Abstract:

If the debate of human nature is the question of "what man is", this debate does not belong only to modern philosophy. “What am I?” Descartes made this debate evident in modern philosophy by asking the question. Descartes, who considers himself as a "thinking being", has inherited certain acceptance from his previous thinkers and has inherited it to his subsequent. This study aims to reveal these concepts of modern philosophy and human understanding of Enlightenment. These acknowledgements that see man as a "intelligent being" and advise that "he can only approach God when he hears the word of the mind" are theological. The acceptance of Christian theology with a general design of the human nature represents the origin of modern philosophy and Illumination on the "difference between mind and faith". This study explores what these theological origins are and how much modern Western thought can exceed this origin. This study is based on the acceptance that the relationship between "mind" and "credo" is actually a measure that determines the horizon of the discussion of "human nature" and is trying to promote this basis. Therefore, the discourse of the relationship between mind and belief is traced into a discourse of human nature. In the study, the symbolic thinkers of modern Western thought are only studied in this context. The discussion, which includes the titles of Cartezyen philosophy, English experimentalism, French Enlightenment and German Enlightenment, aims to show how modern Western thought deals with the "human problem" in the framework of a "general design" depending on its theological origin.