, ecumenical, and optimistic philosophy of the Enlightenment, but also because of their influence on Leibniz. This fully annotated edition includes an introduction which places Conway in her historical and philosophical contexts, together with a chronology of her life and a bibliography.

Page 4 of 4