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Early Modern Philosophy: Descartes and the Rationalists

Series: Early Modern Philosophy: Descartes and the Rationalists

(3)

Episodes

Rating

TVPG

Year

2024

Language

English

Publisher

The Great Courses

About

Four centuries ago, bold thinkers put reason in the driver's seat. Meet the rationalist philosophers who changed the course of the modern world.

Related Subjects

Episodes

1. Philosophy at the Dawn of the Modern Age

31m

Explore the intellectual climate in the 16th and 17th centuries, when early modern philosophy took off. What makes this philosophical movement modern? And what connects it to ancient and medieval philosophy? Professor Reid previews the thinkers covered in the course, and examines their connection to the ongoing Scientific Revolution and the concurrent Reformation that was dividing Christians.

2. René Descartes's Quest for Certainty

36m

A pioneer of early modern philosophy, René Descartes set the goal of building a foundation for knowledge that is absolutely certain. Trace the chain of reasoning in his Meditations on First Philosophy that led him to the self-evident truth of his own thinking existence. Look at other conclusions reached by Descartes in this remarkably subtle work.

3. Descartes's Method and Motives

30m

Why was Descartes so obsessed with certainty? Delve into The Discourse on the Method, which includes an intellectual autobiography. A key step was the time he spent alone in a stove-heated room, when he concluded that a single individual using reason can get closer to the truth than the aggregate of learning contained in all books. Follow the revolutionary deductions he reached with this method.

4. Elisabeth of Bohemia and Cartesian Ethics

31m

In his Discourse, Descartes outlines a provisional moral code, but the full development of his ethical system emerges through his correspondence with Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia. A gifted philosopher, she posed challenging questions that prompted him to rigorously refine his ideas. Their colloquy explored happiness, virtue, emotions, and the passions, with a strong emphasis on practical ethics.

5. Lady Anne Conway's Vitalist Metaphysics

33m

Descartes's works prompted Lady Anne Conway, a reclusive English noblewoman and philosopher, to set down her ideas, which bridged metaphysics, ethics, and theology in sharp contrast to Descartes's system. Drawing on her posthumously published treatise, Dr. Reid summarizes her influential critique of Cartesian dualism and her vitalist conception of all reality, which incorporates reincarnation.

6. Baruch Spinoza on God and Nature

31m

While Descartes argued that mind and body are two distinct substances, Baruch Spinoza, proposed that there is only one substance, which he identified as God or Nature. Everything else, including mind and body, are modes or expressions of this one substance. Spinoza's God is not a personal deity but an infinite, impersonal substance that encompasses all of reality.

7. Spinoza on Mind and Emotion

32m

Continue your study of Spinoza's Ethics by focusing on his philosophy of mind, notably his theory of emotions. Spinoza held that despite their nature, emotions are far from random or irrational. Instead, they are part of the natural order, arising from encounters with external objects or events that affect the body, which in turn affects the mind. This was a highly innovative view at the time.

8. Spinoza on Bondage and Freedom

32m

Spinoza's theory of emotions leads to his account of bondage and freedom. Bondage relates to actions over which we have no control, while freedom is detachment from those emotions that hold us captive. These represent two opposing ways of living-one that results in frustration and suffering, and another that brings fulfillment and peace. The latter is the fundamental goal of his Ethics.

9. Nicolas Malebranche's Occasionalism

26m

After reading Descartes, priest and philosopher Nicolas Malebranche broke with the medieval Scholastic view, which was inspired by Aristotle, and developed his own doctrine of occasionalism. This integrated Cartesian metaphysics with a vision of divine intervention. Although rooted in a theistic framework, Malebranche's ideas influenced later, more secular thinkers such as Hume and Kant.

10. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz on Truth and Being

33m

A co-inventor of calculus with Isaac Newton, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz is best known as a philosopher who built a unified explanation of reality. He called his explanatory agents monads-indivisible, non-physical entities that account for being, perception, consciousness, and other natural phenomena, and play a key role in Leibniz's understanding of truth. Explore this powerful and subtle system.

Extended Details

SeriesEarly Modern Philosophy: Descartes and the Rationalists

Closed CaptionsEnglish

Artists

The Great CoursesDirector

The Great CoursesProducer

James ReidActor