- Founder of modern philosophy - Outlook altered by new physics and astromony
- Didn't publish book - two strange doctrines about the earth's rotation and infinite universe
- Philosopher, mathematician, man of science
- Geometry
- Co-ordinates
- Regarded bodies of men and animals as 'machines'.
- Animals controlled by physics, devoid of feeling/conciousness
- Men have souls which reside in the pineal gland, contact with vital spirits
- Mechanics
- Accepts first law of motion
- No vacuum, no atoms, just nature of impact
- Says world created in Genesis BUT:
- Thinks it could be natural
- Theory of formation of vortices: around sun immense vortex in plenum which carries planets
- Discourse on Method (1637) & Meditations (1642)
- Method of 'Cartisan Doubt' - Doubting everything to clear mind
- Scepticism
- Dreams give us copies of real things
- Theory of Knowledge
- 'I think, therefore I am' - mind more certain than matter
- Questions knowledge of our bodies
- Things can change when burnt etc - smell, taste different
- "I understand by the sole power of judgement, which resides in my mind, what I thought I saw with my eyes." - You don't know if what you're seeing is true, you can only think it
- Errors
- To think that ideas are like outside things
- Three sorts of ideas
- Innate
- foreign and come from without
- Invented by me
- Method of critical doubt
- Indubitle facts
- own thoughts
- Thoughts are more certain than external objects
- Indubitable principles of inference
- Book: Ethics
- Metaphysics: Parimenides, One substance 'god or nature'
- Thought and extension both attributes of god
- No free will, everything is controlled by god
- leads to problems with sin
- Spinoza argued back that negation is only in the eye of the finite beholder, not the infinite god
- Theory of emotions
- Passions distract us and obstruct us from our intellectual vision of the whole
- Hatred can be increased when recipricated but destroyed by love
- All wrong actions are due to error - like Socrates and Plato
- self-seeking/preservation governs behaviour
- Time is unreal
- Disasters in our time are considered worse than those in the past
- Spinoza says time should be irrelevant and that a disaster then is a disaster now.
- Events are part of god's eternal, timeless world as he sees it. God sees the date as irrelevant
- The theory of evil is an inadequate knowledge - God has no knowledge of evil, everything is his good-doing
- Does not object to all emotions, only those that are passions
- God is not affected by emotions or pleasure or pain
- He who loves god should not expect love in return
- Logical monoism
- The world only exists because everything exists together. Not one bit could exist without the rest
- Political theory derived from Hobbes
- Disagrees that all rights should be submitted to sovereign and that democracy is 'most natural' form of government
Leibniz Thanks to - Tom Baxter
- Substances
- Extension is the centre of matter
- Extension isn't an attribute of a substance - extension is an attribute of plurality (more than one) so can't be linked to just one substance. Each single substance becomes more than one once extended.
- Arguments for existence of god
- Ontological argument: Existence vs Essence, God is the greatest thing imaginable, it is greater to exist than not to exist, God exists
- Cosmological Argument: Every finite has a cause and a meaning, a casual loop can't exist, a casual chain can't be an infinite length, a cause and an effect must exist
- The Argument for Eternal Truths: Statements can be either true or false, those that are always true (such as numbers) are the eternal truths
- The Argument for Pre-Established Harmony: All clocks keep time with each other without interacting, if there's no interaction how do the others know they exist?
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