Written on September 2, 2024

There are certain moments in history that can be said to have changed the way a large group of people thought. And there is no better example of this than the Enlightenment, the intellectual movement in Europe that roughly coincided with the eighteenth century and from which most of our modern ideas come.

The origins of this movement can be found in France, with the philosopher René Descartes. Via the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza the movement came to Germany, which eventually led to one of the founders of modern philosophy, the German philosopher Immanuel Kant.

Although the terms phenomenon and noumenon were popularized among modern audiences by Kant, Descartes had already formulated a distinction between the two.

Descartes is known as the philosopher who popularized the dualism of mind and body. In short, he created a distinction between the mind or consciousness and the physical brain. A distinction that is widespread today and which proves the importance and historical impact of this philosopher.

But he was one of the first philosophers to write down and popularize this idea. Most people used to think there was no distinction between normal and paranormal. In the centuries before, people considered the physical and the spiritual as part of the same world.

With this distinction Descartes created two worlds. The first, a purely mechanical world. This is the world we experience and live in. The second, a spiritual world. This is the world that we cannot see and that is hidden beyond the veil.

The most important and influential philosopher before the Enlightenment was Aristotle. Aristotle saw animals as beings that were initiated by fantasy, sensations and desire. According to him, they have souls.

Descartes, however, saw these movements as purely mechanical. Descartes even went so far as to speak of human machines, rather than human beings. These are all thoughts that would go unnoticed if someone were to say them today.

Instead of us all being part of this beautiful magical world, the world became mechanical and thus, for better or for worse, gave way to our modern societies.