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Early modern philosophy texts for students

By evolvingthoughts on March 15, 2009.

As you may have noticed, I am something of a Victorian - as well as being from that wonderful state, I also write as if I were a nineteenth century writer. It comes of reading too many of them over too long a period. I have little trouble when the parentheses separate the beginnings from the ends of sentences by two pages. But most people, those who live in the real world, don't have the patience to wade through the archaic language in which most modern English-language philosophy, both originals and translations, are written.

Now, early modern specialist Jonathon Bennett of the universities of Cambridge, British Columbia, and Syracuse, has set up a site with downloadable classical texts with interspersed commentary and modern terminology, and the boring stuff removed, to make the texts more immediately comprehensible. The site is called Early Modern Philosophy. Check it out.

Tags
education
History
Logic and philosophy

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Thanks.

I always liked philosophy. Many claim that the subject is too abstract and it has little effect at the level of the individual but IMHO everyone has at least one and it has a profound effect on how we think and see the world around us.

IMO a lot of the people who look to religion for answers would do at least as well, often better I suspect, if they instead turned to a study of philosophy.