Philosophy of the 17th, 18th, and 19th Centuries

1. Philosophy of the 17th, 18th, and 19th Centuries Part I

2. Late 17th and Early 18th Centuries The Age of Enlightenment • A gradual process of detachment of philosophy from theology takes place during this period. While philosophers still talked about, and even offered arguments for, the existence of a deity, this was done in the service of philosophical argument and thought. • The 18th century was an age of optimism, tempered by the realistic recognition of the sad state of the human condition and the need for major reforms. The Enlightenment was less a set of ideas than it was a set of attitudes. At its core was a critical questioning of traditional institutions, customs, and morals.

3. Rationalist Philosophers • The notion of God occupies a less central place in the thinking of rationalist philosophers than in the minds of Medieval philosophers. • United by a belief in the rationality of the universe: the universe works in a logical way and makes sense, and the power of reason can understand it. • Mathematics as a model for knowledge.

4. René Descartes (1596-1650) • Meditations (1637) • Beliefs about the world are changing at the time of Descartes. Beliefs based on Aristotle begin to give way to the new discoveries of science. • I am thinking, therefore I am. • I cannot think my existence is false, because if I think this, then I am thinking and my existence must be a fact. • Innate ideas give us: knowledge of ourselves, knowledge of God, knowledge of mathematics. • We can arrive at sure knowledge by reason and need not rely on our senses.

5. Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) • On the Improvement of the Understanding (1662) • Follows Descartes in an attempt to set forth philosophy in a mathematical fashion. • Substance defined as a reality which does not require the idea of any other thing in order to be understood. • Contends that God or Nature is a being of infinite attributes, or which extension and thought are two. Treats the mental and physical worlds as one and the same. Universal substance consists of both body and mind. Neutral monism.

6. Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1648-1716) • Monadologie (1714) • Metaphysical contribution: The world is a composite of material and spiritual things, all of which are made up of unextended elements called monads. • Each monad is independent of the others, yet each, by the law of pre-established harmony, reflects in itself all the modifications or changes that occur in every other. • Symbolic Thought: Believes that much human reasoning can be reduced to calculations. Leibniz’s calculus ratiocinator, which resembles symbolic logic, can be viewed as a way of making such calculations possible.

7. Empirical Philosophers • What can we know? • How well can we know it? • What are the limits to what we can know? • Physical sciences as a model for knowledge.

8. Francis Bacon (1561-1626) • Great Reconstruction (1620) • Reliance upon the scientific process of induction • Rejection of deductive reasoning • Sometimes considered the originator of modern empiricism. • Unlike the Scholastics (a school of philosophers following Aristotle), Bacon focused on subjective elements of reasoning: the powers or faculties of the investigator, including memory, imagination, and reason.

9. John Locke (1632-1704) • An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) • Refutation of innatism (Just because something is universally agreed, it is not necessarily true. Just because something is universally known, it is not necessarily innate.) • All knowledge comes through experience. The mind is a blank sheet, written on by what comes to us through our senses. Matter over mind. • Three kinds of knowledge: intuitive (knowledge of the self), demonstrative (knowledge of God), sensitive (knowledge of the external world). Only intuitive knowledge is certain.

10. George Berkeley (1685-1753) • A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710) • Mind over matter. • If things are perceived there must be a perceiver. Subject as perceiver. • As things continue to exist whether I perceive them or not, there must be a Perceiver. • Everything is an idea in the mind of God.

11. David Hume (1711-1776) • A Treatise of Human Nature (1737) • Reason is nothing more than a habit or custom. • We cannot help believing, but we must not thing our belief is grounded in reason. • Human understanding divided into: 1) Impressions: what we receive through our senses, 2) Ideas: memories or ‘faint images’ of impressions which we combine in thinking and reasoning. • Matter over mind. • We can never really know what’s going on outside of ourselves.

12. Late 18th and early 19th Centuries Romanticism • Romanticism is an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement which originated in the second half of the 18th century and gained strength during the Industrial Revolution. It serves as a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature, and is embodied most thoroughly in the visual arts, music, and literature. • Strong emotion as a source of aesthetic experience • Emphasis on emotions such as trepidation, horror, and awe experienced in confronting the sublime • Often posited as opposed to Realism in art and literature • Viewed as a key movement in the Counter-Enlightenment, a reaction against the Age of Enlightenment.

13. Romantic Philosophers • Beneath all the variety represented by the Romantics lies a common theme: Passion. • While empiricists were concerned with sensory data, and the rationalists were concerned with reason, the romantics looked at consciousness and saw first and foremost its dynamics, purposefulness, striving, and desire. • Preference for intuition or insight • The importance of the subjective is emphasized • Emphasis on life as it is lived, on whole, meaningful experiences • A passionate morality • Emphasis on the human, particularly the individual human person

14. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) • Ideas about the natural goodness of man • Good life is the simple life of the peasant • No natural basis for any inequalities other than biological inequalities • Economic, political, social, and moral inequalities due to private property • Society corrupts

15. Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) • The phenomenal world as an illusion of sorts. • True reality, Kant’s “thing-in-itself,” is referred to as Will. • Out of will everything derives. Will is the inner nature of all things. • Suffering as a natural condition of life. • Esthetic salvation (seeing beauty in something else), ethical salvation (compassion) and religious salvation (asceticism) as a response to suffering.

16. Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) • Three stages or competing life philosophies: 1) the aesthetic person, who lives in the moment and lacks commitment, 2) the ethical person, who is committed to his ideals, and 3) the religious person, who recognizes the transcendent nature of true ideals. • Often considered the first existentialist. Human existence is an ongoing process of creation, and cannot be encompassed by any system.