Many of the unresolved questions of our time, such as the distinction between mind and brain or the mystery of consciousness, have their roots in a history and a centuries-old debate. In Soul Machine, George Makari tells us how at the dawn of modernity the concept of soul was gradually replaced by that of mind, and how the latter was detached from the divine to become natural, biological. The mind seemed to be situated in an intermediate place between soul and body, between the ethereal and the mechanistic, without being either of the two things. The birth of the modern mind was accompanied by tough religious, philosophical and scientific struggles; it was a path full of advances and setbacks, often closely linked to the historical, political and social ups and downs of the time, as occurred, for example, with the Enlightenment or the French Revolution. This monumental work features figures such as Hobbes, Locke and Spinoza – thinkers who were crucial in the transition from the religious conception of the sinful soul to the notion of a sick mind that requires specific care – or Rousseau and the German idealist philosophers – whose counterattack in favour of the spirit and its hidden depths brought about a confrontation whose echoes still reverberate today – leading to the psychoanalysis and neuroscience of our time. A debate, Makari shows us in an erudite and entertaining way, that is not only settled in the field of the sciences of the mind, but that has consequences for our current conceptions of being, society, politics and even ethics. “An illuminating and elegant account of a key and little-known aspect of our history: the gradual replacement of the soul by the mind.”