Knowledge in a Nutshell: Enlightenment Philosophy: The Complete Guide to the Great Revolutionary Philosophers, Including René Descartes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, and David Hume

"...there is nothing elementary about O'Grady's primer. She pulls off the feat of writing a reliable and accessible introduction to modern philosophy that is also a meaningful contribution to the subject." - London Times Literary Supplement

From Descartes' famous line 'I think therefore I am' to Kant's fascinating discussions of morality, the thinkers of the Enlightenment have helped to shape the modern world. Addressing such important subjects as the foundations of knowledge and the role of ethics, the theories of these philosophers continue to have great relevance to our lives.

Ranging across Enlightenment thinking from Berkeley to Rousseau, Enlightenment Philosophy in a Nutshell explains important ideas such as Locke's ideas of primary and secondary qualities, Kant's moral rationalism, and Hume's inductive reasoning.

Filled with helpful diagrams and simple summaries of complex theories, this essential introduction brings the great ideas of the past to everyone.

ABOUT THE SERIES: The critically-acclaimed Knowledge in a Nutshell series provides accessible and engaging introductions to wide-ranging topics, written by experts in their fields.

Jane O'Grady is one of the founders of the London School of Philosophy, and was a Visiting Lecturer and Honorary Fellow at City University. She has taught at the Freud Museum, for the How To Academy and given extra-mural courses at Birkbeck. She co-edited Blackwell's Dictionary of Philosophical Quotations with A. J. Ayer, has several entries in the Oxford Companion to Philosophy, and has written introductions to Mill's On Liberty and The Subjection of Women, as well as several introductions for Plato's dialogues. She is the philosophy obituarist for the Guardian and she also reviews for the Telegraph, the Literary Review, the Financial Times and the Times Higher Education Supplement.