Early Modern Philosophy 1

The course is an intensive study, analysis and interpretation of key philosophical texts of the continental rationalists and British empiricists. The topics to be studied include: 1.) Descartes: Doubt and the Cogito; idea of God and proofs of his existence; the Cartesian circle; proof for the existence of the material world; mind and body; the nature of material substance. 2. Spinoza: God and substance; extension and thought; the nature of mind; three kinds of knowledge; causality and necessity; ethical theory in the Ethics. 3. Leibniz: Substances and complete concepts; theory of mind; freedom and contingency; substance and matter; theory of monads; preestablished harmony; problem of evil. 4. Locke: Theory of ideas; philosophy of body and mind; personal identity. 5. Berkeley: the philosophy of immaterialism; ideas and things; God and finite spirits; the problem of other minds. 6. Hume: Philosophy of mind; empiricist epistemology; theory of causality; external world; problem of personal identity; skepticism.