Period
Early modern
c. 1600 – c. 1800
The age of the new science, rationalism and empiricism, from Descartes to Kant.
Early modern philosophy grew up alongside the scientific revolution. Its central questions were about knowledge: whether it rests ultimately on reason or on experience, and how the mind relates to the world. The period is often told as a contest between rationalists such as Descartes and Spinoza and empiricists such as Locke and Hume, resolved — or reframed — by Kant.
- Traditions
- Western
Philosophers
- Francis Bacon1561–1626
- Thomas Hobbes1588–1679
- René Descartes1596–1650
- Blaise Pascal1623–1662
- Baruch Spinoza1632–1677
- John Locke1632–1704
- Nicolas Malebranche1638–1715
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz1646–1716
- George Berkeley1685–1753
- Montesquieu1689–1755
- David Hume1711–1776
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau1712–1778
- Adam Smith1723–1790
- Immanuel Kant1724–1804
- Jeremy Bentham1748–1832
- Mary Wollstonecraft1759–1797
Sources
- Anthony Kenny, A New History of Western Philosophy, vol. 3: The Rise of Modern Philosophy, Oxford University Press