Notes

The Renaissance was an exciting time of tremendous change in culture and learning that lasted from about 1400 to 1600 in Europe. One change that occurred early in the Renaissance was the invention of the printing press. Almost over night, it made million of books available. This helped the Renaissance spread quickly from Italy, where it began, to the rest of Europe. Other major changes that took place during the Renaissance can be summed up with four “R” words: rebirth, revolution, reaction, and reformation.
The word renaissance literally means “rebirth.” The Renaissance was a period of rebirth of Classical Greek culture. There was a revival of ancient Greek art, literature, and philosophy. During the Renaissance, thousands of wonderful works of art were created, including those of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. In England, the Renaissance was the era of William Shakespeare, who is still considered to be the world’s greatest playwright.The beliefs of the Catholic church were threatened by scientific discoveries such as these. Copernicus’ theory of the solar system challenged the church’s position that Earth was specially created by God and is the center of the universe. The church reacted with a long series of religious trials of so-called “heretics,” known collectively as the Inquisition. During the Inquisition, many people were put to death for the “crime” of disagreeing with church doctrine Not long after the Inquisition began, a German priest named Martin Luther started openly criticizing the Catholic church. Luther thought that ordinary people could read the Bible and pray on their own and didn’t need priests to tell them what to believe. He spoke out for reform of the church and started a movement known as the Reformation. Eventually, he was expelled from the Catholic church. He went on to found the first Protestant sect of Christianity, named Lutheranism.During the Renaissance, as the church’s influence declined, there were new influences on philosophy. Ancient Greek philosophers like Plato and the always-doubting skeptics became popular once again. Another influence was humanism. As the name suggests, this is the doctrine that humans are important, valuable, and interesting in their own right. This is very different from the medieval Catholic belief that humans are imperfect, sinful, and only of interest as God’s creations.One of the most famous philosophers of the Renaissance was Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536). Erasmus was a Dutch monk who revived skepticism. He thought that humans can know nothing for certain so it’s pointless to argue about whether God exists or how people should behave. Instead, he advised people to just have faith in God and love one another. As a humanist, Erasmus believed that people should read and interpret the Bible for themselves. He agreed with Martin Luther that the Catholic church needed reform. However, Erasmus thought that the church should be reformed from within, and he never broke with the church.

• Rationalism is the philosophy that knowledge can be gained through the use of reason alone. It assumes that knowledge exists independently of physical reality and the human mind has innate, or inborn, ideas. The rationalists were mathematicians as well as philosophers and took mathematics as their model. They tried to prove philosophical theories with logic. Two of the most important rationalist philosophers were René Descartes and Benedict Spinoza. Their motto might have been, “It’s all in your head.”

• Empiricism is the philosophy that all knowledge comes from experience through the senses. It assumes that there is an observable physical reality and the human mind has no innate ideas. The empiricists were influenced by the rise of the scientific method and took physical science as their model. They tried to prove philosophical theories with data from the senses. Two of the most important empiricist philosophers were John Locke and David Hume. Their motto might have been, “Seeing is believing.”

René Descartes was the first French rationalist philosopher and is also considered to be the first modern philosopher. He was a skeptic who started out doubting everything. In fact, doubt is literally the basis of his whole philosophy. Doubting, he said, was the only thing he could be absolutely certain of. Beginning with that one basic premise, he went on to develop an entire philosophy.Descartes was born in France but spent most of his adult life in the Netherlands. As a Catholic, he believed in God, and it was important to him to prove that God exists. He also feared the church, and this influenced what he wrote and how he wrote it. For example, he wrote a book on physics but decided not to publish it after Galileo had his run in with the Inquisition. Instead, he “hid” his ideas about physics in a book on philosophy called Meditations.
Descartes expanded this idea, arguing that everything exists as one of these two substances, an idea that’s called dualism.