From Descartes to Nietzsche:The Birth of Science and the Death of God
How do we know anything at all? In this introductory course, Lee Braver traces four of the most influential philosophers in Western history, showing how each built on and challenged the ideas of those who came before.
We begin with René Descartes, who in 1619 decided to tear down everything he believed and rebuild human knowledge from scratch. By doubting every possible thing he could doubt, he arrived at one unshakable certainty: that he existed as a thinking being. From that tiny foundation, he constructed a vision of science built on measurement and mathematical precision that launched the modern world.
Then David Hume arrives to dismantle what Descartes built. Hume argues that our deepest convictions about cause and effect have no rational basis at all. We expect the sun to rise tomorrow not because logic demands it, but because our brains are wired by habit and repetition, much like a dog trained to salivate at the sound of a bell. If Hume is right, the foundations of science rest on assumption rather than reason.
Immanuel Kant refuses to accept that conclusion. He proposes a revolutionary idea: our minds do not passively receive the world but actively shape it, the way a black-and-white television turns every image gray. This means we can have genuine scientific knowledge, but only of the world as it appears to us, never of reality as it is in itself. Science is saved, but metaphysics is forever out of reach.
Finally, Friedrich Nietzsche confronts what centuries of scientific progress have left behind. Science gave us longer lives and extraordinary power, but it also drained the universe of meaning and purpose. Nietzsche argues that we have always been the creators of our own values, and now that the old frameworks have collapsed, we face a choice: despair at the loss, or embrace our creative freedom to forge new ways of living.
Across seven lectures, this course traces a single unfolding argument about truth, knowledge, meaning, and human freedom.
You can watch the lectures below, browse the chapter index, or watch on YouTube.
Lee Braver
Lee Braver is a Courtesy Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Florida, where he was a Professor of Philosophy from 2012-2025. His main interests are in continental philosophy (especially Heidegger and Foucault), Wittgenstein, realism, and dialogue between continental and analytic philosophy.
He is the author of A Thing of This World: A History of Continental Anti-Realism, Heidegger’s Later Writings: A Reader’s Guide, Groundless Grounds: A Study of Wittgenstein and Heidegger, Heidegger: Thinking of Being, editor of Division III of Being and Time: Heidegger’s Unanswered Question of Being and Introducing Ethics: A Beginner’s Guide Through Six Major Thinkers, as well as a number of articles and book chapters.
