Early Modern Philosophy
Code
711031061
Academic unit
Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas
Department
Filosofia
Credits
6
Teacher in charge
Marta Mendonça
Weekly hours
4
Teaching language
Portuguese
Objectives
a) Acquire a basic knowledge of the most important figures in Western philosophical thinking in modern times and of some of their texts.
b) Identify the most significant philosophical issues in modern European thinking and describe them precisely.
c) Acquire a basic ability to place concepts, methodological ideas and doctrinal positions in the historical context to which they belong.
d) Acquire an ability to identify the distinctive features of European philosophy in the modern age from both a methodological and thematic point of view.
e) Acquire an ability to identify and describe the elements representing continuity or rupture in the formulation of philosophical questions and in the suggestions for solving them.
f) Acquire an ability to read and interpret some of the fundamental texts from the modern age.
g) Comprehend the importance of studying modern philosophy for understanding some current philosophical questions.
Prerequisites
None
Subject matter
Reason and Experience in Early Modern Philosophy
What characterizes Early Modern Philosophy? What is the nature of its rupture with previous thought? Is it above all a sort of Epistemology or of Ontology? Or to what extent did the former determine the latter?
This course will focus on these questions, trying to establish the concepts of experience and reason, as defined and presented in 17th and 18th century European philosophy. We will try, firstly, to establish the more important elements in the modern conception of experience and reason and, secondly, to analyse and compare the various ways of explaining the relationship between them: how is it possible to reconcile the sensible experience, which is contingent and particular, with the requirements of universality and necessity of a rationally based knowledge? What is the relationship between these two sources and / or forms of knowledge?
In this course texts from Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, Hume and Kant will be studied.
Bibliography
DESCARTES, uvres Complètes. 11 vols. Publiées par Charles Adam et Adam Tannery. Édition du Jubilé. Paris : Vrin, 1996.
HUME, The Philosophical Works. 4 vols. Aalen: Scientia Verlag, 1964.
KANT, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant. Ed. by Paul Guyer and Allen Wood, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995 -.
LEIBNIZ, Die philosophischen Schriften. 7 vols. Hrsg. Von K. I. Gerhardt, Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, l965.
LOCKE, The Works of John Locke. 9 vols. London: Routledge/Thoemmes Press, 1997.
Teaching method
The course has a mixed approach, theoretical and practical, combining a theoretical examination of the topics of the program with the analysis of texts of the philosophers there studied.
Evaluation method
1. Proof of attendance (70%)
2. One written essay, to be presented in class or discussed with the lecturer or another proof of attendance (30%).