Well here are my late philosophy lecture and seminar notes! During the 17th century there was a huge divide between two key ways of thinking – these were British Empiricism and Continental Rationalism.
Empiricism = Empiricism is a theory of knowledge that asserts that knowledge comes only or primarily via sensory experience. One of several views of epistemology, the study of human knowledge, along with rationalism, however empiricism emphasizes the role of experience. For example John Locke is a huge figure when it comes to empiricism, along with David Hume and Francis Bacon.
Rationalism = In Epistemology rationalism is a theory in which the criterion of the truth is not sensory but in fact intellectual – therefore it has nothing to do with experience. For example, key rationalist thinkers are Socrates, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz and Kant.
Descartes: Came up with the Cogito which is his most famous syllogism – I think therefore I am, or in its Latin form “Cogito ergo sum”. He argues that if you are ever doubting yourself or doubting anything then you can always feel safe in the fact that since you are able to think, you must exist! This is his Cogito.
A Syllogism is a kind of logical argument in which one proposition (the conclusion) is inferred from two or more others (the premises) of a certain form.
Descartes was a 17th century thinker and a contemporary of Galileo and as expected he held very similar views to Galileo, for example he despised the system of university and so on.
“I had gained nothing from my attempts to become educated but increasing recognition of my ignorance”.
He lived a much fulfilled life – travelling and being involved in many wars and so on but he grew wary of this decided to search for “true knowledge”.
As he was a rationalist he always questioned the validity of things – he would never take anything at face value apart from when it comes to Geometry – he believes that geometry is a constant; there will always only be one certain truth to its aspects. For example it is an unchanging truth that a triangle has 3 sides, nothing can alter this fact.
This is his method of doubt – reject any knowledge where there are grounds for doubt – senses can deceive you and to emphasise this deception he talks of a “demon” that deceives you with things that are false.
The Ontological Argument: This is an a priori proof for the existence of God.
A priori ("from earlier") and a posteriori ("from the later") are used in epistemology to distinguish two types of knowledge or arguments
Descartes argues that God's existence can be deduced from his nature, very much like the nature of geometry; Descartes uses the deduction of the sizes of angles in a triangle as an example. Descartes suggests that the concept of God is of a perfect form. He proposes that existence is perfection: it would be better to exist than not to exist. Therefore, God’s existence is a necessary process for thought.
Spinoza: Revealing considerable scientific aptitude, the breadth and importance of Spinoza's work was not fully realized until years after his death. By laying the groundwork for the 18th century Enlightenment he came to be considered as one of the great rationalists of the 17th-century philosophy. His famous work, albeit posthumous, Ethics was only really taken seriously after his death and was then published. In “Ethics” he opposed Descartes' mind–body dualism; it has also allowed him to be widely known as Western philosophy's most important contributors.
Spinoza was considered to be an atheist because he used the word "God" to signify an idea that was vastly different from the traditional Christian idea of God. He claims that God lacks personality and consciousness – stating that god also has no intelligence, feeling or will. This indifferent God painted by Spinoza is indeed the antithesis to the paternalistic God who cared about all things.
He believed that good and evil related directly to pleasure and pain
All things done by humans and animals, according to Spinoza, are divine acts. However he also believes that humans are naturally allowed to exploit nature in an attempt to further human understanding.
Leibniz: Basically, this dude was such a massive mathematics whiz and a boss when it comes to philosophy – so it’s no surprise that Leibniz occupies a prominent place in the history when it comes to mathematics and philosophy.
He was amazing with inventions and working with calculators, most notably Pascal's calculator.
But what we really want to focus on is philosophy; Leibniz claims that this universe that we’re part of is the best possible one that God could have created. Leibniz, along with Descartes and Spinoza, was one of the three great 17th century thinkers of rationalism
His writings pretty much covered all the main topics of mathematics, politics, law, ethics, theology, history and philosophy. Jeeze, dude did you want to let anyone else put some work in? Impressive stuff.
Leibniz's philosophical writings come down to two philosophical treatises, of which only the Theodicy of 1710 was published in his lifetime. Most of his other philosophical ideas were fairly fragmented, insofar as they came from journal entries and so on.
Leibniz dated his beginning as a philosopher to his Discourse on Metaphysics, which he composed in 1686 as a commentary on a running dispute between Nicolas Malebranche and Antoine Arnauld.
“Discourse” was not published until the 19th century. Leibniz made his public entree into European philosophy in 1695 with an article titled "New System of the Nature and Communication of Substances"
The Monads: When it comes to Metaphysics, Leibniz’s most dazzling contribution is his theory of “monads”.
Monads are to the metaphysical realm what atoms are to the physical realm. They are the ultimate aspects of the universe. The monads are known as "substantial forms of being”, from this Leibniz goes on to explain that they are also eternal, indecomposable, individual, subject to their own laws, un-interacting, and each reflecting the entire universe in a pre-established harmony.
Unlike atoms, monads possess no material or character. Furthermore they can be seen as different insofar as they have complete mutual independence. Each monad follows a programmed "instructions" very individual to itself, so it always knows what to do at each moment
So there you have it, my notes all about Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz – I did want to mention watching the matrix and how amazing that was but I feel that this should suffice! What a film, quite possibly Keanu Reeves’ best acted film (apart from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure obviously). Anyway, I’ve gone on for long enough I think.
Im Jack Webb from Winchester signing off, you stay classy, Hampshire x
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