|
|
| & etc |
FEEDBACK
(C)1998-2012
All Rights Reserved.
Site last updated
13 January, 2012
|
|
|
|
Index by Period
Humanism
The movement known as the Renaissance [1] is commonly said to date from
the reign of Nicholas V (1447). The principles, however, as well as the
spirit of the movement, had appeared during the first years of the
fifteenth century, and were propagated and fostered by the Greek
scholars who flocked to Italy after the fall of Constantinople (1453). The Renaissance reached its
Golden Age during the reign of Leo X (1513). It consisted in a revival
of the study of the Greek and Roman classics, attention being paid to
the form rather than to the contents of classical literature. The
representatives of the movement were called "humanists," in allusion to
their opposition to the Scholastics, who were alleged to have insisted
on the divine, or supernatural, to the exclusion of the human, or
natural, elements in their philosophical and theological and above all
in their literary labors. The Renaissance is of interest primarily and
essentially to the historian of literature. Secondarily, however, and
as it were accidentally, it vitally affected the fate of Scholastic
philosophy and contributed to the transition from mediaeval to modern
modes of thought. The humanists claimed the privilege of ridiculing and
attacking the schoolmen, and such was the deplorably degenerate
condition of Scholasticism at the time that the ridicule was often
deserved and almost always successful. But, not content with censuring
what was deserving of censure, the humanists went so far as to condemn
the entire system of Scholastic philosophy and to include in their
condemnation the work of the thirteenth century masters, whose
doctrines they never seriously attempted to understand. While lauding
the literary excellence of the pagan classics, they lost no opportunity
of defaming the great representatives of Christian thought; they were
detractores, as well as laudatores, temporis acti. [2]
[1] Cf. Symonds, The Renaissance in Italy (5 parts in 7
vols., London, 1875-1886), Burckhardt, The Civilization of the
Renaissance, trans. by Middlemore (London, 1890); Voigt, Die
Wiederbelebung des classischen Alterthums (Berlin, 1893).
[2] On the attempts of the humanists to restore pagan modes of thought
and speech, cf. Pastor, History of the Popes, English
trans., Vol. V, pp. 140 ff.
In addition to this general opposition of the humanists to the learning
of the schools, there appeared among the representatives of the
Renaissance a more direct form of anti-Scholasticism in the shape of a
revival of the doctrines of the Platonic academy. Gemietus
Pletho, a Greek scholar who had attended the council of Florence as
ambassador of the Emperor John VIII, inspired Cosmo de' Medici with the
idea of founding a Platonic academy
at Florence. He was aided in the work of expounding Platonism by
Cardinal Bessarion (1403-1472), who was also a Greek. Among the
Italian humanists, Lorenzo Valla (1400-1457), Marsilio
Ficino (1433-1499), Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (died
1494), and his nephew, Giovanni Franceaco Pico della Mirandola
(died 1533) distinguished themselves by the violence and acrimony with
which they attacked the Aristotelians. At the same time Theodore of
Gaza (died 1478) and George of Trebizond (1396-1484) rose
into prominence as defenders of the philosophy of Aristotle. [3]
[3] The works of Pletho, Bessarion, and other Greek writers of this
period are to be found in Migne's Patr. Graeca, Vols.
CLX.-CLXI.
Not only Platonism and Aristotelianism, but also Stoicism and
Epicureanism, had their representatives among the humanists. Justus
Lipsius (Joest Lips) (1547-1606) and Caspar Schoppe (born
1562) revised the doctrines of the Stoa, while Gassendi (1592-
1655) reproduced the essential doctrines of Epicureanism.
Paracelsus (1493-1541) undertook the reform of medical science,
and developed a system of speculative thought in which chemistry and
theosophy are mingled in the most fantastic manner. His influence is
noticeable in the writings of Robert Fludd (died 1637) and in
those of the two Van Helmonta (died 1644 and 1699).
Scepticism, a natural outcome of the intellectual confusion of the
times, was represented in France by Montaigne (1533-1592) and
Pierre Charron (1541-1603), and in Portugal by Francisco
Sanchez (died 1632).
Far more important than these attempts of some of the humanists to
restore the Platonism, Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Pyrrhonism of
ancient times was the controversy waged by the various interpreters of
Aristotle on the question of the immortality of the soul. Pietro
Pomponazzi, or Pomponatius (1462-1530), maintained that the
Alexandrian interpreters understood Aristotle to teach that the human
soul is mortal, and contended that this was the genuine mind of the
Stagyrite. Achillini, Nifo (Niphus), and others followed
the Averroistic interpretation, and
contended that the separate, or impersonal, soul alone is immortal,
the individual soul being immortal according to theology, but mortal
according to philosophy.
Of great importance, too, was the anti-Aristotelian movement
inaugurated by Petrus Ramus (Pierre de la Ramée, slain in
the massacre of St. Bartholomew's day, 1572), who opposed the accepted
Aristotelian system of logic, and, in his treatises Aristotelicae
Animadversiones and Institutiones Dialecticae, attempted to
formulate a new system of logical doctrine.
From the ferment of thought occasioned by the mingling all these
elements there emerged a more or less definite system of naturalism
known as the Italian Philosophy of Nature
| Philosophers |
Pico della Mirandola
Philippus Aureolus Paracelsus
|
|
Notables
|
|
| |
