ntroduction to the Philosophy of the Human Person

a mechanism (Johnston 2006). Human emotions, even the loftiest, they

delighted in explaining by very simple and fundamental natural passions.
In these days of the 17th century, fear is out of place; you may even doubt
if you will. Descartes, a representative thinker of the century, begins his
reflection by doubting everything.

As for the method of escaping from doubt, which consists in the use
of reason and in the study of the facts of experience, nothing else serves.
For philosophy in this age of the 17th century, the supernatural has only a
secondary interest, if it has any interest at all.
(2) The 18th century has its defining movement, too. The characteristic
tendencies of the period are such that it is frequently called the Age
of Empiricism:
John Locke, Hume, and Berkeley were the main exponents of this
general point of view.

George Berkeley John Locke David Hume

The second age of modern philosophy turned curiously back to the study of the
wondrous inner world of humanity's soul. To deify nature is not enough. Human being is
the most interesting in nature, and he is not yet deified. He may be a part of nature's
mechanism, or he may not; still, if he be a mechanism, he is that most paradoxical of things,
a knowing mechanism. His knowledge itself, what it is, how it comes about, whence he
gets it, how it grows, what it signifies, how it can be defended against skepticism, what it
implies, both as to moral truth and as to theoretical truth—these problems are foremost in
the interests of the second period of modern thought.
Gradually, attention is turned more and more from the outer world to the mind of
human being. The first period had been one of naturalism; the second is one of a sort of a
new humanism (Johnston 2006). Reflection is n_ow more an inner study, an analysis of the
mind, than an examination of the business of physical science. Human reason is still
the trusted

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