Phil 6A03             EARLY MODERN PHILOSOPHY

Revised complete version of the book Leibniz, including acknowledgements to you!, is now available on Avenue. 

A reminder that your research paper (about 6000-8000 words or 20 typed double-spaced pages), is due as an email attachment by midnight, Monday, December 9 or later if you have an extension. If you send me versions in Word or equivalent, not pdf, then I can e-mail you back a marked version.

Here's a handout  Righting Writing (which includes the let for interpreting the notations I make (on your papers). The Grading Scheme is also here.

Finally, here is a handout on referencing.

CLASSES: WEDNESDAY 2:30-5:20, BSB 104                                           OFFICE HOURS: W 11:00-12:30 

INSTRUCTOR: Richard T. W. Arthur  rarthur at mcmaster dot ca        OFFICE: UH 305; ext. 23470.

About the Course

From his enthusiastic immersion in the philosophy of Hobbes in his 20s, through his dialogue with Locke’s Essay in his maturity, to his controversy with Newton and Clarke in his last years, Leibniz was always earnestly engaged with English philosophers. Since he was one of Hobbes’s most sympathetic readers and at the same time one of the profoundest critics of Locke’s empiricism and of Newton’s metaphysics, a study of his engagement with them is a great way of getting into the profound issues these thinkers discussed. After acquainting ourselves with Hobbes’s first philosophy and Leibniz’s main ideas, we will turn to a detailed study of the views on language, knowledge, the mind-body relation, free will and determinism, substance and the nature of space and time contained in these exchanges, comparing Leibniz’s views with those of Locke, Newton and Clarke. Graduate students will have particular responsibility for presenting Hobbes’s, Locke's, Clarke’s and Newton's side of things to the class.