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Robert Pasnau.
Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671.

Publisher: Oxford University Press.
Publication due: February 2011.
Size: 246x171mm.
Page count: 816pp.

Publisher's recommended price
Hardback ISBN 9780199567911, £80.00

Description:

Robert Pasnau traces the developments of metaphysical thinking through four rich but for the most part neglected centuries of philosophy, running from the thirteenth century through to the seventeenth. At no period in the history of philosophy, other than perhaps our own, have metaphysical problems received the sort of sustained attention they received during the later Middle Ages, and never has a whole philosophical tradition come crashing down as quickly and completely as did scholastic philosophy in the seventeenth century. The thirty chapters work through various fundamental metaphysical issues, sometimes focusing more on scholastic thought, sometimes on the seventeenth century. Pasnau begins with the first challenges to the classical scholasticism of Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas, runs through prominent figures like John Duns Scotus and William Ockham, and ends in the seventeenth century, with the end of the first stage of developments in post-scholastic philosophy: on the continent, with Descartes and Gassendi, and in England, with Boyle and Locke.

Readership: Scholars and advanced students of the history of philosophy.

Contents:
1: Introduction I. Matter 2: Substratum 3: Theories of Prime Matter 4: Matter and Extension 5: Philosophiae Perenne II. Substance 6: Subjects and Substances 7: The Veiled Subject 8: Cartesian Substances 9: Lockean Substances III. Accidents 10: Real Accidents 11: Inherence 12: Categories 13: Modes IV. Extension 14: Quantity and Extension 15: Extension and Impenetrability 16: Mind and Extension 17: Location 18: Entia Successiva V. Quality 19: Real Qualities 20: Heresy and Novelty 21: Primary Qualities 22: Secondary Qualities 23: Powers and Dispositions VI. Unity and Identity 24: Substantial Form 25: Unity and Dualism 26: Parts and Wholes 27: Real Essences 28: Permanence and Corruption 29: Identity over Time 30: Locke's Nominal Substances; Tables of Authors; Bibliography of Primary Sources; Bibliography of Secondary Sources.