PROJECT

TOPIC:THE PHILOSOPHERS
SUBJECT:ENGLISH
CLASS:XI
SCHOOL:QEMAL BAZELLI
WORKED:ESI BESHELLO,KASANDRA
MUCI,ESJONA ABESHI,FROSINA
BESHELLO,FESTIM OSHAFI,JENS LACKA
MODERN PHILOSOPHY
Modern philosophy is philosophy developed in the modern
era and associated with modernity. It is not a specific
doctrine or school (and thus should not be confused with
Modernism), although there are certain assumptions common
to much of it, which helps to distinguish it from earlier
philosophy.
The 17th and early 20th centuries roughly mark the
beginning and the end of modern philosophy. How much of
the Renaissance should be included is a matter for dispute;
likewise modernity may or may not have ended in the
twentieth century and been replaced by postmodernity. How
one decides these questions will determine the scope of one's
use of the term "modern philosophy". The 17th and early
20th centuries roughly mark the beginning and the end of
modern philosophy. How much of the Renaissance should be
included is a matter for dispute; likewise modernity may or
may not have ended in the twentieth century and been
replaced by postmodernity. How one decides these questions
will determine the scope of one's use of the term "modern
philosophy."
MODERN WESTERN
PHILOSOPHY
How much of Renaissance intellectual history is part of modern philosophy is disputed: the Early Renaissance is often considered
less modern and more medieval compared to the later High Renaissance. By the 17th and 18th centuries the major figures in
philosophy of mind, epistemology, and metaphysics were roughly divided into two main groups. The "Rationalists," mostly in
France and Germany, argued all knowledge must begin from certain "innate ideas" in the mind. Major rationalists were Descartes,
Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Leibniz, and Nicolas Malebranche. The "Empiricists," by contrast, held that knowledge must begin with
sensory experience. Major figures in this line of thought are John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume.Ethics and political
philosophy are usually not subsumed under these categories, though all these philosophers worked in ethics, in their own
distinctive styles. Other important figures in political philosophy include Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
In the late eighteenth century Immanuel Kant set forth a groundbreaking philosophical system which claimed to bring unity to
rationalism and empiricism. Whether or not he was right, he did not entirely succeed in ending philosophical dispute. Kant sparked
a storm of philosophical work in Germany in the early nineteenth century, beginning with German idealism. The characteristic
theme of idealism was that the world and the mind equally must be understood according to the same categories; it culminated in
the work of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, who among many other things said that "The real is rational; the rational is real.“
Hegel's work was carried in many directions by his followers and critics. Karl Marx appropriated both Hegel's philosophy of
history and the empirical ethics dominant in Britain, transforming Hegel's ideas into a strictly materialist form, setting the grounds
for the development of a science of society. Søren Kierkegaard, in contrast, dismissed all systematic philosophy as an inadequate
guide to life and meaning. For Kierkegaard, life is meant to be lived, not a mystery to be solved. Arthur Schopenhauer took
idealism to the conclusion that the world was nothing but the futile endless interplay of images and desires, and advocated atheism
and pessimism. Schopenhauer's ideas were taken up and transformed by Nietzsche, who seized upon their various dismissals of the
world to proclaim "God is dead" and to reject all systematic philosophy and all striving for a fixed truth transcending the
individual. Nietzsche found in this not grounds for pessimism, but the possibility of a new kind of freedom.
19th-century British philosophy came increasingly to be dominated by strands of neo-Hegelian thought, and as a reaction against
this, figures such as Bertrand Russell and George Edward Moore began moving in the direction of analytic philosophy, which was
essentially an updating of traditional empiricism to accommodate the new developments in logic of the German mathematician
Gottlob Frege
RENAISSANCE PHILOSOPHY
Renaissance humanism emphasized the value of human beings and opposed dogma
and scholasticism. This new interest in human activities led to the development of
political science with The Prince of Niccolò Machiavelli. Humanists differed from
Medieval scholars also because they saw the natural world as mathematically ordered
and pluralistic, instead of thinking of it in terms of purposes and goals. Renaissance
philosophy is perhaps best explained by two propositions made by Leonardo da Vinci
in his notebooks:
All of our knowledge has its origins in our perceptionsThere is no certainty where
one can neither apply any of the mathematical sciences nor any of those which are
based upon the mathematical sciences.In a similar way, Galileo Galilei based his
scientific method on experiments but also developed mathematical methods for
application to problems in physics. These two ways to conceive human knowledge
formed the background for the principle of Empiricism and Rationalism respectively.
List of Renaissance philosophers:
Pico della Mirandola,Nicolas of Cusa,Giordano Bruno,Galileo Galilei,Niccolò
Machiavelli,Michel de Montaigne,Francisco Suárez,M Adeel Qureshi
RATIONALISM
Modern philosophy traditionally begins with René Descartes and his aphorism "I think,
therefore I am". In the early seventeenth century the bulk of philosophy was dominated by
Scholasticism, written by theologians and drawing upon Plato, Aristotle, and early Church
writings. Descartes argued that many predominant Scholastic metaphysical doctrines were
meaningless or false. In short, he proposed to begin philosophy from scratch. In his most
important work, Meditations on First Philosophy, he attempts just this, over six brief
essays. He tries to set aside as much as he possibly can of all his beliefs, to determine what
if anything he knows for certain. He finds that he can doubt nearly everything: the reality
of physical objects, God, his memories, history, science, even mathematics, but he cannot
doubt that he is, in fact, doubting. He knows what he is thinking about, even if it is not
true, and he knows that he is there thinking about it. From this basis he builds his
knowledge back up again. He finds that some of the ideas he has could not have originated
from him alone, but only from God; he proves that God exists. He then demonstrates that
God would not allow him to be systematically deceived about everything; in essence, he
vindicates ordinary methods of science and reasoning, as fallible but not false.
List of rationalist philosophers:
Christian Wolff,René Descartes,Baruch Spinoza,Gottfried Leibniz
EMPIRICISM
Empiricism is a theory of knowledge which opposes other theories of knowledge, such as rationalism, idealism and
historicism. Empiricism asserts that knowledge comes (only or primarily) via sensory experience as opposed to
rationalism, which asserts that knowledge comes (also) from pure thinking. Both empiricism and rationalism are
individualist theories of knowledge, whereas historicism is a social epistemology. While historicism also
acknowledges the role of experience, it differs from empiricism by assuming that sensory data cannot be
understood without considering the historical and cultural circumstances in which observations are made.
Empiricism should not be mixed up with empirical research because different epistemologies should be considered
competing views on how best to do studies, and there is near consensus among researchers that studies should be
empirical. Today empiricism should therefore be understood as one among competing ideals of getting knowledge
or how to do studies. As such empiricism is first and foremost characterized by the ideal to let observational data
"speak for themselves", while the competing views are opposed to this ideal. The term empiricism should thus not
just be understood in relation to how this term has been used in the history of philosophy. It should also be
constructed in a way which makes it possible to distinguish empiricism among other epistemological positions in
contemporary science and scholarship. In other words: Empiricism as a concept has to be constructed along with
other concepts, which together make it possible to make important discriminations between different ideals
underlying contemporary science.
Empiricism is one of several competing views that predominate in the study of human knowledge, known as
epistemology. Empiricism emphasizes the role of experience and evidence, especially sensory perception, in the
formation of ideas, over the notion of innate ideas or tradition in contrast to, for example, rationalism which relies
upon reason and can incorporate innate knowledge.
List of empiricist philosophers:
Francis Bacon,John Locke,George Berkeley,David Hume
IDEALISM
Idealism refers to the group of philosophies which assert
that reality, or reality as we can know it, is
fundamentally a construct of the mind or otherwise
immaterial. Epistemologically, idealism manifests as a
skepticism about the possibility of knowing any mind-
independent thing. In a sociological sense, idealism
emphasizes how human ideas—especially beliefs and
values—shape society. As an ontological doctrine,
idealism goes further, asserting that all entities are
composed of mind or spirit. Idealism thus rejects
physicalist and dualist theories that fail to ascribe
priority to the mind. An extreme version of this idealism
can exist in the philosophical notion of solipsism.
List of idealist philosophers:
Immanuel Kant,Johann Gottlieb Fichte,Friedrich
Wilhelm Joseph Schelling,Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Hegel,Arthur Schopenhauer,Francis Herbert Bradley,J.
M. E. McTaggart,John Foster