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Introduction to Early Modern Philosophy - YBAJ241

Title:	Introduction to Early Modern Philosophy
Guaranteed by:	Programme Liberal Arts and Humanities (24-SHVAJ)
Faculty:	Faculty of Humanities
Actual:	from 2023
Semester:	summer
E-Credits:	4
Examination process:	summer s.:
Hours per week, examination:	summer s.:0/2, MC [HT]
Capacity:	unknown / 20 (20)
Min. number of students:	unlimited
4EU+:	no
Virtual mobility / capacity:	no
Key competences:
State of the course:	taught
Language:	English
Teaching methods:	full-time
Teaching methods:	full-time
Level:
Note:	course can be enrolled in outside the study plan enabled for web enrollment

Guarantor:	prof. Burt Crowell Hopkins
Teacher(s):	prof. Burt Crowell Hopkins
Class:	Courses available to incoming students

Examination dates SS schedule Noticeboard

Annotation -

Last update: Bc. Veronika Kučabová (03.01.2024)

The course will investigate the topics, problems, and doctrines of selected philosophers from the 17th and 18th centuries. Original writings of Descartes, Hume, and Leibniz will be studied

Aim of the course -

Last update: Bc. Veronika Kučabová (03.01.2024)

The objectives of the course are (1) to provide an introduction to the shift-

relative to ancient Greek and Mediaeval philosophy-in philosophical problems that emerge with

so-called philosophical “modernity” and (2) to formulate the major issues in modern thought

that have become the target of the various so-called “post-modern” critiques of modernity.

Teaching methods -

Last update: Bc. Veronika Kučabová (03.01.2024)

The practicum of critically reading eminent philosophical texts will comprise the point

of departure for the study of the course’s objectives. On the basis of this practicum, the issues

treated by the texts will be formulated and the students’ encounter with them facilitated. Class

format will be Seminar.

Syllabus -

Last update: Bc. Veronika Kučabová (03.01.2024)

Part 1: Methodological Certainty in Philosophy

(Week 1-Week 4)

Meditations on First Philosophy by René Descartes

Part 2: Primacy of Sense Experience in All Knowledge

(Week 5-Week 8)

Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume

Part 3: Symbolic Cognition and the Quest for Universal Science

(Week 9-Week 12)

Meditations on Knowledge, Truth and Ideas, On the Universal Characteristic, Monadology by G.W.

Leibniz

Recapitulation

(Week 13)

Course completion requirements -

Last update: Bc. Veronika Kučabová (03.01.2024)

Students will be evaluated based upon the following two distinct parameters:

(1) Participation (which includes, yet is not limited to attendance, in-class active participation). If you

are absent, please ask some of your classmates for any assignments or key discussion materials missed.

(2) A Final Oral Exam (dates and additional info will be provided in due course)

Learning resources -

Last update: Bc. Veronika Kučabová (03.01.2024)

The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, Volume II, trans. Cottingham, Stoothoff and Murdoch; A

Treatise of Human Nature, David Hume; Leibniz: Philosophical Essays, trans. Ariew and Garber