What exists?  How can we know it?  In this course, we will study the very different answers given to these questions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley and Hume.  Many of the positions forwarded by these philosophers are still with us today.  The goal of this class will be to understand why those philosophers held the positions they did.  More particularly, we will study philosophical problems surrounding the nature of the mind, the world, and our knowledge of them.  We will also study the various ways in which the different philosophers responded to the emergence of the new mechanistic science.  Finally, we will consider the question of the proper goal of philosophy itself, and how in that period it came to be distinguished from natural science.

Required texts:

1) Rene Descartes,  Philosophical Essays and Correspondence, ed. Roger Ariew (Hackett Publishing Company, 2000). Paperback. ISBN: 0872205029. $16.95. 

2) G. W. Leibniz, Philosophical Essays, ed. Roger Ariew and Daniel Garber (Hackett Publishing Company, 1989).  Paperback.  ISBN: 0872200620. $17.95. 

3) John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding [Abridged], ed. Kenneth Winkler (Hackett Publishing Company, 1996).  Paperback.  ISBN: 087220216X. $9.95. 

4) George Berkeley, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, ed. Kenneth Winkler (Hackett Publishing Company, 1982).  Paperback.  ISBN: 0915145391. $6.50. 

5) David Hume,  An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Second Edition, ed. Eric Steinberg (Hackett Publishing Company, 1993).  Paperback.  ISBN: 0872202291. $5.95.