Locke's 'Essay Concerning Human Understanding' provoked a debate between materialists and immaterialists in England which spread to the continent. This book looks at the effect that his work had on French materialism and compares ideas of the 'philosophes' with those of English philosophers.

France in the eighteenth century glittered, but also seethed, with new goods and new ideas. In the halls of Versailles, the streets of Paris, and the soul of the Enlightenment itself, a vitriolic struggle was being waged over the question of ownership—of property, of position, even of personhood. Those who

John Locke, whose ideas helped give birth to the United States, predicated his political theory on the Hebrew Bible. Why?

A wide-ranging and illuminating examination of the relation between appearance and reality.

This volume consists of 25 papers delivered at an international Spinoza conference held at the Erasmus University (Rotterdam) in October 1994 on the impact of Spinoza on the European Republic of Letters around 1700.