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How did the Enlightenment shift philosophical attention toward the human mind?
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Western philosophy
Painting of scholastic philosopher St. Thomas of Aquinas by Joseph Aubert, 1900.
The Enlightenment marked a significant shift in Western philosophy by moving away from the late Renaissance's focus on the metaphysical constitution of the physical world toward an epistemological and empiricist study of the human mind.1
Philosophers sought to apply the methods of natural science to human nature, aiming to understand the origins of reason and the structure of the mind that perceives the world. Key developments in this shift included:21
- Empiricism and the Tabula Rasa: Thinkers like John Locke argued that the mind begins as a tabula rasa, or blank slate, with all knowledge derived from sensory experience rather than innate ideas.31
- Psychological Perspective: David Hume furthered this by analyzing the mind’s "associating qualities," suggesting that our understanding of cause and effect is a product of mental habit rather than an intrinsic feature of nature.2
- The Kantian Revolution: Immanuel Kant later transformed this focus by arguing that objects of experience must conform to the mind’s own a priori structures, such as space and time, effectively placing the mind at the center of the conditions for all possible knowledge.4