History of Modern Western Philosophy

History of Modern Western Philosophy

From Descartes to Nietzsche
Lecturer: Dr. F. Budi Hardiman

Periods of Western Philosophy

1.  Ancient Philosophy [Greek, Hellenistic and Roman Philosophy]
2.  Medieval Philosophy [Patristic and Scholastic Philosophy]
3.  Modern Philosophy
4.  Contemporary Philosophy [20th Century – Postmodernism]

The Mainstreams of Modern Philosophy

1.  Rationalism (Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Malebranche, Pascal)
2.  Empiricism (Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume)
3.  Criticism (Kant)
4.  Idealism (Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Schoppenhauer)
5.  Materialism (Feuerbach, Marx)
6.  Positivism (Comte, Mach)
7.  Existentialism (Kierkegaard and Nietzsche)

The Meaning of Modernity

1.  “Moderna” means “new” and “now”. Modern is a temporal orientation to ‘here and now’ [not ‘there and past” of the medieval mentality]
2.  The term relates to the concept of time: linear progress [contrary to cyclical concept of time]
3.  Key concepts of the modernity: “technological progress”, “revolution”, “economic growth”

Three Characteristics of modern Philosophy

1. Centers on the problem of consciousness or subjectivity [contrary to theocentrism]
2. Radicalization of the epistemological concept of critique [contrary to dogmatism]
3. Teleological Concept of historical progress of mankind [contrary to status quo]

Modern Philosophy is a philosophy of the subject

•  As a whole we can view the modern western philosophy as a research program on the epistemological and metaphysical problems of consciousness as such [the subject or subjectum]. So Habermas mentions it The philosophy of Subject [die Subjektphilosophie]
•  1. The origin of consciousness (e.g. Descartes and Locke)
•  2. The Development of consciousness (e.g. Hegel, Kierkegaard, Comte)
•  3. The Collapse of consciousness (e.g. Schopenhauer, Nietzsche)

Critique as a central concept

•  Critique is a mean of the processes of emancipation; it functions as:
•  1. Self-reflection of knowledge (critique of knowledge or epistemology)
•  2. Barrier breaker of ideological manipulations (critique of ideology or enlightenment)
•  3. Struggle against political injustice (critique of regime or revolution)
•  Note: Critique isn’t a mere refusal against something, but a reasonable negation with a complex epistemological conditions. It originates during the rise of modern natural sciences those are very skeptical against the medieval metaphysical thought. Critique is an advocate of the factual.

History has a teleological structure

•  History isn’t arbitrary, but has an end that can be anticipated. The German idealists tried to discover the rational scheme behind the empirical historical events. They believed that the ‘telos’ of history was freedom of man and his society. The civilization process was a way to the human freedom.
• Examples
•  Marx believed that the human being (esp. the proletariat) was the actor of history that drives it to its end through the social transformation (revolutions). To him the end of history was the classless society
•  Comte proclaimed that its end was the positivist society, the scientific civilization of mankind
•  Hegel delineated the end of history as the final reconciliation of the idea with its self, i.e. the history that knows its self.
•  Note: Teleological thought is the source of the utopianism in the modern social theories

Renaissance and Philosophy

• The Humanists
•  The spirit of modern philosophy was built in the age of Renaissance. The rebirth of the Greek and Roman civilization in Italy during 16th Century reflected in many cultural aspects such as literature, architecture, philosophy, art etc. The main agents of renaissance’s movement were the humanist such as Dante, Petrarkha, Rabelais, Thomas Morus, etc.
•  The humanists taught eloquence, history, poetry, moral (comparable to the sophists in ancient Greece)
• Man as Natural Being
•  Renaissance culture viewed man as natural being. He doesn’t come from heaven, but grows from earth and is provided with natural talents and vitality. So, the naked figures in the renaissance’s gallery glorified the natural beauty of man.
• Man as Individual
•  The individual (not the collective) was a central theme of art and literature in the culture of renaissance. In the western philosophy the paradigm-shift occurred during the renaissance, i.e. from theocentrism of medieval thought to anthropocentrism of modern thought.
• Machiavelli and the “Virtu”
•  Machiavelli’s theory of power was an example of this paradigm shift: According to him the political power is not God’s grace that is received through fortune (Italian: fortuna), but something that can be seized through human effort and virtuosity (Italian: virtu). Man (in this case the prince) – not God - is a center of power, and from his hand the power grows, and by his hand it is stabilized, e.i. through rational strategies.
• Protestant Reformation
•  Renaissance understood the human subjectivity as rational capacity. But the reformation stressed it as subjective faith. Both of them are the same in their revolt against medieval mentality that centered on ‘objective reason’ or ‘objective faith’.

References
 1. F. Budi Hardiman, Sejarah Filsafat Barat Modern dari Machiavelli sampai Nietzsche, Gramedia, Jakarta, 2004
 2. Reading (Please see the Syllabus)