MODERN PHILOSOPHY

MODERNITY

• "New and Now"
• Focused on here and now
• Thinks in linear progress
• Critique as a perspective
• Critique means of emancipation

PROGRESS

• Different than classical era
• Nothing repeats
• Time keeps going making progress

CRITIQUE

• Gives mind power
• Overcome what we know
• Used to determine what is true
• Descartes is known for critique

CHARACTERISTICS

• Centers on problem of concioussness
• Epistemological concept of Critique
• Teleological concept of progress of mankind

MAIN IDEAS

• Rationalism (Descartes)
• Empiricism (Hume)
• Criticism (Kant)
• Idealism (Hegel)
• Materialism (Marx)

DESCARTES

• Lived 1596-1649
• Mathematical genius
• Tie math and philosophy together
• Doubt anything that can be doubted
• Looking for certain truth

DESCARTES

• Four concepts of doubt
• Can't trust senses, could be crazy, could be dreaming, demon trick
• What can't be doubted?
• Can't doubt ability to doubt
• Cogito, ergo, sum

DESCARTES's legacy

• Birth of Modern Idea of Concioussness
• Focus on individual
• not clear conclusion
• allows for different interpetations

David Hume

• Scottish Philosopher
• study of Human Morality
• Make philosophy a science
• Moral philosophy- science of human nature

David hume

• Base philo in experience
• No a priori statements
• Geography on mind: two tasks- descriptive and Explanatory
• perceptions and its two types: impressions and ideas

Immanuel Kant

• philosopher from russia
• His philo is "critical Philosophy" of Modernity
• Main Objective: bring Metaphysics back to glory

Immanuel Kant

• Major topics: Limits of Knowledge, Ideas of REason, Morality
• Two types of ideas: A posteriori and a priori
• A posteriori depends on sense experience
• A priori comes from the mind and not from sense experience

Immanuel Kant

• Structure of mind
• Reason, understanding, sensibility
• Constructs of mind
• Mind does not conform to objects, objects conform to the mind

Hegel

• German idealist
• Philosophy equals system
• Absolute idealism- being is an all inclusive whole
• has to be a connective point to connect two other points

Hegel

• REason is always coming to know itself through the dialectic process
• Truth becomes based on context through process
• truth is ever growing with history

hegel's politics

• Hegel writes about proper politics
• people's duty to control how they are ruled
• Philosophy can lead to perfect governments

Post Hegelian Philosophy

• Karl Marx heavily influenced by Hegel
• Agreed with many of hegel's ideas
• offered that civil society is the focus to see development
• This led to the development of Communism

Questions

• What made modernity so self focused?
• Why is there no eternal truth according to hegel?

questions

• Why is basing everything in experience so essential to hume?
• How come Descartes never came to a solid bona fide answer for his thinking?

questions

• What made Descartes so obsessed with making philosophy like math?