Early modern philosophy Early modern philosophy Early modern philosophy (also classical modern philosophy) is a period in the history of philosophy at the beginning or overlapping with the period known as modern philosophy. The early modern period in history is roughly 1500–1789, but the label "early modern philosophy" is usually used to refer to a more specific period of time. In the narrowest sense, the term is used to refer principally to the philosophy of the 17th century, posited to have begun with René Descartes; to have included Thomas Hobbes, Blaise Pascal, Baruch Spinoza; and to have ended with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and
Thomas Baldwin (philosopher) Thomas Baldwin (philosopher) Thomas R. Baldwin (born 1947) is a British philosopher and has been a professor of philosophy at the University of York since 1995. He has written generally on 20th century Analytic and Continental philosophy, as well as bioethics, the philosophy of language and of mind, particularly with regard to G. E. Moore, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Bertrand Russell. Baldwin studied at Cambridge University, gaining an MA and a PhD before lecturing at Makerere University and Cambridge. He was editor of "Mind" from 2005 to 2015 and has served as the president of the Aristotelian Society (2006-07) and as