Recommended...................

Unlike the high priest Theodorus in Leibniz's fable about an infinite palace of possibilities, we cannot inspect alternative realities and see what would have transpired if certain things had not happened.  What if Descartes had not asked a passerby for help with a Flemish puzzle, and had never had his vivid dreams of a "marvellous science"?  What if Leibniz had accepted a professorship instead of racing around Europe, fizzing with ideas and suggesting schemes to sovereigns?  What if Hume's career in business had gone rather well, or Oxford had not refused Locke a medical doctorate, or Hobbes had not become starry-eyed about Galileo and fallen in love with Euclid?  What if Spinoza had stayed in his synagogue?  Ours may not be the best of all possible worlds; but these pioneers helped to make it an intellectually adventurous and, as d'Alembert suggested, a less ignorant one.


My first experience with a college course in philosophy did not go very well.  Maybe it was the professor, maybe it was me.  Regardless, not much in the way of teaching or learning was accomplished.  Fast forward nearly four decades, Gottlieb introduces this reader to the ideas and writings of Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Bayle, Leibniz, Hume, Voltaire, and Rousseau.  More importantly, he introduces them in their historical setting.  Ideas are provided a context.  This reader found that exceedingly helpful.