• Dermot Griffin
    137
    I have had in graduate school a very scholastic education and this has led me to an interesting question to think about: Were the intellectual developments during the Middle Ages (this includes the Dark Ages) continued by the Renaissance (i.e. the continuity thesis) or in direct opposition to it (i.e. the conflict thesis)? I honestly don’t know what position is more correct.

    Yes, Aristotle was wrong about the earth being in the center of the universe but he was right about there being a first cause to the universe’s origins. Aquinas and contemporaries of his didn’t know that the sun was in the center of the universe but they put an emphasis on man as a spiritual being in nature; Aristotelian natural philosophy discusses this as well but without an emphasis on a spiritual essence of man (Plato was much more focused on this but his epistemology is wrong). On the other hand, the “Copernican Revolution” of the discovery of man not being in the center of the universe (although some Greeks knew this way before Copernicus or Galileo) could not have been found in the Middle Ages to my knowledge; it begs us to think that man is alone in the world because we just aren’t in the center of everything anymore. The feelings of aloneness and anxiety would pave the way for many 19th century thinkers like the Existentialist’s and Hegelian’s and 20th century thinkers such as the Analytics and Logical Positivists.

    To quote Hans Blumenberg in The Genesis of the Copernican World:

    “The fact that a powerful stream of ancient, especially Stoic, ele­ments of admiration of the cosmos flowed into the early Christian literature first becomes intelligible when one recognizes their function of repelling Gnosticism. Maintaining the Creation as the work of a true and good God against the suspicion that it derived from a demiurge and had a demonic function represses the original biblical fear of the heavenly bodies' being turned into idols and also the idea, which was no less authentic to theology, of man’s foreignness in this world. That is the basis of the fact, that the theology of the Creation begins seriously to compete with that of the Redemption-a process that left its imprint on the entire Middle Ages…”

    He continues:

    “Only the African, Arnobius, who walked on the edge of the abyss of heresy, presented man's natural situation in the world-in his apolo­getic work, composed at the beginning of the fourth century-as one of not being surprised by the world. For that purpose, Arnobius went back, once again, to the outline of the (initially Platonic, then Aristo­telian) allegory of the cave, and opposed to it an antithetical variant. His thought experiment imagines, in the interior of the Earth, a habitable room, which is shielded from the change of the seasons and from the sounds of nature, illuminated only by a constant twi­light, and isolated by an entrance that is obstructed by a labyrinth. In this unstocked experimental space of thought a human child grows up who is wordlessly fed, tended, and watched over by a naked nurse, and whose entire rearing is aimed at not allowing needs and agitations to arise, and thus at preserving the unneedy poverty of the human prehistory depicted by Lucretius in his 'history of culture.' The question toward which everything is directed and in which the con­frontation with both the Platonic and the Aristotelian cave allegories culminates is the question of the effect of emerging from the cave. At an arbitrarily chosen age-the later it is, the more instructive [the experiment]-this person is brought out of his isolation, confronted with the outside world, and brought together with other people. How will he behave, what will he say, if he is expected to testify about himself and about where he comes from? He will, so Arnobius con­firms, meet every demand for comprehension stupidly and with indifference, and will let the world be, without fear and without amazement.”

    What the Middle Ages did seem to provide intellectually was a revival in the study of the world around and man’s place in it (as least building a foundation for understanding our place in it) while also simultaneously constricting man from further knowledge. Aquinas himself was condemned in 1277 for his work along with Plato and Aristotle years before in 1270. Regardless, there seems in my own study to be a connection somewhere between the intellectualism of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance but I don’t know if I can exactly call this a continuation of tradition.
  • Fooloso4
    6.1k


    You might find this essay interesting: What Renaissance?

    Renaissance philosophy started in the mid-14th century and saw the flowering of humanism, the rejection of scholasticism and Aristotelianism, the renewal of interest in the ancients, and created the prerequisites for modern philosophy and science. At least, this is the conventional story. But, in fact, there was no Renaissance. It is an invention by historians, a fiction made in order to tell a story – a compelling story about the development of philosophy, but nevertheless a story. In fact, all periodisation is ‘mere’ interpretation. This view is called historiographical nihilism.
  • Dermot Griffin
    137


    Interesting read. After thinking this over for the past week I like to think that the Renaissance was definitely a continuation of certain ideas that Platonism, Aristotelianism, and Scholasticism shared but there definitely was a shift in some ideas. I largely attribute this to Copernicus with his scientific discoveries. So I can’t say I’m for either thesis, be it continuity or conflict. The Renaissance in my opinion seems to be something unique altogether.
  • Fooloso4
    6.1k
    Interesting read.Dermot Griffin

    "Interesting" but based on what you say, you reject the premise.
  • Dermot Griffin
    137


    Well let’s be honest. If St. Thomas came to the conclusion that the geocentric theory was false and that the heliocentric theory was true this would’ve made philosophy very different for the centuries that followed. There would be no “conflict” between science and religion like there is now. I’m of the opinion that there shouldn’t be a conflict between the two anyway but there are some things which naturally just are and this is what the theologian and philosopher need to sit down and discuss.
  • Fooloso4
    6.1k


    The author of the essay is not arguing against events but against concepts such as "historical periodisation":

    ...such grand statements as the outline of a period such as the Renaissance are futile and empty. The arbitrariness of assigning the term ‘Renaissance philosophy’ to a period in time can be easily seen if we have a look at the historical development of the term itself.

    Renaissance philosophy is often presented as a conflict between humanism and scholasticism, or sometimes it’s simply described as the philosophy of humanism. This is a deeply problematic characterisation, partly based on the assumption of a conflict between two philosophical traditions – a conflict that never actually existed, and was in fact constructed by the introduction of two highly controversial terms: ‘humanism’ and ‘scholasticism’. A telling example of how problematic these terms are as a characterisation of philosophy in the 16th century can be found in Michel de Montaigne (1533-92). He was critical of a lot of philosophy that came before him, but he didn’t contrast what he rejected with some kind of humanism, and his sceptical essay An Apology for Raymond Sebond (1580) wasn’t directed at scholastic philosophy. In fact, both these terms were invented much later as a means to write about or introduce Renaissance philosophy. Persisting with this simplistic dichotomy only perverts any attempt at writing the history of 14th- to 16th-century philosophy.
  • Dermot Griffin
    137


    I think I better understand the authors point. However could not the “Christian humanism” that rose during the Renaissance be a kind of spiritual humanism? I mean many forget that the first humanists were Christians inspired by the scholastic’s of the Middle Ages. I do know that there is a school of thought that tends to downplay the pursuits of people like Pico della Mirandola or Lorenzo Valla who both sought to synthesize the old school ways of thinking (Platonism, Aristotelianism, the budding Thomist movement, certain thinkers within Judaism and Islam) in a pre-modern context. Many history professors wrongly label the Renaissance the beginnings of the age of secularism and the Enlightenment has the actualized age of secularism and I’ve never been at home with either of approaches.
  • Fooloso4
    6.1k
    However could not the “Christian humanism” that rose during the Renaissance be a kind of spiritual humanism?Dermot Griffin

    The author of the essay points to 'humanism' and 'scholasticism' as a "deeply controversial terms". I don't see how adding 'Christian' or 'spiritual' helps. In fact, it is indicative of the problem. It is still an attempt to divide history into distinguishable periods and fit the work of a thinker into a period.
  • Paine
    2.5k

    Augustine synthesized a Neo-Platonist view of the cosmos with the Pauline vision of a world torn asunder by the struggle between good and evil where miracles appear. The experience of natural events was not separated from why miraculous things happen. This lead to many different accounts of experience. The importance of personal visions and hearings stood side by side with the image of an ordered creation. We live in the vestibule between the inner and the outer. This can be seen in the life of St. Francis of Assisi, described by St. Bonaventure:

    As it stood above him, he saw that it was a man and yet a Seraph with six wings; his arms were extended and his feet conjoined, and his body was fixed to a cross. Two wings were raised above his head, two were extended as in flight, and two covered the whole body. The face was beautiful beyond all earthly beauty, and it smiled gently upon Francis. Conflicting emotions filled his heart, for though the vision brought great joy, the sight of the suffering and crucified figure stirred him to deepest sorrow. Pondering what this vision might mean, he finally understood that by God’s providence he would be made like to the crucified Christ not by a bodily martyrdom but by conformity in mind and heart. Then as the vision disappeared, it left not only a greater ardour of love in the inner man but no less marvelously marked him outwardly with the stigmata of the Crucified.

    I don't know how the loss of geocentricity relates to the end of peoples' time in the vestibule One could argue that it brought the human more clearly into view. Places where the natural and the 'supernatural' were separated allowed a person to decide for themselves whether they were awake or living in a dream.

    I had never heard of Arnobius before. He sort of built the first Skinner Box. Is Blumenberg saying this experience is the result of failing to 'repel Gnosticism'?
  • Dermot Griffin
    137
    I generally am a tad cagey about the historicity surrounding events like the stigmata; in none of the private writings of St. Francis does he mention having it. Perhaps St. Francis had dream where this was revealed to him but as far as a physical stigmata goes I’m a skeptic. Regardless, the passage from Bonaventure is very important because it reveals something about the human condition: we all long for the Absolute (not to get too Hegelian).

    To try and respond to your question about Arnobius (I’m still reading Blumenberg) what he seems to be saying is that the longing for transcendence, to feel a union or a connection with God, is completely natural and we find this in both religious people and non-religious people. The difference is that religious people are conscious of this while non-religious people are not. Charles Darwin, for example, was not deeply invested in organized religion but he had a belief in philosophical theism. Arnobius from what I’ve read believed in God and professed himself a Christian but seemed to think outside the box. To reference Blumenberg again:

    “For Arnobius, immortality becomes the sum of what can be gained, in Christianity, as an addition to man's mortal nature. Arnobius works with an anthropo­logical minimum. He is a kind of Christian Epicurean. His cave man corresponds to Lucretius's original man, before he strayed into cul­ture: provided by nature with meager nourishment and constantly in flight from nature's dangers, and consequently without an upward glance at the heavens, and without the corresponding idle affects of amazement and fear. Arnobius betrays no horror at the outcome of this thought experi­ment. On the contrary, he has a sort of pre-Rousseauvian sympathy for his figure's insensitivity toward the world's seductive magnifi­cence, which could only seduce him into superfluity. For man is a creature of superfluity, a superfluous creature in a world-constitution that is finished and complete without him. This ‘animal supervacuum’ [superfluous creature] is a kind of practical joke played on God's work by unknown heavenly courtiers, so that man has no part in the legitimation of the creation, does not bring with him and cannot find any relation to it, but instead finally has to be extracted from it by a pure act of grace. From the same basic idea of man's 'surplus' status as the last mem­ber of the Creation, Pico della Mirandola was to draw, more than a millennium later, the conclusion of the ‘dignitas hominis’ [dignity of man]: freedom for self-definition and for the continual change of his point of view in contemplating the world. For the Renaissance phi­losopher man will no longer need validation by the world's quality of order; for Arnobius, man's worldlessness is still his absolute neediness.”

    I think that Arnobius was attempting to criticize Gnosticism because of its emphasis on man being the creation of the Demiurge (the “trickster”) but at the same time critique contemporaries of his. No doubt he was controversial with his “Christianized Epicureanism” but Erasmus during the Renaissance also was influenced by Epicurean thought, something that would’ve been a taboo in the Middle Ages as the Papal States believed that Epicurus did not believe that the soul left the body and because of his agnosticism was condemned (and placed in the 6th circle of Hell in Dante’s Inferno). Gnosticism eventually went away and has made an attempt at revival specifically beginning in the 60’s; Timothy Leary (I’m sure we’ve all heard of him), a native to my hometown, went on to found the “League for Spiritual Discovery.” They based everything off of a Catholic mass but instead of giving communion with bread and wine they would give tabs of LSD instead, also claiming that the gospel writers were advocating everyone to “trip out” and use psychedelic drugs, and added the Gnostic texts into the biblical canon unofficially. The big one was the Gospel of Thomas which I personally don’t think is Gnostic at all.
  • Paine
    2.5k

    Thank you for directing my attention toward Blumenberg. After having searched for his writings, I am going to read some his work on fables, myths, and metaphors. If I get where he is coming from, the importance of the St. Francis story is not historical as an event but emblematic of what people considered possible and real. The barriers between life and death, the natural and the miraculous were less solid than for us as a culture of shared understanding.

    I am curious which particular school of Gnosticism Blumenberg is referring to. There are many variations, as can be seen here. In the various ways that evil came into being, the role of the Demiurge is primarily that of the 'Craftsman'. This is the same agent in Plato's Timaeus who assembled creation. How 'tricky' he was considered to be varied greatly amongst Gnostic theogonies. Plotinus militated against the Gnostics because they said the world was a place that required salvation. As he said in many places: "No has the right to find fault with the constitution of the world for it reveals the greatness of intelligible nature."

    Gnosticism did not simply evaporate but was vigorously erased by the Church as much as it was in their power to do so. The discovery of the Nag Hammadi in 1945 brought the Gospel of Thomas into view. The writing does have some connections to Gnostic thinking and some of that language is found in the Gospel of John as well. What really pushed it out of the canon must be the absence of the Passion/Resurrection narrative along with Jesus's instruction to look to James to lead them after he is gone. That is not exactly the vibe the Church Fathers were hankering for.
  • BC
    13.6k
    This being a philosophy forum and not a mechanics or agriculture forum, intellectual developments take center stage. However, the Middle Ages were not "Dark" Ages. Material culture developed during the Middle Ages, without which the high renaissance would have had a meagre existence.

    This isn't to claim that the people of the Middle Ages were prosperous literate yeomen. Far from it; there was plague, for instance; crop failures which led to starvation; there were numerous upheavals unsettling everybody. Still, there was material progress.

    Without a reasonably robust material foundation (for which intellectuals are generally not responsible) there would be no renaissance.
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