The Early Modern Age · School
Empiricism
Held that all knowledge comes from experience; Locke, Berkeley and Hume pushed the principle to ever more radical conclusions.
Representative figures · 9
Francis Bacon弗朗西斯·培根
'Knowledge is power': set out the programme of induction and experimental science, and proposed to rebuild all human knowledge.
Thomas Hobbes霍布斯
A thoroughgoing materialist who derived absolute sovereignty from a state of nature where life is 'nasty, brutish and short'; Leviathan begins modern political philosophy.
John Locke洛克
Founder of empiricism and father of liberalism: the mind is a blank slate, and government rests on the consent of the governed.
George Berkeley贝克莱
'To be is to be perceived': matter does not exist, only minds and ideas, and God guarantees that things persist.
David Hume休谟
Took empiricism to its limit: causation is habit, the self a bundle of perceptions, reason the slave of the passions. Kant said he woke him from his dogmatic slumber.
Denis Diderot狄德罗
Editor of the Encyclopédie, who spent twenty-five years gathering all knowledge into one work and explored every forbidden question in materialist essays and dialogue-novels.
Adam Smith亚当·斯密
A professor of moral philosophy who wrote The Wealth of Nations: sympathy shapes morality, an invisible hand coordinates markets, and economics became a science.
Immanuel Kant康德
The Copernican revolution of philosophy: objects conform to our forms of knowing, not knowledge to objects. Reason legislates for nature and for itself.
John Stuart Mill约翰·斯图亚特·密尔
The classic statement of liberalism: coercion of an individual is justified only to prevent harm to others. He refined utilitarianism and cast the first parliamentary vote for women's rights.