Philosophy 322:
               Further Reading






None of these is required or expected for the course. If you want to further explore some issues, these are some useful places to start.


A. Some Fun Books

Descartes' Secret Notebook. Amir D. Aczel. Broadway Books, 2009. - Includes lots of gossip!

Religion and the Enlightenment. James M. Byrne. Westminster John Knox Press, 1997. - Nice overview of religion in the Enlightenment!

The Swerve. Stephen Greenblatt. W.W. Norton & Co., 2012. - Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award Winner tells the story of the recovery of Lucretius' philosophical poem On The Nature of Things which fueled the Renaissance.

Heretics!: The Wondrous (and Dangerous) Beginnings of Modern Philosophy. Steven Nadler and Ben Nadler. Princeton University Press, 2017. - A graphic novel about Enlightenment philosophy, written by a top philosopher of the era!

Christianity, Book-Burning and Censorship in Late Antiquity: Studies in Text Transmission. Dirk Rohmann. Baylor University Press, 2017. - A history of the destruction of Ancient Greek philosophy in Europe.

Aristotle's Children: How Christians, Muslims, and Jews Rediscovered Ancient Wisdom and Illuminated the Middle Ages. Richard Rubenstein. Harcourt, 2003. - Tells the story of the recovery of the works of Aristotle in Christian Europe.

Descartes' Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict Between Faith and Reason. Russell Shorto. Vintage, 2009. - Interesting book!



B. The Standard Editions

The standard editions of an author's works include everything they ever published, and often anything else they may have written. It is what serious scholars use when studying a major figure, and what you tend to see in the bibliographies of their books and articles. Typically, they are in the original language of the author, but there are also standard editions of works in translation for many authors. Some versions are available for free online - particularly at the Internet Archive. The standard biography of a person is the biography generally considered to be the most detailed and reliable. Here are some standard editions for the authors we are discussing:

George Berkeley -



The Works of George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne. Edited by A. A. Luce and T. E. Jessop. 9 volumes. London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1948-1957.
A standard biography is A. A. Luce, The Life of George Berkeley (Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1949).

Rene Descartes -

Oeuvres de Descartesin 11 vols. Adam, Charles, and Tannery, Paul, eds. Paris: Librairie Philosophique Vrin.  - this is the standard edition in French. Other editions of better quality often refer to this editions pagination, and refer to it as "AT". This makes it convenient to find the passage being discussed in books and articles about Descartes. This edition is available for free online!

The Philosophical Writings Of Descartes in 3 vols. Cottingham J, Stoothoff R, Kenny A, and Murdoch D, trans. Cambridge University Press, 1983. - this is the current standard edition of Descartes translated into English.

The Philosophical Works of Descartes in 2 vol.s. Haldane, Elizabeth and Ross, G. R. T. Cambridge University Press, 1934. - this was the standard edition of Descartes' works translated into English prior to  the Cottingham edition.

The standard biography is Stephen Gaukroger, Descartes: An Intellectual Biography (Oxford University Press, 1995).

A definitely NOT standard edition is Descartes Meditations, Bro: A Retelling of Meditations on First Philosophy, by Tommy Maranges. ?, 2015. - the Meditations with a striking amount of cussing and contemporary slang added.

Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia -

Her letters in French are reprinted in  Descartes' works by Adam and Tannery.

The Correspondence between Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia and Rene Descartes, Shapiro, Lisa, ed. University of Chicago Press, 2007. - This is the only complete English edition in print.

David Hume -



Clarendon Hume Edition Series. Norton, David Fate, Beauchamp, T. L., et al, ed.s. Oxford University Press, 1999 - . - These are still in the process of being published.

Prior to the Clarendon series, the standard editions of Hume's Treatise and Enquiries were those edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge (and updated by P. H. Nidditch) for Oxford University Press, first published in the late 19th century.

The standard editions of Hume's letters are: The Letters of David Hume in 2 vol.s. Greig, J. Y. T., ed. Oxford University Press, 1932; and New Letters of David Hume, Kilbansky, Raymond and Mossner, Ernest Campbell, ed.s. Oxford University Press, 1954.

The standard biography of Hume is The Life of David Hume by Ernest Campbell Mossner, now in a second edition (Oxford University Press, 2001). Not the most exciting read, but Hume lived an interesting life.

Immanuel Kant -

The first complete edition of the works of Immanuel Kant translated into English will be The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, published by Cambridge University Press. It began publication in 1992, and is still in the process of being created.

The standard biography is Manfred Kuehn, Kant: A Biography, (Cambridge University Press, 2002).

The standard German edition of Kant's works is called the Academy edition of Kant's Collected Writings in 29 volumes, begun by Wilhelm Dilthey in 1894. It is currently published by Walter de Gruyter, and the first 23 volumes are available online for free.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz -



There is no complete version of Leibniz' works translated into English. The most complete selection was edited by Larry Loemker, Philosophical Papers and Letters in 2 volumes. (University of Chicago Press, 1956). Though not making any attempt to provide a complete edition, the Yale Leibniz Series, from Yale University Press, includes some very high quality editions of selections of Leibniz's philosophical works in English translation with the original German included on facing pages. The standard biography is Maria Rosa Antognazza, Leibniz: An Intellectual Biography, (Cambridge University Press, 2011).

The standard edition in German is Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe. The project began in 1923 and is still underway. It is currently  published by De Gruyter.

John Locke -

The standard edition of Locke's works is the Clarendon Edition of the Works of John Locke, which will eventually contain 37 volumes. The series began in 1975, and is still being produced by Oxford University Press. The previous standard edition was The Works of John Locke, 10 volumes, (Thomas Tegg, 1823).
A standard biography is Roger Woolhouse, Locke: A Biography, (Cambridge University Press, 2008). The previous standard biography (now dated due to discoveries of much previously unknown material by Locke) was Maurice Cranston, John Locke: A Biography, (MacMillan, 1957).


C. Women Philosophers of the Enlightenment Era



The contributions of many women philosophers of the era have long been overlooked, but that is changing. More of their works, often in the form of correspondence with the philosophers listed above, are becoming more widely available, both in print and on the internet. For the latter, see the links page for the course. Here are a few highlights of anthologies of the former:

Women Philosophers of the Early Modern Period. Margaret Atherton. Hackett, 1994.

Women Philosophers of Seventeenth-Century England: Selected Correspondence. Jacqueline Broad. Oxford University Press, 2019. Includes correspondence from Elizabeth of Bohemia, Margaret Cavendish, Anne Conway, Mary Astell Damaris Masham, and Catharine Trotter Cockburn.

Women Philosophers of Eighteenth-Century England: Selected Correspondence. Jacqueline Broad. Oxford University Press, 2020. Includes correspondence from Mary Astell, Elizabeth Thomas, and Catharine Trotter Cockburn.

An Unconventional History of Western Philosophy: Conversations Between Men And Women Philosophers. Karen J. Warren. Rowman & Littlefield, 2009. - large anthology including the works of women philosophers with the often more well-known male philosophers they worked with.



"This is manifest in every Branch of Learning. Logick has put on a Countenance clearly different from what it appeared in formerly: How unlike is its shape in the Ars Cogitandi, Recherches de la Verite, &c. from what it appears in Smigletius, and the Commentators on Aristotle? But to none do we owe for a greater Advancement in this Part of Philosophy, than to the incomparable Mr. Locke, Who, in his Essay concerning Humane Understanding, has rectified more received Mistakes, and delivered more profound Truths, established on Experience and Observation, for the Direction of Man's mind in the Prosecution of Knowledge, (which I think may be pro∣perly term'd Logick) than are to be met with in all the Volumes of the Antients. He has clearly overthrown all those Metaphysical Whymsies, which infected mens Brains with a Spice of Madness, whereby they feign'd a Knowledge where they had none, by making a noise with Sounds, without clear and distinct Significations." - William Molyneux, "To the Illustrious [sic] The Royal Society," Dioptrica Nova, 1692. Molyneux's book was the first treatise in English on optics.






322 Home  Dr.
        Korcz's Home Page