Historical Importance

The first to notice about Spinoza is that he continues the method that Descartes has deployed, that is to say the geometrical kind of method preceding from definitions and axioms logically to prove theorems and conclusions. For example, Spinoza’s ethics starts with definitions and axioms and then proves theorems. Spinoza insists that his words, particular about God and his attributes must never be understood in their vulgar and figurative sense, but only in the special sense given to them in the definitions.

Contrast with Hobbes

Conceptualist vs Nominalist

With Descartes, we are switching to continental rationalist philosophy. The contrast works out like following. Hobbes is a nominalist, influenced by William Ockham, no universals, the only explanatory principles needed are efficient cause and material cause, no formal and final causes. Consequently, his nominalist gives rise to empiricist epistemology in which he tries to see what are uniform patterns of cause and effect relationship. In contrast to that, Descartes is a conceptualist, which makes possible his rationalism, and he maintains that we have some intuitive innate knowledge of general principles and universal premises.

Introduction

Here is what distinguishes the three great British empiricists: Locke, Berkeley and Hume:

Berkeley’s Idealism

His Project

We will introduce Berkeley’s Idealism in the metaphysical sense, that is to say all that exists is that of nature of mind, immaterial spirit. He was a very practically minded man. He denies the existence of matter. He considered carefully John Locke’s epistemology. Mind is the object of thinking, the only thing the mind thinks is idea. Ideas are representations of material objects, seeing this scheme, Berkeley’s strategy is simple, namely, to deny that there is any objectively real representations of our ideas of primary qualities. To deny that you can break the cognitive barrier and get to the extra-mental, outside of the mind. Locke did it by casual inferences, whereas Locke is realist about materiality, Berkeley is anti-realist about matter, denying the independent reality of matter. That’s characteristic of metaphysical idealism. Idealism is a kind of ant-realism about matter. We will run across other views that questions the reality of matter that is known as phenomenalism, that is they assert that all we know are appearances of things like material objects but whether in reality there is matter is another question. Idealism is a subset of phenomenalism. Immanuel Kant is some sort of phenomenalist, characteristically, all of the 19th century German idealism is phenomenalism. The Platonic tradition likewise is a kind of idealism.

Introduction - The Age of Enlightenment

Locke is the representative in the Enlightenment, his book An Essay Concerning Human Understanding is sometimes taken to mark the beginning of the philosophical Enlightenment. The term Enlightenment refers to the right of reason, of scientific knowledge, gained by the objective scientific methods, whether inductive or deductive, with the kind of objectivity the science claimed. This was an age opposed to dogmatic systems, the system builders claims kind of knowledge which can not be established by scientific methods alone. It’s an age of criticism, criticizing the possibility of knowledge. So it’s not surprising an enlightenment thinker started to criticizing the claims of the enlightenment and of scientific knowledge. When we get to David Hume, we will find he is a philosophical skeptic, he is skeptical of the objective enlightenment knowledge and develops in its place how belief arises and how it is justified. It’s also the age of the rule of reason, not only in thinking but in our living. The idea is when we are ruled by reason, we are freed from other causal conditions. If you are acting out of emotional compulsion, you are not acting freely. It’s only when you are able to detach yourself and thinking about what you do that you are really free. Freedom is only possible under the rule of reason as we say in political freedom is possible under the rule of laws. Consequently the ethical theory develops which are concerned with knowing what is right. It is the age where the theory of individual right develops.