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The Great Thinkers of Western Philosophy |
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Niccolo Machiavelli and Galileo Galilei
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 Thomas Aquinas, 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 transcend such effective reality. This love and study of detail and of the individual, passed on to later ages, ha 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 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 transcendental 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 of 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, that is, the absolute, the universal, the ultimate cause and end. 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. Life Niccolo Machiavelli (picture) was born in Florence in 1469. He was secretary to the Dieci di Liberta e Pace, or the Ten of the Florentine Republic. Destitute and deprived of office when the Medici returned to power, he was exiled for a time but was later recalled. He died in obscurity and neglect in 1527, Among his varied writings, those of particular interest to philosophy are: Il Principe (The Autocrat, better known as The Prince), and Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius. Political Thought The problem of the state had already been discussed by Aristotelian-Scholastic philosophy, which had advanced a solution based on the premise that man, by reason of his rational nature, tends to the perfect society, the state. Consequently, the positive elements of the state, and in particular the element of morality, must be derived from the concept of the rational being and not from the fact of man's actual historical behavior. The concept of morality, like all rational concepts, is something absolute, which cannot vary even though it has been disobeyed. Thus, even granted the hypothesis that all men tell lies, the rational concept of lying as a moral evil, remains constant. For Machiavelli this principle did not hold true, because of the immanentist principle that the state must be considered in itself without reference to any reality which might transcend it. The problem which Machiavelli sets out to solve is how to enlarge and maintain the state, which must be ordered to the greater good of the citizens. To solve this problem, Machiavelli appeals to history, which reveals that states rise out of the conflict of violent passions, and that a leader succeeds in forming and maintaining a state only if with greater passion than his opponent he is able to triumph over him. Machiavelli draws the conclusion that the prince or autocrat cannot appeal to Christian ascetical or renunciatory morality, but must use force and cunning, according to circumstances, to overcome his adversaries. Hence the principle of the new science in politics was: "The end justifies the means." The prince must justify his action in reference to the maintenance of the state; and he will be a good ruler if he achieves this end, regardless of what means he uses. Nevertheless the prince (and the state) of Machiavelli have an ethics, surely not Christian ethics, but the Humanist Renaissance ethics of love of country. Machiavelli was an eyewitness to the miseries which afflicted the Italy of his day, divided and lacerated as it was by discord and the wars of various princes. To put an end to the role of these princes, whose ambitions laid all Italy open to strife, he dreamed of the rise of an ideal prince, the incarnation of Caesar Borgia, who, with the force of a lion and the cunning of a wolf, would succeed in subjugating all petty rulers and forming a single Italian state. Seeing that the rulers of his day were egoistic and wicked, Machiavelli dreamed of raising up in his prince a greater egoism and more violent passions in order to overcome the power of the local tyrants and to establish a principality which must save Italy, the Italy which in his day was "without a head, without order, lacerated and beaten." Along with the theories of Machiavelli must be considered the politico-religious thought of Girolamo Savonarola (1452-1498). Savonarola also starts with a consideration of the actual chaos of society and of the Church, and sees a possibility of a renovation through the intervention of a lay prince (for him, Charles VIII). For Savonarola the intervention of a lay prince must be only occasional, because he does not deny the Church lives and moves in virtue of the eternal promise of its founder, Jesus Christ. Thus he cannot be judged heretical. Note must also be taken of the political thought of the Catholic priest Giovanni Botero (1540-1617). In his work Of the Nature of the State, comprising ten books, he counsels the prince to prudently hide his weaknesses, in order to preserve his regal reputation, and to fully respect the Catholic religion, which is a precious and indispensable means for rendering politically docile men who are profoundly inclined to evil, and to direct the militia and into war the instinctive ferocity of man. In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On the Internet
Life Born in Pisa in 1564, Galileo Galilei (picture), known usually as just Galileo, 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, where he died in 1642. (More than 350 years later the Catholic Church formally apologized for its treatment of Galileo.) General Doctrine Galileo is one of the most representative figures of the Renaissance. An excellent writer, he made discoveries in the entire field of physics, especially in the science of mechanics, in astronomy and in the methodology of science. Nevertheless, he is not a philosopher in the strict sense of the word. Notable is his method for scientific research, which enabled him and his disciples to achieve great discoveries. His theory of knowledge, however, is not sustained by an adequate metaphysics; the metaphysics which logically should support his theory is atomistic, and does not conform to the principles of the Catholic faith, which Galileo sincerely professed. The Galilean Method The theory of knowledge of Galileo begins, like that of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, with experience. But Aristotle and Aquinas use experience in order to arrive at the absolute values of matter and form, while Galileo is content to remain in the field of experience. His purpose is to tell us not what nature is, but how nature reveals itself. He studies nature to learn the laws which govern natural phenomena, and not as steppingstone to reach an understanding of the underlying reality of things. Nature, according to Galileo, has a mathematical structure; its characteristics are triangles, rectangles, circles, spheres, cones, pyramids, and other mathematical figures. Mathematics represents the rational element of nature, and when the full content of mathematics is finally discovered, then nature is apprehended. To arrive at the knowledge of such mathematical laws, Galileo says, we must make use of sense and reason, by passing through three stages:
This method of Galileo without doubt led to numerous scientific discoveries. But it is to be noted that in following this method we are in the field of science and not philosophy; we learn that phenomena appear according to mathematical formulae, but we learn nothing of the reality from which these phenomena originate. Such a method falls short of being a true metaphysics. If it is necessary to suppose a metaphysical basis for such a method, the only one that can be attributed to it is materialistic atomism, according to which the ultimate or basic elements are quantity (atoms) and motion. If for Democritus (an early Greek naturalistic philosopher) the atoms moving in space were directed by chance, for Galileo they are directed by mathematical laws. Indeed, beginning with Galileo, this new physio-mathematics was to take the place of traditional metaphysics. Furthermore, it must be kept in mind that qualitative values find no place in physical mathematics for the simple reason that they (e.g., odors, tastes, etc.) are not reducible to mathematical formulae. Hence it becomes necessary to distinguish between quantitative elements (expansion, weight, motion) and qualitative elements (odors, tastes, etc.). The first are called objective, having a reality distinct from the subject; the second will be called subjective, being modifications of the subject and devoid of any objective reality. This theory, proposed by Galileo and afterwards followed by John Locke in his noted distinction between primary and secondary qualities, was to become part of modern thought. Now, such mechanism is in opposition to the transcendence of God and hence in opposition to the very faith professed by Galileo. Consequently, the Galilean method must be considered as a method of science and not as a theory of knowledge, for knowledge is based on metaphysics. The Trial of Galileo It is necessary to hold fast to this distinction between science and philosophy (theology) in order to find the reason for the two condemnations (1616 and 1633) the Catholic Church's Holy Office (Inquisitors) made of Galileo's defense of the heliocentric system of Copernicus. Nicolaus Copernicus, in his famous De revolutionibus orbium caelestium (Concerning the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres), had proposed, without giving direct proofs, a new astronomical system which can be summarized in this way: The world is spherical and finite, its extreme limits being the heaven of the fixed stars. Heavenly bodies are all spherical, and their movement is circular and uniform. The sun is located at the center of the system, and the planets rotate around it. The earth is a planet and has a double movement, revolving daily around its own axis, and annually around the sun. Galileo was the announcer of this system. He too neglected to give direct proofs; he had the intuition of genius rather than scientific knowledge. In reference to the two trials to which Galileo was subjected for teaching this radical system, it is necessary to remember the good faith on both sides of the dispute: Galileo, a convinced Catholic, and the members of the Commission of the Holy Office, among whom were persons like Robert Cardinal Bellarmine, far above any personal intrigue. Moreover, there were failings on both sides. Galileo did not confine himself to proposing the heliocentric doctrine as a scientific hypothesis; but to corroborate it he became an interpreter of the celebrated Scriptural passage which speaks of Josue's causing the sun to stand still. The members of the Commission of the Holy Office, according to the prejudice then in vogue, believed that the destruction of Aristotle's physics meant the ruin of his metaphysics as well, and that the whole body of medieval thought would crumble. Certainly, they were not disposed to accept the new system. If there had been a consciousness of the limits of science and philosophy -- a recognition that the one is the knowledge of how and the other of the why of nature; if it had been considered that physical science is non-philosophical and has nothing to do with the principles of metaphysics, and that the principles of metaphysics do not reveal the laws that regulate nature, it would have been possible to avoid all that happened. But the times were not yet ripe for such a distinction between science and philosophy, and history is obliged to record the unhappy results. Direct proofs of the Copernican system were formulated only later, with Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), who established the three famous laws which regulate the movement of the stars; and with Newton (1642-1727), who completed the system with the law of universal gravitation, thus explaining the equilibrium of heavenly bodies. It should be noted that in 1993 the Catholic Church recognized its error regarding Galileo and apologized for his condemnation by the Commissioners of the Holy Office at that time. In The Academy Bookstore Enrich Your Life With a Philosophy Book...
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