Watch Early Modern Philosophy: Descartes and the Rationalists

2025
1 Season

Continue your study of Spinoza's Ethics by focusing on his philosophy of mind, notably his theory of emotions. Spinoza held that despite their nature, emotions are far from random or irrational. Instead, they are part of the natural order, arising from encounters with external objects or events that affect the body, which in turn affects the mind. This was a highly innovative view at the time.

Early Modern Philosophy: Descartes and the Rationalists is a series that ran for 1 seasons (12 episodes) between October 23, 2025 and on The Great Courses

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Seasons

12. Rationalism Then and Now

October 23, 2025

In this last lecture, Professor Reid asks how the thinkers presented in the course shed light on today

11. Leibniz on Morality and the Problem of Evil

October 23, 2025

In his satire Candide, Voltaire makes fun of Leibniz

10. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz on Truth and Being

October 23, 2025

A co-inventor of calculus with Isaac Newton, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz is best known as a philosopher who built a unified explanation of reality. He called his explanatory agents monads

9. Nicolas Malebranche

October 23, 2025

After reading Descartes, priest and philosopher Nicolas Malebranche broke with the medieval Scholastic view, which was inspired by Aristotle, and developed his own doctrine of occasionalism. This integrated Cartesian metaphysics with a vision of divine intervention. Although rooted in a theistic framework, Malebranche

8. Spinoza on Bondage and Freedom

October 23, 2025

Spinoza

7. Spinoza on Mind and Emotion

October 23, 2025

Continue your study of Spinoza

6. Baruch Spinoza on God and Nature

October 23, 2025

While Descartes argued that mind and body are two distinct substances, Baruch Spinoza, proposed that there is only one substance, which he identified as God or Nature. Everything else, including mind and body, are modes or expressions of this one substance. Spinoza

5. Lady Anne Conway

October 23, 2025

Descartes

4. Elisabeth of Bohemia and Cartesian Ethics

October 23, 2025

In his Discourse, Descartes outlines a provisional moral code, but the full development of his ethical system emerges through his correspondence with Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia. A gifted philosopher, she posed challenging questions that prompted him to rigorously refine his ideas. Their colloquy explored happiness, virtue, emotions, and the passions, with a strong emphasis on practical ethics.

3. Descartes

October 23, 2025

Why was Descartes so obsessed with certainty? Delve into The Discourse on the Method, which includes an intellectual autobiography. A key step was the time he spent alone in a stove-heated room, when he concluded that a single individual using reason can get closer to the truth than the aggregate of learning contained in all books. Follow the revolutionary deductions he reached with this method.

2. Ren

October 23, 2025

A pioneer of early modern philosophy, Ren

1. Philosophy at the Dawn of the Modern Age

October 23, 2025

Explore the intellectual climate in the 16th and 17th centuries, when early modern philosophy took off. What makes this philosophical movement modern? And what connects it to ancient and medieval philosophy? Professor Reid previews the thinkers covered in the course, and examines their connection to the ongoing Scientific Revolution and the concurrent Reformation that was dividing Christians.

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Where to Watch Early Modern Philosophy: Descartes and the Rationalists

Early Modern Philosophy: Descartes and the Rationalists is available for streaming on the The Great Courses website, both individual episodes and full seasons. You can also watch Early Modern Philosophy: Descartes and the Rationalists on demand at Prime Video and Amazon.