Lesson 2 - Major Thinkers of the Enlightenment

Question 1

What are the problems related to the philosophy of René Descartes?

Answer 1

1. ) Autonomous Epistemology - knowledge independent of divine revelation (set thinkers on the road to relativism and skepticism)
2. ) Impossible to deduce contingent historical truths from necessary rational truths
   - Can’t get historical truths from sense experiences.
   - Rationalism has limits on what it can establish

Question 2

Explain the metaphysics of David Hume.

Answer 2

1. ) Radical Empiricism
2. ) Hume’s Fork
   - - Truths of Reason (conceptual) - all cats are animals
   - - Matters of Fact (empirical) - the cat is on the mat
   - Matters of Fact are the only truths that are rational
3. ) Metaphysics are things beyond the universe
   - - Since we can’t know them by truths of reason or matters of fact then they are non-sensical

Question 3

What was Immanuel Kant’s Copernican Revoluiton?

Answer 3

1. ) The human mind is active in knowledge, not just passive
2. ) Our minds actively shape what our observations are
3. ) The empirical world is constructed by the activity of our minds
4. ) Divided Reality
   - - Noumenal World - world as it is (unknowable)
   - - Phenomenal World - world as we experience it (knowable)

Question 4

What was Kant’s interpretation of Christianity?

Answer 4

1. ) Religious truths are postualted rather than known
   - - Moral postures
2. ) Christianity is concerned more with moral rather than metaphysical
3. ) View of religion is legalistic and moralistic
   - - truths of Christianity are built on morality, morality is built on reason
4. ) Reinforces that revelation is subject to reason
5. ) God is banished to a realm beyond rational knowledge (neumanal world)
6. ) Christianity is now a private matter

Question 5

Discuss G. W. F. Hegel’s response to Immanuel Kant.

Answer 5

1. ) Do away with the noumenal world altogether
   - - It is unknowable and not real, therefore it is irrevelant
2. ) Hegel = everything is a product of the human mind; Rational is the real, and the real is the rational; reality is defined by the human mind