This course is a survey of 17th century philosophy, including the works of Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant. We began with a brief discussion of the philosophical climate of Western Europe in the first decades of the 17th century, focusing on the emerging problems with the late Scholastic worldview and the intellectual vacuum left by its rejection. This provides context for Descartes’s project of providing secure foundations for his alternative scientific approach, as well as Leibniz’s struggles with just how much of Scholasticism can be rejected. From here we move across the channel to Locke, with a focus on his empiricist epistemology and constructivist metaphysics. Berkeley and Hume round out our discussion of British Empiricism, leading to Kant’s transcendental idealism.
Notes: