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{{Short description|Philosophy in recent times}}
{{for|the book by Roger Scruton|Modern Philosophy: An Introduction and Survey}}

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'''Modern philosophy''' is [[philosophy]] developed in the [[Modern history|modern era]] and associated with [[modernity]]. It is not a specific doctrine or school (and thus should not be confused with ''[[Modernism]]''), although certain assumptions are common to much of it, which helps to distinguish it from earlier philosophy.<ref>{{Cite book | last = Baird | first = Forrest E. |author2=Walter Kaufmann | title = From Plato to Derrida | publisher = Pearson Prentice Hall | date = 2008 | location = Upper Saddle River, New Jersey | isbn = 978-0-13-158591-1 }}</ref>

The 17th and early 20th centuries roughly mark the beginning and the end of modern philosophy. How much of the [[Renaissance]] should be included is a matter of dispute, as is whether modernity ended in the 20th century and has been replaced by [[postmodernity]]. How one answers these questions will determine the scope of one's use of the term "modern philosophy."

==Modern Western philosophy==
{{See also|Early modern philosophy|Late modern philosophy}}
How much of Renaissance intellectual history is part of modern philosophy is disputed:<ref>[[Brian Leiter]] (ed.), ''The Future for Philosophy'', Oxford University Press, 2006, p. 44 n. 2.</ref> The [[15th century philosophy|Early Renaissance]] is often considered less modern and more medieval compared to the later [[16th-century philosophy|High Renaissance]]. Later, by the 17th and 18th centuries, the major figures in [[philosophy of mind]], [[epistemology]], and [[metaphysics]] were roughly divided into two main groups. The "[[Rationalism|Rationalists]]," mostly in France and Germany, argued all knowledge must begin from certain "[[Innatism|innate ideas]]" in the mind. Major rationalists were [[Descartes]], [[Baruch Spinoza]], [[Gottfried Leibniz]], and [[Nicolas Malebranche]]. The "[[Empiricism|Empiricists]]," by contrast, held that knowledge must begin with sensory experience. Major figures in this line of thought are [[John Locke]], [[George Berkeley]], and [[David Hume]] (These are retrospective categories, for which Kant is largely responsible). Ethics and political philosophy are usually not subsumed under these categories, though all these philosophers worked in [[ethics]], in their own distinctive styles. Other important figures in [[political philosophy]] include [[Thomas Hobbes]] and [[Jean-Jacques Rousseau]].

In the late 18th century [[Immanuel Kant]] set forth a groundbreaking philosophical system that claimed to bring unity to rationalism and empiricism. Whether or not he was right, he did not entirely succeed in ending philosophical disputes. Kant sparked a storm of philosophical work in Germany in the early nineteenth century, beginning with [[German idealism]]. The characteristic theme of idealism was that the world and the mind equally must be understood according to the same categories; it culminated in the work of [[Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel]], who among many other things said in the Preface to his ''[[Elements of the Philosophy of Right]]'' that "The real is rational; the rational is real."

Hegel's work was carried in many directions by his followers and critics. [[Karl Marx]] appropriated both Hegel's [[philosophy of history]] and the empirical ethics dominant in Britain, transforming Hegel's ideas into a strictly materialist form, setting the grounds for the development of a [[social science|science of society]]. [[Søren Kierkegaard]], in contrast, dismissed all [[systematic philosophy]] as an inadequate guide to life and meaning. For Kierkegaard, life is meant to be lived, not a mystery to be solved. [[Arthur Schopenhauer]] took idealism to the conclusion that the world was nothing but the futile endless interplay of images and desires, and advocated [[atheism]] and [[pessimism]]. Schopenhauer's ideas were taken up and transformed by [[Nietzsche]], who seized upon their various dismissals of the world to proclaim "[[God is dead]]" and to reject all systematic philosophy and all striving for a fixed truth transcending the individual. Nietzsche found this not grounds for pessimism, but the possibility of a new kind of freedom.

Nineteenth-century British philosophy came increasingly to be dominated by strands of [[British Idealism]], which incorporated neo-Hegelian and German Idealist thought. As a reaction to this, philosophers such as [[Bertrand Russell]] and [[George Edward Moore]] began moving in the direction of [[analytic philosophy]], which was essentially an updating of traditional empiricism to accommodate the new developments in [[logic]] of the German mathematician [[Gottlob Frege]].

===Renaissance philosophy===
[[Renaissance humanism]] emphasized the value of human beings (see [[Oration on the Dignity of Man]]) and opposed [[dogma]] and [[scholasticism]]. This new interest in human activities led to the development of [[political science]] with [[The Prince]] of [[Niccolò Machiavelli]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Niccolo-Machiavelli|title=Niccolo Machiavelli {{!}} Biography, Books, Philosophy, & Facts|website=Encyclopedia Britannica|language=en|access-date=2019-05-30}}</ref> Humanists differed from Medieval scholars also because they saw the natural world as mathematically ordered and pluralistic, instead of thinking of it in terms of purposes and goals. Renaissance philosophy is perhaps best explained by two propositions made by [[Leonardo da Vinci]] in his notebooks:
*All of our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions 
*There is no certainty where one can neither apply any of the mathematical sciences nor any of those which are based upon the mathematical sciences.
In a similar way, [[Galileo Galilei]] based his [[scientific method]] on experiments but also [[mathematical physics|developed mathematical methods for application to problems in physics]]. These two ways to conceive human knowledge formed the background for the principle of [[Empiricism]] and [[Rationalism]] respectively.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/Western-philosophy/Renaissance-philosophy|title = Western philosophy - Renaissance philosophy}}</ref>

List of Renaissance philosophers:
* [[Pico della Mirandola]]
* [[Nicolas of Cusa]]
* [[Giordano Bruno]]
* [[Galileo Galilei]]
* [[Niccolò Machiavelli]]
* [[Michel de Montaigne]]
* [[Francisco Suárez]]

===Rationalism===
{{Main|Rationalism}}
Modern philosophy traditionally begins with [[René Descartes]] and his aphorism "[[Cogito ergo sum|I think, therefore I am]]". In the early 17th century, the bulk of philosophy was dominated by [[Scholasticism]], written by theologians and drawing upon [[Plato]], [[Aristotle]], and early Church writings. Descartes argued that many predominant Scholastic metaphysical doctrines were meaningless or false. In short, he proposed to begin philosophy from scratch. In his most important work, ''[[Meditations on First Philosophy]]'', he attempts just this, over six brief essays. He tries to set aside as much as he possibly can of all his beliefs, to determine what if anything he knows for ''certain''. He finds that he can doubt nearly everything: the reality of physical objects, [[God]], his memories, history, science, even mathematics, but he cannot doubt that he is, in fact, doubting. He knows what he is thinking about, even if it is not true, and he knows that he is there thinking about it. From this basis, he builds his knowledge back up again. He finds that some of the ideas he has could not have originated from him alone, but only from God; he proves that God exists. He then demonstrates that God would not allow him to be systematically deceived about everything; in essence, he vindicates ordinary methods of science and reasoning, as fallible but not false.

List of rationalist philosophers:
* [[Christian Wolff (philosopher)|Christian Wolff]]
* [[René Descartes]]
* [[Baruch Spinoza]]
* [[Gottfried Leibniz]]

===Empiricism===
{{Main|Empiricism}}
Empiricism is a [[theory of knowledge]] that, in contrast to other theories of knowledge, such as rationalism, [[idealism]], and [[historicism]], asserts that knowledge comes (only or primarily) via sensory [[experience]].  Rationalism asserts instead that knowledge comes (also) from pure thinking. Both empiricism and rationalism are individualist theories of knowledge, whereas historicism is a [[social epistemology]]. While historicism also acknowledges the role of experience, it differs from empiricism by assuming that sensory data cannot be understood without considering the historical and cultural circumstances in which observations are made. Empiricism should be distinguished from empirical research, because even adherents of epistemologies other than empiricism generally agree that research should be empirical. 

Empiricism is first and foremost characterized by the ideal to let observational data "speak for themselves", while the competing views oppose this ideal. The term empiricism should thus not just be understood in relation to how this term has been used in the history of philosophy. It should also be constructed in a way that makes it possible to distinguish empiricism from other epistemological positions in contemporary science and scholarship. In other words, empiricism as a concept has to be constructed along with other concepts, which together make it possible to make important discriminations between different ideals underlying contemporary science.

Empiricism is one of several competing views that predominate in the study of human knowledge, known as epistemology. Empiricism emphasizes the role of [[experience]] and [[evidence]], especially [[sensory perception]], in the formation of ideas, over the notion of innate ideas or [[tradition]]<ref>{{Cite book| last = Baird | first = Forrest E. |author2=Walter Kaufmann | title = From Plato to Derrida | publisher = Pearson Prentice Hall | year = 2008 | location = Upper Saddle River, New Jersey | isbn = 978-0-13-158591-1 }}</ref> in contrast to, for example, rationalism which relies upon reason and can incorporate innate knowledge.

List of empiricist philosophers:
* [[Francis Bacon]]
* [[John Locke]]
* [[George Berkeley]]
* [[David Hume]]

===Political philosophy===
{{Main|Political philosophy}}

Political philosophy is the study of such topics as [[politics]], [[liberty]], [[justice]], [[property]], [[rights]], [[law]], and the enforcement of a [[legal code]] by [[authority]]: their nature and purpose; what (if anything) makes a [[The purpose of government|government legitimate]]; what rights and freedoms (if any) it should protect and how and why it should do so; what duties (if any) citizens owe to a legitimate government; and when (if ever) it may be legitimately overthrown. In a [[vernacular]] sense, the term "political philosophy" often refers to a general view, or specific ethic, political belief, or attitude, about [[politics]] that does not necessarily belong to the technical discipline of [[philosophy]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Hampton |first=Jean  |title=Political philosophy |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-sHkdq5qhFwC&pg=PR13 |page=xiii |year=1997 |isbn=9780813308586}} [[Charles Blattberg]], who defines politics as "responding to conflict with dialogue," suggests that political philosophies offer philosophical accounts of that dialogue. See his {{cite journal | title= Political Philosophies and Political Ideologies| year=2009| ssrn=1755117| last1=Blattberg| first1=Charles}} in ''Patriotic Elaborations: Essays in Practical Philosophy'', Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2009.</ref>

List of political philosophers by country:
*United Kingdom
** [[Jeremy Bentham]]
** [[Thomas Carlyle]]
** [[Thomas Hobbes]]
** [[John Locke]]
** [[James Mill]]
** [[John Stuart Mill]]
*France
** [[Montesquieu]]
** [[Jean-Jacques Rousseau]]
** [[Voltaire]]
*Italy
** [[Cesare Beccaria]]
** [[Giambattista Vico]]
** [[Giuseppe Mazzini]]
*Germany
**[[Karl Marx]]
**[[Friedrich Engels]]

===Idealism===
{{Main|Idealism}}

Idealism refers to the group of philosophies that assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally a construct of the mind or otherwise immaterial. [[Epistemology|Epistemologically]], idealism manifests as a [[skepticism]] about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing. In a sociological sense, idealism emphasizes how human ideas—especially beliefs and values—shape society.<ref>{{cite book |title=Sociology 14th Edition |url=https://archive.org/details/sociologythediti00maci |url-access=limited |last=Macionis |first=John J. |year=2012 |publisher=Pearson |location=Boston |isbn=978-0-205-11671-3 |page=[https://archive.org/details/sociologythediti00maci/page/n119 88] }}</ref> As an [[ontology|ontological]] doctrine, idealism goes further, asserting that all entities are composed of mind or spirit.<ref name="Brittanica">Daniel Sommer Robinson, "Idealism", ''Encyclopædia Britannica'', https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/281802/idealism</ref> Idealism thus rejects [[physicalism|physicalist]] and [[dualism (philosophy of mind)|dualist]] theories that fail to ascribe priority to the mind. An extreme version of this idealism can exist in the philosophical notion of [[solipsism]].

List of idealist philosophers:
* [[Immanuel Kant]]
* [[Johann Gottlieb Fichte]]
* [[Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling]]
* [[Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel]]
* [[Arthur Schopenhauer]]
* [[T. H. Green]]
* [[Francis Herbert Bradley]]
* [[Josiah Royce]]
* [[J. M. E. McTaggart]]
* [[John Foster (philosopher)|John Foster]]

===Existentialism===
{{Main|Existentialism}}

'''Existentialism''' is generally considered to be the philosophical and cultural movement that holds that the starting point of philosophical thinking must be the individual and the experiences of the individual. Building on that, existentialists hold that [[morality|moral thinking]] and [[science|scientific thinking]] together do not suffice to understand human existence, and, therefore, a further set of categories, governed by the norm of [[Authenticity (philosophy)#Existentialism|''authenticity'']], is necessary to understand human existence.<ref>
Mullarkey, John, and Beth Lord (eds.). ''The Continuum Companion to Continental Philosophy''. London, 2009, p. 309
</ref><ref>
Stewart, Jon. ''Kierkegaard and Existentialism''. Farnham, England, 2010, p. ix
</ref><ref name=Crowell2010Stanford>{{cite encyclopedia | url=http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existentialism/ | title=Existentialism | first=Steven | last=Crowell | author-link=Steven Crowell | encyclopedia=[[Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]] |date=October 2010 |access-date=2012-04-12}}
</ref>

List of existentialist philosophers:
* [[Søren Kierkegaard]]
* [[Friedrich Nietzsche]]
* [[Jean-Paul Sartre]]
* [[Simone de Beauvoir]]
* [[Karl Jaspers]]
* [[Gabriel Marcel]]
* [[Martin Heidegger]]
* [[Alexander Solzhenitsyn]]

===Phenomenology===
{{Main|Phenomenology (philosophy)|Existential phenomenology}}
Phenomenology is the study of the structure of experience. It is a broad [[philosophical movement]] founded in the early years of the 20th century by [[Edmund Husserl]], expanded upon by a circle of his followers at the universities of [[University of Göttingen|Göttingen]] and [[Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich|Munich]] in [[Germany]]. The philosophy then spread to [[France]], the [[United States]], and elsewhere, often in contexts far removed from Husserl's early work.<ref name="Husserlhistory">{{citation
|first=Dan
|last=Zahavi
|author-link = Dan Zahavi
|title=Husserl's Phenomenology
|publisher=Stanford University Press
|place= Stanford
|year=2003
}}</ref>

List of phenomenologists:
* [[Edmund Husserl]]
* [[Martin Heidegger]]
* [[Maurice Merleau-Ponty]]
* [[Max Scheler]]

===Pragmatism===
{{Main|Pragmatism}}
'''Pragmatism''' is a philosophical tradition centered on the linking of practice and theory. It describes a process where theory is extracted from practice and applied back to practice to form what is called ''intelligent practice''.{{citation needed|date=May 2012}} Important positions characteristic of pragmatism include [[instrumentalism]], [[radical empiricism]], [[verificationism]], [[conceptualism|conceptual relativity]], and [[fallibilism]].{{citation needed|date=May 2012}}
There is general consensus among pragmatists that philosophy should take the methods and insights of modern science into account.<ref name="BiestaBurbules" />
[[Charles Sanders Peirce]] (and his [[pragmatic maxim]]) deserves most of the credit for pragmatism,<ref name="HaackLane2006">{{cite book|author1=Susan Haack|author2=Robert Edwin Lane|title=Pragmatism, old & new: selected writings|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=f-DWAAAAMAAJ|access-date=12 February 2011|date=11 April 2006|publisher=Prometheus Books|isbn=978-1-59102-359-3|pages=18–67}}</ref> along with later twentieth century contributors [[William James]] and [[John Dewey]].<ref name="BiestaBurbules">Biesta, G.J.J. & Burbules, N. (2003). ''Pragmatism and educational research''. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.</ref>

List of pragmatist philosophers:
* [[Charles Sanders Peirce]]
* [[William James]]
* [[John Dewey]]
* [[Richard Rorty]]

===Analytic philosophy===
{{Main|Analytic philosophy}}

Analytic philosophy came to dominate [[English-speaking countries]] in the 20th century. In the [[United States]], [[United Kingdom]], [[Canada]], [[Scandinavia]], [[Australia]], and [[New Zealand]], the overwhelming majority of university philosophy departments identify themselves as "analytic" departments.<ref name="Searle03P1">
"Without exception, the best philosophy departments in the United States are dominated by analytic philosophy, and among the leading philosophers in the United States, all but a tiny handful would be classified as analytic philosophers. Practitioners of types of philosophizing that are not in the analytic tradition—such as phenomenology, classical pragmatism, existentialism, or Marxism—feel it necessary to define their position in relation to analytic philosophy."
[[John Searle]] (2003) ''Contemporary Philosophy in the United States'' in N. Bunnin and E.P. Tsui-James (eds.), ''The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy'', 2nd ed., (Blackwell, 2003), p. 1.</ref> The term generally refers to a broad philosophical tradition<ref>See, e.g., Avrum Stroll, ''Twentieth-Century Analytic Philosophy'' (Columbia University Press, 2000), p. 5: "[I]t is difficult to give a precise definition of 'analytic philosophy' since it is not so much a specific doctrine as a loose concatenation of approaches to problems."  Also, see ibid., p. 7: "I think Sluga is right in saying 'it may be hopeless to try to determine the essence of analytic philosophy.'  Nearly every proposed definition has been challenged by some scholar. [...]  [W]e are dealing with a family resemblance concept."</ref><ref>See [[Hans-Johann Glock]], ''What Is Analytic Philosophy'' (Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 205: "The answer to the title question, then, is that analytic philosophy is a tradition held together ''both'' by ties of mutual influence ''and'' by family resemblances."</ref> characterized by an emphasis on clarity and argument (often achieved via modern [[formal logic]] and analysis of [[language]]) and a respect for the [[natural sciences]].<ref name="LeiterWeb">[[Brian Leiter]] (2006) webpage [https://web.archive.org/web/20061115002425/http://www.philosophicalgourmet.com/analytic.asp ''“Analytic” and “Continental” Philosophy''].
Quote on the definition: "'Analytic' philosophy today names a style of doing philosophy, not a philosophical program or a set of substantive views. Analytic philosophers, crudely speaking, aim for argumentative clarity and precision; draw freely on the tools of logic; and often identify, professionally and intellectually, more closely with the sciences and mathematics, than with the humanities."</ref><ref>H. Glock, "Was Wittgenstein an Analytic Philosopher?", ''Metaphilosophy'', 35:4 (2004), pp. 419–444.</ref><ref>Colin McGinn, ''The Making of a Philosopher: My Journey through Twentieth-Century Philosophy'' (HarperCollins, 2002), p. xi.: "analytical philosophy [is] too narrow a label, since [it] is not generally a matter of taking a word or concept and analyzing it (whatever exactly that might be).  [...]  This tradition emphasizes clarity, rigor, argument, theory, truth. It is not a tradition that aims primarily for inspiration or consolation or ideology. Nor is it particularly concerned with 'philosophy of life,' though parts of it are. This kind of philosophy is more like science than religion, more like mathematics than poetry&nbsp;– though it is neither science nor mathematics."</ref>

List of analytic philosophers:
*[[Rudolf Carnap]]
*[[Gottlob Frege]]
*[[George Edward Moore]]
*[[Bertrand Russell]]
*[[Moritz Schlick]]
*[[Ludwig Wittgenstein]]

==Modern Asian philosophy==
Various philosophical movements in Asia arose in the modern period including:

*[[New Confucianism]]
*[[Maoism]]
*[[Buddhist modernism]]
*[[Kyoto school]] 
*[[Neo-Vedanta]]

==Notes==
{{Reflist|30em}}

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