Book Details

This anthology contains excerpts from some thirty-two important 17th- and 18th-century moral philosophers. Including a substantial introduction and extensive bibliographies, the anthology facilitates the study and teaching of early modern moral philosophy in its crucial formative period. In addition to well-known thinkers such as Hobbes, Hume, and Kant, there are excerpts from a wide range of philosophers never previously assembled in one text, such as Grotius, Pufendorf, Nicole, Clarke, Leibniz, Malebranche, Holbach, and Paley. Some of the writers, such as Crusius and Wolff, have never appeared in English before. sOriginally issued as a two-volume edition in 1990, the anthology is now reissued with a new foreword by Professor Schneewind, as a one-volume anthology to serve as a companion to his highly successful history of modern ethics, The Invention of Autonomy. The anthology provides many of the sources discussed in The Invention of Autonomy, and taken together the two volumes will be an invaluable resource for the teaching of the history of modern moral philosophy.