Modern Philosophy: 1600-1800

Catalog description

This course surveys major philosophical issues of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a vibrant era of scientific revolution, religious and political upheaval, and Europe's rise to global power. In its quest for a method of scientific discovery, philosophy breaks with the Aristotelian tradition that had dominated it for centuries; it ends up confronting remarkably new questions and modes of explanation. We focus on the works of the major thinkers of this era, such as Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant. Although with different priorities and conclusions, each takes up the implications of the new, mechanistic conception of nature. We study their investigations into the following types of questions: What is "substance" and what are the genuine qualities of things? What is the nature of the mind, and how is it related to the "material body"? How do we acquire knowledge of reality, and can we ever be certain of this knowledge? Are natural phenomena determined by causal laws? Does God exist and, if so, what is his role in relation to a material world governed by causal laws? The lively debates over these questions gave birth to two rival schools of thought, one seeking answers in the innate principles of the mind (rationalism), the other in our experience of the world (empiricism).