The Baroque

Discourse on Method by Rene Descartes published in 1637

Spinoza
Pearl of irregular shape.
Irregularity means contrast. Tensions between Irreconcilable
contrast
Pompous and Flamboyant forms of self-expression
monastic
movement which turns away from the world.
carpe diem - seize the day
memento mori - remember that you must die.
Vanity and affectation
Concerned about the ephemeral nature of things.
It was an age of political conflict.
Thirty years war (1618 1648)
War against Catholics and Protestants
It is also a time of great class differences
a) Rich People
French Aristocracy
Court of Versailles
Bourgeois
b) Poor People
proletariat
Theater
Symbol of life
The play is just an illusion
Pride comes before the fall
It presents a human frailty
Shakespeare 1600
As You Like It:
All the worlds a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They
have their exits and entrances; And one man in his time plays many
parts.
Macbeth:
Lifes but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more; its a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.
We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is
rounded with a sleep
Calderon de la Barca
Qu es la vida? Un frenes.
Qu es la vida? Una ilusin,
una sombra, una ficcin,
y el mayor bien es pequeo.
Que toda la vida es sueo,
y los sueos, sueos son!
o Buhay ay Isang Panaginip
translated by Mr. Tebang
Ano ang buhay? Isang diliryo. Ano ang buhay? Isang ilusyon,isang anino
at punong-puno ng kasinungalingan. Ang biyayang malaki ay maliit din.
Ang buhay ay isa lamang pangarap. At ang pangarap ay isa lamang
pangarap.
Old Arabian Tales
A Thousand and One Nights
PHILOSOPHY?
1. Idealism
A view that stresses the central role of the ideal or the spiritual in the
interpretation of experience. It may hold that the world or reality exists
essentially as spirit or consciousness, that abstractions and laws are more
fundamental in reality than sensory things, or, at least, that whatever
exists is known in dimensions that are chiefly mentalthrough and as
ideas.
2. Materialism
It is also called physicalism, in philosophy, the view that all facts
(including facts about the human mind and will and the course of human
history) are causally dependent upon physical processes, or even
reducible to them.
3. Thomas Hobbes
o born April 5, 1588, Westport, Wiltshire, England died December
4, 1679, Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire,

o English philosopher, scientist, and historian, best known for his

political philosophy that he articulated in his masterpiece
Leviathan (1651).
o He defended materialism, the view that only material things are
real. His scientific writings present all observed phenomena as the
effects of matter in motion.
o He believed that all phenomena, including man and animals,
consists exclusively of particles of matter.
4. Newtons mechanistic world view
o Everything was governed by the same unbreakable laws or by the
same mechanism.
o It is possible in principle to calculate every natural change with
mathematical precision.
o He imagined that the world is one big machine.
5. Jullien Offroy de la Mettrie in his book Lhome machine
o born Dec. 25, 1709, Saint-Malo died Nov. 11, 1751, Berlin
o French physician and philosopher whose Materialistic
interpretation of psychic phenomena laid the groundwork for
future developments of behaviourism and
o played an important

o part in the history of modern Materialism.

6. Pierre-Simon Marquis de Laplace
o born March 23, 1749, Beaumount-en-Auge, Normandy, France
died March 5, 1827, Paris,
o French mathematician, astronomer, and physicist who is best
known for his investigations into the stability of the solar system
7. Determinism
o If an intelligence in a given time had known the position of all
particles of matter, nothing will be unknown, and both future and
past would lie open their eyes. It is written in the stars.
o The difference between material and spiritual is, material can be
broken up into smaller and smaller bits, but the soul cannot even
be divided into two.