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
Peter Osborne (philosopher) Peter Osborne (philosopher) Peter Osborne (born 1958) is Professor of Modern European Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP), Kingston University, London. He is also an editor of the journal "Radical Philosophy". Osborne graduated from the University of Bristol in 1979, with a Bachelor of Science in philosophy and economics, went on to obtain a Master of Arts in Philosophy at the University of Sussex in 1980, and stayed on to earn a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1988 Osborne, along with CRMEP colleague Howard Caygill, was a student of Gillian Rose. Osborne returned