Modern Philosophy

Modern Philosophy is Philosophy done of course during the “Modern” era of Europe, Britain, and North America. It is not a specific doctrine or school, and while it should not be confused with Modernism in Art or Modernity in History in a literal way, they are all clearly facets of the same era. Although there are certain assumptions in distinguishing Modern Philosophy from Renaissance Philosophy and Contemporary Philosophy, such assumptions are fading, and we shall group them together below for simplicity.

To many, the Modern period in Philosophy spans from the beginning of the Seventeenth Century until the present, but then, the Contemporary period overlaps, spanning from the Twentieth Century to the present, yet is no longer “Contemporary”, as dominated by the Philosophy of the 1950s to 1970s. How much of the Renaissance period, which spanned from the Fourteenth to the Seventeenth Century, and was called “Modern” at the time, is to be included in Modern Philosophy is often a matter of dispute, and sometimes Nineteenth Century Philosophy is treated as its own period, somehow. Lastly, in many ways Philosophy has already changed into something we can call “New Philosophy”, but this could imply we are currently out of the “Modern” period altogether.

Clearly, there have been too many futile attempts to classify and package the complex History of Philosophy, along with too many definitions of “Modern” which arose out of Culture and Art. In a thousand years, or even another hundred, what will “Modern” mean if it still includes Renaissance and Enlightenment thinking? Just as clearly for us today is that we live in a highly eclectic Age.

Modern 1.0: Renaissance Philosophy

The Renaissance as a movement as well as in Philosophy was a reaching back for Classical models before Middle Ages Europe. It was the search for Naturalism over Stylism in Art, and it was the re-emergence of Mathematics as intimately related to Philosophy. The period was one of an expansion of trade with China and India, it was the dawn of the Printing Press, and it was the revival of learning. The Greek Language was again studied as early as the Thirteenth Century, and in the Fifteenth, in 1462, a “Platonic Academy” was founded in Florence by Cosimo de Medici.

The word now used for one of the most important threads of the Renaissance is “Humanism”, an increasing focus on the temporal and personal over the merely religious. Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494) wrote Oratio de Hominis Dignitate or Discourse on the Dignity of Man in 1486. Sometimes called “The Manifesto of the Renaissance”, it invoked Plato and Aristotle to argue for a conception of Human worth which spreads to Belief in the importance of encompassing all knowledge.

Nevertheless, the role of the Church in society was as powerful as ever, and it would take some time before Philosophy could emerge from the “yokes of Pastoral Power”, as Immanuel Kant would later put it. For examples, Giordano Bruno was put to death by the Church in 1600 for suggesting that the Universe is Infinite, and for embracing the Solar model of Nicolai Copernicus, while Galileo Galilei was tried for heresy and convicted in 1633, also for supporting Copernicus, but was allowed to remain on house arrest until he died. Copernicus himself had earlier died naturally in 1543 not long after his heliocentric theory was published.

Modern 2.0: Enlightenment Philosophy

By the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, the Renaissance was becoming the “Enlightenment”, the “Age of Reason”, which was a focus on the power we have to understand the World and Universe, and self-improve our condition in life. The Enlightenment movement for Rationality and Humanism was based on Freedom and Happiness, and of course, Knowledge. Enlightenment philosophers truly defined the playing field on which current philosophers still operate, in many ways.

We can perhaps date the beginning of Enlightenment Philosophy with René Descartes and his dictum “I think, therefore I am”. In the early Seventeenth Century Philosophy was still dominated by Scholasticism, written by theologians drawing upon Plato, Aristotle, and Church writings. Descartes argued that some predominant Scholastic metaphysical doctrines were meaningless or false. He proposed to begin Philosophy again from scratch in his most important work, Meditations on First Philosophy. He tried to set aside all his beliefs to determine what he knew for certain, and found he could doubt nearly every thought in his head, but he could not doubt that he he doubting. Even if deceived by an “Evil Genius”, he could not doubt that he was at least a thing that thinks.

The major figures in a new body of work in Metaphysics and Epistemology during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries followed along two famous groups. The Continental “Rationalists”, mostly in France and Germany, assumed that all Knowledge must begin from certain “Innate Ideas” in the Mind. In this line were René Descartes, of course, with Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Leibniz, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. By contrast, the British “Empiricists” held that Knowledge must begin with sensory Experience. In this line were Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume. All of these figures and others have been important and influential. To mention one is to imply the others are lesser, which is not right. This period rebooted Metaphysics and Epistemology, and the distinctive styles of these philosophers continues through the development of Modern Science and the Philosophy of Science, as well as Ethics, and Political Philosophy.

Likewise to the beginning with Descartes, we can perhaps date the pinnacle of Enlightenment Philosophy squarely with Immanuel Kant in the late Eighteenth Century, who set forth an equally ground-breaking philosophical system which unified Rationalism and Empiricism as “Transcendental Idealism”, based in Synthetic a Priori Knowledge, that is Knowledge we generate before we apply it to new experiences. His Ethics was based on what he called a “Categorical Imperative”, a Moral Law from within which directs us to act not in self-interests for for the Good of Humanity. Kant's Aesthetics were in turn rooted in a subjugation of the Self with “Sublime” experiences which take us outside ourselves, and show us our place in an overwhelmingly large Universe.

Continuing to work out and argue over the complex work of Kant became an industry all to itself which continues to this day, eventually with “Post-Kantian” and “Neo-Kantian” schools. Kant sparked a storm of philosophical work in Germany in the early Nineteenth Century known as “German Idealism”, with its characteristic theme that the World and the Mind must be understood according to the same Categories. This work is represented by J.G. Ficte, F.W.J. Shelling, and G.W.F. Hegel, among others. Hegel's students, most notably, Karl Marx, appropriated both Hegel's Philosophy of History, along with the Empirical Ethics then dominant in Britain, transforming Hegel's ideas into a materialist form and a tool for Revolution.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, Søren Kierkegaard made Philosophy a religious endeavour, giving us the phrase, a “Leap of Faith”. Arthur Schopenhauer took Idealism to the conclusion that the World was nothing but an endless interplay of images and desires, advocating Atheism and Pessimism. Kierkegaard's and Schopenhauer's ideas were then taken up and transformed by Friedrich Nietzsche, who seized upon their various dismissals of the World to proclaim “God is Dead”, rejecting systematic Philosophy, striving for a fixed Truth transcending the Individual. Nietzsche found in this created the possibility of a new kind of Freedom.

Modern 3.0: Post-Modern Philosophy

Near the turn of the Twentieth Century, and certainly thereafter, Philosophy literally exploded in several rich and challenging directions of inquiry. Many of the notions from the Post-Enlightenment were developed further by Louis Althusser, Georges Bataille, Jean-François Lyotard, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard, and many others, as their work came to incorporate Social Theory and Literary Criticism, becoming “Structuralism” and “Post-Structuralism”, another debated distinction, along with other “isms” to “Post-Modernism” and “Deconstruction”, all of which dominated “Critical Theory”. At the same time, this “Continental Philosophy” diverged to form “Phenomenology and Existentialism”, itself two lines, with German phenomenologists Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, and French Jean-Paul Sartre along with other existentialists.

Meanwhile, British Philosophy moved beyond the Post-Kant and Post-Hegel movements, as Gottlob Frege, a German who never worked in the English-speaking world, founded a tradition taken by Bertrand Russell, G.E. Moore, A.N. Whitehead, and Ludwig Wittgenstein to become known as “Analytic Philosophy”. Centered in Oxford and Cambridge, and joined by philosophers of “Logical Empiricism” emigrating from Austria and Germany such as Rudolf Carnap, this group also linked with the “Logical Positivists”, another group of scientists and philosophers in Vienna which included Carnap, Otto Neurath, and Moritz Schlick, with other logical empiricists in Berlin, Hans Reichenbach and Carl Hempel. These strands began with what became generally the Philosophy of Logic and continued through “Logical Positivism”, “Linguistic Philosophy”, and “Ordinary Language Philosophy”.

The independent and sometimes antagonistic streams during this period often corresponded with whether the philosopher in question belonged to the English-speaking world or Continental Europe, but then, almost as often, it did not. As the students of these traditions in the United States began to influence ideas from Universities, W.V.O. Quine, Donald Davidson, Saul Kripke, Daniel Dennett, Richard Rorty and many others put a uniquely American twist on “Contemporary Philosophy”.

While this dizzying array of thinkers and lines of thought, both Continental and Analytic, produced influential work, it also produced an extraordinary amount of academic navel-gazing which vastly over-complicated its own history. Virtually all of these philosophers were professional academics, and after many, many attempts by each to re-organize and re-interpret the History of Philosophy, we were left with a swirling mess of overlapping rubrics and factions, as well as whole new areas of interesting study, such as Philosophy of Logic, Philosophy of Science, and Philosophy of Language, among others.

This is why “Modern Philosophy” and “Contemporary Philosophy” are such misleading terms. Furthermore, with the so-called “Contemporary” period, we are essentially talking about Philosophy done from around the time of the first World War and into the Seventies and Eighties of the Twentieth Century, or only about 80 years. Therefore, it is perhaps more helpful to think of this period in Philosophy as “Post-Modern” in general.

Modern 4.0: The Road Ahead

Arguably, our newest Philosophy is still “Modern”. We can think of the whole span of work in Philosophy from Giordano Bruno to Jean Baudrillard as essentially one era, but it is an era we continue writing. This Modern way of philosophizing is one of questioning all tradition and assumptions, which is complete break with Medieval Philosophy, but also contrasts from Ancient Philosophy. Yet, even these constructs have exceptions. Newer philosophers today are finding complex connections to their history and heritage in unexpected places, with little need for the boundaries sought after before. Thus, New Philosophy in the Twenty-First Century may become very different from its predecessors.

Scholarship by M.R.M. Parrott

Dynamism: Life: Volume II: Biological Chemistry and Epistemology Philosophy and Science Treatise ©2001, 2010-2011 M.R.M. Parrott First Published: Jun 2011 Published by rimric press 0-9746106-5-8 | 978-0-9746106-5-8 216 Pages, Paperback & eBook, 2025 2025 Edition Extras: Afterword, Notes on the Text and Cover Art Amazon Paperback (author) Barnes & Noble Paperback (author) Waterstones Paperback (author)

Dynamism: Force: Volume I: Quantum Physics and Ontology Philosophy and Science Treatise ©2001-2004 M.R.M. Parrott First Published: Feb 05/Jun 11 Published by rimric press 0-9746106-1-5 | 978-0-9746106-1-0 204 Pages, Paperback & eBook, 2025 2025 Edition Extras: Both Prefaces, Afterword, Notes on the Text and Cover Art Amazon Paperback (author) Barnes & Noble Paperback (author) Waterstones Paperback (author)

Synthetic A Priori: Philosophical Interviews Interviews, Discussion ©1998-1999 M.R.M. Parrott First Published: 99,00,02,08,11 Published by rimric press 0-9662635-6-1 | 978-0-9662635-6-5 232 Pages, Paperback & eBook, 2025 2025 Edition Extras: Both Prefaces, Notes on the Text and Cover Art Amazon Paperback (author) Barnes & Noble Paperback (author) Waterstones Paperback (author)

The Pure Critique of Reason: Kant and Subjectivity Philosophical Monograph ©1998-1999 M.R.M. Parrott First Published: Oct 2002 Published by rimric press 0-9662635-5-3 | 978-0-9662635-5-8 148 Pages, Paperback & eBook, 2025 2025 Edition Extras: Afterword, Notes on the Text Amazon Paperback (author) Barnes & Noble Paperback (author) Waterstones Paperback (author)

The Empiricism of Subjectivity: Deleuze and Consciousness Philosophical Monograph ©1996-1997 M.R.M. Parrott First Published: Oct 2002 Published by rimric press 0-9662635-3-7 | 978-0-9662635-3-4 128 Pages, Paperback & eBook, 2025 2025 Edition Extras: Afterword Amazon Paperback (author) Barnes & Noble Paperback (author) Waterstones Paperback (author)

The Ethos of Modernity: Foucault and Enlightenment Philosophical Monograph ©1995-1996 M.R.M. Parrott First Published: May 96/Oct 02 Published by rimric press 0-9662635-2-9 | 978-0-9662635-2-7 160 Pages, Paperback & eBook, 2025 2025 Edition Extras: Afterword Amazon Paperback (author) Barnes & Noble Paperback (author) Waterstones Paperback (author)

The Generation of 'X': Philosophical Essays 1991-1995 Academic Papers ©1991-1995 M.R.M. Parrott First Published: Oct 2002 Published by rimric press 0-9662635-0-2 | 978-0-9662635-0-3 160 Pages, Paperback & eBook, 2025 2025 Edition Extras: Afterword Amazon Paperback (author) Barnes & Noble Paperback (author) Waterstones Paperback (author)