Phil 4120 - Early Modern Philosophy

Instructor:  Lex Newman

A detailed syllabus of the course will be forthcoming, namely at the start of the semester. In the mean time, I want to make a comment about the course texts that you should be buying.

Since this is a survey course (one in which we'll consider some philosophical views from a wide variety of philosophers), buying texts for a course like this one is potentially a very expensive endeavor. I have tried to keep down the costs in two kinds of ways. First, in some cases I will simply provide web readings (rather than having you buy a whole text). Second, I have ordered abridged versions of the various texts.

If you do not plan to do further work in philosophy, then these abridged versions of the various texts will serve your needs just fine. If, however, you do plan to do further work in philosophy, then I strongly recommend that you purchase not these abridged versions, but the full scale versions of the texts that serious philosophers tend to use. It will cost you a bit more, but if, for example, you go to philosophy grad school, you'll end up having to buy them anyway.

Here are links to the texts that I really recommend (you would purchase these three texts instead of buying the texts that the bookstore will be selling for our course):

• The Descartes text:
  • ISBN:  0521288088.  That is, get the edition of Descartes' Meditations published by Cambridge and translated/edited by Cottingham (et al.), volume 2.
  • Buy from Amazon.
  • Buy from Barnes and Noble.


• The Locke text:
  • ISBN:  0198245955.  That is, get the edition of Locke's Essay published by Oxford and edited by Nidditch.
  • Buy from Amazon.
  • Buy from Barnes and Noble.


• The Kant text:
  • ISBN:  0872202577.  That is, get the edition of Kant's first critique published by Hackett and translated/edited by Pluhar.
  • Buy from Amazon.
  • Buy from Barnes and Noble.