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
Modern philosophy for a fixed truth transcending the individual. Nietzsche found in this not grounds for pessimism, but the possibility of a new kind of freedom. 19th-century British philosophy came increasingly to be dominated by strands of neo-Hegelian thought, and as a reaction against this, figures such as Bertrand Russell and George Edward Moore began moving in the direction of analytic philosophy, which was essentially an updating of traditional empiricism to accommodate the new developments in logic of the German mathematician Gottlob Frege. Renaissance humanism emphasized the value of human beings (see Oration on the Dignity of Man) and opposed dogma and