Benedict (Baruch) Spinoza. Rationalism and pantheism. God is the only substance in the world
Benedict (Baruch) Spinoza is one of the greatest representatives of rationalism. He was born in Amsterdam to a Jewish family in 1632. He received a religious education under the guidance of rabbis. After the death of his father, he spent some time in the commercial affairs that he inherited, without showing much interest in these activities. He did not express a desire to become a rabbi. Thanks to Van den Enden, who taught him Latin, Spinoza made acquaintances among Christian scholars (Meyer, Oldenburg, etc.). Spinoza’s way of life aroused suspicions among the leaders of the community that he showed insufficient respect for the religion and customs of his ancestors. In 1656, they subjected Spinoza to the “great excommunication”, he was abandoned by his relatives. Forced to leave Amsterdam, Spinoza lived for a long time in small settlements (Rijnburg, Voorburg), later moving to The Hague. He earned his living by grinding optical glass. Limiting himself to the bare necessities, he devoted his life to philosophical research. At the same time, Spinoza continued to maintain contact with his learned friends (mostly through correspondence).
Blaise Pascal. Pascal’s law. The Great Fluid Equilibrium Experiment
Blaise Pascal was born in 1623 in Clermont-Ferrand to the royal councilor of the financial and tax district of Auvergne, Etienne Pascal, and the daughter of a local judge, Antoinette Begon, who died when her son was only two and a half years old. Pascal’s family belonged to the judicial “nobility of the robe”. Pascal’s father, a widely educated intellectual, a gifted mathematician and a talented educator (in the spirit of Montaigne’s humanistic pedagogy), after the death of his wife devoted his life to his children (there were two more daughters in the family), who received an excellent home education (ancient Greek and Latin, grammar, mathematics, history, geography, etc.). From 1631 the family lived in Paris. Blaise grew up as a very sickly and brilliantly gifted child, who later demonstrated his gift first of all in mathematics and physics, then in invention, then in polemical writings, theology and, finally, in philosophy. Everywhere his genius left a bright and unique mark.
Thomas Hobbes. About the Citizen and Leviathan
Thomas Hobbes was born in 1588 in Malmesbury to a local priest. After graduating from a provincial school, he managed to enter Oxford University and then get a job as a tutor in a family of English aristocrats. This allowed him not only to move in aristocratic circles, but also to travel with his students around France and Italy, to become acquainted with the latest achievements of European science. Hobbes assessed the English Revolution as a grave social disaster and, with the onset of revolutionary unrest, moved to Paris, where he lived for about 11 years (1640-1651). In France, he developed his political philosophy and set it out initially in his work “On the Citizen” (1642), and later in his main work “Leviathan, or the Matter, Form, and Power of the State, Ecclesiastical and Civil” (1651). When Cromwell invited him back, Hobbes returned to England, but he never found common ground with his compatriots, who were divided into two warring camps; his works “On the Citizen” and “Leviathan” were included in the index of prohibited books. Nevertheless, the thinker continued to develop his philosophical concept. Over the course of several years, he published two works – “On the Body” (1655) and “On Man” (1658), which, together with the previously written doctrine “on the citizen”, formed three parts of “The Principles of Philosophy”, presenting his views as a complete system. Hobbes died in 1679.
Rene Descartes. Founder of rationalism in philosophy. All sciences are interconnected
René Descartes is the founder of rationalism as a special direction in the philosophy of the New Age, one of the greatest mathematicians and physicists of his era. He was born in 1596 in the city of La Haye (province of Touraine) into a noble family. He studied at the Jesuit college of La Flèche, then at the University of Poitiers. Scholastic teaching did not satisfy the young Descartes: the knowledge he received seemed insufficient to him, and in large part, questionable. “That is why, as soon as age allowed me to get out of submission to my teachers, I completely abandoned book studies and decided to seek only that science that I could find in myself or in the great book of the world” (1.1, 255). He goes to Holland and enters military service there.
Francis Bacon. The mind left to its own devices has little power
The philosophy of the New Age is an era of independence of reason, its liberation from the authorities of the past. In many ways, this liberation was due to the split in Western European Christianity in the 16th century, which created a “neutral” territory of pure rationality, which the best minds began to explore. The desire for independence was also present in the Renaissance, but the philosophers of that time still looked back to ancient sources. Modern European thinkers rely on their own thinking, reinforced by empirical knowledge of nature. But the liberated mind needed internal discipline. Otherwise, it could not become an effective tool for obtaining truths that transform the environment of human existence and turn the world into a comfortable habitat for rational beings. It is no coincidence that the problem of method came to the forefront of philosophical research in the New Age. But it soon became clear that it would not be possible to develop unambiguous methodological recipes.