Abstract

While others were investigating the philosophical origins of modern political thought in the writings of Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Locke, Richard Kennington focused more on the philosophical origins of modern natural science in the works of Bacon and Descartes. This book collects the widely scattered fruits of his investigations. There are fourteen essays in all—four on Bacon and seven on Descartes, followed by one each on Spinoza, Leibniz, and Locke. He wrote them over a period of almost four decades. Six are published here for the first time. By reading them straight through in their present order, one realizes that Kennington returned again and again to the same fundamental themes. Yet there is no sense that he repeated himself: reiterations occur in different contexts, sometimes with different audiences in mind, and in each case he seems to be thinking something through from the beginning, as if for the first time.