Jonathan Kramnick Actions and Objects All Books sku-14558799

Actions and Objects from Hobbes to Richardson is a hardcover by Jonathan Kramnick, listed under All Books. It examines how minds cause actions through literature and philosophy of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

Kramnick considers how writers, including novelists, poets, philosophers and scientists, understood belief, desire and emotion: whether they belonged to nature and its laws of cause and effect or stood outside it. He pays particular attention to accounts that make action compatible with external determination and blur the line between mind and matter.

Instead of focusing on psychological depth, interiority or whether literary works were read as true or fictional, he examines literature and philosophy together as attempts to understand how minds work. SKU: sku-14558799.