The dictionary of seventeenth-century French philosophers
Résumé
This major new publication is the most comprehensive reference source ever on seventeenth-century French authors who have contributed to the invention, spreading or discussion of philosophical ideas and issues. Featuring authors having published at least a book, or written a manuscript, between 1601 and 1700, the period beginning with Pierre Charron and ending with Fontenelle, the Dictionary uses the word 'philosophical' in a wide, seventeenth-century sense. It includes many scholastic figures, having taught metaphysics, logic and theology in Parisian colleges, in the Sorbonne and in the provinces, but also authors who have been involved in the many intellectual debates of the time, for or against Cartesianism, Jansenism, Free-thinking and the new science, many of whom were not philosophers. This wide approach to philosophy explains why the Dictionary includes not only metaphysics and logic, but science, ethics, aesthetics, education, politics, rhetoric, medicine, chemistry, alchemy and theology, and why many of the authors may more usually be called divines, scientists, mathematicians, or even alchemists, cabbalists and playwrights. In addition to short, but well documented, biographies of the writers, there are detailed expositions and analyses of their doctrines and ideas, bibliographies of their writings (including sometimes manuscripts) and suggestions for further reading. All the major seventeenth-century French philosophers are featured, but the most valuable characteristic of the Dictionary is its representation of a huge range of less well-known - and sometimes completely unknown - writers. In many cases the Dictionary offers the first scholarly treatment of the life and work of authors. This book will be an indispensable reference work for scholars working on almost any aspect of seventeenth-century French studies.