Like the enlightenment, modernity is an umbrella term that is useful for what it covers but also in danger of excluding thinkers or ideas that might deserve the label. A.C. Grayling’s new book, The Age of Genius, devotes itself in part to answer the question of what exactly we mean when speaking of modern philosophy. Most people believe that Descartes is the first modern philosopher because they think he is. But the issue isn’t so arbitrary:
![Two ancient Greeks walk past a pile of drunk philosophers by what looks like the Acropolis. (Conde Nast TagID: cncartoons024458.jpg) [Photo via Conde Nast]](/core/files/2017/04/modernphilosopher.jpeg)
Two ancient Greeks walk past a pile of drunk philosophers by what looks like the Acropolis. (Conde Nast TagID: cncartoons024458.jpg) [Photo via Conde Nast]
But plausible claims to the title could also be made on behalf of Thomas Hobbes, Francis Bacon or (several decades earlier) Michel de Montaigne, all of whom made original and significant, but very different, contributions to what A. C. Grayling refers to as the modern mind. On the other hand, we might want to save the founders honour for some figure later than Descartes, someone whose thought seems more familiar to us, less influenced by Scholasticism and less informed by theological assumptions and ostensible religious motivations say, John Locke, with his radically empiricist theory of knowledge; or Baruch Spinoza, the most iconoclastic thinker of his time; or, even later, the sceptical atheist David Hume.
The reviewer, Steven Nadler, is nettled that Graylingomits proper treatment of Baruch Spinoza while gabbling about less relevant philosophers. The debate goes on, which one may
Read in full at the Times Literary Supplement
