English Philosophy in the Age of Locke presents a set of new essays investigating key issues in English philosophical, political, and religious thought in the second half of the seventeenth century. Particular emphasis is given to the interaction between philosophy and religion in the leadingpolitical thinkers of the period, and connections between philosophical debate on personhood, certainty, and the foundations of faith, and new conceptions of biblical exegesis.Paul Dumouchel examines church-state relations from the viewpoint of Hobbes's political theory. Knud Haakonssen explores the basis of obligation in Cumberland's theory of natural law, and Ian Harris the relation of Locke's account of justice to his theory of rights, each tracing his subject'sdistinctive views to a particular conception of God's design. John Milton reappraises the documentary evidence for Locke's reading of Gassendi. The theology of the Unitarian Controversy and Locke's relation to both Socinian and non-Socinian writers are explored at length by John Marshal. VictorNuovo places the Socinian debate itself in a broader context of Locke's lifelong concern to view all history and knowledge within a theocentric perspective to which the key was sound scriptural exegesis and a rationally founded faith. Udo Thiel's analysis of the personal identity debate amongEnglish theologians like Sherlock and South provides the philosophical context for Locke's place in these debates. M. A. Stewart investigates the philosophical background to Edward Stillingfleet's attacks on Locke; and Beverley Southgate explores the place of John Sergeant in the backlash againstscepticism precipitated by some of the philosophical trends of the day.

The Early Modern Subject explores the understanding of self-consciousness and personal identity—two fundamental features of human subjectivity—as it developed in early modern philosophy. Udo Thiel presents a critical evaluation of these features as they were conceived in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He explains the arguments of thinkers such as Descartes, Locke, Leibniz, Wolff, and Hume, as well as their early critics, followers, and other philosophical contemporaries, and situates them within their historical contexts. Interest in the issues of self-consciousness and personal identity is in many ways characteristic and even central to early modern thought, but Thiel argues here that this is an interest that continues to this day, in a form still strongly influenced by the conceptual frameworks of early modern thought. In this book he attempts to broaden the scope of the treatment of these issues considerably, covering more than a hundred years of philosophical debate in France, Britain, and Germany while remaining attentive to the details of the arguments under scrutiny and discussing alternative interpretations in many cases.