The Moderns!

Modern Philosophy began actually with Descartes(31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650 (who's name literally means "Some Maps" or "These Cards" if you took French, but reallly has the name from some land his family owned or something).

First off, Descartes rejected idiocy, which was basically the standard at the time. Of course things get more complicated then that, mainly when you're talking about the Roman Catholic Churh's monopoly on information, which meant systemized idiocy to some extent.

The Roman Catholic Church is an excellent bridge to Spinoza, but we'll get to that in a second.

The problem of Modern Philosophy that exists today, but to a lesser extent, was how things could be known. Descartes said to keep a firm foundation. In order to show that he knew stuff he made contributions to math (the coordinate graph and Snell's law) and biology, and basic-level physics. He had his hand in a couple of other puddings, too, but this is a good, albeit *very* rough sketch of the guy. The foundation business means that he had to subject everything to doubt.

Spinoza (November 24, 1632 – February 21, 1677) will be remembered as his own philosophy, truly, but also as a reaction to Descartes' doubt disaster, among other things. The method of doubt looks a lot like not knowing anything, when you get right down to that.

Spinoza was a foundationalist (read: believer (ist) in foundations (foundation). He thought that it was a big deal to react to religion, as well, because his family had been kicked out of Spain in a religion-based ethnic cleansing known as The Inquisition (the questioning until you get really annoyed). Other members of Spinoza's family were lucky enough to feel Roman Catholicism's "mercy" getting tortured, beaten, and murdered. It's cool though, Spinoza's distaste with religion eventually lead him to be rejected from Judaism, too.