The Aristotelian Tradition and the Rise of British Empiricism. Logic and Epistemology in the British Isles (1570-1689)

This book is a radical reappraisal of the importance of Aristotelianism in Britain. Using a full range of manuscripts as well as printed sources, it provides an entirely new interpretation of the impact of the early-modern Aristotelian tradition upon the rise of British Empiricism, and reexamines the fundamental shift from a humanist logic to epistemology and facultative logic. It aims at reconstructing the philosophical background and framework in which the thought of philosophers such Locke, Berkeley and Hume originated: The book shows that a number of aspects of British empiricism can be accounted for only in reference to the Aristotelian tradition, which holds even for philosophers who had established themselves as anti-scholastic, anti-Aristotelian philosophers working outside academic institutions.