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MODERN PHILOSOPHY |
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Select: Nicholas of Cusa - Bernardino Telesio - Giordano Bruno - Tommaso Campanella Niccolo Machiavelli - Galileo Galilei |
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EXPOSITION OF THE VARIOUS PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEMS General Notions: The New Consideration of Nature The Renaissance, as an age of transition, was not conducive to the building of great philosophical systems. It contained, in germinal form, the directive ideas of modern times, but under the guise of the past. Thinkers preferred to write in ancient Latin, and the style of their writing is also archaic. Under this external aspect, which smacks of antiquity, are hidden the signs of the next age. The greatest representatives of thought, in the order of time, are Nicholas of Cusa, Telesio, Bruno, and Campanella; the most important is Bruno. In the though of all these men there is a new view of nature, in which nature is considered immanently, according to the forces inherent in it, and is accessible to experience and reason. These forces are considered as living ones, vital spirits, demons; everything is animate; the physical world has a soul. It is necessary to investigate these animate forces, for it is on the basis of their activity that all events can be explained. It is because of this desire to bring into subjection the occult forces of nature that during the Renaissance we find so widely diffused the science of magic, which professes to know the good and evil spirits of nature, and to make them allies in good and evil enterprises. Also characteristic are alchemy, with its objective of discovering the philosophical stone which can change everything into gold; and medicine, with its hope of finding the panacea of evil by uncovering the common animating force of the universe. This is a charlatan school, to be sure, but it indicates the tendency of some of the chief exponents of the age to explain nature through the forces imbedded in it. Hence we see Neo-Platonic tendencies, and the Neo-Platonic thinkers mentioned above. Although Neo-Platonism, logically developed, leads to pantheism, the thinkers of the Renaissance, with the exception of Bruno, are not pantheists. Without any logical foundation they still affirm transcendency, but this more from faith than from conviction. The next period, in a more logical systematization of Neo-Platonism, completely denied this transcendency.
1. Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464) The Cardinal of Cusa (picture) formulated a new type of logic and a new interpretation of nature, which made the first break with Scholasticism. Theory of Knowledge The process of knowledge entails three stages: The first two, phantasy (sensitive knowledge) and reason (abstractive and discursive knowledge), are deficient, because they represent reality in an improper way, through contradictory notes of unity and multiplicity. The third is intellective knowledge, which consists in a mystical intuition of God. This presents the reality (God) as a perfect unity, in which opposites are nullified -- here we have the "coincidence of opposites." Theodicy God is infinite unity; in Him all limits and all opposites are reconciled. God is the "implicatio" of all things. But what is "implicatio" in God becomes "explicatio" in the universe; hence the universe results from multiplicity, distinction and opposition. The transcendence of God is serious compromised; the principle of contradiction is replaced by the principle of "coincidence of opposites"; that is, the principle of contradiction is denied. In The Radical Academy
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2. Bernardino Telesio (1509-1588) Telesio held that the principles of the physical world are "matter and force." Matter is the inert element; force is the active element; it acts upon matter by means of heat and cold. Life is dependent upon heat, which is everywhere present to a greater or lesser degree. Hence the whole universe is animated. A different type of life means a different degree of heat. Knowledge is obtained through a modification of heat. In spite of this materialistic conception of the universe, Telesio affirms (illogically) the transcendence of God and the immortality of the human soul. In The Radical Academy
By the end of the sixteenth century, the new astonomy of Copernicus was well known. In Italy it was adopted by Bruno and attached to his philosophy. Buno was a Dominican priest, born near Naples, and influenced by Telesio. He had a superb love of nature and opposed existing Catholic thought. He held no favor for Protestantism, which was in its early formative stages. Bruno travelled widely, returned to Italy, was imprisoned for his heresy, and burned at the stake in Rome in 1600. According to Bruno the universe is infinite and is full of a plurality of heliocentric systems, which are composed of matter and soul. Both matter and soul are, rather than principles, two aspects of a single substance in which all opposites and all differences are reconciled. The soul of the universe is intelligent; it is God, conceived of as "Natura naturans." The world "Natura naturata" is an effect of God. Birth is the individualization of the infinite (God) in the finite; death is the return of the finite to the infinite. Religion has a practical but not a theoretical value. Morality is the participation of the individual in the life of the universe. Bruno was charged with atheism because he identified God (the universe or external cause) and Nature (a different form of the universe although a totality of phenomena. To identify God and Nature was not a negation but an explanation. This construction led to Bruno's condemnation. Bruno's philosophy is a theoretical expression of Humanism, and its influence on subsequent thought was great. His thinking influenced Leibnitz and Hegel. In The Radical Academy
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4. Tommaso Campanella (1568-1639) According to Tommaso Campanella (picture) to know means to feel, and to feel means to take notice of sensitive modifications. This sense knowledge reveals the existence of the sentient subject (according to St. Augustine). Knowledge of the exterior world is given us by the mind ("mens"). It is a kind of knowledge similar to St. Augustine's illumination. The metaphysics of Campanella consists in the theory of the "three primary facts": power, knowledge, and will. These three primalities are known intuitively in the subject; by reflection they are grasped in the world and in God. The world is animated. In regards to religion, Campanella maintains that all positive religions are interpretations of natural religion. Only the Christian religion, which is supernatural, satisfies all the exigencies of natural religion. The others are deficient. In politics, Campanella's thought is in favor of a universal society, with the Pope as head of the religious aspects and the King of Spain as head of the civil. In his "Civitas Solis" (City of the Sun, Campanella offers a socialistic theory of the State similar to Plato's "Republic." Power is governed by knowledge. The papacy is a monarchy of religious unity dominating the secular State and education must be universal and compulsory, and based on natural science and mathematics. Campanella, a member of the Dominican Order, was persecuted by the Inquisition. He spent twenty-seven years of his life in prison on account of his political ideas although he never attempted to put them into practice. In The Radical Academy
Elsewhere On the Internet THE NEW VIEW ON POLITICS AND PHYSICS General Notions One of the characteristics of the Renaissance was a concentration on the particular, on the individual -- something that had been neglected during the Middle Ages, since the Middle Ages were entirely preoccupied with the universal and the transcendental. The study of history, in so far as history signifies the science of effective, concrete and individual reality, had remained outside -- though not opposed to -- the concern of medieval thinkers. Earlier thinkers, such as Aristotle and St. Thomas, had begun with the particular, not to remain with it, but to surpass and transcend it. For them, only that which was universal and transcended phenomenal reality had value. During the Renaissance, on the other hand, study was made of phenomena, of concrete reality, not as a means of rising to absolute values, but in order to remain with the ambit of concreteness. Philosophers sought to explain the individual through the individual, phenomena through phenomena, and fell into the habit of not giving due attention to what transcends such effective reality. This love and study of detail and of the individual, passed on to later ages, has given origin to history and to natural science (physics), which represent the real achievements of modern thought. The error of the modern age rests not in these achievements, but in the attempt to replace traditional Aristotelio-Classical Realistic metaphysics with history and physics. This trend is characteristic of all modern thought. Once a thinker begins with the presupposition that he is not to concern himself with any supernatural reality and that study should be limited to the search for the laws of phenomenal reality alone, there remains for him nothing else but to proclaim these laws as the last and ultimate data of human thought, and hence to put physics in the place of traditional metaphysics. Thus we have a harmful inversion, no less damaging than the inversion of decadent Scholasticism, which held that the scientific writings of Aristotle, and especially his physics, were so connected with metaphysics that the destruction of one meant the ruin of the other. This unjustified prejudice was the cause of many errors, such as the trial of Galileo. At present the opposite prejudice is held: sciences take the role of metaphysics. To avoid these evils it is necessary that metaphysics and the natural sciences take note of their limits. The sciences have for their object the study of phenomena and the laws relative to these phenomena. The proper object of philosophy is the reality which transcends the phenomena. On the one hand metaphysics, concerned with universal knowledge, has no contact with the particular as such, and therefore cannot dictate the laws which regulate phenomenal reality. On the other hand, physical science, limited to the study of phenomena, has no right to dictate metaphysical laws pertaining to philosophy. In a word, philosophy is not the science of the particular, and physical science is not philosophy. Given their proper scope, one is not opposed to the other; indeed they complement each other. The most representative exponents of the new science during the period of the Renaissance are Machiavelli and Galileo. Neither was a philosopher, notwithstanding the pretensions of both to be such, but both were theorists of reality as it presents itself to experience: Machiavelli for history applied to politics, and Galileo for mathematics as applied to physics.
1. Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) The Problem of the State The most radical attack on the Catholic theory of the State came from Machiavelli (picture), an Italian diplomat and Secretary of the Chancellery of the Council of Ten at Florence. He opposed the political corruption of the Roman Curia and the Italian Government. His most famous work is "The Prince," which sets out to solve the following problem: To solve this question he appeals to history, which shows that states rise out of the conflict of violent passions. Hence he draws the conclusion that "the prince" cannot follow Christian morality, but must use force and cunning; for the end justifies the means. In The Radical Academy
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2. Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) Born in Pisa, Galileo Galilei (picture) taught first in his native city, and then in Padua. From Padua he went to Florence, called there by Cosimo II, who nominated him head mathematician and philosopher. In 1616 the Roman Inquisition, summoning Galileo for interrogation, condemned the Copernican heliocentric system and prohibited Galileo from teaching it. In 1623 Galileo, in controversy with the Jesuit Orazio Grassi, published "Il Saggiatore" (The Appraiser), and in 1632, "Dialogue on the Two Greatest Systems of the World." This persistent defense of the heliocentric system was the cause of Galileo's second trial and of his condemnation in 1633. He passed the last years of his life in the village of Arcetri near Florence. Galileo's Method of Knowledge Galileo supposed that the world has a mathematical structure; that is, that the elements of the world are triangles, spheres, pyramids, and other mathematical figures. To arrive at knowledge of them, we must make use of sense and of reason as follows:
This method is good in the field of sciences, but not in philosophy. The only metaphysics which can underlie this method is the materialistic atomism of Democritus. The Trial of Galileo In reference to the two trials (1616 and 1633) to which Galileo was subjected in regard to the heliocentric system, it is necessary to indicate the good faith of both Galileo and the members of the Comimission of the Holy Office. There were, however, failings on both sides: on Galileo's part, for trying to explain the Sacred Scriptures through a scientific hypothesis; on the part of the members of the Commission, for their prejudice in favor of the physics of Aristotle. In The Radical Academy
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