René Descartes FATHER OF MODERN WESTERN PHILOSOPHY De scartes refused to accept the authority of previous philosophers. He frequently set his views apart from those of his predecessors. In the opening section of the Les passions de l'âm e. Many elements of his philosophy have precedents in late Aristotelianism , the revived Stoicism of the 16th century, or in earlier philosophers like Augustine . In his natural philosophy , he differed from the schools on two major points: first, he rejected the splitting of corporeal substance into matter and form; second, he rejected any appeal to final ends , divine or natural, in explaining natural phenomena. In his theology, he insists on the absolute freedom of God's act of creation. Descartes laid the foundation for 17th-century continental rationalism , later advocated by Baruch Spinoza and Gottfried Leibniz , and opposed by the empiricist school of thought consisting of Hobbes , Locke , Berkeley , a...
