Visual paradigm in early modern modern epistemology

Abstract

Abstract. The article attempts to deconstruct the rationalist narrative of the visual paradigm of knowledge in the Early Modern philosophy. The aim of this article is to reveal main aspects of visual paradigm of knowledge in the philosophical concepts of rationalist orientation in the Modern era in correlation with ocularcentrism as a process of visual information fixing in human consciousness. It is shown that along with ancient experiments, in which visual perception increases its ability to obtain knowledge about the world, attention is focused on the concept of in a number of semantic aspects. The metaphor of natural light of mind is analyzed. In the Early Modern epistemology two visual techniques of cognition - review and panorama of - are distinguished, which allow to obtain the maximum of information for further mental processing in the mind. In the context of the comparative method, it has been investigated that an important aspect of understanding of the problem of in the Modern time is the achievement of a clear and distinct vision of God's reality. But if in the Antiquity and in the Middle Ages contemplation of the reality of God was associated with spiritual purification from passions, in a situation Modern clarity of vision becomes the result of using the method, which is the process of an ordered procedure for the consideration of an idea. Research results. Visual images have a double embodiment in the Early Modern philosophy – with external, physical, and internal, metaphorical nature. The first is connected with the active attention of Early Modern thinkers to optics and physiology of vision. The second is based on truth and the ways of its achievement, which is the result of understanding of the methodological consequences of the emergence of new optics, new theories of vision, the development of optical devices, the emergence of new artistic means of expression. Conclusion . An important aspect of Early Modern theories of vision is the use of a method that arranges the process of considering ideas. In his context, becomes a metaphor for education, which became the meaning of the Enlightenment