PHIL 102 - History of Western Philosophy: Modern

1 unit(s)

102-51b & 52b: Descartes inaugurated modern philosophy by turning philosophical attention away from questions about what the world is like and directing it onto the question: how is it possible for us to know what the world is like? He made this question urgent by offering arguments that suggest that we cannot know what the world is like - arguments suggesting that there is an unbridgeable “gap” between the mind and the material world. We will carefully examine the ways in which Descartes himself, Hume, and, finally, Kant, seek to answer these arguments and bridge the “gap” that Descartes’ arguments open up. We will see how their various approaches to this task shape and are shaped by their conceptions of the human mind, the material world, the relation of the mind to the human body, and the nature of the ‘self.’ Mr. Seidman.