The most characteristic features of Western European philosophy of modern times. Cheat sheet: Main features of modern philosophy

The philosophy of the New Time – briefly the most important thing. We continue our acquaintance with philosophy in a short, simple presentation. In previous articles you learned about the following periods of philosophy:

So, let's turn to the philosophy of the New Time.

The 17th-18th centuries is the period to which modern philosophy belongs. This was a time when human civilization made a qualitative leap in the development of many scientific disciplines, which in turn had a huge impact on philosophy.

In the philosophy of modern times, the idea that the human mind has no limits to its power, and science has unlimited possibilities in its knowledge of the surrounding world and man, has become increasingly dominant.

Particularly characteristic of this period of development of philosophy is the tendency to explain everything from the point of view of materialism. This was due to the fact that natural science was a priority at that time and had a strong influence on all spheres of social life.

The main directions of philosophy of the New Time are empiricism and rationalism

The philosophical thought of that time was characterized by several distinct directions:

empiricism,
rationalism,
philosophy of education,
French materialism..

Is empiricism in philosophy?

Empiricism is a direction in philosophy that recognizes only experience and sensory perception in knowledge and downplays the role of theoretical generalizations.

Empiricism opposed rationalism and mysticism. Formed in English philosophy of the 17th century, led by Fr. Bacon (1561-1626), Hobbes, Locke.

Is rationalism in philosophy?

Rationalism is a direction in philosophy that recognizes only reason as the only source of knowledge, denying knowledge through experience and sensory perception.

The word "rationalism" comes from Latin word“reason” – ratio. Rationalism was formed under the leadership of Descartes (1596-1650), Leibniz, and Spinoza.

Philosophy of enlightenment of the 18th century

The philosophy of enlightenment of the 18th century was formed during the Age of Enlightenment. This was one of the important periods European history, was associated with the development of philosophical, scientific and social thought. It was based on freethinking and rationalism.

The Age of Enlightenment began in England under the influence of the scientific revolution of the 17th century and spread to France, Germany and Russia. Its representatives are Voltaire, Montesquieu, Diderot, Rousseau.

18th century French materialism

French materialism of the 18th century is a trend in philosophy that revived Epicureanism and interest in the philosophy of antiquity.

Formed in France in the 17th and 18th centuries. Its representatives are Lametra, Holbach, Helvetius.

Problems of New Time Philosophy

The problem of being and substance occupied a special place in the philosophy of modern times; in the opinion of philosophers, it was here that the whole essence of the world and the ability to control it lay.

Substance and its properties were the focus of attention of philosophers, since, in their opinion, the task of philosophy was to make man a ruler natural forces. Therefore, the basic task was to study substance as the basic category of all things.

As a result, several trends in the study of substance have emerged in philosophy. The first of them was founded by Bacon, who believed that substance is the basis of all things. The second was founded by Locke. He, in turn, tried to comprehend substance from the point of view of epistemology.

Locke believed that concepts are based on outside world, and the objects that we see have only quantitative features, and differ from each other only in primary qualities. In his opinion, matter does not have any variety. Objects differ only in their figures, rest and movement.

Hume sharply criticized the idea that substance has any material basis. In his opinion, there is only the “idea” of substance, and it was under this that he subsumed the association of perception.

Representatives of this direction made a significant breakthrough in the study and further development of the theory of knowledge, where the main subjects of study were the problems scientific approach in philosophy and methods for man to study the reality around him, as well as the connection between external and inner experience combined with the problems of obtaining true knowledge.

As a result of the study of all the above problems, the main directions in the philosophy of the New Age arose - empiricism and rationalism. The founder of empiricism was F. Bacon. Rationalism was represented by Descartes and Spinoza.

The main ideas of modern philosophy

The main ideas were the principles of the independently reflective subject and methodical doubt. It also developed the method of intellectual intuition and the inductive-empirical method of understanding the world.

In addition, methods of jurisprudence and ways to protect the freedom of people were developed. The main goal was the intention to embody the ideas of freedom from religion, to build a vision of the world based on scientific knowledge.

The main ideas of the philosophy of the New Time:

Books on New Age philosophy

V. Hösle. Geniuses of modern philosophy
P.D.Shashkevich. Empiricism and rationalism in modern philosophy

Philosophy of the New Time. VIDEO LECTURE

Summary

I hope the article " The philosophy of the New Time - briefly the most important thing" turned out to be useful for you. We can say that the philosophy of the New Time has become significant driving force in the development of all human civilization, prepared the basis for improving the philosophical scientific paradigm and substantiated the methods of rational knowledge.

The following article is devoted to the topic “German classical philosophy”.

I wish everyonean unquenchable thirst for knowledge of yourself and the world around you, inspiration in all your affairs!

2. The problem of truth in philosophy

3. Russian philosophy about the historical identity of Russia. P.Ya. Chaadaev about the fate of Russia

Bibliography

1. Philosophy of modern times: distinctive features. Dispute between sensualists (F. Bacon, T. Hobbes, D. Locke) and rationalists (R. Descartes, B. Spinoza, V. G. Leibniz)

The most important distinguishing feature The philosophy of the New Age is an innovation in comparison with scholasticism. It should be especially emphasized that the first philosophers of the modern era were students of neo-scholastics. However, with all the strength of their minds and souls they sought to revise, test the truth and strength of the inherited knowledge. F. Bacon's criticism of "idols" and R. Descartes' method of doubt in this sense are not just intellectual inventions, but features of the eras: old knowledge was revised, solid rational foundations were found for a new title. The search for rationally justified and provable truths of philosophy, comparable to the truths of science, is another feature of the philosophy of the New Age.

One of the most famous philosophers of modern times is the rationalist Rene Descartes. Descartes' methodology is that sciences and philosophies should be combined into unified system. The thinker likens their unity to a powerful tree, the roots of which are metaphysics, the trunk is physics and the branches are mechanics, medicine, ethics. Metaphysics (or first philosophy) is the foundation of systematic knowledge; it is crowned with ethics. This is the general architectural design of the building of science and philosophy proposed by Descartes. The origins and objectives of methodological doubt, justified by Descartes, are as follows. All knowledge, including that about the truth of which there is a long-standing and strong agreement (which especially applies to mathematical truths), is subject to the test of doubt. Moreover, theological judgments about God and religion are no exception. According to Descartes, it is necessary - according at least, temporarily - to leave aside judgments about those objects and wholes, the existence of which at least someone on earth can doubt, resorting to one or another rational arguments and grounds. The meaning of Descartes' methodological doubt: Doubt should not be self-directed and limitless. Its result should be a clear and obvious primary truth, a special statement: it will talk about something whose existence can no longer be doubted. Doubt, Descartes explains, must be made decisive, consistent and universal. His goal is by no means private, secondary knowledge. As a result, doubts and - paradoxically, despite doubts - must line up, and in a strictly justified sequence, undoubted, generally valid principles of knowledge about nature and man. Descartes' metaphysical system is a doctrine of the world as the unity of two substances: extended and thinking, which is the basis of dualism. Descartes moves on to the question of the existence of the material world, deepening the ideas obtained from external reality. That the existence of the material world is possible follows from the fact that it is the object of geometric proofs based on the idea of extension (extensa), especially since consciousness does not echo but preserves it. In addition, we exhibit an ability that is not reducible to reason - the ability of imagination and feeling.

The Englishman John Locke opposed the Cartesian concept of the innateness of clear thoughts. He, like Descartes, adhered to the concept reasonable person. According to Locke, it is necessary to clearly and clearly show how a person comes to his ideas. Descartes does not explain this, but simply states that we have ideas that are self-evident in their truth.

Locke argues this way: the very first thing a person receives is sensations. Thanks to sensations, a person develops simple ideas external experience, fixed in judgments like: this object is of such and such a color, of such and such a length. But there are also complex ideas, namely: ideas of objects; relationship ideas; ideas-concepts (general concepts).

An example of the idea of an object is, for example, the idea of a given, specific person. Such an idea results from the simple addition of initial ideas directly evoked by sensations.

An example of the idea of a relationship is the idea of motherhood, obtained as a result of comparison, juxtaposition of the idea of a parent and a child.

Example general concept is the concept of "person". To obtain the concept of "man", it is necessary to collect all the ideas about individuals, discard unequal simple ideas (this means that we abstract from them), then the remaining ideas will make up the concept of “man”. The definition of the concept “man” indicates only the ideas inherent in each person.

Locke is a sensualist, i.e. he believes that any knowledge can be isolated from sensations and feelings through the operations described above. Figuratively speaking, before turning to sensations, the human mind is a blank slate, no imprints, no traces.

The debate about ideas stretches throughout the entire history of the development of philosophy; we still have to return to it more than once. If sensualists (Bacon, Hobbes, Locke) derive knowledge from feelings, then rationalists (Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz) emphasize the priorities of thinking.

If Descartes is a representative of rationalism in new philosophy and puts forward knowledge through reason as the most reliable, then the English philosopher Francis Bacon is the founder of another direction, namely empiricism, which requires proceeding from experience. To gain true knowledge of nature, it is necessary, according to Bacon, to radically change scientific methods of research. In the Middle Ages, and even in antiquity, science, says Bacon, used mainly the deductive method, with the help of which thought moves from general obvious provisions (axioms) to particular conclusions. This method, according to Bacon, is not effective; it is not suitable for understanding nature. Every knowledge and every invention must be based on experience, i.e. must move from the study of isolated facts to general provisions. This method is called inductive.

It is not easy for a person to achieve such true, objective knowledge, according to the philosophers of the 17th century; a person is subject to delusions, the source of which is the characteristics of the cognizing subject himself. If we do not find means to eliminate these subjective hindrances, which F. Bacon called “idols” or “ghosts”, and liberation from which is the subject of the critical work of the philosopher and scientist. “Idols” are various kinds of prejudices or predispositions with which the human consciousness is burdened. Teleological consideration of nature was in the 17th century. the main obstacle to the new natural science, and therefore turned out to be the subject of the most severe criticism from the leading thinkers of this era. Science must discover the mechanical causality of nature, and therefore pose to nature not the question “for what?”, but the question “why?”

Benedict Spinoza, a famous philosopher from Holland, was born into the family of a Jewish merchant. For his bold views he was excommunicated from the synagogue. Fleeing persecution by fanatics, he lived in the village and made a living by grinding lenses. He created his own powerful system and adhered to monistic views. Main works: "Theological-Political Treatise", "Ethics". Died in the city of Rijnsburg (Holland).

Spinoza's metaphysics can be defined as a holistic doctrine that should philosophically represent the unity of the world, and it was developed in his treatise “Ethics”. “Ethics” includes a broadly understood philosophical metaphysics that tells about nature, substance, God, about man - his body and soul, feelings and mind, as well as about ethical and moral problems themselves. But it does not come down to ethics in the narrow sense. To understand this work of Spinoza, as well as a number of his other works, one should take into account exactly how philosophizing unfolds in them. Philosophical teaching, which considers the diversity of the phenomena of the world from the point of view of a single basis (substance) of everything that exists - monism asserts that the basis of everything that exists is one beginning - substance. In other words, Spinoza decisively opposes the dualism of Descartes or any other possible dualism with the thesis of a single, and absolute, divine substance - nature, which is the basis of monism.

The doctrine of man, according to Spinoza, should help people discover such a “human nature” that is characteristic of all people. Spinoza seeks to direct all sciences, from mechanics, medicine to moral philosophy and the teaching of raising children, towards the fulfillment of a noble goal, “namely, that we come to the highest human perfection.” This requires more than just science. It is necessary, according to Spinoza, “to form such a society as is desirable, so that as many as possible, as easily and surely as possible, come to this.” So, in Spinoza, philosophy, thanks to the doctrine of man, is concentrated around the good of man, his moral renewal and is closely connected with the change of society on humanistic principles.

According to Spinoza, there are three types of knowledge: the first kind of knowledge is sensory. The second type of knowledge is rational knowledge. “The foundations of reason (ratio) are concepts.”

It is a matter of ratio (reason) and intellectus (intellect, reason in highest value words). Samples of such knowledge, i.e. operating with true, adequate concepts, Spinoza, following the example of Descartes, considers mathematics and logic.

And yet intuition, the third type of knowledge, is placed even higher than purely rational knowledge.

Philosophers of the New Age criticized mythological ideas, calling them “opinion” as opposed to “knowledge,” and so now there is criticism of medieval, and often Renaissance consciousness, and that is why the problem of prejudices and misconceptions is so acute again.

Main features of modern philosophy

The new era, which began in the 17th century, became an era of approval and gradual victory in Western Europe capitalism, as a new mode of production, era rapid development science and technology. Under the influence of such exact sciences as mechanics and mathematics, mechanism became established in philosophy. Within the framework of this type of worldview, nature was viewed as a huge mechanism, and man as an proactive and active worker.

The main theme of modern philosophy was the theme of knowledge. Two major movements emerged: empiricism and rationalism, which interpreted sources and nature differently human knowledge.

Supporters of empiricism (Bacon, Hobbes, Locke) argued that the main source of reliable knowledge about the world is human sensations and experience. This position is most thoroughly presented in the works of Bacon. Bacon was a supporter of empirical methods of knowledge (observation, experiment). He considered philosophy to be an experimental science based on observation, and its subject should be the world, including the person himself. Supporters of empiricism called for relying in everything on the data of experience and human practice.

Proponents of rationalism believed that the main source of reliable knowledge is knowledge (Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz). The founder of rationalism is Descartes, the author of the expression “question everything.” He believed that in everything one should rely not on faith, but on reliable conclusions, and nothing should be accepted as the final truth.

Along with a positive assessment of the possibilities of knowledge, philosophical agnosticism, which denied the possibility of human knowledge of the world, was also revived in the 17th century. He showed himself in the works of Berkeley and Hume, who believed that man knows only the world of phenomena, but is not able to penetrate into the depths of things, to achieve knowledge of the laws of the surrounding nature.

The views of Spinoza, who argued that nature is the cause of itself and all the processes occurring in it, had a pantheistic orientation. God does not stand above nature, but is her internal cause. Knowledge is achieved by reason and it is the primary condition for free human activity. The German philosopher Leibniz emphasized the spiritual nature of the world. The basis of the universe are monads, as units of being, giving the world diversity and harmony.

In the 17th century, the “legal” worldview became widespread. Within its framework, the theory of “social contract” (Hobbes, Locke) developed. She explained the origin of the state as a voluntary agreement of people in the name of their own safety. This worldview professed the idea of natural human rights to freedom and property. The legal worldview expressed the sentiments of the young bourgeoisie, as a class formed in modern times.

The French Enlightenment (Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau) made a special contribution to the development of social teachings of the New Age in the 18th century, which ideologically prepared the French Revolution of 1789 - 1794. They perceived the church as a symbol of ignorance and obscurantism, a brake on the development of society, so Voltaire’s motto: “Crush the reptile!” became the slogan of the era, predetermining the demands for the separation of church and state. According to the Enlightenment, social progress is possible only with the help of reason, law, science and education. Man is a natural social being and is capable of endless development and improvement of his activities. But private property makes people unequal, gives rise to envy and enmity between them, therefore, a new society must be created on the basis of social equality and justice. The Enlightenmentists took a position of historical optimism, and their ideal was a republic as a form of democracy.

A significant contribution to the doctrine of the nature and essence of man, the ways of his upbringing, was made by the French Materialists of the 18th century: Diderot, Helvetius, Holbach. They believed that man is a product of his environment. Therefore, to change people's morals, it is necessary to change the circumstances of their lives. This idea of the Enlightenment was the source of the emergence of Marxist philosophy.

Bibliography

To prepare this work, materials from the site were used istina.rin.ru/

Main features of modern philosophy

The new era, which began in the 17th century, became the era of the establishment and gradual victory of capitalism in Western Europe as a new mode of production, an era of rapid development of science and technology. Under the influence of such exact sciences as mechanics and mathematics, mechanism became established in philosophy. Within the framework of this type of worldview, nature was viewed as a huge mechanism, and man as an proactive and active worker.

The main theme of modern philosophy was the theme of knowledge. Two major movements emerged: empiricism and rationalism, which interpreted the sources and nature of human knowledge in different ways.

Supporters of empiricism (Bacon, Hobbes, Locke) argued that the main source of reliable knowledge about the world is human sensations and experience. This position is most thoroughly presented in the works of Bacon. Bacon was a supporter of empirical methods of knowledge (observation, experiment). He considered philosophy to be an experimental science based on observation, and its subject should be the surrounding world, including man himself. Supporters of empiricism called for relying in everything on the data of experience and human practice.

The views of Spinoza, who argued that nature is the cause of itself and all the processes occurring in it, had a pantheistic orientation. God is not above nature, but is its internal cause. Knowledge is achieved by reason and it is the primary condition for free human activity. The German philosopher Leibniz emphasized the spiritual nature of the world. The basis of the universe are monads, as units of being, giving the world diversity and harmony.

Bibliography

To prepare this work, materials were used from the site http://istina.rin.ru/

The 17th century opens the next page after the Renaissance in the history of the development of philosophical thought, called “philosophy of the New Age.” Modern times are an era that covers the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries in human history. Conditionally the beginning New history The English bourgeois revolution of 1640 is considered to be the beginning of a new period - the era of bourgeois relations or industrial civilization. The era is called New because it was in the 17th century. new historical realities have emerged.

The philosophy of the New Age continued the ideas created during the Renaissance. But if the philosophy of the Renaissance was only an opposition to scholasticism, then the philosophy of the New Age is already a programmatic expression of a new worldview, in which main goal is a person. If the Renaissance asserted: “man is free and equal to God“, then in the 17th century this slogan begins to sound like this: “man is a small link in the great mechanism of nature and must live according to its laws.”

The philosophy of modern times turns to the study of the nature of the material world. The focus of her attention is nature as a substance, the process of its cognition. Philosophy is proclaimed as a science designed to establish the truth. A characteristic feature of the philosophy of the New Age is faith in the mind of man, who cognizes and changes nature.

Modern times are a period of philosophical reflection second scientific revolution.

The first scientific revolution occurred around the 5th century. BC. V Ancient Greece. Its result is the formation of the first scientific picture of the world (which can be called ancient, or ancient, or geocentric, or pantheistic, or Aristotelian) and the formation of a rationalistic worldview, which gave rise to philosophy as a pre-science. This picture of the world, with minor changes made to it as science progressed, existed for approximately two thousand years. The Renaissance and, especially, the New Age is a time of grandiose change from the ancient scientific picture of the world to new ideas that led to the 16th-17th centuries. to a new scientific revolution, the result of which was the emergence of the second scientific picture of the world in the history of mankind. When we talk about science, then we're talking about, first of all, about natural science, that is, about the sciences that study nature (astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, etc.). The second scientific picture of the world is often called classical natural science. Indeed, in ancient times there was no natural science in the full sense of the word, since there were no separate sciences (they were all replaced by philosophy). In modern times, these sciences appeared, which means that natural science appeared, which quickly achieved great success and laid a solid foundation for all subsequent scientific knowledge. It is called classical because it is the first, basic, original, exemplary, reference.

The most important in the scientific picture of the world are astronomical and physical concepts, because they paint a complete image of the universe and cover the entire Universe with their attention. The main feature of the first, or ancient, scientific picture of the world was Ptolemy's geocentrism, where in the center there is a stationary spherical Earth, and all the planets and stars move around it.

The second scientific picture of the world was marked by the discovery of Copernicus at the beginning of the 16th century, who made an unusually bold assumption for his time that the Earth is not the stationary center of the world, but one of the planets, which, together with others, revolves around the real stationary center of the universe - the Sun, therefore his theory came to be called heliocentrism. The Copernican theory dealt a crushing blow to medieval religious ideas. After all, they, following Ptolemy, painted the Earth as the motionless center of the universe. And, in addition, it was believed that hell, where sinners suffer after death, is located underground, and paradise, where the righteous are blissful, is in heaven, that is, hell and paradise are located at opposite ends of the universe. Copernicus turned out that the Earth moves on its own in the sky around the Sun, which means that hell, which is underground, is located in the sky, next to paradise, which cannot be the case according to religious ideas. Copernicus' revolution marked new era in the development of science, was the beginning of a global change in scientific ideas, the starting point of the second scientific revolution, and, accordingly, a new worldview.

Important feature The first or ancient scientific picture of the world was pantheism, that is, the idea of the universe as a huge living and intelligent organism, similar to man, only much superior to him in its temporal and spatial scale. Everything in the world is reasonable, expedient and harmonious, the ancients believed. The universe is permeated by a certain spiritual force, which makes everything around beautiful and orderly.

The science of modern times has approved a different view of the world, according to which it is not a living and intelligent organism, but a grandiose, inanimate and unreasonable mechanism. And the harmony, orderliness and harmony of the universe are explained by the same thing as the harmony and harmony of any mechanism: the precise fit of all its parts to each other, precise dimensions, correct calculation, competent design and impeccable operation. Any mechanism consists of elements between which there are constant forces that obey certain laws. These bodies, forces and unchanging laws make the mechanism orderly and harmonious. You just need to discover the mechanical laws of interaction between bodies and explain everything using these natural laws. These laws should be discovered and investigated by a special science - mechanics, which became one of the main ones in classical natural science.

The most outstanding representative of mechanics and, in general, of the second scientific picture of the world was Isaac Newton, and if the first scientific picture of the world is often called Aristotelian, then the second is called Newtonian. He formulated three laws of mechanics, which are classical, still form its basis, and are studied in school course physics. Since the main thing in explaining the world was its establishment mechanical laws, and they are expressed and written mathematically, then the natural sciences of the New Age began to speak in the language of mathematics. And if in antiquity the role of all sciences, as a rule, was played by philosophy, then in modern times this role began to be played by natural science: physics, chemistry, biology, etc.

The idea that replaced ancient pantheism, according to which the universe is a grandiose mechanism, is called mechanism.

These circumstances had a significant impact on the development of philosophy, identified its key problems and ways to solve them. Understanding the surrounding world in order to increase power over nature is the main task of the new science and philosophy.

In the second half of the 17th and XVIII centuries The basic philosophy of the Enlightenment took shape. The historical and cultural era of Enlightenment, which began in the 18th century, is associated with a well-known reorientation of the philosophical thought of the New Age from nature to man and the social conditions of his life. Enlightenment is an ideological program of a broad socio-political movement that advocated the improvement of man and society on the basis of reason and success in the development of science and technology. This movement became most widespread in the second half XVIII century in France. The main provisions of the educational program are as follows:

a) the doctrine of ignorance and ignorance as main reason and the source of human troubles and misfortunes, which lead to the fact that “man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains.” The most terrible social ulcer was considered to be socio-economic inequality, which can be eliminated in the only way - by educating the broad masses (education should leave the walls of scientific laboratories and university classrooms and become the property of the bulk of the population);

b) rationalism, the essence of which can be conveyed by the formula “the laws of nature are the laws of reason.” True, in their ideas, the enlighteners do not go from reason to nature, but on the contrary, they believe that man receives reason from nature and only then independently masters it;

c) the belief that every person has “natural rights”, the main of which are the rights to life, freedom and equality in relation to each other;

d) belief in the origin of society not by the “will of God”, but as a result of a “social contract” - a voluntary, equal union of people among themselves, which reflects the general reasonable order of things in the world in relation to man and society.

This leads to the main peculiarities philosophy of the New Age.

1. C Vetsky character. Philosophy solves ideological problems regardless of religious doctrine and without reference to church authorities.

2. Deism. basis philosophical worldview becomes a doctrine according to which God created the material world, gave it laws, and then does not interfere with natural history his events.

3. Search for a method of scientific knowledge. The strategic task is now considered to be the study of nature and the use of the acquired knowledge for practical human purposes.

4. Strengthening materialistic tendencies. The orientation of philosophers towards natural science led to the study of the foundations of nature.

5. Metaphysicality of philosophy. Most developed science During this period there was mechanics - a field of knowledge in which the problem of development was not considered. This became one of the main reasons for the refusal of philosophy from the dialectical ideas of the Renaissance, which was expressed:

a) in mechanism - an attitude according to which any phenomena can be explained using the laws of mechanics;

b) in the idea of the possibility of complete and exhaustive knowledge of the world, obtaining the final truth.

6. Rationalism. Establishment of the cult of the human mind, capable of both revealing any secrets of the world and the best way organize social life, which for a long time determined the development of all Western European philosophy.

7. Professionalization of philosophy. In modern times, philosophy turns into a special sphere human activity, which has a special terminological language, is studied by a separate group of people united in a professional community with their own periodicals, and becomes a mandatory subject of teaching and research within universities.

In the philosophy of modern times the following can be distinguished: periods.

1. Early (beginning of XVII V.). New trends in Renaissance philosophy are intensifying. Natural philosophical and scientific issues come to the fore. Main representatives: F. Bacon, T. Hobbes, R. Descartes.

2. Scientific revolution (XVII century). Strictly speaking, it begins a little earlier - in late XVI century, but a comprehensive transformation of traditional ideas about the world and man and the formation of a new (first scientific) picture of the world occurs only towards the end of the 17th century. Representatives: B. Spinoza, J. Locke, G. Leibniz, J. Berkeley, D. Hume.

3. Enlightenment(XVIII century). The ideology of the Enlightenment, an original cultural and philosophical phenomenon of the New Age, is spreading in Europe. Representatives: C. Montesquieu, F.M. Voltaire, J.-J. Rousseau, M.J.A. Condorcet, D. Diderot, P. Holbach, K.A. Helvetius, J.O. de La Mettrie et al.