17th-century Western philosophy is conventionally seen as being dominated by the coming of symbolic mathematics and rationalism to philosophy, many of the most noted philosophers were also mathematicians. Also called "The Age of Reason", some date the beginning of "modern philosophy" from this period, rather than from the Renaissance.
[Someone moved the page titled 18th-century philosophy to 17th-century philosophy, apparently with the result that this strange mix of 17th- and 18th-century philosophers appears on this page. This needs work!]
This article is a part of the History of Philosophy series.
The main theme of the period is the rise of the Cartesian method in philosophy, and the subsequent decline of the Scholastic method. It is often characterised in terms of the conflict between the competing schools of Rationalism as represented by Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza, and Empiricism, represented by Hobbes, Locke, and Montesquieu ,Berkeley and Hume, though this may be a simplification.
Rejecting religious dogma and superstition, thinkers of the Age of Reason applied a new emphasis on empiricism and rationality to their thought. The emergence of modern science -- the "scientific method" -- created a foundation for a new approach to human experience and understanding.
At the end of the era, European humanity had a new conception of existence in an ordered universe. Science and religion conflicted but were not mutually exclusive.
In the 18thcentury the philosophies of The Enlightenment would begin to have dramatic effect, and the landmark works of philosophers such as Immanuel Kant and Jean-Jacques Rousseau would have an electrifying effect on a new generation of thinkers.
In the late 18thcentury a movement known as Romanticism would seek to combine the formal rationality of the past, with a greater and more immediate emotional and organic sense of the world.
The last third of the 18thcentury produced a host of ideas and works which would both systematize previous philosophy, and present a deep challenge to the basis of how philosophy had been systematized.
The eighteenth century also saw a continued rise of empirical philosophical ideas, and their application to political economy, government and sciences such as physics, chemistry and biology.
The boundaries of the Enlightenment cover much of the seventeenth century as well, though others term the previous era "The Age of Reason." For the present purposes, these two eras are split; however, it is equally acceptable to think of them conjoined as one long period.
A variety of 20th century movements, including liberalism and neo-classicism traced their intellectual heritage back to the Enlightenment, and away from the purported emotionalism of the 19th century.
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