The Renaissance

(Artistic depiction by Raphael of the school of Athens) 
shows all the important intellectual figures in ancient greece)

This lecture was basically a brief overview of the history and context of western philosophy. We looked at the the renaissance all the way from the scientific revival to Descartes’ cogito. Initially we looked at the difference between Plato and Aristotles beliefs. Plato believed in forms (ideals which exist outside time), he believed that our senses limit us to seeing the true form of everything around us, and we can merely see an imperfect copy of the world. Supposedly only the soul can see the true world around us.  Aristotle believed that in order to understand the world we had to understand the fundamental fact that Axioms exist, for example to attempt any kind of scientific equation or theory we must first realise that things are real. Descartes expanded on his theories...
   
The renaissance was a rebirth of classical thought and art, and was a self-conscious rejection of tradition, which was known as scholasticism. It argued for a more humanistic world view. Protagoras came up with the statement; “man is the measure of all things”. Prior to this point in time man and the body where seen as wicked and in need of salvation by the gods. From this point onwards man was seen as a being which could think for itself, and come to its own conclusions. One of the most important things about the renaissance was the ability to print information. With this new technology it was now possible to pass information from generation to generation; therefore people could expand on other people’s beliefs and ideas over thousands of years. This was necessary if any kind of progression was to occur.
   
There where supposedly two phases in which the renaissance occurred in Europe. The first was the South which saw witness to people like Machiavelli who was very hostile to Christian teachings; he can be seen as the beginning of political science, and a representative for renaissance humanism in the south. His most famous book is called ‘the prince’. In this he wrote about how people should rule, “it is necessary for a prince who wishes to maintain himself to learn how not to be good and to use this knowledge and not to use it according to necessity”. He came up with various rules for warfare as well for example; in a conflict always support the weaker side because when the conflict is over you will be the dominant power. This theory was actually proved correct and caused the eruption of the British Empire in the early 17^th century.
   
‘The age of reason’ marks the intellectual transition from the Middle Ages to the modern world. Descartes was another important philosopher. His belief was that the universe could be explained through mathematics, running along the same train of thoughts as Plato and Pythagoras. It was known as mechanical science. Sir Isaac Newton is a substantially important figure when it comes to mechanical science but he didn’t exist for another 100 years after this, so Descartes can be seen as the original mechanical scientist. Descartes loved mathematics because of “the certainty of it’s demonstrations and the evidence of its reasoning”. Obviously he was a very logical thinker. His true aim was “to arrive at knowledge of things a priori from the knowledge of the order of nature which controls them”. This is similar to Aristotle’s beliefs as it was necessary to have a fundamental certainty of the existence of himself and his thoughts.