Modern philosophy will determine the scope of one's use of "modern philosophy." How much of Renaissance intellectual history is part of modern philosophy is disputed: the Early Renaissance is often considered less modern and more medieval compared to the later High Renaissance. By the 17th and 18th centuries the major figures in philosophy of mind, epistemology, and metaphysics were roughly divided into two main groups. The "Rationalists," mostly in France and Germany, argued all knowledge must begin from certain "innate ideas" in the mind. Major rationalists were Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Leibniz, and Nicolas Malebranche. The "Empiricists," by contrast, held that knowledge
Philosophy of the Unconscious of the scales, and his 'World-process' in the other. There are some who believe they weigh equally; for in each scale there is an evil word—and a good joke." Hartmann's work has been seen as preparing the way for Freud's later theory of the unconscious. Freud consulted "Philosophy of the Unconscious" while writing "The Interpretation of Dreams" (1899), in which he called Hartmann the firmest opponent of the theory that dreams are wish fulfillments. The philosopher Hans Vaihinger was influenced by "Philosophy of the Unconscious", relating in his "The Philosophy of 'As if'" (1911) how it led him to Schopenhauer.