Alan Nelson 
A Companion to Rationalism 

This book is a wide-ranging examination of rationalist thought in philosophy from ancient times to the present day.

* Written by a superbly qualified cast of philosophers

* Critically analyses the concept of rationalism

* Focuses principally on the golden age of rationalism in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries

* Also covers ancient rationalism, nineteenth-century rationalism, and rationalist themes in recent thought

* Organised chronologically

* Various philosophical methods and viewpoints are represented

Table of Content

List of Contributors ix

Acknowledgments xi

List of Abbreviations xii

Introduction xiv

Part I The Core of Rationalism 1

1 The Rationalist Impulse 3

Alan Nelson

2 The Rationalist Conception of Substance 12

Thomas M. Lennon

3 Rationalist Theories of Sense Perception and Mind-Body
Relation 31

Gary Hatfield

4 Rationalism and Education 61

David Cunning

Part II The Historical Background 83

5 Plato’s Rationalistic Method 85

Hugh H. Benson

6 Rationalism in Jewish Philosophy 100

Steven Nadler

7 Early Modern Critiques of Rationalist Psychology 119

Antonia Lo Lordo

8 Rationalism and Method 137

Matthew J. Kisner

9 Cartesian Imaginations: The Method and Passions of Imagining
156

Dennis L. Sepper

Part III The Heyday of Rationalism 177

10 Descartes’ Rationalist Epistemology 179

Lex Newman

11 Rationalism and Representation 206

Kurt Smith

12 The Role of the Imagination in Rationalist Philosophies of
Mathematics 224

Lawrence Nolan

13 Idealism and Cartesian Motion 250

Alice Sowaal

14 Leibniz on Shape and the Cartesian Conception of Body
262

Timothy Crockett

15 Leibniz on Modality, Cognition, and Expression 282

Alan Nelson

16 Rationalist Moral Philosophy 302

Andrew Youpa

17 Spinoza, Leibniz, and the Rationalist Reconceptions of
Imagination 322

Dennis L. Sepper

18 Kant and the Two Dogmas of Rationalism 343

Henry E. Allison

Part IV Rationalist Themes in Contemporary Philosophy
361

19 Rationalism in the Phenomenological Tradition 363

David Woodruff Smith

20 Rationalist Elements of Twentieth-Century Analytic Philosophy
379

Paul Livingston

21 Proust and the Rationalist Conception of the Self 399

Alan Nelson

22 Rationalism in Science 408

David Stump

23 Rational Decision Making: Descriptive, Prescriptive, or
Explanatory? 425

Jonathan Michael Kaplan

24 What is a Feminist to do with Rational Choice? 450

Mariam Thalos

25 Rationalism in the Philosophy of Donald Davidson 468

Richard N. Manning

Index 488

About the author

Alan Nelson is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Irvine. He is a leading scholar of the great philosophical systems of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and has published widely on rationalism in the history of philosophy and in the philosophy of science.