Lecture (LEC)

• COLL (CASE) A&H Breadth of Inq
• IUB GenEd A&H credit

• IUB GenEd A&H credit
• COLL (CASE) A&H Breadth of Inquiry credit

This course is a survey of early modern European philosophy, focusing on developmentsn in metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of mind. The early modern period is among the richest in the history of philosophy. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century thinkers abandoned the old, Aristotelian philosophy that had dominated the middle ages and sought to replace it with their own systematic accounts of the world and our relation to it. This shift in philosophical theorizing was precipitated by the emergence of a new, increasingly experimental approach to scientific inquiry. Early modern philosophers were deeply interested not only in questions about the natural world and its origins but also in human nature and the limits of our knowledge. The course will trace several major philosophical developments of the early modern period by studying some of its most philosophically pro- found works, by authors including René Decartes, Anne Conway, David Hume, and Émilie du Châtelet. Among the questions considered are: what is the nature of matter and space? What is the relationship between the mind and the body? How do objects causally interact with one another? What is the relationship between God and nature? Is there a mind-independent world? If there is, what can we know about it? And what justifies our belief that the future will resemble the past?