Idea and Ontology

An Essay in Early Modern Metaphysics of Ideas

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• Publisher: Penn State University Press
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9780271049366
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Epistemology in Philosophy

The prevailing view about the history of early modern philosophy, which the author dubs “the early modern tale” and wants to convince us is really a fairy tale, has it that the focus on ideas as a solution to various epistemological puzzles, first introduced by Descartes, created difficulties for the traditional ontological scheme of substance and mode. The early modern tale depicts the development of “the way of ideas” as abandoning ontology at least by the time of Berkeley. This, in turn, fostered an antimetaphysical bias as modern philosophy developed further, elevating epistemology to its current primary status in the field.

Marc Hight challenges this account by showing how, though the conception of ideas changed over time, the ontological status of ideas remained a central part of the discussion about ideas and influenced how even later thinkers like Locke, Berkeley, and Hume thought about them. By his reading of important texts in early modern philosophy, Hight aims not only to provide a more accurate history of philosophy for this period but also to resuscitate the value of metaphysics for philosophical analysis today.

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction: Idea Ontology and the Early Modern Tale
• 1. The Traditional Ontology
• 2. Descartes
• 3. The Cartesians: Malebranche and Anauld
• 4. Locke
• 5. Leibniz
• 6. Berkeley
• 7. Divine Ideas
• 8. Abstraction and Heterogeneity
• 9. Hume and Idea Ontology
• References
• Index
• Back Cover