Fissures in the history of modern philosophy — Spinoza's abysmal rationalism — Unruly Greek Schelling.Delving beneath the principal discourses of philosophy from Descartes through Kant, Bernard Freydberg plumbs the previously concealed dark forces that ignite the inner power of modern thought. He contends that reason itself issues from an implicit and unconscious suppression of the nonrational. Even the modern philosophical concerns of nature and limits are undergirded by a dark side that dwells in them and makes them possible. Freydberg traces these dark sources to the poetry of Hesiod, the fragments of Heraclitus and Parmenides, and the Platonic dialogues, and he claims that they rear their heads again in the work of Spinoza, Schelling, and Nietsche. Freydberg does not set forth a critique of modern philosophy but explores its intrinsic continuity with its ancient roots."The great era of modern philosophy took its departure from another great era, that of Greek thought. But in so doing, modern philosophy suppressed that dark, Delphic region accessible by nonrational means alone. Suppression, however, does not and cannot mean elimination, cancellation, and can never mean Aufhebung, Hegel’s term that includes negating, overcoming and surpassing. The dark origin of modern philosophy roils everywhere beneath its rational surface, giving modern philosophy life even as its progeny seek to deny this darkness. A Dark History of Modern Philosophy seeks to expose this crucially concealed dimension.The heart of this discourse consists in the excavation of those dark sources as they exercise their potency, which is mostly unacknowledged and always silent concerning their significance.This survey differs markedly from more accustomed ones in that it concentrates on the unavoidable limits that stop thought in its tracks. This is as far as possible from an attempt at refutation. Rather, such limits belong to the very nature of philosophy itself."…