The Baroque or The “Age of Reason”: (17th century)
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) - England
· Hobbes’ philosophy revolved around the concept of fear. He said that the fear of death and strive for security is mostly what humans deal with. Hobbes wanted to find the cure for violence, he said that the only reason people become violent was not because human nature is aggressive, but because he is protecting himself from death or acting out of fear.
· Humans are beings of passion and feelings rather than reason. He believed that humans were not governed by reason, like so many philosophers before him said, but went with their feelings or desires; if it makes me feel good than it is good. The first desire is that of power, for with power comes the ability to be secure, but only security, for if the strive for power threatens death then it will be abandoned. Hobbes also said that there was no direct definition of good, or no great being/idea of good. Good is pleasure and security where bad is fear and insecurity. Happiness is continuous satisfaction and only from the want of peace and security comes war.
· Hobbes thought that the job of the State was not to help man be virtuous, but to provide security for all of it’s citizens. He said that the cure for violence was in the proper ruling of the State, which should be run by an all powerful ruler. The citizen should give up all his rights to this leader and the ruler should recognize his power and responsibilities toward his state:
o Execute the purpose and terms of contracts
o Punish when necessary
o Legislate civil laws
o Distribute property
o Have complete judicial power
o Censure what he thinks necessary
o Appoint his own heir
o But he must not kill a citizen for no just reason
· These theories of Hobbes are composed in a book called The Leviathan.
René Descartes (1596-1650) Rationalist: France
· Descartes’ dream for his philosophy was to have perfect knowledge of Being, what things truly are and perfect knowledge of Cause, how things work and why. He wanted to get rid of all the handed down philosophical thoughts from history so he could make his own.
· In Mediations on First Philosophy Descartes says that the skeptics never took skepticism far enough or believed in it strongly enough.
· Descartes thought Reason alone can give us true knowledge, and the reason one uses for things like mathematics is the same reason to use for figuring out philosophical questions.
· He makes the point that one can never be sure if she is dreaming or awake, for dreams can seem very much like reality.
· Descartes proved the existence of God by reasoning that his imperfect mind could never come up with a perfect being unless the perfect being does exist. For example a triangle must have three corners, or it is not a triangle, therefore a perfect being must exist, because not existing would be self contradicting, for a perfect being to be a perfect being must exist.
· A famous line of Descartes was “Cogito, ergo sum” - “I think therefore I am.” One thing was certain: he doubted everything, therefore he could think, therefore he was a thinking “I” which is more real than the physical world.
· Descartes was a dualist and believed that animals are machines, like humans, but only humans have souls, like the angels. Also there is a division between spirit and matter.
Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) Rationalist: Amsterdam
· Spinoza critically read the Bible and found many inconsistencies, he concluded that the Bible was not inspired to God down to the last letter. He became the first modern philosopher to completely reject the Judeo-Christian theories, because it didn’t work with science and reason.
· Spinoza viewed nature in a purely mechanistic way, one very different from the Aristotelian view of nature that was so widespread. Spinoza was a monist, he believed that there was only one world, or realm, and that was the world that one can see, hear and taste. That world he called nature, or God, everything is nature and “God is in everything, and everything is in God”. He could even be classified as a Monistic determinist because Spinoza believed that the cause of things are logically implicated, (almost like mathematical fate) and in knowing that you have no freedom in the way things are going – everything is running off of mathematical laws – gives you an element of freedom.
· In his book Ethics Geometrically Demonstrated or just Ethics he brought up the principal he called “conatus”, which is desire or instinct. He said that our feelings are just the responses and connections that we have to objects. For example love is the feeling of desire, warmth and inward joy that we have when we are near a certain person and we associate those feelings with that person and it becomes love.
· Spinoza said that the well being and happiness of a person depends on how their environment affects them. To be happy you must remember that you are only as happy as your environment is affecting your psychological state, and if your environment is not giving you what you want don’t let it affect your happiness.
Isaac Newton (1642 – 1727) Scientist: England
· Newton explained how the planets moved around the sun and why they did so, i.e. the moon is pulled to earth by gravity, but it doesn’t collide with earth because the moon was once flung through the universe at a great speed. Since that there is no resistance in space to stop it from moving, but it has gotten caught in earth’s gravity, and now it orbits the earth.
· In a break from college Newton came up the Law of Universal Gravitation but forgot about the papers he had written it on for twenty years when a scientist brought up the question of gravity. Law of universal Gravitation – Every object attracts every other object with a force that increases in proportion to the size of the objects and decreases in proportion to the distance between the objects. Along with the discovery of the law of gravity, during his break Newton created the Infinitesimal Calculus (which got him the chair of mathematics at his college), founded modern optics and advanced the boundaries of mathematical understanding.
· Newton also proved that very few nature laws exist throughout the universe, and ended laying down the foundations of modern physics: Laws of Motion and Mechanics:
o First law or Law of Inertia: “An object in motion tends to stay in motion and an object at rest tends to stay at rest, unless acted upon by an outside force.”
o Second Law: Acceleration is produced when a force acts on a mass. The greater the mass (of the object being accelerated) the greater the amount of force needed (to accelerate the object).
o Third Law: "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”
· Newton believed in God and that his theories were a proof the magnificence of God.