Book contents
- The Eclipse of Classical Thought in China and the West
- The Eclipse of Classical Thought in China and the West
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- 1 The Dilemma
- Part I Two Ancient Traditions
- Part II The Formation of Two Constitutions
- Part III The Eclipse of Classical Thought
- 10 Neo-Confucianism
- 11 The Path to Orthodoxy
- 12 The Rise and Fall of Western Rationalism
- 13 The Search for Alternatives
- 14 Conclusion
- Appendix The Encounter with the Abrahamic Religions
- Index
12 - The Rise and Fall of Western Rationalism
from Part III - The Eclipse of Classical Thought
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 July 2022
- The Eclipse of Classical Thought in China and the West
- The Eclipse of Classical Thought in China and the West
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- 1 The Dilemma
- Part I Two Ancient Traditions
- Part II The Formation of Two Constitutions
- Part III The Eclipse of Classical Thought
- 10 Neo-Confucianism
- 11 The Path to Orthodoxy
- 12 The Rise and Fall of Western Rationalism
- 13 The Search for Alternatives
- 14 Conclusion
- Appendix The Encounter with the Abrahamic Religions
- Index
Summary
Rationalism flourished in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As John Finnis and Germain Grisez noted,1 its metaphysics can be traced to the theologian Francisco Suárez (1548–1617). He was one of the last of the late scholastics.
Suárez, unlike Aristotle and Aquinas, believed that that the concepts of all things that are or could be are timeless and invariable. Consequently, so are the precepts of natural law. Moral knowledge is knowledge of these precepts. Moral action is conformity to them. In reaching those conclusions, he broke with the way human nature had been understood in the Aristotelian tradition. In these respects, he was followed by two of the most influential rationalist philosophers, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) and Christian Wolff (1679–1754).
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- Information
- The Eclipse of Classical Thought in China and The West , pp. 252 - 272Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022