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Historical Background:

The notion " baroque" originally comes from a word, which means " irregular bead". For the art of the baroque large highly-contrasting forms were typical: The 17th century was shaped by contradictions. On the one hand the attitude of the Renaissance loving life, on the other hand world denial and religious restraint were very popular. Likewise a pompous lifestyle is typical of the baroque, at the same time you find monastery movements, which helped the believer refrain from the world. A very meaningful phrase of the baroque is " Carpe Diem ", which means: Use The Day. In many respects the baroque was shaped by vanity and foolishness, and,in addition, transitoriness .Many had thus the opinion that everything around us once dies and would decay. Also politically there were many contrasts in that time. A multiplicity of wars in Europe, among other things the Thirty-Years-War promoted a feeling of death waiting around the corner.

Gottfried Willhelm Leibnitz philosopher and mathematician in the 17th Century
 

Philosophy of the Barock:

The philosophy of the baroque is shaped by contradictory way of thinking. For some the existence was of mental nature, for other spiritual nature. Differently expressed one can define that also as a contrast between idealism and materialism. Materialism defines the philosophy, which examines everything for material originalness. Each organism, even our soul, consists of small particles and human consciousness develops by the movement of such particles, believes the materialists. These two views pull themselves by the entire history of philosophy, but in the time of the baroque they occur very clearly. Particularly the materialism was constantly encouraged by the arising natural sciences. The view of the materialism made it possible that everything is steered by unalterable regularity and thus each modification in nature with mathematical accuracy can be calculated. Thus the so-called mechanistical conception of the world develops. The mechanists saw however nevertheless no contradiction between its mechanistical conception of the world and the faith in God. Leibnitz, an important philosopher of the 17. Century, thinkas of it in addition, that the difference between everything that consists of material and everything that is made from spirit is, that the material can be divided into ever smaller sections. But the soul cannot be divided into pieces.