Rebecca Copenhaver

Four anthologies covering the modern period are reviewed here and assessed with respect to whether anthologized selections and supplementary materials are useful to teachers and undergraduate students. With the exception of one anthology, each volume makes conservative choices in representing the modern period. Such choices reinforce a history of the modern period increasingly out of step with current scholarship and discourage scholarly teachers from presenting a history deeply embedded in science, psychology, education, economics, religion, mathematics, and social, political and moral philosophy. Each of the volumes has significant strengths when used in a curriculum guided by this more conservative canon, but the canon itself is problematic as an organizing principle for anthologies and curricula covering the modern period.

The early modern period is arguably the most pivotal of all in the study of the mind, teeming with a variety of conceptions of mind. Some of these posed serious questions for assumptions about the nature of the mind, many of which still depended on notions of the soul and God. It is an era that witnessed the emergence of theories and arguments that continue to animate the study of philosophy of mind, such as dualism, vitalism, materialism, and idealism. Covering pivotal figures in philosophy such as Descartes, Hobbes, Kant, Leibniz, Cavendish, and Spinoza, Philosophy of Mind in the Early Modern and Modern Ages provides an outstanding survey of philosophy of mind of the period. Following an introduction by Rebecca Copenhaver, sixteen specially commissioned chapters by an international team of contributors discuss key topics, thinkers, and debates, including: Hobbes, Descartes’ philosophy of mind and its early critics, consciousness, the later Cartesians, Malebranche, Cavendish, Locke, Spinoza, Descartes and Leibniz, perception and sensation, desires, mental substance and mental activity, Hume, and Kant. Essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy of mind, enlightenment philosophy, and the history of philosophy, Philosophy of Mind in the Early Modern and Modern Ages is also a valuable resource for those in related disciplines such as religion, history of psychology, and history of science.