From Descartes to Kant Fall 2008

Course Description
What is "modern" philosophy and how did it alter the course of Western thinking about the mind, body, perception, thinking, and therefore what we mean by knowledge? This course examines the birth and development of the moderns. We will begin the course with a brief, yet crucial, consideration of the world-changing discoveries of Galileo and Bacon, thinkers who uprooted two millennia of philosophical insight with a certain employment of the intellect. This "certain employment" gives birth to the conditions of so much of what we know as science and culture. In philosophy, this new conception of the intellect frames a conflict between two dominant schools: rationalism (Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza) and empiricism (Locke, Berkeley, Hume). Our first course readings will draw primarily from Rene Descartes and David Hume in order to establish the wide, conflicting boundaries of this new philosophical orientation. In response to this conflict between Descartes and Hume, we will consider Immanuel Kant's critical turn in philosophy. Kant's work attempts to reconcile the potent insights of rationalism and empiricism, while at the same time ridding them of naivete. Close reading of difficult texts and expository writing will be the focus of our intellectual labor. WRI, REA, PRS