PHIL 2610

Modern philosophers (those working in the European tradition between, roughly 1600 and 1800 CE) can be divided into two schools: Rationalists, who believed that all knowledge ultimately rests on reason alone; and Empiricists, who believed that all knowledge ultimately rests on our sense experience. This course investigates the central ideas of Rationalist philosophers - especially, Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza. It will provide students with an overview of the central ideas and controversies in this school, such as the proper method of philosophy; the distinction between reason and innate ideas, sense-perception and imagination; the significance of basic ontological categories (substance, mode, cause, force, action); the place of religious belief in philosophy.