Focusing on Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz, the author examines their attitudes to major philosophical problems still relevant today and aims to show how their ideas relate, despite their different systems.

The seventeenth century saw a fundamental shift in our ways of thinking about ourselves and the universe. The reassuring medieval view of an earth - centered cosmos designed expressly for the benefit of human beings had been steadily eroded; yet at the some time there emerged a new optimism about the possibility of developing a clear and comprehensive account of the working of the universe, together with a determination to penetrate the nature of the human mind and its relation to the material world.

I am grateful for this book. I have learned from it, and so will students, professional philosophers and motivated general readers.