Philosophy from Descartes to Kant
Fall 2007
- The era of the modern scientific revolution was spurred
by the
publication of Copernicus's 1543 treatise, De Revolutionibus,
which argued that the sun, not the earth, was the center of planetary
motions. This revolution in scientific thought and process was in full
swing by the time of Galileo's 1633 condemnation for empirical work
supporting Copernican cosmology. An era of rapid scientific progress and
its societal repercussions was fueled by the birth of modern philosophy,
which coalesced around Descartes's work of the early mid-17th century.
This course is a study of Descartes and Leibniz, who have come to be known
as Continental Rationalists; Locke, Berkeley, and Hume---British
Empiricists; and Kant. We'll focus on these modern philosophers' work on
knowledge, perception, and metaphysics. We will pay particular attention
to their views on the nature of the mind, concepts, primary and secondary
qualities, causation, and the self.
Reading list will include selections from:
- Descartes, Discourse on Method, Meditations on First Philosophy
- Spinoza, The Ethics
- Leibniz, Discourse on Metaphysics, Monadology
- Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
- Berkeley, Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, Principles
of Human Knowledge
- Hume, An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, A Treatise on
Human Nature
- Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, Critique of Pure
Reason