Modern Philosophy

The modern period of Philosophy covers ideas from famous philosophers in Europe and America since the beginning of the c17th until the present, and included a significant portion of the Renaissance; Modernism in Philosophy has been replaced by Post-Modernity in the Twentieth Century (although this is conjectured).

Descartes, Rousseau and Kant

History of Modern Philosophy

Modern Philosophy of the c16th and c17th is roughly divided into two groups of famous philosophers: Rationalists and Empiricists. Rationalism affirms the importance of reason and intuition as paths to knowledge about the world. Empiricists refute this theory by saying that the only way of acquiring knowledge about the world is throught the five senses, and is a posteriori (after experience)

Descartes' quest for a kind of knowledge self-evident to reason and secured from doubt is where modern philosophy started out. His 'method' is espoused beautifully in his Meditations. What he essentially does is rip from under out our feet all foundational truths that we held as self-evident (even the most basic, like the existence of an external world), and then attempts an epistemic reconstruction. He end up with his cogito ("I think, therefore I exist) which he considers to be the most basic self-evident truth. There is a problem with circularity here though.

....page under construction...