section_path: Culture/Literature and philosophy/Philosophy
section_name: Philosophy
paragraph_text: Philosophy
  
  Medieval philosophy was dominated by Scholasticism until the emergence of Humanism in the Renaissance. Modern philosophy began in France in the 17th century with the philosophy of René Descartes, Blaise Pascal and Nicolas Malebranche. Descartes was the first Western philosopher since ancient times to attempt to build a philosophical system from the ground up rather than building on the work of predecessors. France in the 18th century saw major philosophical contributions from Voltaire who came to embody the Enlightenment and Jean-Jacques Rousseau whose work highly influenced the French Revolution. French philosophers made major contributions to the field in the 20th century including the existentialist works of Simone de Beauvoir, Camus, and Sartre. Other influential contributions during this time include the moral and political works of Simone Weil, contributions to structuralism including from Claude Lévi-Strauss and the post-structuralist works by Michel Foucault.