Early Modern Philosophy: Descartes to Hume

Unit 1 · The Modern Turn

1. The break with the ancient world Why the 17th century tore up the Aristotelian picture and set out to rebuild knowledge from scratch. 8 min
2. The new problem of knowledge If we only ever meet our own ideas, how can we know they match a world outside the mind? 8 min
3. Two roads: rationalism and empiricism The map of the whole course — reason versus experience as rival sources of knowledge. 7 min

Unit 2 · Descartes I: Doubt and the Cogito

1. The method of doubt Descartes tears down every belief he can doubt — even mathematics — to find something unshakeable. 9 min
2. Cogito, ergo sum The one thing the demon cannot fake — that I, the doubter, exist. Descartes' bedrock certainty. 8 min
3. Clear and distinct ideas From the cogito Descartes extracts a general test for truth — but it has a hidden dependence on God. 7 min

Unit 3 · Descartes II: God, World, and Mind

1. The proofs of God Descartes argues an idea this perfect could only come from a perfect being — and that such a being must exist. 9 min
2. The Cartesian Circle Does Descartes use clear ideas to prove God, then God to trust clear ideas — arguing in a circle? 7 min
3. The external world and the source of error A non-deceiving God lets Descartes trust that bodies exist — and explains why we still make mistakes. 8 min
4. Mind and body: the great divide Descartes splits reality into thinking stuff and extended stuff — and bequeaths a problem no one can solve. 9 min

Unit 4 · Spinoza: God, or Nature

1. The geometric method and the one substance Spinoza writes philosophy like geometry — and deduces that there can be only a single substance. 9 min
2. God, or Nature (Deus sive Natura) The single substance is God — but Spinoza's God is not a person outside the world; it IS the world. 9 min
3. Mind and body without interaction Spinoza dissolves Descartes' mind–body problem — mind and body are one thing seen two ways. 8 min
4. Necessity, the passions, and blessedness In Spinoza's world nothing is free in the usual sense — yet a kind of freedom and joy is still possible. 9 min

Unit 5 · Leibniz: Monads and the Best World

1. Two great principles of reasoning Leibniz builds everything on two laws — nothing is contradictory, and nothing is without a reason why it is so. 8 min
2. The monads: true atoms of nature Since real things must be genuine unities, reality is made of unextended, indivisible, mind-like points. 9 min
3. The pre-established harmony If nothing interacts, why do mind and body march in step? Because God synchronized every substance in advance. 8 min
4. The best of all possible worlds A perfect God with a sufficient reason must have created the best world there could be — evil and all. 8 min

Unit 6 · Locke: The Blank Slate

1. The attack on innate ideas Locke opens empiricism by demolishing the rationalists' claim that some ideas are stamped on us at birth. 8 min
2. Two fountains: sensation and reflection Every idea we have, Locke says, is built from atoms delivered by outer sense or inner sense. 8 min
3. Primary and secondary qualities Some of our ideas resemble the world; others — colour, taste, sound — are just powers in things to affect us. 8 min
4. Substance and personal identity What holds a thing's qualities together? And what makes you the same person over a lifetime? 9 min

Unit 7 · Berkeley: To Be Is to Be Perceived

1. The attack on matter Berkeley takes empiricism to its shocking conclusion: there is no such thing as mind-independent matter. 9 min
2. No abstract ideas, no primary qualities Berkeley turns Locke's own tools against him — dissolving abstract ideas and the primary/secondary split. 8 min
3. God and the reality of the world If things exist only when perceived, why is the world stable and shared? Because God perceives it all. 8 min

Unit 8 · Hume: The Limits of Reason

1. Impressions and ideas Hume's empiricist microscope — every genuine idea must be traceable back to a vivid original experience, or it is empty. 8 min
2. Hume's Fork and the problem of induction Reason can prove mathematics but cannot prove the future will resemble the past — the deepest crack in empiricism. 9 min
3. Causation: constant conjunction We never see one thing MAKE another happen — only that they always go together. The necessity lives in the mind, not the world. 9 min
4. The self and mitigated skepticism Look inward for the self and you find only a rush of perceptions — yet nature will not let us truly doubt. Where empiricism ends. 8 min

Unit 9 · Rationalism, Empiricism, and Kant

1. The reckoning: reason vs experience After six systems, what did each side get right — and why did the "way of ideas" end in Hume's skepticism? 8 min
2. Kant's Copernican turn (coda) Hume "woke Kant from dogmatic slumber" — and Kant's answer closes the early-modern age and opens ours. 8 min

🎓 Final exam