The Rationalists ― Between Tradition and Innovation

The Rationalists provides a balanced overview of those associated with the rationalist movement, presenting a sharper depiction of their intellectual contexts and sources. Topics range from theodicy and early modern music theory to Spinoza’s anti-humanism.

Carlos Fraenkel is an associate professor in the departments of philosophy and Jewish studies at McGill University in Montreal. His publications include From Maimonides to Samuel ibn Tibbon: The Transformation of the Dalalat al-Ha’irin into the Moreh ha-Nevukhim, Jerusalem: The Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2007 (Hebrew) and Philosophical Religions from Plato to Spinoza—Reason, Religion, and Autonomy, forthcoming with Cambridge University Press. Dario Perinetti is associate professor in the department of philosophy at Universite du Quebec a Montreal. He has published on David Hume, G.W. Hegel and early modern philosophy of history. He is currently completing a manuscript book on David Hume. Justin E. H. Smith is associate professor of philosophy at Concordia University in Montreal. He is the author of Divine Machines: Leibniz's Philosophy of Biology (Princeton University Press, 2010), and is currently working on a critical edition and translation for the Yale Leibniz series, with Francois Duchesneau, of Georg Ernst Stahl's Negotium Otiosum. His current research concerns the impact of European colonial expansion and exploration in the 16th and 17th centuries on early modern philosophical reflections about human nature and human difference.