|
|
||
 |
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
MODERN PHILOSOPHY |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
|
TABLE OF CONTENTS Background Essay Introductory Essay Overview Essays Diagram Critical Essay
Humanism and the Renaissance The Resurgence of
the Philosophical Schools - Platonism
- Marsilio
Ficino Expanded Discussions
Essays
Critical Essays The Philosophy of Rationalism René
Descartes - Benedict
Spinoza - Nicholas
De Malebranche Expanded Discussions
Essays
Critical Essays
The Philosophy of Empiricism Francis Bacon - Thomas Hobbes - John Locke - George Berkeley - David Hume Expanded Discussions
Essays
Critical Essays
Special Reference The Philosophy of Illuminism English
Illuminism Background Essays
Expanded Discussion Essays
The Philosophy of Immanuel Kant Expanded Discussion Essays Critical Essay Background Essay: The Successors of Kant The German Idealists Johann Gottlieb
Fichte - Friedrich
Wilhelm von Schelling Expanded Discussions
Essays
Johann Friedrich
Herbart - Arthur
Schopenhauer Expanded Discussion Essays
Felicite de
Lamennais - Victor
Cousin Background Essay Expanded Discussion Essays
The Philosophy of Positivism Expanded Discussion Essay Essays
Ludwig A.
Feuerbach - Karl
Marx and Friedrich Engels Expanded Discussion Essays
Critical Essays Essay Unclassified Modern Philosophers Leonardo da
Vinci - Ben
Jonson - Uriel
Acosta Wilhelm von
Humboldt - Friedrich
von Schlegel - Samuel
Taylor Coleridge John
Tyndall - Hermann
von Helmholtz - Thomas
Henry Huxley Essays
Modern philosophy considered as a whole is characterized by a basic immanentism which distinguishes it and places it in opposition to ancient and medieval philosophy, which are based on transcendence. Between Greek philosophy and Christian thought there is no opposition; rather, one is a gradual development of the other. Greek philosophy, in its attempt to discover the explanation of "becoming" or change, had arrived - in the great speculations of Plato and Aristotle - at the affirmation of the transcendence of the absolute God. Christian philosophy, developed during the medieval period, gradually developed the Greek idea of the transcendence of the absolute God. Christian thinkers rejected the Greek metaphysical dualism of God and eternal matter, and replaced it with the concepts of creation and the providence of God. Modern philosophy rises as the antithesis of ancient and medieval philosophy, and does this by virtue of the immanent principle. No longer God, but nature (or man), is considered the metaphysical absolute. Nature becomes divinized and is put in God's place. As a result, the explanation of all reality is sought in the principles of nature itself. Immanentism pervades the whole of modern philosophy and is its characteristic property. However, the logical consequences which flow from immanentism developed slowly, and only with Kant and Idealism does immanentism become critical and conscious. During the Renaissance, Rationalism and Empiricism, although based on immanentism, still affirmed the transcendence of God over nature and man. But this affirmation no longer forms part of philosophy, since an immanentist philosophy cannot, without being a contradiction in terms, find its outcome in transcendence. The causes which determined the break of modern philosophy with ancient and medieval philosophy can be reduced to two:
Immanentism made its appearance in Greek philosophy with Stoicism and Neo-Platonism; during the Middle Ages it appeared with Scotus Erigena and Master Eckhart. Modern philosophy appeals to these historical precedents. Greek immanentism, in comparison with the great systems of Plato and Aristotle, represents but passing moments of crisis in the history and development of thought; the immanentism of the Middle Ages was defeated by the authority of the Church and Scholasticism. Modern immanentism, on the other hand, rising as it does on the decline of Scholasticism and with an attitude of disregard for all authority, has been able to pretend unto the present day to be the only philosophy. Another historical antecedent of modern philosophy is Latin Averroism with its principle of the double truth, according to which what is true in philosophy may be false in religion and vice versa. When in the progress of time it was no longer possible to sustain the logic of the principle of double truth, philosophers appealed to the principle of exclusion or isolation, according to which what was believed to be true in the philosophical field was affirmed exclusively, that is, without taking into account the truths of religion. Modern philosophy, essentially immanentist, does not find its justification in pure speculation, but in scientific and empirical motives, and in the struggle against Scholasticism and against the authority of the Church. As a consequence, it became essentially atheistic. Enrich Your Life With a Philosophy Book...
|
|||||||
|
Introduction & Directory |
|||||||
|
|
|||||||
|
|
||
|
|
||
[Homepage] [Newsletter] [Search] [Support the Academy] [Link to Us] [Contact the Academy] [Citing Articles from Our Website] [Privacy Policy & Disclaimer]
Copyright 1998-99, 2000-01, 2002-03, & 2004-05 by The Radical Academy. All Rights Reserved.
This Page Was Updated On