Modernity in Philosophy: Reason and Senses
Modernity: Reason and the Senses
With modern philosophy, the idea of knowledge of your understanding is a process that involves two elements: a subject who knows and an object that is known. Modern philosophy is characterized by its great concern for knowledge. Not in vain, some authors have argued that modern philosophy is epistemology. This is true. In the modern era, two currents were born that are very important in the history of philosophy and are essentially epistemological schools: on the one hand, rationalism and empiricism; on the other, at the end of the illustration, the genius Kant will close all this controversy with his work Critique of Pure Reason, in which both positions are synthesized, rationalism and empiricism, in a philosophical theory of high-rise and influence. Kant’s theory of knowledge is still in force, to a large extent, today.
Empiricism
The basic thesis of empiricism says that knowledge begins and ends with experience, from the information provided to us by the senses. The second of the great theses of empiricism is the thesis called “tabula rasa” by John Locke in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding. For empiricism, the mind is like a blank sheet on which knowledge is printed from contact with reality, i.e., the information from the senses. Later, David Hume, another of the great empiricists, distinguished between:
- Impressions: Are immediate observation of the object.
- Simple Ideas: They are copies of impressions.
- Compound Ideas: They are formed by mechanisms of association of ideas from the simple ones.
The problem of empiricism is to explain how ideas that have no correlation with reality are formed, for example, the idea of God, the soul, and others. The cause and empiricist philosophy was developed, especially in England; it is an Anglo-Saxon philosophy.
Rationalism
Without a doubt, one of the most important currents of modern philosophy. It begins with Descartes and has Spinoza and Leibniz, together with the French philosopher, as the supreme representatives. Not in vain, the philosophy of Leibniz is the summit of rationalism. For rationalism, reason is the only instrument that lets us know the world; all knowledge is rational knowledge. The senses, as stated by Descartes, are not a source of knowledge but of error. The mind has innate ideas born with all subjects, being in them in which case the real knowledge. The theory of innate ideas is fundamental to rationalism; it is a logical postulate, the so-called theory of nativism.
Immanuel Kant: The “Pure Reason”
Kant’s epistemology is, without a doubt, the pinnacle of modern philosophy. The Critique of Pure Reason is a work in which Kant develops his theory of knowledge. This is a work of great depth, difficulty, and rigor and is the leading exponent of Kantian epistemology. Kantian thought is a brilliant synthesis between rationalism and empiricism. Kant poses a conciliatory stance, according to which, supported with empirical need to know and experience with the rationalist understanding, stating that brings pure concepts, empirical meaningless in the process of knowledge. For Kant, the senses provide the material of knowledge, but it is reason that organizes a common shape for all. Thus, establishing a more complex relationship between the knower and the known object. The subject knows the reality actively involved in the process, thereby imposing mental structures on the world. Therefore, knowledge inescapably involved in the two elements: reason and the senses.