This is the first book to explore the ethical thought of Pierre Gassendi, the seventeenth-century French priest who rehabilitated Epicurean philosophy in the Western tradition. Lisa T. Sarasohn's discussion of the relationship between Gassendi's philosophy of nature and his ethics discloses the underlying unity of his philosophy and elucidates this critical figure in the intellectual revolution.Sarasohn demonstrates that Gassendi's ethics was an important part of his attempt to Christianize Epicureanism. She shows how Gassendi integrated ideas of human freedom into a neo-Epicurean ethic where pleasure is the highest good, yet maintained a consistent belief in Christian providence. These views challenged what were then the new systems of philosophy, Hobbesian materialism and Cartesian rationalism. Sarasohn places Gassendi in his historical and intellectual context, considering him in relation to contemporary philosophers and within the patronage system that conditioned his own freedom. She investigates the links between his ethical thought and philosophy of science and makes sense of his attacks on astrology. Finally, her work clarifies Pierre Gassendi's considerable influence on seventeenth-century ethical and political philosophy, particularly on the work of John Locke—and thus on the whole English liberal tradition in political philosophy.

Science unbound: In this book, the author explores Comprehensive Scientism by juxtaposing the philosophies of one challenging figure of the European Enlightenment with those of a legendary evolutionary biologist. Paul Henri Thiry d’Holbach lived from 1723-1789 and wrote one monumental work known as ‘the Bible of atheists’. Richard Dawkins, a modern-day scientist and self-declared atheist, is currently galvanizing the secularist movement’. Gerold Reisinger’s treatise aims to uncover the motives of d’Holbach and Dawkins for claiming that science is the only source of knowledge to defend atheism. Various aspects of their forms of scientism are outlined and elucidated in relation to the comprehensive form that combines epistemological, ontological, moral and existential scientism. Basic research by Stenmark and Peels frames this philosophical work’s analysis and comparison of the two iconic philosophers and their writings. The book shows that scientism is what unites their positions and proves to be as powerful a motive today as it was in the 18th century to render science the know-all and be-all of truth and reality and thereby attempt to obviate religion for humankind.