Medieval and renaissance philosophy

Medieval and renaissance philosophy

These are my personal notes from Part 2 of the book The History of Philosophy by A.C. Grayling, and from episodes 16, 17 and 20 to 24 of the podcast Philosophize This! by Stephen West.

I introduce each philosopher using the format Name (Year, Place – Description). Year refers to the year of birth (or an approximation, as some dates are uncertain), and Place refers to the current country of their city of birth. In the Description, I highlight either what I consider the philosopher’s main contribution or a memorable trait that helps me recall them easily.

Sometimes it's more helpful to group philosophers by schools of thought rather than detailing their individual contributions. In such cases, the format is School – Description [Name1 (Year1, Place1), Name2 (Year2, Place2), ...].

At the mercy of christian orthodoxy – The scholastics

• Augustine of Hippo (354, Algeria – tormented by his sinful past): There are two types of evil. One is permitted by God as punishment for our sins or as the source of a greater good. The other is the evil people do when they sin, which comes from abusing the free will that God gave us: “as long as those who do not sin attain happiness, the universe is perfect; and when sinners are unhappy, the universe is perfect.” All evil, directly or indirectly, is caused by people: evil is the absence of good and thus foreign to God. From birth, we all sin (whether we know it or not), which is why we need God to save us from our inevitable fate in hell. Time exists only in relation to how the human mind perceives reality and gives meaning to what surrounds it. God created time and exists outside of it, comprehending everything in eternal foreknowledge.

• Boethius (480, Italy – consoled by philosophy after his death sentence): There is a difference between divine knowledge and predestination: just because God knows everything that has happened, is happening, and will happen, does not mean that He has forged an unchangeable destiny for each of us. What is past, present, and future to us is only present to God. Happiness and goodness are the same thing and do not arise from possessing worldly goods (wealth, power) but from possessing authentic goods (virtue, love). Therefore, the wicked (who lack goodness) are necessarily unhappy. Even if it doesn’t seem so at the moment, the suffering and unhappiness of good people have a higher purpose: everything that happens is the will of God. The properties of particular things do not have an independent existence—“redness” does not exist, but red things do.

• Anselm of Canterbury (1033, England – logic taken to the extreme): Some things exist only in the human mind, some exist only in reality, and some exist in both. God is the mental concept of the greatest thing conceivable. But since existing in reality and the mind is “greater” than existing only in the mind, God must also exist in reality (ontological argument). Assuming that truth has not always existed leads to a similar contradiction: it implies that before truth existed, it was true that truth did not exist. Therefore, truth has always existed.

• Peter Abelard (1079, France – nominalism and deontology): Everything that exists is individual and particular: universals are only names we assign for convenience to group similar things (dogs) or things with similar features (redness). Whether an action is good or bad depends solely on the intentions of the actor: the consequences of an action are morally irrelevant if the intentions stem from love of God and the desire to obey Him.

• Roger Bacon (1214, England – a modern mind before modernity): Theories derived through reason must be verified with sensory and instrumental data. Error originates from excessive trust in customs and popular opinion. Truth lies in God's general revelation throughout history, so studying the languages of other civilizations is necessary for a complete education. Language is a system that allows the transmission of thoughts from one thinker to a receiver using signs that are independent from the information they carry.

• Thomas Aquinas (1224, Italy – reason as a path to adopt christian faith): The essence of a thing is a compound of matter and substantial form. Matter can change, but the substantial form determines what the thing is. A thing also has accidental forms that do not contribute to its essence, such as the color of a leaf, which can change without it ceasing to be a leaf. In the case of humans, the substantial form is the soul, which performs functions independent of bodily organs, such as reason and will. The soul is incorruptible—that is, unchangeable—and thus survives death. However, it is not a complete substance on its own, as the human being is a unity of body and soul. When processing information acquired through the senses, the human soul—endowed with an active intellect—makes knowledge possible. The existence of God is not an immediate or intuitive knowledge, but it can be demonstrated from observation of the sensible world: everything that exists has a cause, so there must be a first cause that is itself uncaused—God (cosmological argument).

• Duns Scotus (1266, Scotland – univocity of being): There is no sharp distinction between existence and essence. Matter can exist without form (prime matter) and vice versa (spiritual beings). Reason alone is insufficient to know the nature of God; revelation is a necessary condition. The will is superior to the intellect.

• William of Ockham (1285, England – Ockham’s razor): When giving an explanation, one must not make more assumptions than necessary: all else being equal, a simple theory is preferable to a complex one. Theological truths can only be understood through faith, so there can be no proofs of God’s existence: “the ways of God are not open to reason, for He created the world and the path to salvation independent of any logic or rationality that humans might discover.” God is the only necessary being in the universe; everything else must be discovered through investigation. Church and state are of equal rank but differ in their spheres of responsibility, and thus must remain separate. The will is independent of both the intellect and natural appetites, and can choose even what does not appear good.

Let’s worry about the life we have now instead of the next one – The Renaissance

• Humanism (human dignity) – [Francesco Petrarch (1304, Italy), Nicholas of Cusa (1401, Germany), Marsilio Ficino (1433, Italy), Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463, Italy), Charles de Bovelles (1475, France)]: Instead of lamenting humanity’s miseries, we should celebrate human dignity. We lack the natural advantages of animals (claws, speed, shells), but we possess the gifts of intelligence and creativity. These allow us to exploit the advantages of animals: we are divine reflections capable of understanding and transforming the world. Humans can shape themselves, become what they want, and occupy any position in the order of things: knowing oneself is knowing something exalted. While true happiness lies in eternal life in God's presence, in this world we can achieve an imperfect reflection of that supreme posthumous happiness. The mature concepts of pagan philosophy can be applied to life in this world, but matters of the next life should be left to the Scriptures. The state should seek not only peace, but also fame, honor, and glory through the promotion of art and culture. To pursue this through war is beastly and unworthy of civilized humanity.

• Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466, Netherlands – the middle way): Faith must be a personal matter focused on loving one another, far from arbitrary rituals and meaningless scholastic disputes. The Church should return to the original sources of Christianity (the Scriptures) and learn from the teachings of the great pagan philosophers. Being ignorant of the truth does not make one miserable; we are born in ignorance, and it is part of what it means to be human.

• Niccolò Machiavelli (1469, Italy – mantenere lo stato): There is no intrinsically correct way to act because good and evil are defined after the fact based on the goal being pursued. While the average person should be honest, temperate, etc., this does not apply to good rulers, whose goals are very different: unscrupulous opponents would exploit rulers who tried to govern only through virtue. The stability of the state must be the ultimate goal of a good ruler, and they must do whatever it takes to preserve it: “the end justifies the means.” The two main tools available are law and force, and the best ruler is the one who knows how and when to apply each. Since a ruler might be wicked and have interests that don’t align with the state’s, the people must be armed (guardians of their own freedom) and relentless when the situation calls for it: the stability of the state must always be preserved.

• Michel de Montaigne (1533, France – near-death experience): Most generalizations made by humans are not useful because they eventually turn out to be wrong, so we should not waste time seeking rules that apply to all cases. The most productive worldview is one based on our own set of prior experiences: one cannot be sure that others experience things the same way. We should not agonize over things we cannot know: “to learn how to philosophize is to learn how to die.”