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Modern Western Civ. 8: Rebirth of Philosophy

[Back to Modern Europe Syllabus]

Paul Halsall
Modern Western Civilization

Class 8: The Rebirth of Philosophy

I. Introduction

In building up to our consideration of the Enlightenment we have spent some time looking at the Scientific Revolution, and the intellectual creativity it encompassed.

Philosophy - another sort of intellectual adventure. - no clear direction before Descartes.

Descartes and Bacon had a purely philosophical impact as well as their work on scientific method. We will also discuss Locke in this class as a philosopher.

II. The Rationalist Tradition

Tends to try to construct a world system from a priori reasoning - as opposed to bits and pieces observation.

RATIONALISM in this case is not just being reasonable, it is making Reason everything.

A. René Descartes 1591-1650

a. Biography

French.

1628 - moved to Holland where he lived most of his life.

1649 - moved to Stockholm to visit Queen Christina -the weather killed him

His aim was to try build knowledge from scratch

The Myth: 1619

closeted in a stone heated room in Bavaria he made his decision

b. Main Works

  • Discourse on Method 1637
    emphasis on deduction and maths - important in his whole philosophy - maths is a form of non-empirical knowledge
  • Meditationes de Prima Philosophia 1641 - Meditations
  • Principia Philosophiae 1644- Principles

c. Descartes' Philosophy

  1. Radical Doubt
    He tried to doubt everything as a methodological tool - "mischevious Devil" idea
  2. Knowledge
    But Je pense, donc je suis/ Cogito ergo sum

    HIS PHILOSOPHY IS THUS EXTREMELY INDIVIDUALISTIC IT STARTS FROM THE FACT HE KNOWS HIMSELF

  3. Then he says that you can prove existence of God- ontological proof - based on idea of perfection implying existence.
  4. He makes assumptions in this argument that show his "doubt" was less radical than is often supposed - he claims men have INNATE IDEAS which are more or less contained in the "I" that one knows exists - and these enable man to make certain statements and deductions - eg the Law of non-contradiction (Aristotle). Since God is perfect and good you can trust the evidence of the senses - this allows scientific knowledge.
  5. MOST IMPORTANT was that from cogito ergo sum Descartes argued to sum res cogitans - I am a being that thinks

    FOR DESCARTES THERE IS A RADICAL DISTINICTION BETWEEN THE MIND AND THE BODY - DUALISM

  6. The world is made of two incompatible substances - MIND and MATTER -our bodies can thus have no part in what we really are -Man is an incorporeal mind in a mechanical body (opposite of Aristotle, similar to Plato)
    -Descartes does not explain how mind acts on body he locates the Pineal gland as the place of contact, but does not explain how the contact is made.
  7. The problem of how consciousness is related to matter is still a problem - and will be unless we are prepared to say, with Marx, that consciousness is just an effusion of matter.

B. Baruch (Benedictus) Spinoza 1632-77

a. Biography

Dutch/Jewish: born and lived in Holland

b. Works

  • Tractatus Theologico-Politicus 1670
  • Ethics 1677

c. Philosophy

He was also a thinker trying to construct a world system from his own thoughts - like Descartes he thought knowledge was deductive. He was a incredibly complicated writer.

  1. Main Idea - Everything is God, God is Everything Pantheism or Panentheism (explain difference). Spinoza also put a great emphasis on Ethics.
  2. Spinoza was seen as an atheist - expelled from his synagogue - but his ideas did have an effect through the writings of others.

d. Links

C. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) German

  • Unlike Spinoza he denied their was just one thing in the world (ie God) and said there were an infinite number of things.
  • His Philosophy is too complicated to go into[!], but he was another rationalist thinker.
  • He was also a great mathematician
    -invented Calculus about the same time as Newton
    -he also disputed with Newtom about the nature of space
    -he disbelieved in the possibility of limitless empty space (links up with modern ideas).
  • A Victim of Voltaire
    He had a view of God - that God made best of all possible worlds - God would only do the best as the best would always be most economical - this view was attacked by Voltaire in Candide.

D. Rationalism - Summary

The Ideas of these Rationalist Thinkers may seem odd - but this was because they followed reason over any observation. In fact they had little influence on science after Newton - but as we shall see observation/empiricism has its problems.

More importantly they set the trend for the speculative trend in Continental European thought: Hegel, Marx, Satre, Existentialism etc - All were thinkers who set out to make systems that explain, or explain away everything - European philosophers continue to have wider interests than mere observation would allow.

III. Empiricism

Empiricism is basically the theory that all knowledge is derived from experience. It is a tendency to give observation priority in coming to know things - and as observation is piecemeal, so is the way its world picture is built up.

A:. Francis Bacon 1561-1626

Already discussed his theory of Induction.

He was forerunner of the Empiricist school - basically and English/British movement in Philosophy

B. Thomas Hobbes 1588-1679

English

Also a forerunner of Empiricism. He was most important for laying the philosophical foundations of absolutism - and will look at him in that context elsewhere.

What is important here is that his approach in setting up his study of political science was based on observing how human beings behaved - he self consciously applied the methods of Galileo and William Harvey in science to political philosophy.

C. John Locke 1632-1704

English

a. Introduction

The most important and influential philosopher of his time

  • He often wrote in conscious opposition to Descartes.
  • Like Hobbes he was very important as a political thinker and we shall look at him elsewhere.
  • He was just as important as a philosopher. His contribution here was in epistemology (explain epistemology - science of how we know what we know) [shell of philosophical egg]). This is sometimes referred to as his Psychology -obviously epistemology and psychology are related.

b. Works

  • A Letter Concerning Toleration 1689
  • Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1690
  • Two Treatises of Government 1690

c. Use of Newton

  • Locke was the real founder of the empirical school. He took Newton and science as his starting point. In OPPOSITION TO DESCARTES Locke held that all knowledge comes from sense impressions made on the mind from birth.
  • Instead of INNATE IDEAS he proposed that at birth the mind was a TABULA RASA - a blank table. The mind's knowledge of the world was made by the innumerable observations imprinted on it from birth - from these many impressions a picture of the world was built up - He thought all of our complex ideas were built up from simple ones .Obviously this is linked to the scientific idea of induction. Although there were similarities with Descartes - esp. in that knowledge is a sort of intuition - Locke implied that, as in science, you never have certain knowledge, just highly probable knowledge.
  • This was first attempt to explain human knowledge that took account of what had been happening in science. This shows one way (as well as the general change in attitude) that the Scientific Revolution had a dominant influence on the Enlightenment.

d. Implications of Locke's Epistemology

  • Note that one consequence of thinking that people are really formed by there experience might be a belief that by education and proper upbringing you could make people better. He viewed man as rational. These ideas were immensely influential - even on the Continent.
  • His thoughts on toleration also set the tone for continental thought in the next century - Locke is thus one of the leading influences on the Enlightenment. Toleration, Respect for Reason and optimism about human perfectibility are hallmarks of the Enlightenment.

D. Bishop George Berkley 1685-1753

Anglo-Irish

Also an empiricist - but with rather strange idea that material things do not exist - only sensations. But he was in empiricist tradition

E. David Hume 1711-1761

Scottish/Edinburgh

a. Works

  • Treatise on Human Nature 1739/40
  • An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding 1748
  • Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion 1777

b. Philosophical Position

  • Hume rejected Rationalism, and was an empiricist, but he was also empiricism's greatest problem:-
  • He noted that if you reject absolutely the idea that the mind is born with no innate way of making sense of the world - then there is a problem as to how you can know that the sense it does make accords with any reality -for instance how can we know that the principle of causation (on which many arguments are based) is true: the principle of causation cannot be drawn from observation, but is projected on to it.
  • He also criticized Induction - it is not in itself a logical way of explaining things, since it relied on the non-logical principle that a general conclusion can be drawn from a finite number of observations.
  • It must be said that these ideas clashed with Hume's concern for scholarship and the experimental method in practice.
  • Hume ends up with extreme scepticism that anything can be known at all, including God, He was a complete atheist.

F. Empiricism - Summary

Empiricism did cause philosophical problems, but its approach tended to be concrete.

Despite Hume, people still thought about the sort of ideas that these early empiricists raised - you get in England and then in the USA a tendency in Philosophy to look at piecemeal or "realistic" solutions - you get fewer world system builders than on the continent.

IV. Immanual Kant 1724-1804

German

"inner world within, and starry heavens above"

  • He dealt with problems and issues raised by both empiricists and rationalists
  • Most important modern Philosopher, but his thought is too complicated to deal with in this class
  • The main thing to note here across is Kant's moral theory - the idea of duty - influence on Germany
    Categorical imperative - Do what you would wish to be a universal law

V. Theology in the Age of Reason

A. Catholic

  1. Liguori and Moral Theology
  2. Jansenism and Ireland

B. Protestant

  1. Latitudinarianism
  2. Quietism
  3. Wesleyanism

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