Excerpt from A History of Modern Philosophy, Vol. 1: From the Renaissance to the PresentThe General Character and the Main Divisions of Modern Philosophy. Modern Philosophy, as distin guished from Medimval Philosophy, is occupied with the immanent and concrete, rather than the transcendent and abstract, with the natural and the human, rather than the supernatural and the superhuman. As distinguished from Ancient Philosophy, it is occupied with the subject, rather than with the object with thought, rather than with being. It may be quite easily divided into three great periods, as follows: 1. A period predominantly of reception and appro priation (though with considerable self-assertion as against medimvalism) 2. A period of original e¿'ort very largely destructive or negative (towards previous philosophy as well as the object of thought generally) 3. A period of equal originality, and more constructive or synthetic e¿'ort. Psychologically speaking, these periods may be viewed as, respectively, periods of (receptive) sense, (analytic) under standing, and (synthetic) reason, logically, as periods of thesis, antithesis, synthesis. The first period extends from the middle of the fifteenth century to the beginning of the seventeenth, the second, from the beginning of the seven teenth century to the third quarter of the eighteenth, and the third from the third quarter of the eighteenth century, onwards.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.