Provides students and general readers with a basic understanding of the central concepts, issues, and thinkers of the early modern era of philosophy
Is there a world that exists apart from ourselves? If an external world exists, what is its nature?
Can an external world based on evidence from our sense perception be known? How do such questions arise? Is it even possible for them to be answered? This is Modern Philosophy: An Introduction surveys how philosophers from the late sixteenth century to the early nineteenth century investigated central metaphysical and epistemological issues.
Focusing on six key philosophers, this accessible volume provides readers with a solid and balanced appreciation of how philosophy was done in the Modern period. Each chapter explores the views of a particular thinker–René Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, George Berkeley, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, and Lady Mary Shepherd–with special attention paid to their engagement with ’The Problem of the External World.’ Throughout the book, readers are invited to consider related philosophical problems and doctrines, such as transcendental idealism, mind-body dualism, and skepticism.
* Introduces a range of philosophical concepts, including materialism, idealism, rationalism, and empiricism
* Discusses how the philosophical views from each of the philosophers covered are similar and different
* Addresses the views of other important thinkers such as John Locke and Adam Smith
* Features an epilogue that helps readers locate other important philosophers from different historical periods
* Provides links to high-quality online editions and translations of primary texts that are freely available to students
Part of Wiley-Blackwell’s popular This Is Philosophy series, This is Modern Philosophy: An Introduction is an invaluable resource for undergraduate students in Early Modern philosophy courses, graduate philosophy students looking to refresh their knowledge, and general readers looking for an easy-to-read introduction to the subject.
Innehållsförteckning
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction 1
I.1 Knowledge as Scientia 2
I.2 Ideas, Propositions, and Beliefs 5
I.3 The idea of a Modern Philosophy Course 11
I.4 Rationalism and Empiricism 12
I.5 Some Other ’isms’ of the Period 14
I.6 The Problem of the External World 16
1 René Descartes 21
1.1 Descartes’s First Principle 21
1.2 Preliminaries on Ideas and the Ontology 39
1.3 Clarity and Distinctness: A Model Based on Simple Natures 51
1.4 The Idea of the Infinite Being: A Proof for God’s existence 57
1.5 Why God, Creator of Descartes’s Mind, Cannot be Understood as Being a Deceiver 64
1.6 The Problem of the External World Continued: The Case for a Material World 68
Reference 74
2 Thomas Hobbes 75
2.1 Hobbes’s Materialism 75
2.2 Hobbes’s View of Mind 77
2.3 Concept-Pairs 83
2.4 A Body Cannot be the Origin of Its Own Motion 88
2.5 A Proof for the Existence of an External World 90
Reference 91
3 George Berkeley 92
3.1 Berkeley’s Rejection of a Material World 92
3.2 Abstraction versus Exclusion 94
3.3 Objects are Collections of Ideas 101
3.4 The Problem of the External World Answered: The Omni-perceiver 134
3.5 Possible Common Ground 143
4 David Hume 147
4.1 Hume on Impressions and Ideas 148
4.2 The Idea of Cause and Effect 152
4.3 Object and Existence 156
4.4 Unity and Identity 159
4.5 Constancy, Coherence, Continued Existence, and Distinct Existence 161
5 Immanuel Kant 167
5.1 Kant’s Critical Period 167
5.2 Knowledge: Preliminaries 169
5.3 Transcendental Philosophy 171
5.4 Two Distinctions and the Category of Synthetic a priori Propositions 175
5.5 The External World 192
References 202
6 Lady Mary Shepherd 203
6.1 Cause and Effect, and a Proof of the External World 203
6.2 Hume and The Problem of the External World 205
6.3 Consciousness and Sensation 206
6.4 A Commonsense Reading 227
References 230
Epilogue 232
Index 239
Om författaren
KURT SMITH is a Professor of Philosophy at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, USA. He has participated in three competitive National Endowment for the Humanities summer programs focused on Early Modern Philosophy and has been a Visiting Scholar at Princeton University. Professor Smith is the author of several monographs, book chapters, journal articles, and encyclopedia entries.
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