Overview
In the Western tradition, Renaissance Philosophy referred to the period after Medieval Philosophy but before Modern Philosophy. There were no exact dates delineating the period, but many would roughly estimate it as extending from 14th to 17th centuries. Much of this period can also be seen as a reaction to and a move away from the ideas and schools that dominated the medieval period. As the Renaissance heightened its uprising against the reign of religion and therefore reacted against the church, against authority, and against Scholasticism, there was a sudden flourishing of interest in problems centering on civil society, man, and nature. These interests found exact representation in the three dominant strands of Renaissance philosophy: Humanism, Platonism, and Aristotelianism.
I. HUMANISM
I am a man, and nothing human is foreign to me.- Terence (Latin writer)
Etymologically, the word humanism came from the Latin word h?m?nus meaning kind man or humane. During the Italian Renaissance humanism was defined as a specific intellectual program. Humanism meant an appreciation for Classical learning and a revival of the concerns of Classical learning (those which were humanistic in the Greek sense and a turning away from what was seen as the obscurantism and scholasticism). In philosophy, humanism stressed the importance of human beings and their nature and place in the universe. The movement Humanism emerged in Italy and spread to France, Germany, the Netherlands and England toward from the 1300s to the 1500s.
Throughout the Middle Ages, God has always been the point of departure in philosophy. On the other hand, Renaissance humanist took man himself as their point of departure. Renaissance humanism was also characterized by individualism. For the humanists, man is not only a human being but a unique individual. The ideal became what we call the Renaissance man, a man of universal genius embracing all aspects of life, art, and science. Humanists also rejected the notion that man has a sinful nature and should despise life on earth. Thus, man has freedom to delight himself, and develop his potentials without limit.
The greater concern of the humanists was to educate man based on the study of the classical Greek and Latin works. This interest is not merely for scholastic purpose but was also practical. The imitation of the ideal and refined Roman authors was the best way to learn how to speak and write well. Due to that, humanists studied philology (the science of the meaning and history of words) and history (the accounts of noble and wise men of classical antiquity).
Renaissance philosophy was concerned primarily to the field of ethics. The leading humanists were Francesco Petrarca, and Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola.
Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)
Petrarch was considered as the first great humanist and may even be called the father of humanism. Petrarch cannot be considered a philosopher in the sense of conceiving original philosophical ideas. He was more of a propagator of the moral teaching of the ancient philosophers, specifically the Latin thinkers. He also rejected medieval scholasticism and insisted on the continuity between pagan and Christian creativity. Some of his famous works were Ascent of Mont Ventoux, On His Own Ignorance and That of Many Others, A Disapproval of an Unreasonable Use of the Discipline of Dialectic, and An Averroist Visits Petrarca. His various works showed him at different times of his life.
Petrarch influence was more great and lasting than his contemporaries because of his literary and artistic style that touched the hearts of his readers intensely.
Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola
Pico, count of Mirandola, thoughts and learning has always appealed to the scholars. He received an extensive education due to his social position. By the age of 23, he openly posted 900 theses with various subjects, offering to defend them publicly. Because of his thesis on Cabbalistic he was accused by the Church as heretic.
Pico recommended the absolute value and centrality of man, his cosmic responsibility, his freedom and responsibility. These ideas were expounded in his renowned Oration on the Dignity of Man which was divided on two parts. The first part attempted a general justification of the study of philosophy while the second part explained his interest in philosophy. The Oration emphasized the unity of truth despite the contrasting schools of philosophy. He attacked astrology in Disputationes adversus astrologiam divinatricem due to his desire to defend human liberty. While his work Hepthaplus was a mystical account on the creation of universe.
CHRISTIAN HUMANISM
Some Renaissance scholars were not interested in studying classical literature. They were concerned on how to identify and cautiously edit the texts where Christianity was based like the Bible, letters of Saint Paul, and other works of the fathers of the church. They sought to apply the methods of humanism in Christianity.
Desiderius Erasmus
I know perfectly well what a bad name folly has,
even among the biggest fools I’m the one, the one and only
-from his work, the Praise of Folly
Wisdom, wit, and elegant Latin style were the characteristics of Erasmus works. He wrote the Greek New Testament with critical notes and Latin translation, as an alternative to the Latin Vulgate. His De Ratione Studii (On the Method of Study) and De Pueris Satim ac Liberaliter Instituendis (On Teaching Children Firmly but Kindly), expressed his educational views.
During the Reformation, Erasmus refused to take any side. However, he attacked religious superstition and abuses through his famous satire The Praise of Folly. In this book, he criticized the overemphasis on ceremonies and procedures while neglecting Christian spiritual virtues. His book also denounced the moral quality of Church leaders.
Sir Thomas More
Like Erasmus, More believed that it was important to eliminate the abuses, inequalities and evils that were normally accepted in his time. When he entered the Parliament, he proposed for the decreased of appropriation of King Henry VII which cost him the imprisonment of his father.
More withdrew form public life until the royal throne was inherited by King Henry VIII. More led a peaceful public life until he refused to support King Henry VII request for a divorce from Catherine Aragon, which eventually cost him decapitation.
Utopia was Mores best-known work where he described a perfect society where there is no rich or poor, strong or weak, only a common concern for the welfare and bliss of everyone. These conditions were in contrast to the English society of his time.
II. PLATONISM
From the 15th century onward the dialogues of Plato and works of Neoplatonism (a school of Greek philosophy during the 3rd century which was spearheaded by Plotinus) became available in the original Greek in western Europe. As a result of this new grip with the original texts, Platonic influence on Renaissance became even more complex and difficult to recognize than those on medieval thought. Medieval Platonic traditions (notably by the Augustinianism) endured, and new ones developed from the direct reading of the Neoplatonic texts. European thinkers realized that the Neoplatonic interpretation of Plato was in some ways a perverted and one-sided one; hence they developed their own allegedly more genuine understandings of Plato on the basis of direct readings of his varied works as they found to be philosophically appealing.
In the 15th century, Cosimo de’ Medici sponsored a Platonic Academy at Florence, of which the greatest figures to emerge were its founder, Marsilio Ficino who translated all of Plato and Plotinus into Latin, and the humanist Pico della Mirandola author of the Oration on the Dignity of Man. The Platonism of this academy was really a form of Neoplatonism, but with a Platonic Christian twist which stressed love as the route through which the individual could return to God. The influence of the Platonism of the Florentine Academy was extensive that it may be seen not only in the writings of later Italian philosophers but also in the iconography of Italian Renaissance painting, in 16th-century French literature and was particularly marked in England. The most impressive development of this post-Renaissance movement lay in the works of the Cambridge Platonists during the late 17th century.
Marsilio Ficino
In 1462 Ficino became head of the Platonic Academy of Florence. Ficino revised the thought of Plato in a Renaissance perspective. Ficino imagined the world as perfectly harmonious heavenly melody reflecting GODs face.
In his Theologia Platonica (Platonic Theology) and Liber de Christiana religione (Book on the Christian Religion), he discussed the convergence of philosophical truth and religious conviction. His thought was also expressed in a collection of letters and in De vita libri tres (Three Books on Life), a series of tracts on medicine and astrology.
Ficino devoted the remainder of his life to the translation and interpretation of Plato and the succeeding Platonic school, which he attempted to integrate more closely with Christian theology. His interpretation of Platonism greatly influenced European though especially his teaching that man naturally tended toward religion, distinguishing him from the lower animals, and that all religions had a measure of truth.
Nicholas of Cusa
The Platonism of the Florentine Academy was a Christian one of a humane and liberal kind. This was probably at least partly due to the influence in Italy of Nicholas of Cusa who worked out his own very original version of Christian Platonism with influenced by the German mystical tradition.
Cusa was skilled in theology, mathematics, philosophy, science, and the arts. In De docta ignorantia (On Learned Ignorance), he described the learned man as one who is aware of his own ignorance. In this and other works he usually borrowed symbols from geometry to demonstrate his points, as in his comparison of man’s search for truth to the task of converting a square into a circle.
III. ARISTOTELIANISM
One of Renaissance most important philosophical characteristics was the development of a reinvigorated Aristotelianism. The humanistic Aristotelianism originated from the academic teaching tradition of the universities mainly of Italian Universities, Bologna and Padua, where Pomponazzi and Zabarella are notably active. Aristotelian tradition central concerns were the fields of logic and method, natural philosophy and metaphysics.
Toward the end of the 13th century Aristotelianism was very influential to universities in Italy and Paris. There was a significant difference between the way Aristotle was taken at Paris and in the Italian universities.
In Paris the Aristotelian philosophers were either theologians or students of logic and of natural philosophy in the faculty of arts who had to defend themselves against powerful theological faculty. The Italian universities had no faculties of theology; and from the beginning Italian Aristotelianism developed as the preparation for medicine rather than for theology.
Nevertheless, Aristotelianism was still the standard doctrine of some universities down to the end of the 18th century and even longer.
Pietro Pomponazzi
Pomponazzi interpreted Aristotle in the light of the humanism in his time. In his De immortalitate animae (on the Immortality of the Soul), Pomponazzi contended that the immortality of the individual soul cannot be demonstrated on the basis of Aristotle or of reason, but must be accepted as an article of faith. In developing this view, he maintained that moral action is the only proper goal of human life. He declared that virtue is its own reward and vice its own punishment. He also answered the moral and pragmatic arguments on immortality.
In his De incantationibus, he turned on several features of religion, which he reduced to their natural causes. He consented to the belief that the origin of religions were caused by stellar influences.
Naturalistic humanism was started by Pomponazzi and culminated in Zabarella.
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