Key figures in modern philosophy

17^th century_ Rene Descartes- “Father of modern Philosophy” “Methodic doubt” “Cogito ergo sum” “Consciousness as an abstract thinking thing” Francis Bacon- “Father of empiricism” “inductive reasoning” “modern scientific method” Thomas Hobbes- “political philosophy” “The Leviathan” Baruch Spinoza- “A panthrist” “Impersonal God” John Locke-“ Father of liberalism” “Tabula Raza” “Social contract theory” Leibniz-Famous for his monad ology (monads have no windows, i.e. sensory data cannot enter monads from the outside) “Worked on calculus and binary number system” 18^th century­_George Berkeley- “Extreme idealism”(thoughts and perceptions are the only existing things) “esse es percipi” (To be is to be perceived) Francois-Marie Arouet (aka Voltaire)- “Key figure in the enlightenment period” ”A deist” David Hume- “Materialist empiricist cum extreme skepticism” “Induction fallacy” Rousseau Jean-Jacques- “The innate goodness of man” Adam Smith-“Father of modern economics” Immanuel Kant- “Brought criticism” “A synthesis between empiricism and rationalism- synthetic a priori” “nominal vs phenomenal” “Knowledge comes from the senses filtered through the rational mind” J. W. Von Goethe- “Philosophy of romanticism-Emphasis on feelings, not reason” 19^th century= G. W. F. Hegel-“Moderate idealist” “The Hegelian dialectic-Thesis, antithesis, synthesis” “Auguste  Conte-“Father of sociology and logical positivism” J. S. Mill-“Promoter of utilitarianism” Soren Kierkegaard-“Father of theistic existentialism” “A personal irrational faith based on a leap in the dark “Karl Marx- “Author of the communist manifesto” “Responsible for modern communism and socialism “James William- “Promoted pragmatism” “ Will-to-believe doctrine ”Friedrich Nietzsche- “God is sead- More a sociological claim tham a metaphysical declaration” 20^th century Bertrand Russell- “Promoted the analytic school of philosophy, bythe use of scientific method to solve philosophical problems” Husserl Edmund- “Founder of current phenomenology”  Ludwig Wittgenstein-“Meanings of words in their ordinary usage” Jean-Paul Sarte- “Existence precedes essence” “Most famous existentialist”

Some major concepts in modern philosophy (Capture the etymology, the context, those it is related to, the concept extensively)

Modern/Modernity- From Latin modernus, modo, "just now” “a post traditional and postmedieval historical period” ‘Enhancement and/or opposition to the past” Targets of modernity include industrialization, capitalization, rationalism, secularisstion, nation-state. It has the following external characters: Renaissance, reformation, discovery of the new world, capitalism, rise of science. The internal charactes are subjectivity and the search for solid foundations. The problematic of modernity” The problematic of modernity revolves around the following: Enhancement, subjectivity and autonomy. While enhancement concerns a movement from the old, obsolete ways, methods, perspective to newer and better ones, subjectivity concerns the growth, improvrment, positive movement of the subject, the individual. Autonomy is the result of the joint effort f enhancement and subjectivity, in that the subject is enhanced to be able to make laws for himself. Modern Philosophy: A vulgar definition-A new, current, better way of philosophising, of studying the fundamental nature of existence. Essentially, it is a change from the ancient (mythology, fear cosmology) amd medieval (dogmatism, fideism) to the new ( rational enquiry, scientific method) While ancient philosophy was concernrd eith the first principle of nature and being, modern philosophy is concernrd with the first principle of knowledge. Players here includes seven philosophers arranged into three groups: Descartes, Leibniz, and Spinoza (The Rationalists); Locke, Berkeley, and Hume (The Empiricists); and Kant (who is generally thought to have combined the best insights of the other two groups). Secularisation: The transformation of a society from close identification with religious values and institutions toward nonreligious values and secular institutions. Etymology- from the latin secularis—seculum, an age, a generation. Secularization is one pf the targets of modernity. Rationalism Rationalism is the view that regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge, the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive. Rationalists say that certain truths exist and that the intellect can directly grasp these truths. Rationalists have such a high confidence in reason,n that proof and physical evidence are unnecessary to ascertain truth. Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza are important here. Modern philosophy, in so far as it is convermed the first principles of knowledge has rationalism as an element. Empiricism is the theory that experience is of primary importance in giving us knowledge of the world. Whatever we learn, according to empiricists, we learn through perception. Knowledge without experience, with the possible exception of trivial semantic and logical truths, is impossible. To say that we have learned something from experience is to say that we have come to know of it by the use of our senses. Berkeley, Locke and Hume prominent here. Subjectivity refers to an a shift of emphasis grom the group, the whole, to the individual, a person. It is abot making the individual the focus of all the strivings of modernity. Descartes conceives subjectivity as an abstract thinking tging, while Kant sees it as a self-relating subject that allows absolute self-consciousness. Criticism is attributed to Immanuel Kant, the critical philosophy movement sees the primary task of philosophy as criticism rather than justification of knowledge. Criticism, for Kant, meant judging as to the possibilities of knowledge before advancing to knowledge itself (from the Greek kritike (techne), or "art of judgment"). The initial, and perhaps even sole[citation needed] task of philosophers, according to this view, is not to establish and demonstrate theories about reality, but rather to subject all theories—including those about philosophy itself—to critical review, and measure their validity by how well they withstand criticism.Kant expresses criticism of knowledge as a synthesis between empiricism and rationalism. A priori- "from the earlier" It is a kind of knowledge which proceeds from the mind, independent of obdervation or experience; reasoning from self-evident propositions. Examples- mathematics (3+2=5), tautologies ("All bachelors are unmarried"), and deduction from pure reason (e.g., ontological proofs).^[3]A posteriori- 'from what comes after'. reasoning or knowledge which proceeds from observations or experiences, conclusion or judgment based on induction. Examples-  most aspects of science and personal knowledge. Both terms are philosophical terms of art popularized by Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Analytic judgement: Those whose predicates are wholly contained in their subjects; since they add nothing to our concept of the subject, such judgments are purely explicative and can be deduced from the principle of non-contradiction. Synthetic judgments, on the other hand, are those whose predicates are wholly distinct from their subjects, to which they must be shown to relate because of some real connection external to the concepts themselves. Hence, synthetic judgments are genuinely informative but require justification by reference to some outside principle.    

Synthetic a priori proposition is a proposition the predicate of which is not logically or analytically contained in the subject—i.e., synthetic—and the truth of which is verifiable independently of experience—i.e., a priori. Unlike his predecessors, Kant maintained that synthetic a priori judgments not only are possible but actually provide the basis for significant portions of human knowledge. In fact, he supposed (pace Hume) that arithmetic and geometry comprise such judgments and that natural science depends on them for its power to explain and predict events. What is more, metaphysics—if it turns out to be possible at all—must rest upon synthetic a priori judgments, since anything else would be either uninformative or unjustifiable. Kany nuilt his trqancendantal philosophy on synthetic a priori lnowledge.Cogito Ergo Sum: From René Descartes in the Discourse on Method,, where he attempted to prove his existence as a thinking being, by thinking.”'I think, therefore I am” “I cannot doubt of our existence while I doubt” "I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am”

Descartes regarded it as a first step in demonstrating the attainability of certain knowledge. It is the only statement to survive the test of his methodic doubt. The statement is indubitable.

Rationalization--the world can be understood and managed through a reasonable and logical system of objectively accessible theories and data. Tabula rasa: From Latin “scraped tablet”—i.e., “clean slate. “A mind not yet affected by experiences, impressions; existing undisturbed in its original pure state” “John Locke's philosophy regarding the epistemological question of the foundations of knowledge-individuals are born without built-in mental content and that therefore all knowledge comes from experience or perception” Inquisition: A special ecclesiastical institution for combating or suppressing heresy. The judge, or inquisitor, could bring suit against anyone. The accused had to testify against himself/herself and not have the right to face and question his/her accuser It was this same body in 1633 that tried Galileo Galilei. Copernican Revolution: The paradigm shift from the Ptolemaic model of the heavens, which described the cosmos as having Earth stationary at the center of the universe, to the heliocentric model with the Sun at the center of the Solar System. It began with the publication of Nicolaus Copernicus’s De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres). Also, there is the Kant’s Copernican revolution: Kant's theory of mind radically revised the way that we all think about human knowledge of the world. The mind has an active role in producing our conception of reality by acting as a filter, an organizer, and an enhancer. Kant's ideas is that objective reality is made possible by the form of its representation. This ideas is called Kant's Copernican Revolution, because like Nicolaus Copernicus who turned astronomy inside-out by hypothesizing that the earth moved around the sun (instead of the other way round), Kant turned epistemology inside-out by theorizing that objective reality depends on the mind (instead of the other way round).