Abstract

Patrick Madigan's book explores the modern philosophical struggle, from its inception in Descartes to its "apotheosis" in Nietzsche, to come to grips with the essential tension between two of its most fundamental concepts--reason and freedom. Rather than a straightforward historical survey, the work offers the reader, who is somewhat familiar with the moderns, a very useful, thoughtful reflection woven out of a single threading theme: that Descartes' project to defeat the sceptic initiates a relentless pursuit of reason-as-rigor, wherein this reason impregnated with the seeds of suspicion increasingly threatens the very freedom that launched the "modern project to rigor." What is especially praiseworthy is the author's success in displaying, with broad brush strokes, accented by occasional detail, a vital lineage between Descartes and Nietzsche.