EMPIRICISM, SKEPTICISM & MATERIALISM in Fall 2020 (PL2037)

In this course we shall examine the birth of empiricism in polemics over the origins of knowledge and political authority, the limits of human reason, and the possibility of philosophy itself finding a way out of the seventeenth century's religious wars and tyranny towards the creation of free and tolerant societies of rational individuals. Readings from Descartes, Locke, Berkeley and Hume.