The Routledge Companion to Sixteenth-Century Philosophy

Most subjects seem simple and under-studied until you look at them closely. Sixteenth century philosophy is one of them. This Companion demonstrates just how much specialist research and scholarship has taken place in recent decades, and how complex the issues really are under the surface. Of course, specialists would say that, wouldn’t they? Yet in this case, there is good reason to revisit and re-evaluate.

Superficial understandings of sixteenth century thought often bleed into crude contrasts with the mediaeval period, and underplay the sixteenth century at the expense of the seventeenth when “everything” (above scientific inquiry) appears to flourish. It...