The Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth-Century Thought gives a comprehensive overview of intellectual life in the eighteenth-century Anglophone world at a time when the boundaries of knowledge were growing rapidly in response to a world undergoing radical change. Organised in two parts, the volume begins with four wide-ranging chapters on key areas of thought: philosophy, science, political and legal theory, and religion. The second part comprises shorter chapters that focus on subjects of emerging inquiry, such as aesthetics, economics, and sensibility and emotion, as well as intellectual disciplines undergoing methodological evolution, such as history. A chronology is provided to help situate historical events, important thinkers, key publications, and intellectual milestones in relation to one another, and guides for further reading point the reader to avenues for deeper exploration of the Companion's various topics.

‘This fine collection of essays should be in the hands of specialists working on the 18th century. The volume comprises four long, substantive essays on philosophy, science, politics, and religion and four briefer essays on 'emerging' areas of inquiry—history, economics, aesthetics, and sensibility … One can read these essays as separate treatments on distinct subjects, but there also is great value to reading the book as a whole … Highly recommended.’

J. A. Jaffe Source: Choice Connect

‘… remarkably consistent volume, it provides an excellent survey of its quintes-sentially eighteenth-century topic.’

Robert Demaria Jr Source: Eighteenth-Century Studies

‘A welcome new resource on several relevant subfields in eighteenth-century British thought.’

Roger Maioli Source: The Scriblerian and the Kit-Cat