The Philosophy Book
Page 12
After Aquinas
Since the Middle Ages, Aquinas has come to be regarded as the official orthodox philosopher of the Catholic Church. In his own time, when translations of Greek philosophy were being made from Arabic, complete with Arabic commentaries, he was one of the thinkers keenest to follow Aristotle’s train of philosophical reasoning, even when it did not fit neatly with Christian doctrine. He always remained faithful to the Church’s teachings, but this did not prevent his thought from almost being condemned as heretical shortly after his death. The great thinkers and teachers of the following century, such as the secular philosopher Henry of Ghent, and the Franciscans John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham, were all far more willing to say that purely philosophical reasoning, as best represented by Aristotle’s arguments, is often mistaken.
Scotus thought that Aquinas’s Aristotelian view of the soul was inadequate, and Ockham rejected Aristotle’s account of knowledge almost entirely. Henry of Ghent explicitly criticized Aquinas’s view that God could have created a universe that always exists. If it always existed, he argued, there would be no possibility of its not existing, and so God would not have been free to create or not create it. Aquinas’s supreme confidence in the power of reason meant that he had more in common with the greatest philosopher of the previous century, the French philosopher and theologian Pierre Abélard, than he did with his contemporaries and successors.
The laws of cause and effect lead us to look for the cause of any event, even the beginning of the universe. Aristotle supposed that God set the universe into motion, and Aquinas agreed, but added that the “Prime Mover”—God—must itself be uncaused.
Coherent belief
Both Aquinas’s general view on the relation between philosophy and Christian doctrine, and his particular treatment of the eternity of the universe, remain relevant in the 21st century. Today few philosophers believe that religious positions, such as the existence of God or the immortality of the soul, can be proved by philosophical reasoning. But what some claim for philosophy is that it can demonstrate that although religious believers hold certain doctrines as a matter of faith, their overall views are no less rational or coherent than those of agnostics or atheists. This view is an extension and development of Aquinas’s constant endeavor to develop a philosophically coherent system of thought, while holding on to his Christian beliefs. Reading Aquinas’s works is a lesson in tolerance, for Christians and non-Christians alike.
Cosmic background radiation provides evidence of the “Big Bang” that started the universe, but we can still argue, like Aquinas, that this was not the only possible way for it to exist.
The role of philosophy
Today, we do not look to philosophy to tell us whether or not the universe has always existed, and most of us do not turn to the Bible, as Aquinas and other medieval philosophers did. Instead we look to physics, in particular to the theory of the “Big Bang” proposed by modern scientists, including the British physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking. This theory states that the universe expanded from a state of extremely high temperature and density at a particular point in time.
Though most of us now turn to science for an explanation of how the universe began, the arguments of Aquinas show that philosophy is still relevant to how we think about the subject. He demonstrates how philosophy can provide the tools for intelligent enquiry, allowing us to investigate not what happens to be the case, but what is possible and what is impossible, and what are intelligible questions to ask. Is it or is it not coherent to believe that the universe had a beginning? This is still a question for philosophers, and no amount of theoretical physics will be able to answer it.
"One may say that time had a beginning at the Big Bang, in the sense that earlier times simply would not be defined."
Stephen Hawking
THOMAS AQUINAS
Thomas Aquinas was born in 1225 at Roccasecca in Italy. He studied at the University of Naples and then joined the Dominican order (a new, highly intellectual order of friars) against the wishes of his family. As a novitiate he studied in Paris and then in Cologne under the German Aristotelian theologian, Albert the Great. Returning to Paris, he became Master (professor) of theology, before leaving to travel around Italy teaching for 10 years. Unusually, Aquinas was then offered a second period of tenure as Master at Paris. In 1273 he experienced something that has been considered both some sort of vision and a possible stroke; after it, he said that all he had done was “mere straw”, and he never wrote again. He died at the age of 49, and was recognized as a saint by the Catholic Church in 1323.
Key works
1256–59 Disputed Questions on Truth
c.1265–74 Summa Theologica
1271 On the Eternity of the Universe
See also: Aristotle • Avicenna • Averroes • John Philoponus • John Duns Scotus • Pierre Abélard • William of Ockham • Immanuel Kant
IN CONTEXT
BRANCH
Epistemology
APPROACH
Epistemology
BEFORE
380–360 BCE Plato writes on “the Good” or “the One” as the ultimate source of reason, knowledge, and all existence.
Late 5th century CE The Greek theologian and philosopher Dionysius the Areopagite describes God as “above being.”
c.860 Johannes Scotus Eriugena promotes the ideas of Dionysius the Areopagite.
AFTER
1492 Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s On Being and the One marks a turning point in Renaissance thinking about God.
1991 French philosopher Jean-Luc Marion explores the theme of God as not a being.
Nikolaus von Kues belongs to a long tradition of medieval philosophers who attempt to describe the nature of God, stressing how God is unlike anything that the human mind is capable of grasping. Von Kues begins with the idea that we gain knowledge by using our reason to define things. So in order to know God, he deduces that we must try to define the basic nature of God.
Plato describes “the Good” or “the One” as the ultimate source of all other forms and knowledge, and some early Christian theologians talk of God as “above being.” Von Kues, writing around 1440, goes further, stating that God is what comes before everything, even before the possibility of something existing. Yet reason tells us the possibility of any phenomenon existing must come before its actual existence. It is impossible for something to come into being before the possibility of it arises. The conclusion that von Kues comes to, therefore, is that something that is said to do this must be described as “Not-other.”
"Whatever-I-know is not God and whatever-I-conceive is not like God."
Nikolaus von Kues
Beyond apprehension
However, the use of the word “thing” in the line of reasoning that von Kues adopts is misleading, as the “Not-other” has no substance. It is, according to von Kues, “beyond apprehension”, and is before all things in such a way that “they are not subsequent to it, but exist through it.” For this reason too, von Kues thinks “Not-other” comes closer to a definition of God than any other term.
See also: Plato • Johannes Scotus Eriugena • Meister Eckhart • Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
IN CONTEXT
BRANCH
Epistemology
APPROACH
Epistemology
BEFORE
354–430 CE St. Augustine of Hippo integrates Platonism into Christianity.
c.1265–1274 Thomas Aquinas combines Aristotelian and Christian philosophy in his Summa Theologica.
AFTER
1517 Theologian Martin Luther
writes The Ninety-Five Theses, protesting against clerical abuses. It triggers the start of the Reformation.
1637 René Descartes writes Discourse on the Method, putting human beings at the center of philosophy.
1689 John Locke argues for separation of government and religion in A Letter Concerning Toleration.
The treatise In Praise of Folly, which Erasmus wrote in 1509, reflects the Humanist ideas that were beginning to flood across Europe during the early years of the Renaissance, and were to play a key role in the Reformation. It is a witty satire on the corruption and doctrinal wranglings of the Catholic Church. However, it also has a serious message, stating that folly—by which Erasmus meant naive ignorance—is an essential part of being human, and is what ultimately brings us the most happiness and contentment. He goes on to claim that knowledge, on the other hand, can be a burden and can lead to complications that may make for a troublesome life.
Faith and folly
Religion is a form of folly too, Erasmus states, in that true belief can only ever be based on faith, never on reason. He dismisses the mixing of ancient Greek rationalism with Christian theology by medieval philosophers, such as St. Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas, as theological intellectualizing, claiming that it is the root cause of the corruption of religious faith. Instead, Erasmus advocates a return to simple heartfelt beliefs, with individuals forming a personal relationship with God, and not one prescribed by Catholic doctrine.
Erasmus advises us to embrace what he sees as the true spirit of the Scriptures—simplicity, naivety, and humility. These, he says, are the fundamental human traits that hold the key to a happy life.
"Happiness is reached when a person is ready to be what he is."
Desiderius Erasmus
See also: St. Augustine of Hippo • Thomas Aquinas • René Descartes • John Locke
INTRODUCTION
The Renaissance—a cultural “rebirth” of extraordinary creativity in Europe—began in 14th-century Florence. It was to spread across Europe, lasting until the 17th century, and it is now viewed as the bridge between the medieval and modern periods. Marked by a renewed interest in the whole of Greek and Latin Classical culture—not just the philosophical and mathematical texts assimilated by medieval Scholasticism—it was a movement that viewed humans, not God, at its center. This new humanism was reflected first in the art and then the political and social structure of Italian society; republics such as Florence and Venice soon abandoned medieval feudalism in favor of plutocracies where commerce flourished alongside the new scientific discoveries.
By the end of the 15th century, Renaissance ideas had spread across Europe and virtually eclipsed the Church’s monopoly of learning. Although Christian philosophers such as Erasmus and Thomas More had contributed to the arguments within the Church that had sparked the Reformation, a purely secular philosophy had yet to emerge. Unsurprisingly, the first truly Renaissance philosopher was a Florentine—Niccolò Machiavelli—and his philosophy marked a definitive movement from the theological to the political.
The Age of Reason
The final nail in the coffin of the Church’s authority came from science. First Nicolaus Copernicus, then Johannes Kepler, and finally Galileo Galilei showed that the Ptolemaic model of the universe with Earth at its center was mistaken, and their demonstrations overturned centuries of Christian teaching. The Church fought back, ultimately imprisoning Galileo for heresy, but advances in all the sciences soon followed those in astronomy, providing alternative explanations for the workings of the universe, and a basis for a new kind of philosophy.
The victory of rational, scientific discovery over Christian dogma epitomized the thinking of the 17th century. British philosophers, notably Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes, took the lead in integrating scientific and philosophical reasoning. It was the beginning of a period that became known as the Age of Reason, which produced the first great “modern” philosophers and revived the connection between philosophy and science, especially mathematics, that dated back to pre-Socratic Greece.
The birth of rationalism
In the 17th century, many of the most significant philosophers in Europe were also accomplished mathematicians. In France, René Descartes and Blaise Pascal made major contributions to mathematics, as did Gottfried Leibniz in Germany. They believed that its reasoning process provided the best model for how to acquire all our knowledge of the world. Descartes’s investigation of the question “What can I know?” led him to a position of rationalism, which is the belief that knowledge comes from reason alone. This became the predominant belief in continental Europe for the next century. At the same time, a very different philosophical tradition was being established in Britain. Following the scientific reasoning espoused by Francis Bacon, John Locke came to the conclusion that our knowledge of the world comes not from reason, but experience. This view, known as empiricism, characterized British philosophy during the 17th and 18th centuries.
Despite the division between continental rationalism and British empiricism (the same division that had separated the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle), both had in common the placing of the human at their centers: it is this being whose reason or experience leads to knowledge. Philosophers on both sides of the Channel had moved from asking questions about the nature of the universe—which were being answered by scientists such as Isaac Newton—to questioning how we can know what we know, and they now began to investigate the nature of the human mind and self. But these new philosophical strands had moral and political implications. Just as the Church’s authority had been undermined by the ideas of the Renaissance, so the aristocracies and monarchies were threatened by the new ideas of the Enlightenment, as this period came to be known. If the old rulers were removed from power, what sort of society was to replace them?
In Britain, Hobbes and Locke had laid the foundations for democratic thinking during the turbulent 17th century, but it was another 100 years before a questioning of the status quo began in earnest elsewhere.
IN CONTEXT
BRANCH
Epistemology
APPROACH
Epistemology
BEFORE
5th century BCE Plato argues in his Republic that the state should be governed by a philosopher-king.
1st century BCE The Roman writer Cicero argues that the Roman Republic is the best form of government.
AFTER
16th century Machiavelli’s peers begin to use the adjective “Machiavellian” to describe acts of devious cunning.
1762 Jean-Jacques Rousseau argues that people should hold on to their liberty and resist the rule of princes.
1928 Italian dictator Benito Mussolini describes The Prince as “the statesman’s supreme guide.”
In order fully to understand Machiavelli’s views on power, it is necessary to understand the background to his political concerns. Machiavelli was born in Florence, Italy, during a time of almost constant upheaval. The Medici family had been in open but unofficial control of the city-state for some 35 years, and the year of Machiavelli’s birth saw Lorenzo de’ Medici (Lorenzo the Magnificent) succeed his father as ruler, ushering in a period of great artistic activity in Florence. Lorenzo was succeeded in 1492 by his son Piero (known as Piero the Unfortunate), whose reign was short-lived. The French under Charles VIII invaded Italy in considerable force in 1494, and Piero was forced to surrender and then flee the city, as the citizens rebelled against him. Florence was declared a republic that same year.
The Dominican prior of the San Marco monastery, Girolamo Savonarola, then came to dominate Florentine political life. T
he city-state entered a democratic period under his guidance, but after accusing the pope of corruption Savonarola was eventually arrested and burnt as a heretic. This led to Machiavelli’s first known involvement in Florentine politics, and he became Secretary to the second Chancery in 1498.
Career and influences
The invasion by Charles VIII in 1494 had sparked a turbulent period in the history of Italy, which at the time was divided into five powers: the papacy, Naples, Venice, Milan, and Florence. The country was fought over by various foreign powers, mainly France, Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire. Florence was weak in the face of their armies, and Machiavelli spent 14 years travelling between various cities on diplomatic missions, trying to shore up the struggling republic.
In the course of his diplomatic activities, Machiavelli met Cesare Borgia, the illegitimate son of Pope Alexander VI. The pope was a powerful figure in northern Italy, and a significant threat to Florence. Although Cesare was Florence’s enemy, Machiavelli—despite his republican views—was impressed by his vigor, intelligence, and ability. Here we see one of the sources for Machiavelli’s famous work, The Prince.