|
|
||
 |
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
MODERN PHILOSOPHY |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Select: Leonardo da Vinci - Ben Jonson - Uriel Acosta - Duc de La Rochefoucauld Ralph Cudworth - Arnold Geulincx - Pierre Bayle - Emanuel Swedenborg Carolus Linnaeus - Julien Offray de La Mettrie - Samuel Johnson Claude Adrien Helvétius - Johann Georg Hamann - Johann Kasper Lavater |
|
|
For nearly four centuries after Leonardo da Vinci's death, humanity remained uninformed about the scientific and philosophical performances of one of the greatest painters of the Italian Renaissance. Leonardo (picture) himself published only his Treatise on Painting in which the author combined the display of his artistic skill and experiences with epistemological and mathematical disquisitions. But the immense range of Leonardo's studies, researches and knowledge remained hidden in his diaries, notebooks and sketchbooks, which were printed late in the nineteenth century. They make manifest that Leonardo anticipated many important discoveries. He knew that the earth is a star which turns around the sun, and that moonlight is a result of reflection. He invented a submarine and an airplane, a parachute, poison gas and shrapnel. But, as one of his notes clearly indicates, he kept his inventions secret because he did not wish these instruments of destruction to be used. To Leonardo, sensual experience is the interpreter between man and nature. But the visible form is regarded by him as the symbol of a spiritual reality. The artist's eye is a perfect instrument of experience but mathematical thought has to control it, and every practice must be founded upon sound theory. Leonardo was of a religious mind though independent of traditional faith. No other artist of the renaissance but Leonardo could have dared to portray St. John the Baptist and Bacchus, the pagan god, as resembling one another like brothers. And none of that age could combine the character of an altar piece with that of a psychological study, as Leonardo did in his "Last Supper." In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On The Internet
Starting as a bricklayer, Ben Jonson (picture) made his way to become a dramatic poet who held a dominant place in English literary life during the last years of Queen Elizabeth and the reign of James I. In his progress to this position, Jonson was a soldier who distinguished himself on the battlefield. He fought many duels, and attacked many of his fellow writers with the weapon of sarcasm, though he respected the gentle Shakespeare. Because he killed an actor, Jonson narrowly escaped capital punishment. While in prison he became a convert to the Catholic Church, but twelve years thereafter, he returned to Protestantism. Ben Jonson's best known works are his plays Every Man in His Humour (1598) and Volpone (1605). In his essays Timber or Discoveries Made Upon Men and Matters, he dealt mostly with the dignity and value of literature, while he also cast sidelights on the daily life of his time. Algernon Charles Swinburne praised these essays, and put them above those of Francis Bacon. Recent scholars have discovered that Jonson was much indebted to Latin authors, but they do not deny that he also relied on personal observation and expressed original views. In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On The Internet
Born in Portugal, the descendant of a Marrano family, religiously observant of Catholicism, the young Acosta prepared himself for the priesthood. But, tortured by doubts about the Christian religion, he decided to flee to Holland. Here he embraced Judaism, not because he was convinced of the truth of his new faith, but he was resolved to deny his former beliefs. He defied Jewish orthodoxy, the very basis of Judaism, because he was incapable of integrating himself into the Jewish community or of understanding its precarious situation and vital needs. His attacks upon the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, which he wrote as a member of the Jewish congregation of Amsterdam angered the congregation because they felt the Christian authorities who had given the Jews refuge would be offended. Banished, he recanted, revolted anew, was banished anew, and ostracized for seven years. No longer able to endure solitude, he was willing to withstand the most severe penance in order to be allowed to reenter the Jewish community. But the rigors of the ceremony destroyed his will to survive. Soon thereafter, he committed suicide, unrepenting and irreconcilable. To some extent, he was the victim of his temper, but more so of an era in which it was impossible for an independent thinker to live unharmed outside a religious community. Many novelists and dramatists, Jew and non-Jew, have idealized his life and thoughts, for the poetic transfiguration of his fate is the tragedy of an uprooted man in revolt against tradition and any community based on tradition -- the tragedy of a humiliated man, unable to live in isolation, whose only alternative was death. He entitled his autobiography Exemplar Humanai Vitae (Example of a Human Life), but his life was certainly anything but typical. In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On The Internet
Duc de La Rochefoucauld, François VI [Prince de Marsillac] (1613-1680) The almighty Cardinal Richelieu and his successor, the no less powerful Cardinal Mazarin, were defied by the Duke of La Rochefoucauld (picture) who, descending from a family as noble and as old as the Plantagenets, treated the statesmen -- virtually absolute rulers over France -- as snobs. Fearless on the military and political battlefield, La Rochefoucauld lacked and detested brutality. He was a brilliant soldier, but no warrior. Twice exiled because of his frankness, La Rochefoucauld was more inclined to observation and meditation, and thinking gave him more solace for his experiences without mellowing his impressions. His sentiments were benevolent but his eyes and ears were inexorable. He called himself an Epicurean and skeptic. In fact, La Rochefoucauld, a grand-seigneur of the highest rank in the French kingdom, was melancholic. What he had experienced and observed he condensed with admirable artistic skill in his Maxims (1665). He had seen the triumph of intrigues, the victory of meanness over generosity, and he had penetrated into the secrets of statesmen and kings, of court-cabals and political plotters. He had participated in foreign and civil wars, and felt himself defeated and disappointed. From all these occurrences he drew the conclusion that egoism is the rule of human actions. His feelings were in constant revolt against this knowledge of his comprehensive mind. The Maxims scandalized the society of his time but were eagerly read and translated into many languages, and their resigned wisdom continues to attract philosophers and laymen in France and elsewhere, despite all cultural changes. In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On The Internet
A theologian, Ralph Cudworth (picture) constantly warned against the overestimation of dogmatic differences. He was Regius professor of Hebrew at Cambridge University, England, from 1645 to 1688 and while there became known as the leader of the Cambridge Platonists. In his True Intellectual System of the World (1678), he concentrated upon the refutation of all the atheistic schools, particularly those of Democritus, Lucretius, and Hobbes. However, he did consider it incumbent upon him to present fairly the disputed doctrines. This caused many critics, among them Dryden, to express apprehension lest readers of these presentations become converts to atheism, and stop reading before perusing Cudworth's refutation. Cudworth maintained that a primitive monotheistic creed could be found even in ancient paganism. In his explanation of the universe, he tried to avoid both the assumption of chance and the hypothesis of a steady interference of God. Therefore, he introduced the concept of "plastic nature" which was to act in a creative manner in accordance with its own laws. This concept, very likely, influenced Spinoza, and the nineteenth century French philosopher, Paul Janet, whose work was based on the idea of "plastic nature." When the Stuarts resumed their reign of England in 1660, Cudworth encountered some governmental difficulties. They hesitated to reappoint him because he had been an intimate friend of Thurloe, Cromwell's secretary, and Cromwell had consulted Cudworth in 1655 on the question of the readmission of the Jews to England. In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On The Internet
For twelve years, Geulincx was professor at the University of Louvain, Belgium, a stronghold of Catholic orthodoxy. Then he was converted to Calvinism, and became professor at the University of Leyden, Holland, at that time the center of learning, and an asylum for scholars who had been persecuted in their native country. He wrote all of his works in Latin, and died before his principal books, namely Ethica and Metaphysica, could be published. Although Geulincx often and intensely dealt with metaphysical questions, he was even more interested in ethics, but did not separate one from another. On the contrary, his ethics is founded upon metaphysics, though he also used psychological experience for his argumentation. He summed up his doctrine in the words: Ita est, ergo ita sit (So it is, therefore be it so). His view on life is colored with optimistic resignation. His steady confidence in God does not shut his eyes to the shortcomings of the existing world; if he expressed the idea of what Leibniz, about twenty-five years after Geulincx' death, has called the "pre-established harmony," he did not intend to assert that the existing world was good or the best of all possible but rather that it were good enough for Man who is morally and intellectually far from perfection. Geulincx was a man of moderation, opposite to any kind of extremism. Following Descartes, he regarded doubt as the force that makes Man ask for truth. He appreciated the educational value of provisional skepticism, but demanded that mature men must believe in God whom he regarded as the first cause of all things, without denying second causes. Geulincx therefore, while adopting the Scholastic term of occasional cause, held that occasionalism was an indispensable hypothesis, apt to explain natural and mental facts, but was far from the radical standpoint of Malebranche who published his views only five years after Geulincx' death. In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On The Internet
Although not widely known today, Pierre Bayle (picture) was a very influential philosopher in the seventeenth century. And throughout the first half of the eighteenth century, Bayle was one of the most widely-read thinkers of that period. Born into a Huguenot (French Calvinist) family, he eventually concerted the Catholicism and then, after a few years, converted to the Reformed faith and spent many years as a teacher of Calvinism. He was born in Carlat-le-Comte, France. In 1675 he took the chair of philosophy at Sedan until forced into exile at the University of Rotterdam in 1681, where he published a strong defense of liberalism and religious toleration. Bayle was dismissed from the university in 1693 following the accusation that he was an agent of France and an enemy of Protestantism. In 1696 he completed his major work, the Historical and Critical Dictionary, a skeptical analysis of philosophical and theological arguments, which became the most widely owned book in private libraries in France throughout the eighteenth century. According to Bayle, critical reason prepares one for faith and faith must not fear critical reason or erudition. One should rely only on faith (fideism) and, for there to be faith, there must be an obligation to natural judgment. He raised such issues as the mystery of salvation and the questions of justification and sanctification. He also addressed the problem of evil and said that neither logic nor evidence can overcome someone who doubts the goodness of God. Natural reason cannot explain why God allows evil. For Bayle, all areas of human belief show the incapacity of reason and the need for faith. His skepticism is directed against all intellectual confidence. Bayle was opposed by outraged theologians. He criticizes the very foundation of his culture's intellectual inheritance. He tries to show that Christianity becomes superstitious when it departs from simple faith. Always, one must avoid overextension of human claims and hold to simple faith. Elsewhere On The Internet
Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) Emanuel Swedenborg (picture) was born in Stockholm and studied at Uppsala. Emerson once remarked that it would require "a colony of men" to do justice to Swedenborg's work. Goethe adopted several of Swedenborg's ideas. Balzac founded essential views on human and cosmic nature on Swedenborg's doctrine. So have many modern authors. And today there are thousands of faithful Swedenborgians in Europe and America. Until his fifty-third year, Swedenborg had been known as a great engineer, a scholar and a scientist. He had written important books on mathematics, mechanics, physiology and astronomy. Then he experienced a grave crisis. As a young boy, he had already yearned to know God and had eagerly discussed theological questions with clergymen. In his advanced age he became more and more anxious about his spiritual conditions. He was deeply impressed by dreams in which he had visions. In 1757 he became convinced of having witnessed in one of his visions the Last Judgment. In his Arcana Coelestia (in 12 volumes, 1749-56) he offered a mystical interpretation of the first books of the Old Testament which, according to him, was purposely written to prevent profanation, and by exposing their true meaning, he developed his own religious and philosophical system. Of fundamental importance to Swedenborg's system is his doctrine of correspondence, which, as he asserts, was known to the ancient people in Canaan, Chaldea, Syria and Egypt and since had been forgotten. Greek travelers who visited these countries misunderstood the doctrine and changed it into fabulous stories which, however, allow a reconstruction of the true sense. According to this doctrine, everything in our visible, natural or material world corresponds to something in the invisible, spiritual astral world. The total natural world corresponds to the spiritual world not only in general but in particular. Thus, everything in the natural world represents an idea. Swedenborg distinguishes four styles in the world. The first, the style of the most ancient mankind which extends until Noah and the Flood, has been transcribed by Moses but has an offspring in the third style, the prophetic, while the second, the historic, extends from Abraham to the time of the kings of Judah and Israel. The fourth style, that of David's psalms, is mixed with the prophetic style and common speech. The restitution of the most ancient religion is Swedenborg's purpose. He claims to be sent by God to announce the end of the Christian and the beginning of the New Jerusalem dispensation. He recognizes Jesus Christ as Savior but rejects the Christian doctrine of Trinity and excludes the Epistles of Paul from the Biblical Canon. God is one, both in essence and person. He is uncreated, eternal, infinite, omnipotent, the union of love and wisdom. Related with the doctrine of correspondence is Swedenborg's doctrine of degrees. Man is a recipient of three degrees, and capable of thinking analytically and rationally of things within the sphere of nature, and of spiritual and celestial things above the natural sphere. At the highest degree, man may see God. Swedenborg's behavior showed nothing eccentric. Apart from his visions, he was very practical and free from emotion. He was a strict vegetarian and admonished his disciples to refrain from eating meat. His modesty and simplicity won him many friends and admirers even among those who did not share his opinions. In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On The Internet
On New Year's Day of 1730, the dean of the University of Upsala, Sweden, found on his desk a peculiar form of season's greetings. It was a manuscript, written by an unknown student and entitled Preliminaries on the Marriage of Plants. In his preface, the author of the manuscript confessed to his incapability of making verses, and excused himself for having, instead, written a juvenile treatise, in which he handled the analogy between plants and animals as he saw it. This manuscript contained the germ of Carolus Linnaeus' (picture) great contributions to botany. Searching for a principle for the classification of plants, Linnaeus, dissatisfied with any division according to color, use of the season of flowering, found the key in the reproductive parts of the plants, and classified them according to their different ways of producing offshoots. In addition to this sexual system, Linnaeus also contributed to the natural sciences by originating the binominal system of naming plants and animals. The first name indicates the genus and the second, the particular species by Latin or Greek words. In this way, Linnaeus made his naming system internationally applicable. Linnaeus furthermore contributed to mineralogy and ethnology by his report on his scientific expedition to Lapland and his miscellaneous essays. He was a charming writer because he was a loving character and a unique observer. As a great scientists said, Linnaeus saw plants "just as an insect sees them." Born in a small farm cottage in a remote district of Sweden, Linnaeus as a little boy already astonished his relatives and teachers by his interest in, and knowledge of, plants. He liked to remember his native village and preserved his country-boy outlook even after he had become internationally renowned. It is an almost general custom among botanists to make a botanical excursion on Linnaeus' birthday, although modern botany has ceased to concern itself with the flowers in the fields and has become a kind of department of physics and chemistry. In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On The Internet
Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751) This "scapegoat of 18th century materialism," as Friedrich Albert Lange rightly called him, has been blamed and despised by many who had not read a single page of his books. La Mettrie (picture) was a physician in the French army. In this capacity he entered into conflict first with medical routine, then with his superiors, and, finally, the government. He was dismissed, and emigrated to Holland. In his books L'homme machine and L'homme plante (1748), La Mettrie demonstrated by comparative methods the relationship between man other living beings, and proceeded to a theory of the evolution of organisms. He stated that psychical life is observable already on the lowest level of the evolution. Investigating the functions of the brain, La Mettrie tried to discern various stages of its formation which are of primary importance in the development of mental life. Also, he protested again an evaluation of the moral character of men which depends on the acceptance of religious doctrines. Although La Mettrie was decried as a crude materialist, he also influenced idealist philosophers. To him Goethe owes the inspiration for his botanical ideas. In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On The Internet
Samuel Johnson (picture) was most popular among his British contemporaries, especially the citizens of London, as "the philosopher," but he disliked philosophers just as he disliked country life, music, learned women. Whigs, history for its own sake and a lot of other things. To him, Berkeley was a madman, Hume nothing but an infidel and Voltaire, whose literary skill he admired, a rascal. He was a critic of literature but he held that the fundamental aspects of life were not proper subjects for poetry. Although Johnson was not a profound thinker, he was a man of deep convictions, acquired by hard experiences. His poem The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) outlines his philosophy of life, which he formulated again and again in satirical and earnest, resigned and irate sayings. To him life is mostly litter, and rarely sweet. It is endurable only because there are short intervals of satisfaction. The end of writing is to enable mankind "better to enjoy life or better to endure it." Poetry must stand the test of reason and common sense. Fabulous images, Johnson maintained, have worn thin. In politics, Johnson was a staunch Tory, in religious questions uncompromisingly orthodox. He demanded that literature, in which he was mainly interested, does not have to explain the riddles of existence, but that it should support moral and religious doctrines and defend the king and the Church. Much of this philosophy was expressed by Johnson in casual remarks in his Lives of the Poets (1779-81). However, he is best known not by his own writings but rather by the book of his biographer James Boswell, who wrote down Johnson's remarks about daily life, literature, politics, and contemporary history. The biography presents a genial man, who -- though difficult to deal with, a sarcastic conversationalist, sometimes sound, sometimes queer -- was always sincere and original. In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On The Internet
Claude Adrien Helvétius (1715-1771) Claude Adrien Helvétius (picture) was a French philosopher and financier, born in Paris, whose thought influenced Jeremy Bentham, and through him, the British utilitarians. Many moralists of many ages have complained that personal interest in the pursuit of happiness is the only efficient principle of human actions. The awareness of this fact has made some of them melancholy, others resigned to that fate, and still others fundamentally pessimistic, or indignant, or hypocritical. There has been no lack of efforts to deny such statements or to change the character of man if the statement were true. Helvétius, contrary to all of these critics of egoism, was the first to draw an optimistic conclusion from the conviction that personal interest was the real rule of human behavior. His book De l'Esprit (On the Mind, 1758), in which Helvétius explained his views and founded them upon Condillac's sensualism, was condemned by the Sorbonne and burned in Paris after the judges had declared it dangerous to state and society. Helvétius was a clever financier by profession. He used his large income for the promotion of literature, philosophy and social welfare. He was one of the first to insist on taking the social environment and economic conditions into consideration before sentencing a defendant. Not this demand but other suggestions advanced by Helvétius were later realized by the legislation of the First French Republic and by Napoleon. In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On The Internet
Johann Georg Hamann (1730-1788) During a stay in London, where he was bound to become acquainted with British business methods, Johann Georg Hamann (picture), a native of Königsberg , Prussia, had a mystical experience which made him a grim adversary of rationalism and the spirit of enlightenment that fascinated most of his contemporaries. With the aid of allegorical interpretation, Hamann regarded the Bible as the fundamental book of all possible knowledge, including that of nature. Allegory and symbol gave Hamann truer knowledge than notions. Myths and poetry were to him of greater validity than scientific research and logical conclusions. Language was the key that opens the door to reality. Hamann was a past master in sensing the unconscious tendencies of speech. But in his style there are no consequences, no development of ideas. He tried to grasp the flux of life, but, according to his own avowal, often forgot the meaning of the similes he had used and to which he alluded in later pages of the same treatise. His fugitive associations, therefore, are of greater value than his efforts to express his intentions elaborately. Devout and coquettish, excessive in his piety and repentance of transgressions with which his imagination remained fascinated, Hamann tried to embrace spirit and sensuality, sometimes illuminating their relations, sometimes becoming hopelessly confused. His writings were inspired by sublime earnestness and brilliant irony. He accused the rationalistic spirit of his age of ignoring God and nature, human genius, creative action and the enjoyment of real life. His views deeply impressed Herder, Goethe, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, Hegel and Kierkegaard. In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On The Internet
Johann Kasper Lavater (1741-1801) Protestant orthodoxy and pietism, formerly opposed to each other, became allied in the mind of Johann Kasper Lavater (picture), whose complicated character made him sometimes obstinate, sometimes humble. He always tried to realize, by his thinking and conduct of life, the ideal of Christian humanity. He also tried to combine belief in miracles with the modern cult of poetic genius. Trained in psychological self-analysis, he was, nevertheless a helpless illusionist, whose extreme gullibility exposed him to the suspicion of being insincere. A staunch adversary of rationalism, Lavater was often the victim of fanatics, charlatans and crooks who exploited his longing or miracles and the manifestation of supernatural forces. Notwithstanding his attempts to reach simple faith, an unsophisticated belief in the Word of the Bible, he was never satisfied with plain truth, and was always ready to take divination for knowledge and phantoms for reality because they stirred his imagination more than did reason. But when he was not occupied with the propaganda for his ideas, Lavater always proved to be a noble-minded and charitable man. However, it was not his theological writings that made him famous but his Physiognomics (1774-78), which was translated into several languages. This work contains a wealth of material and has inspired psychologists and poets, but it lacks scientific method. Lavater, who collected and interpreted a great number of historical or artistic portraits, was convinced that his physiognomical studies would promote not only a knowledge of man but also a mutual love of men. In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On The Internet
Enrich Your Life With a Philosophy Book...
|
|
|
Introduction & Directory |
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
||
[Homepage] [Newsletter] [Search] [Support the Academy] [Link to Us] [Contact the Academy] [Citing Articles from Our Website] [Privacy Policy & Disclaimer]
Copyright 1998-99, 2000-01, 2002-03, & 2004 by The Radical Academy. All Rights Reserved.
This Page Was Updated On