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 A Philosophical Map

 

These two main schools of epistemological thought...

 

The Rationalist Philosophers

René Descartes 1596-1650
Benedictus de Spinosa  1632-1677
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz 1646-1716

 
and

 

The Empiricist Philosophers

John Locke 1561-1620
George Berkeley  1685-1753
David Hume 1711-1776

... and the tensions between these two schools of thought
converge in the work of

(1724-1804)

especially in his book

The Critique of Pure Reason (1781)

 

In that book, the central question is...

Is it even possible to know what's Really Real?

When later Philosophers ask that question they end up giving different answers to it.

The main possible answers to that Big Question
include these:

 No, it's not possible to know what's really real

Yes, it is possible,
and what's really real is

Yes, it is possible,
and what's really real is

Yes, it is possible,
and what's really real is

Nihilism

Matter

Spirit

Will

 

 Karl Marx

G W F Hegel

Arthur Schopenhauer

       

Descendants of Schopenhauer's thought include...

 Existentialism

Friedrich Nietzsche

Soren Kierkegaard

Jean-Paul Sartre

Albert Camus

etc

 Depth Psychology

Sigmund Freud

Alfred Adler

Carl Jung

Viktor Frankl

Abraham Maslow

etc