This volume draws a balanced picture of the Rationalists by bringing their intellectual contexts, sources and full range of interests into sharper focus, without neglecting their core commitment to the epistemological doctrine that earned them their traditional label. The collection of original essays addresses topics ranging from theodicy and early modern music theory to Spinoza’s anti-humanism, often critically revising important aspects of the received picture of the Rationalists. Another important contribution of the volume is that it brings out aspects of Rationalist philosophers and their legacies that are not ordinarily associated with them, such as the project of a Cartesian ethics. Finally, a strong emphasis is placed on the connection of the Rationalists’ philosophy to their interests in empirical science, to their engagement in the political life of their era, and to the religious background of many of their philosophical commitments.

From the reviews:

“This volume opens with a brief, but powerful essay by the editors … and a very welcome one. The aim of the volume … is to recognize and advance developments in our understanding of the ways in which the study of the history of philosophy can be pursued. … provides considerable reason to hope that we can build on the new insights … and arrive at a perspective from which we can better evaluate not only the PSR, but also rationalism itself.” (Michael Della Rocca, Philosophy in Review, Vol. XXXII (5), 2012)

Carlos Fraenkel is an associate professor in the departments of philosophy and Jewish studies at McGill University in Montreal. His publications include From Maimonides to Samuel ibn Tibbon: The Transformation of the Dalâlat al-Hâ’irîn into the Moreh ha-Nevukhim, Jerusalem: The Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2007 (Hebrew) and Philosophical Religions from Plato to Spinoza—Reason, Religion, and Autonomy, forthcoming with Cambridge University Press. Dario Perinetti is associate professor in the department of philosophy at Université du Québec à Montréal. He has published on David Hume, G.W. Hegel and early modern philosophy of history. He is currently completing a manuscript book on David Hume. Justin E. H. Smith is associate professor of philosophy at Concordia University in Montreal. He is the author of Divine Machines: Leibniz's Philosophy of Biology (Princeton University Press, 2010), and is currently working on a critical edition and translation for the Yale Leibniz series, with François Duchesneau, of Georg Ernst Stahl's Negotium Otiosum. His current research concerns the impact of European colonial expansion and exploration in the 16th and 17th centuries on early modern philosophical reflections about human nature and human difference.