Materialism from Hobbes to Locke av Stewart (Associate Professor of Philosophy Associate Professor of Philosophy University of Florida) Duncan

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Are human beings purely material creatures, or is there something else to them, an immaterial part that does some (or all) of the thinking, and might even be able to outlive the death of the body? This book is about how a series of seventeenth-century philosophers tried to answer that question. It begins by looking at the views of Thomas Hobbes, who developed a thoroughly materialist account of the human mind, and later of God as well. This is in obvious contrast to the approach of his contemporary Ren¿escartes. After examining Hobbes''s materialism, Stewart Duncan considers the views of three of his English critics: Henry More, Ralph Cudworth, and Margaret Cavendish. Both More andCudworth thought Hobbes''s materialism radically inadequate to explain the workings of the world, while Cavendish developed a distinctive, anti-Hobbesian materialism of her own. The second half of the book focuses on the discussion of materialism in John Locke''s Essay concerning Human Understanding,arguing t