The philosophy of the 17th and 18th Century forms the basis of all modern thinking. It starts with an examination of the substance of our consciousness in order to unfold the system of our insights on this basis. The rationalism of Descartes and Spinoza, Leibniz and Wolff, as well as empiricism from Bacon and Hobbes to Locke, Berkeley and Hume, belong under this category. Both mindsets are combined in the Enlightenment. Kant, above all, completes and transcends this period with his criticism of reason.