THE PhilosophyModern is mainly characterized by a shift to Humanism, started in Renaissance, and for unconditional appreciation to reason brought to light by skepticism and the discovery that the human being is independent of rational metaphysical bodies, such as God, to discover his intellect. While the ancients asked themselves, for example, “what was the truth and knowledge?”, the moderns started to ask themselves “how is true knowledge possible?”.
It is common in historiographical studies on Philosophy to separate Renaissance Philosophy and the Enlightenment of Modern Philosophy. However, we can conceive the idea that Modern Philosophy, even being a time courseintermediary among the ideals of Rebirth It's from Enlightenment, she did not stand out entirely from the two, for she was born in one and conceived the other. To understand the Modernity, it is necessary, then, to look at what happened before and after it.
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Characteristics of Modern Philosophy
Among the main features of Modern Philosophy are the skepticism in relation to ancient beliefs and customary beliefs, the appreciationgivesreason, the attempt to establish the limits of human knowledge and how we can know the world truly and the valorization of a political life that understands the existence of a link between politics and knowledge. During this period, thinkers such as Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton, Rene Descartes, David Hume, Francis Bacon, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Baruch de Spinoza, among others.
We can list as two great epistemological currents of modernity the rationalism it's the empiricism, besides highlighting, as the main figure of the theory politics modern, the contractualism, which strongly influenced Enlightenment thought and later political theories such as the socialism it's the liberalism.
Another feature that cannot be left aside for the understanding of Philosophy developed in Modernity is scientism, the result of new ideas brought mainly by Galileo and Newton, that attest to the value of scientific method and the need for a rigorous analysis of nature to understand and master it.
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Historical Context of Modern Philosophy
In the Renaissance, the human being was faced with a newparadigm, because the medieval theocentrism it was no longer strong enough to cover up the valorization of human power, with a rescue of ancient humanism. Therefore, there was also a rescue of aesthetic, moral and knowledge values, all of which originated from the Ancient Greece, given by the rediscovery of the philosophical works of Plato that were unknown during the Medieval period, such as The banquet and Phaedo.
There was also the engendering of new political theories originated by Florentine thinkers, such as Nicholas Machiavelli, who rescued the idealspoliticiansromansclassics, defending the need for a active political life and the freedom of Italian cities against the rule of the Roman-Germanic empire.
All these Renaissance elements caused a effervescencecultural and politics in the Renaissance, together with the appreciation of the philosophical ideals of Antiquity, they boosted the scientific thought that would give birth to Modernity. We have, in the transition from Renaissance to Modernity, the creation of the movable type press, a machine created by Johannes Gutemberg, which enabled the printing of books and the creation of the press; the discoveries of Nicolaus Copernicus and Johannes Keppler; and Galileo Galilei's discoveries for the Modern physics and the defense of heliocentrism.
In economic and political terms, we have the formation of national states europeans, the development of capitalism in its first form, the mercantilist, and the naval development made possible by the Great Navigations. The nautical expansion resulted in the exploration of the seas and new territories, putting a whole medieval European imagination that believed in sea monsters and the finitude of the ocean given the belief that O planet Earth it was formed by a large flat terrain.
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Schools of Modern Philosophy
In Modernity, we had the formation of two main schools concerning the theory of knowledge (empiricism and rationalism), and the consolidation of political schools that resulted mainly in the Enlightenment, which operated a junction between knowledge, moral and politics.
A hallmark of Modernity is the skepticism against the dogmatic attitude towards some subjects. Plínio Junqueira Smith, a scholar of skepticism, states that the skeptical attitude is, in short, one that questions the dogmatic view.
the skeptics, in the Antique, led by Pyrrhus, did not believe in the possibility of attaining any true knowledge, transforming suspension of judgments into a attitudecriticism before the dogmatism that prevailed in Greek philosophies, especially the pre-Hellenic philosophical schools. In the Middle Ages, the dogmatic attitude advanced, in a sense, as it sought to understand, in a plausible and rational way, the absolute unquestionable truth.
In Modernity, the debate between rationalists and empiricists has once again surfaced the dogmatism (for seeking a final and absolute truth), however, along with the dogmatic attitude, came the skepticism (not Pyrrhonian skepticism, but constructive skepticism, which aimed to criticize the extremely dogmatic attitude).
Rationalism
Because it is in line with the current and most striking thought of Modernity, scientism, the school rationalist, together with empiricism are great representatives of what was the philosophy developed during the Modernity.
In this sense, modern rationalists were critical of later Philosophy traits, in trying to delimit the way to obtain correct knowledge. However, what defines rationalism, in the first and most complete instance, is the fact that they argued that true knowledge is obtained through a strictly rational exercise., without resorting to the data of practical experience, but resorting to pure reasoning through intellectual abstraction.
There is, among rationalists, a kind of rescue and improvement of the ideas of Plato. Representatives of this philosophical strand are René Descartes, Wilhelm Gotffried Leibniz and Blaise Pascal.
Empiricism
For empiricist philosophers, true knowledge can only be obtained through data collected by the experienceempirical. Knowledge, according to them, is born when we hear, see, feel, taste, etc. The data provided by these sensory experiences are turned into ideas, but they are born with experience and find their correctness in it.
Contractualists
Contractual philosophers attest to its importance in the political and legal field. Advocates of the existence of a hypothetical pre-moral state of humanity, the contractualists stated that the companies were constituted from a social pact formed in order to end the state of human nature (the pre-moral stage), because only in this way is it possible to construct laws and found human groups politically reasoned.
These philosophers believe in two different laws: one law of nature that governs natural life (that's why they are also called jusnaturalists) and a covenant law, which initiates the formation of society.
Enlightenment
Enlightenment theorists merged issues relating to the theory of knowledge and science with politics. For the Enlightenment, society evolves morally through the evolutionscientificand of knowledge. According to the Enlightenment, technical and scientific progress brought to everyone is the guarantee of moral and social progress, therefore, humanity's efforts must move towards scientific discoveries and the popularization of these discoveries.
Illuminists also advocate the separation of religious and political domains. Therefore, the idea of a universal, free, secular and quality school it's an Enlightenment idea. Republican thought, a defender of individual freedom, is also a hallmark of the Enlightenment.
As for the eternal clash between empiricists and rationalists, Immanuel Kant resolves the dispute by establishing the bases of your criticism, which merges rationalist and empiricist ideals, establishing that there are rational characteristics of our knowledge that understands universal concepts, for example, but departs from empirical experience individual.
Also access: The philosophical discussion about moral values in society
main philosophers
Among the philosophers of the modern period, we can highlight:
IsaacNewton: the physicist, philosopher and mathematician who revolutionized the PhysicsModern by systematizing his three laws. Also, your work Mathematics Principle is an important bibliographical source to understand the Philosophy of logic and modern rationalism.
JohnLocke and ThomasHobbes: the two thinkers present theses, at first similar, about the need for covenantSocial in politics, and on empiricism in epistemology. The difference is that Hobbes advocates strong, monarchical government to end insecurity in the human state of nature, while Locke defends private property as the element that most justifies and needs the intervention of a strong government, as only it is capable of guaranteeing the protected legitimate property. John Locke is considered one of the theorists of (political) liberalism and one of the ancestors of economic liberalism.
Voltaire: defender of freedomreligious, of the secularity of the State and individual freedom, was a great Enlightenment thinker.
Diderot and D'Alambert: the French philosophers, supported by the Enlightenment ideal of a popularizationofknowledge as a way to achieve moral advancement, they founded the Encyclopedia, a collection of fascicles that intended to contain entries on everything that human beings can know.
ImmanuelKant: the Prussian philosopher inaugurates a newcriticism in Enlightenment Philosophy and resolves the clash between rationalists and empiricists by establishing that the source of knowledge is, simultaneously, the data of the empirical perception and the rationalization and understanding of the concepts universals. These two different elements merge and give rise to human knowledge.
Also access: Pre-Socratics, a group of ancient philosophers
René Descartes and his skeptical position
René Descartes, the author of the maxim “I think, therefore I am”.
Another important philosopher of this period, René Descartes was a skepticalradical of Modernity, Cartesian thought, initially, can be confused with an ancient skeptical Philosophy, understanding that the skepticism “is a particular type of philosophy, as it is not constituted by a set of theses about things, nor does it intend to be a knowledge".
The main characteristic of the skeptic is to keep "a critical attitude towards the dogmatic pretension of having discovered the truth.”i However, Cartesian skepticism is totally different from classical skepticism, because if it starts with a critical attitude towards dogmatism (the dogmatism of doubtful opinion and knowledge), he ends up claiming to have discovered a first irrefutable truth: the cogito. in your work Method Discourse, Descartes arrives at the first irrefutable truth: existence itself.
In his skeptical position, the French philosopher says that our customary, common-sense beliefs may be wrong, that our senses can deceive us, to the point that we do not know whether we are dreaming or waking. Furthermore, he claims that illusions can take over our intellect, which attests to the need to doubt everything, even calling into question its own existence.
However, when realizing that the exercise of doubting is the exercise of thinking, the philosopher concludes that it is not possible to think without first existing. Hence, the surest conclusion and undoubted first thought is "I think therefore I am”. To learn more about the author, read René Descartes: biography, ideas, works and phrases.
i SMITH, Plínio Junqueira. Skepticism. Col. Step by step philosophy. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar, 2004, p. 8.
by Francisco Porfirio
Philosophy teacher
