101. Early Modern Philosophy

The purpose of this topic is to enable you to gain a critical understanding of some of the metaphysical and epistemological ideas of a number of the traditionally canonical figures within early modern European philosophy. This period saw a great flowering of philosophy in Europe. Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz, often collectively referred to as "the rationalists", placed the new "corpuscularian" science within grand metaphysical systems. Locke wrote in a different, "empiricist" tradition. He argued that, since our concepts all ultimately derive from experience, our knowledge is necessarily limited. Berkeley and Hume developed this empiricism in the direction of a kind of idealism, according to which the world studied by science is in some sense mind-dependent and mind-constructed.