The Edinburgh Critical History of Early Modern and Enlightenment Philosophy
By (Author) Stephen Howard
Edited by Jack Stetter
Edinburgh University Press
Edinburgh University Press
9th April 2026
United Kingdom
Professional and Scholarly
Non Fiction
Philosophy: metaphysics and ontology
Western philosophy: Enlightenment
Hardback
384
Width 170mm, Height 244mm
Written by a team of leading international scholars, this book examines a crucial period of philosophy from the perspective of themes and lines of thought that cut across authorial, disciplinary and national boundaries. Its fresh approach opens up new ways for specialists and students to conceptualise the history of early modern and Enlightenment thought within philosophy, politics, religious studies and literature.
This critical reference work takes a problem-based approach to the history of philosophy, highlighting the continued richness and relevance of sixteenth- to eighteenth-century philosophy. The five sections of the book explore: historiography and broader structures of thought in the period; the intersection of philosophy and politics; life and the metaphysics of bodies; theories of knowledge, with a special emphasis on social epistemology; and themes that stretch the boundaries of cognition (art, cosmology, the infinite and religion).
Stephen Howard is a Research Fellow at the Goethe-Universitat Frankfurt, where he leads a DFG project. He is the author of Kant's Late Philosophy of Nature: The Opus postumum (Cambridge University Press, 2023) and articles in journals including the Southern Journal of Philosophy, the European Journal of Philosophy, Kantian Review, Kant-Studien, the British Journal for the History of Philosophy, and Perspectives on Science. He is the editor of Howard Caygill, Force and Understanding: Writings on Philosophy and Resistance (Bloomsbury, 2020) and co-edited with Rudolf Meer, a special issue of Kant-Studien.