17th Century Philosophy

17th Century Western philosophy is conventionally seen as being dominated by the coming of symbolic mathematics and rationalism to philosophy, many of the most noted philosophers were also mathematicians. Also called "The Age of Reason", some date the beginning of "modern philosophy" from this period, rather than from the Renaissance.

This article is a part of the History of Philosophy series.

Overview

Pre-Socratic philosophy

Ancient philosophy

Medieval philosophy

Renaissance Philosophy

17th century philosophy

18th century philosophy

19th Century Philosophy

20th Century Philosophy

Postmodern philosophy

Contemporary philosophy

Eastern philosophy

The main theme of the period is the rise of the Cartesian method in philosophy, and the subsequent decline of the Scholastic method. It is often characterised in terms of the conflict between the competing schools of Rationalism as represented by Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza, and Empiricism, represented by Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley and Hume, though this may be a simplification.