Chapter 14 - The Philosophical Tradition

Summary

Defoe was not a philosopher, yet his work demands attention from a philosophical perspective for two reasons. One is contextual. Defoe’s literary career in the first quarter of the eighteenth century coincided with a remarkable period in the history of British philosophy. Second, Defoe frequently takes up themes addressed by the major philosophers of his day, and thus familiarity with their central concerns and arguments will be helpful to his readers. This chapter offers a general and necessarily brief survey of four philosophical contexts likely to be of interest to Defoe’s readers: practical philosophy, natural philosophy, metaphysics and epistemology, and philosophy of religion. In so doing, it seeks to call attention to (and specifically with reference to Robinson Crusoe) several of the ways in which Defoe’s thought intersected with concerns being taken up by some of the leading philosophers of early eighteenth-century Britain.