PHIL 356 Rationalists of the 17th and 18th Centuries

This course undertakes a close examination of four major Rationalist philosophers, Descartes, Malebranche, Spinoza, and Leibniz. Each of these thinkers made extravagant claims for reason and produced systems of metaphysics that claimed certainty on issues such as the existence of God, the concept of substance, the immortality of the soul, and the nature of the world.