Lecture notes (expanded upon)

Plato and Aristotle
Plato’s theory of ideas:
Plato believed that a true philosopher is one who has knowledge but not opinions.
To have knowledge is to know of something for it is impossible to know of something non-existent therefore knowledge is infallible.

Conversely whilst opinion can only be derived from that which exists, those things can be interpreted in different ways and thus opinion is to interpret something in one way and not have knowledge of the absolute and everything. For example opinion is to find something beautiful when it can be regarded as both beautiful and ugly.

Therefore opinion is based on what we are able to perceive from our senses whereas knowledge is to see past perception and see the raw world not coloured by opinion derived of our senses.

Aristotle meanwhile is more fixated on observation of the world as perceived by human senses. That one could only learn about existing reality through that which can be perceived. In this he simply seeks to classify things and propose an idea that something cannot exist by itself but only in the context of others things e.g. that football cannot exist without the football players.

As I detailed in the previous post the preface to the Italian Renaissance was a long and complex journey. The Italian Renaissance and all that would follow were no less so.

The Italian Renaissance
The Renaissance itself was not entirely a popular movement, scholars, artists and philosophers funded by the rich and employed by the powerful such as the Medici family who ruled Florence at the time.

It resulted in poetry and painting and produced many famous names such as Leonardo, Michelangelo and Machiavelli.

The Renaissance was a time of intellectual freedom, the opportunity to reject scholasticism consciously and without retort, whilst there was no direct affront against the church there was far more hostility in the South than North as the latter incorporated theology into study. In fact it was the fact that the popes were humanist at this time which allowed the Renaissance to flourish as it did in the South. When popes became religious once more the Renaissance soon ended as ecclesial authority descended on the innovators and philosophers marking an end to further progress scientifically and philosophically without due consent of the Church.

The Northern Renaissance
Unlike the Italian Renaissance which suffered from a degradation of morals and descent into anarchy the new learning that spread itself through  Britain, France etc differed in the fact it concerned itself more with combining newly developed and developing  scholarly skills to the Bible and obtaining more accurate texts than that of Vulgate, the Latin bible. The Northern Renaissance was thus less innovative and free but developed on stronger foundations and as such was more stable. Notable names are Erasmus and Sir Thomas More both products of the Northern Renaissance.

In this ‘Age of Reason’ and discovery, new peoples were found, technologies and foods discovered and traded at a global scale as a global economy emerged from ever expanding and innovating commerce.

Erasmus and Sir Thomas More make excellent examples of the Northern Renaissance due to their outright rejection of scholastic philosophy and whilst despising theology in its current superfluous forms still had great love for Christ and Christianity as seen in Erasmus’s book ‘The Praise of Folly’ and More’s book ‘Utopia’ which details a religious paradise where all believers are accepted but have no absolute power in a democracy headed by a Prince.

Scientific Renaissance
The scientific renaissance incorporates the philosophy of those who dared interpret the world without God or at least Christianity, the dominant theology of the time.

Most notable is perhaps Galileo but Copernican theory was the first in the series of great science developed by such men who dared to think beyond the realms of dogmatic certainty perpetuated by the Church. Copernican theory is that which states the sun, not the Earth is the centre of the universe and that the Earth travels around the Sun. He made this opinion known but dared not publish his work which would be published in the year of the death dedicated to the Pope and not condemned by the more liberal Church of the time.

Other great men of the scientific Renaissance would include Kepler, Galieo and Newton who would all make considerable contributions to science such as Kepler’s three laws of planetary motion.

Political Science would also emerge, most significantly with Machiavelli’s ‘Prince’ dedicated to Lorenzo the Second in attempt to win the favour of the Medici family who had exiled him as he was known to oppose them. Prince detailed how principalities are won, lost and held and Machiavelli remains almost completely objective whilst offering practical advice for the reader to think or act upon as they will. Machiavelli’s political philosophy was scientific and empirical based on such observations that ‘all armed prophets have conquered and unarmed ones failed.’

Modern Philosophy

Descartes is widely regarded as the founder of modern philosophy, especially in regards to his two most influential books ‘Discourse on Method’ and ‘Meditations.’ In these he embarked upon ‘Cartesian Doubt’ whereby one forgets all they know in order to rebuild their knowledge through a test of universal doubt. I.e. doubting all perceptions, memories etc to ascertain what cannot be doubted beyond measure and thus must be real. For example one may remember completing a task however this could simply be a hallucination and because there is doubt it cannot be trusted. Eventually he found something absolute; thought. To doubt in its very essence is a form of thinking and so it cannot be denied. 

Therefore: ‘I think therefore I am.’

His work would continue to influence many after his death in 1650 and still remains a poignant quote today.