The Early Modern Age · School
Rationalism
Held that knowledge is grounded in reason rather than the senses; Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz built systems with geometrical method.
Representative figures · 6
René Descartes笛卡尔
Father of modern philosophy, who found 'I think, therefore I am' through universal doubt, split mind from matter, and invented analytic geometry.
Blaise Pascal帕斯卡尔
Mathematical prodigy, co-founder of probability, defender of Jansenism; the Pensées ask, with the 'thinking reed' and the 'wager', where humanity stands amid the infinite.
Baruch Spinoza斯宾诺莎
The lens-grinder expelled by his synagogue, who proved by geometrical method that God is Nature and that freedom is the understanding of necessity.
Nicolas Malebranche马勒伯朗士
The Oratorian who fused Descartes with Augustine, holding that we see all things in God and that God is the only true cause.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz莱布尼茨
The last universal genius: inventor of calculus and binary arithmetic, author of the monadology and 'the best of all possible worlds', who dreamed of a universal language in which every dispute could be calculated.
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.