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MODERN HISTORY SOURCEBOOK

CRIB SHEET

[Note: Crib Sheets are meant as review aids for a particular period/theme. They are not complete overviews!]

The Rationalist Tradition

Rene Descartes 1591-1650

• Discourse on Method 1637
• Meditationes de Prima Philosophia 1641 (Meditations)
• Principia Philosophiae 1644 (Principles)
• Cogito ergo sum I think therefore I am
• sum res cogitans - I am a being that thinks
  

Baruch(Benedictus) Spinoza 1632-77

• Tractatus Theologico-Politicus 1670
• Ethics 1677
• Pantheism/Panentheism
  

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716)

The Empiricist Tradition

Francis Bacon 1561-1626

• Novum Organum 1620
• Theory of Induction
  

Thomas Hobbes 1588-1679

• Leviathan 1651
  

John Locke 1632-1704

• An Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1690
• Two Treatises of Civil Government 1690
• A Letter Concerning Toleration 1689
• innate ideas
• tabula rasa

Bishop George Berkley 1685-1753

David Hume 1711-1761

• Treatise on Human Nature 1739/40
• An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding 1748
• Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion 1777
• Opposes logic of induction
  

Immanual Kant 1724-1804

• Critique of Pure Reason 1781
• Critique of Practical Reason 1788
• Categorical imperative
• "inner world within, and starry heavens above"
  
  

The French Enlightenment and the Philosophes

Voltaire (Francois-Marie Arouet) 1694-1778

• Letters on the English 1733
• Lettres Philosophiques 1734
• Elements of the Philosophy of Newton 1738
• Candide 1759
• Dictionnaire Philosophique 1764
• Ecrasez L'infame
  

Denis Diderot 1713-84

Jean le Rond d'Alembert 1717-83

• The Encyclopedia 1751-72 17 Vols
  
  

© 1997, Paul Halsall, halsall@murray.fordham.edu