Modernity Phase I -- The Undermining of the Authority of Consciousness

1580-1581 -- Montaigne travels in Italy. "Next to travel, the best education is history, for it is travel into the past."

1533 -- Birth of Montaigne

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (28 February 1533 – 13 September 1592), = was one of the most significant philosophers of the French Renaissance, known for popularizing the essay as a literary genre. His work is noted for its merging of casual anecdotes and autobiography with intellectual insight. His massive volume Essais contains some of the most influential essays ever written.

1580 -- Essais, Montaigne (1533-192)

Montaigne wrote in a rather crafted rhetoric designed to intrigue and involve the reader, sometimes appearing to move in a stream-of-thought from topic to topic and at other times employing a structured style that gives more emphasis to the didactic nature of his work.

1599-1601 -- Hamlet (protagonist questions his own sanity, and his sanity is questioned by others)

1605 -- Don Quixote, Part I (further undermining of the authority of consciousness)

1615 -- Don Quixote, Part II (further undermining of the authority of consciousness)

1616 -- Death of Shakespeare
1616 -- Death of Cervantes

1618 -- The 3rd Defenestration of Prague
1618-1648 -- The Thirty Years War

It resulted in the deaths of over 8 million people, including 20% of the German population, making it one of the most destructive conflicts in human history. Initially a war between the Protestant and Catholic states in the Holy Roman Empire, it gradually developed into a general European war involving most of the great powers. The war became less about religion and more of a continuation of the French–Habsburg rivalry for European political pre-eminence and a Habsburg attempt to rebuild the imperial authority in Germany.

(Mind-body split)

1620 -- Novum Organum, Bacon

1624 -- Founding of New Amsterdam

1637 -- La Géométrie, Descartes

The work was the first to propose the idea of uniting algebra and geometry into a single subject. For its time this was ground-breaking. It contributed to the mathematical ideas of Leibniz and Newton and was thus important in the development of calculus.

1637 -- Discourse on the Method, Descartes ("Cogito ergo sum")

1638 -- Two New Sciences, Galileo

1641 -- Meditations on First Philosophy) Descartes


1649 -- The Passions of the Soul Descartes. 



1650  -- Death of Descartes