Abstract

Insofar as historians of philosophy aim to get the story right, it is now widely recognized that they must reckon with works of early modern women philosophers—oft-neglected philosophers who read, and were read by, canonical luminaries such as Descartes and Leibniz. Thomas’s volume collects thirteen new contributions to the scholarship on the metaphysics of such authors: Mary Astell, Elisabeth of Bohemia, Margaret Cavendish, Catharine Trotter Cockburn, Émilie Du Châtelet, Bathsua Makin, Damaris Masham, and Anna Maria van Schurman. Cavendish, Conway, and Du Châtelet receive multiple chapters.The quality of each chapter is excellent. Most could have been published as journal articles in their own right. Thus, though...