History of Modern Philosophy The Period of Transition: From Nicolas of Cusa to Descartes byFalckenberg, Richard
The essays at philosophy which made their appearance between the middle of
the fifteenth century and the middle of the seventeenth, exhibit mediaeval
and modern characteristics in such remarkable intermixture that they can
be assigned exclusively to neither of these two periods. There are eager
longings, lofty demands, magnificent plans, and promising outlooks in
abundance, but a lack of power to endure, a lack of calmness and maturity;
while the shackles against which the leading minds revolt still bind too
firmly both the leaders and those to whom they speak. Only here and there
are the fetters loosened and thrown off; if the hands are successfully
freed, the clanking chains still hamper the feet. It is a time just suited
for original thinkers, a remarkable number of whom in fact make their
appearance, side by side or in close succession. Further, however little
these are able to satisfy the demand for permanent results, they ever
arouse our interest anew by the boldness and depth of their brilliant
ideas, which alternate with quaint fancies or are pervaded by them; by the
youthful courage with which they attacked great questions; and not least
by the hard fate which rewarded their efforts with misinterpretation,
persecution, and death at the stake. We must quickly pass over the broad
threshold between modern philosophy and Scholastic philosophy, which is
bounded by the year 1450, in which Nicolas of Cusa wrote his chief
work, the Idiota, and 1644, when Descartes began the new era with
his Principia Philosophiae; and can touch, in passing, only the most
important factors. We shall begin our account of this transition period
with Nicolas, and end it with the Englishmen, Bacon, Hobbes, and Lord
Herbert of Cherbury. Between these we shall arrange the various figures
of the Philosophical Renaissance (in the broad sense) in six groups:
the Restorers of the Ancient Systems and their Opponents; the Italian
Philosophers of Nature; the Political and Legal Philosophers; the Skeptics;
the Mystics; the Founders of the Exact Investigation of Nature. In Italy
the new spiritual birth shows an aesthetic, scientific, and humanistic
tendency; in Germany it is pre-eminently religious emancipation--in the
Reformation.
