University of Iowa Professor David Cunning has published a new book, Cavendish (Routledge). The book is a critical introduction to the philosophical ideas of Margaret Cavendish, and is part of Routledge'sArguments of the Philosophers series.

From the Routledge website:

"This is the first full account of Cavendish’s philosophy and covers the whole span of her work. David Cunning begins with an overview of Cavendish’s life and work before assessing her contribution to a wide range of philosophical subjects, including her arguments concerning materialism, experimentation, the existence of God, social and political philosophy and free will and compatibilism.

Setting Cavendish in both historical and philosophical context, he argues that like Spinoza she builds on central tenets of Descartes’ philosophy and develops them in a direction that Descartes himself would avoid. She defends a plenum metaphysics according to which all individuals are causally interdependent, and according to which the physical universe is a larger individual that constitutes all of reality.

Cavendish is essential reading for students of seventeenth-century philosophy, early modern philosophy and seventeenth-century literature."

Cunning is an associate professor and the chair of the Department of Philosophy, part of the UI College of Liberal Arts & Sciences.