title: The Rationalists: Descartes: Discourse on Method & Meditations; Spinoza: Ethics; Leibniz: Monadology & Discourse on Metaphysics
author: Rene Descartes
description: Founded in the mid-17th century, Rationalism was philosophy's first step into the modern era. This volume contains the essential statements of Rationalism's three greatest figures: Descartes, who began it; Spinoza, who epitomized it; and Leibniz, who gave it its last serious expression.
zlib_text: **Learning from Six Philosophers Volume 2**
  
   **Bennett, Jonathan** , retired, previously at the Universities of Cambridge
  and British Columbia, and at Syracuse University, New York
  
  **Abstract** : This book presents and analyses the most important parts of the
  philosophical works of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume.
  Volume 1: the shift from Aristotelian to Cartesian physics; Descartes on
  matter and space, on causation, and on certainty; Descartes and Spinoza on
  matter and mind, and on desire; Leibniz's metaphysics (monads) and physics,
  his theory of animals. Volume 2: Locke on ideas, on necessity, on essences, on
  substance, on secondary qualities, on personal identity; Descartes on
  modality; Berkeley's epistemology and metaphysics; Hume on ideas, on belief,
  on causation, on bodies, on reason; Hume and Leibniz on personal identity.
  
  **Preface to Volume 2**
  
  This second half of my two-volume work is mainly concerned with themes in the
  philosophies of Locke, Berkele