The Little Book of Philosophy by Rachel Poulton

Author:Rachel Poulton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: The Little Book of Philosophy
ISBN: 9781632281340
Publisher: Viva Editions
Published: 2021-01-14T16:00:00+00:00

Modern Philosophy

With its artistic and cultural advancements, the Renaissance period (around 1400 to 1600) marks the start of the Modern era in history and philosophy. Thinkers were courageously challenging the dominant beliefs of the Catholic Church, which had been all-powerful throughout Europe. In 1632 Galileo Galilei, the pre-eminent scientist, published Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, which called into question the Church’s Ptolemaic view of the universe: that the Earth is the center of the universe and the Sun revolves around it. Galileo used the newly invented telescope and backed up the Copernican view that actually the Earth and all other planets orbited the Sun. The Catholic Church didn’t like this idea and, after a trial by the inquisition, Galileo was found guilty of heresy and put under house arrest for the rest of his life. And his book was banned.

Galileo was an Empiricist—he used his observations and experiences of the world to come up with new ideas. And it was the Empiricists, with their insistence that all knowledge originates in sensory experience, who formed part of the Modern philosophical landscape. Philosophers such as John Locke and David Hume took this empirical approach, embodying this Age of Enlightenment.

On the other hand, there was a group of Modern philosophers who based their theses on Rationalism— the principle that knowledge originates in the mind and some truths can be known through reasoning alone. Philosophers such as René Descartes (page 103), Baruch Spinoza and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz used their mathematical knowledge and reasoning and applied them to all learning, using Continental Rationalism to advance philosophical ideas into the Modern Age.

In addition to these two distinct practices of philosophy, Empiricism, and Rationalism, there were huge developments in Political philosophy, with thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes (page 114), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (page 121), and Immanuel Kant (page 129) contributing revolutionary ideas.

Modern philosophers were beginning to unshackle themselves from the chains of theology and the antiquated theories of the Ancients that had kept philosophical thought tightly contained. As the Modern period progressed, the Church’s grip on society weakened and thinking became less restricted—unorthodox beliefs began to be more freely discussed than before. In the words of Immanuel Kant, in order to become enlightened, people needed to “dare to know!”

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