Renaissance Philosophy

The designation Renaissance philosophy is used by scholars of intellectual history to refer to the thought of the period running in Europe roughly between 1355 and 1650 (the dates shift forward for central and northern Europe and for areas such as Spanish America, India, Japan, and China under European influence). It therefore overlaps both with late medieval philosophy, which in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was influenced by notable figures such as Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, William of Ockham, and Marsilius of Padua, and early modern philosophy, which conventionally starts with René Descartes and his publication of the Discourse on Method in 1637. Philosophers usually divide the period less finely, jumping from medieval to early modern philosophy, on the assumption that no radical shifts in perspective took place in the centuries immediately before Descartes. Intellectual historians, however, take into considerations factors such as sources, approaches, audience, language, and literary genres in addition to ideas. This article reviews both the changes in context and content of Renaissance philosophy and its remarkable continuities with the past.

Starting points of the new thinking
Usually the Renaissance is the time of the 15th and 16th century, with the beginning and end of the period extending beyond. It is a time of economic boom in the cities and the big trading houses (Hanseatic, Fugger, Medici) and the age of discoveries. It is the time when the bourgeoisie gained more and more weight and adopted education. Technical innovations such as the further development of the compass, the gunpowder, weight wheel watches (about 1300) and spring clocks (about 1400), a pronounced growth in ore mining because of the Münzrechte that the rulersbecause of the golden bull of Charles IV of the IV., and also the invention of the printing press (about 1450) show the tremendous spirit of optimism at this time. The growing weakness of the Church against the Empire emerges in papal exile in Avignon (1309-1377), in the great schism (1378-1417), and in the subsequent councils of Constance and Basel.

The roots of Renaissance devotion date back to the 13th century. The universities replaced in increasing numbers the monastic and cathedral schools. The education broadened and with the Artes liberales also the general philosophical knowledge. Among the philosophers, Scotus (1266-1308) advocated a sharper separation of faith and reason, opening the door to the “via moderna” of Ockham’s nominalism (1285-1349). Among the important innovators are Roger Bacon (1214-1294), according to which science is strictly separated from theology and empirical with experimentsand mathematics must be operated, Petrus Peregrinus, who first described the polarity of the compass, Dietrich von Freiberg (about 1245-1318) exploration of the rainbow or Marsilius of Padua (1275-1343), in the book Defensor Pacis (defender of the Peace) for a republican society entered into the church into it and after its condemnation by the pope as well as Ockham with Louis the Bavarian in Munich protection had to look for. In a time of growing and increasingly independent of the Church of Italian citiesAbove all, it was the poets and artists who used the free spaces and developed their own views on the world.

To be mentioned among the poets are, in particular, Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), still strongly attached to medieval thought, with his Divine Comedy and his essay on the philosophy of the state Monarchia, Petrarch (1304-1374), who was a critical writer of humanism in Scholasticism and Aristotelianism (About his and many other ignorances), and his Florentine friend Boccaccio (1313-1375), who is considered the founder of the Italian novella.

Important for the development in Florence was also Coluccio Salutati (1331-1406), who was personally acquainted with Petrarch, had an intense knowledge of Roman literature and, as chancellor, advocated humanism and civil liberty. Among other Salutati established a chair for Greek language. His pupil Leonardo Bruni (1369-1444) was also his successor. Bruni became known through translations of Plato, Aristotle and other Greek philosophers and even wrote literary texts. Later known Renaissance writers are Torquato Tasso (1544-1594), François Rabelais (1494-1553),Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536) and Philipp Melanchthon (1497-1560) and not least William Shakespeare.

Have become famous in the arts u. a. as a pioneer of the painter Giotto (1267-1337), a friend of Dante, outstanding sculptor Donatello (1386-1466), painter Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510), famous for his allegories and paintings of Greek mythology, the universal genius Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), who excelled not only in art but also in technique, architecture, anatomy and other fields; furthermore Hans Holbein (1465-1524),Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564), Titian (1477-1576) or Raphael (1483-1520). They all united the ideal of the union of antiquity and nature, which led them to increasingly naturalistic representations.

Rebirth of Neoplatonism
It is customary, however, to start the first humanistic requests, prelude to the Renaissance, with a fourteenth-century author: Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374). In him, the first among the moderns, there is already the disagreement between the medieval religious perspective and the rediscovery of man, typical of Humanism. In Petrarch it is announced in short that which will be a constant of the subsequent humanistic and then Renaissance thought, that is the attempt to reconcile Agostino, Cicero, Plato, to keep united Christian thought, humanae litterae Latin, and classical Greek philosophy.

Since then man became the center of attention that previous culture seemed to have not granted him, so that his work in the world began to acquire a new meaning based on the ideal of homo faber. The renewed interest in the classics will also reveal a multiplicity of cultural orientations that will essentially lead to two tendencies of thought: one that refers to Aristotle, interpreting it in a naturalistic way, in contrast to the religious sense with which he had read San Thomas; the other that refers to Plato and the Neo – Platonists (Plotinusin particular), in which we find, in addition to the aforementioned Petrarca, also Coluccio Salutati and Leonardo Bruni.

But it was especially the latter, the Neoplatonic one, to enjoy a great rebirth, due to a strong anti-Aristotelian polemic, which described Aristotle as an ancient and pedantic thinker, and thanks to the reunification between the Eastern and Eastern Churches. Occidente (occurred in 1438), which brought together a large number of Byzantine intellectuals and scholars in Italy, especially in Florence, who favored the rediscovery of Greek classical studies; the best known of them was the master Pletone. The immigration of oriental scholars was then also encouraged by the fall of Constantinople in 1453. A characteristic of Renaissance philosophers was their tendency to identify Platonism with Neoplatonism, a peculiarity typical of all Humanism and the Renaissance. Only in the nineteenth century was it possible to distinguish the thought of Plato from that of Plotinus; in the fifteenth century, in fact, Platonism meant a complex and very complex philosophical current, which embraced not only Plato, but also Neoplatonic as Agostino and Duns Scotus, as well as Orphic and Pythagorean traditions. Aristotle himself was basically included; the polemic against him was directed more towards thenaturalism and a certain way of understanding Aristotelianism, especially that of schools, for the rest of Plato and Aristotle, the concordances and divergences were sought.

The rediscovery of the classics meant, among other things, not so much a simple acquisition of the ancient texts, as a different way of reading them, concerned with reconstructing them historically and subjecting them to a rigorous critical screening. It was in this way that the passion for philology spread, a tendency present above all in the activity of Lorenzo Valla. The interest in pedagogy can not be neglected either, aiming not at a professional education, but at forming the young person in its entirety, through a harmonious development of all human gifts, both physical and spiritual, making each individual as a work of art, an accomplished attempt to know shaping your life as the artist shapes his work. This love for beauty was born out of the prevailing of ideal tendencies related precisely to Neoplatonism. L ‘ love, the freedom, the thirst for the infinite, they were exalted as absolute values, similar to what will happen in Romanticism. Initially adverse to naturalism, which seemed to forget the true value of manNeoplatonism exalted the beauty of the Idea, opposed to sensible beauty, and to which it can only be reached through higher thought and senses. L ‘ love especially Platonic was understood as a way to rise to perfection and contemplation of God. Purity and spirituality were therefore the qualities that best suited true love.

Nicola Cusano and Marsilio Ficino were undoubtedly the most important Neo-Platonists, who, to the previous medieval perspective turned towards the Transcendent and expressed in its extreme form from the Gothic, substituted a religiosity that looks rather to the divine present in man and in the world.. According to Cusano, the human individual, despite being a small part of the world, is a totality in which the whole universe is contracted. In fact, man is the image of God who is the “implicatio” of all being as well as in unityNumerical numbers are potentially implicit, while the Universe is instead the “explanatio” of Being, that is the explication of what is present in power in unity. Man is therefore a microcosm, a human god. Cusano was also among the first to conceive of the universe, already in the first half of the fifteenth century, without spatial limits and therefore without a circumference that delimits it.

That there is no conflict between Platonism and Christianity was also the conviction of Ficino, who conceived Platonism as a real preparation for the faith, naming his most famous work Platonic Theology. The theme of eros becomes Ficino a central philosophical motif: love is the same expansion of God in the world, the cause for which God “pours” into the world, and for which he produces in men the desire to return to him. At the center of this circular process there is therefore man, true copula mundi, which holds the opposite extremes of the universe in its own right, and as in Cusano it is a mirror of that One (intended plotinally)) from which all reality comes. Here, however, we note how Ficino uses the Platonic concept of Eros by attributing a Christian meaning to it, since, unlike Plato, love is first of all an attribute of God, the movement of God descending into the world, and not just the restless tension of ‘human soul that wants to go up to him. Ficino was also one of the most active characters of the Neoplatonic Academy of Florence, which became the driving force of Renaissance neoplatonism: commissioned by Cosimo de’ Medici, it was a cenacle of Florentine philosophers and scholars reunited in the Medici villa of Careggi (near Florence), and wanted to mean the reopening of the ancientAthenian Academy of Plato (which was closed in 529 AD), to promote the revival of the doctrine of the great Greek philosopher.

Another leading exponent of the Platonic Academy was Pico della Mirandola, who nevertheless tried to reconcile Neoplatonism with Aristotelianism and mystical conceptions connected to the Jewish cabal, joining them in a line of continuity according to an ideal of universal concord. He, in the Oratio de hominis dignitate, attributes to man the dignity of being the architect of his own destiny. For man, in fact, God offers the gift of freedom: while in other creatures everything has already been given as a definite and stable quality, man is allowed to make himself and invent himself in the forms he chooses.

Important Philosophers
It was also the republican Florentine milieu of the Medici, in which it came to the solution of Scholastic Aristotelianism, as the Georgios Gemistos Plethon (1355-1450), an avid supporter and translator of Plato, from Byzantium in the course of the Council of Ferrara to Florence Influence gained. His pupil was Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), son of the physician of Cosimo de Medici, which was characterized in particular by Plato translations. Ficino tried Platonic and NeoplatonicTo connect thought with the Christian teachings and held the view that in the similarity of both worlds of thought is expressed that there are eternal truths of faith (natural theology). The soul strives for Ficino to ascend into the spiritual, Divine. Will and love as expressions of the will serve as decisive driving forces. As a pupil of Plethon Bessarion (1403-1472) had moved to Italy and had after conversion to the Latin Church and appointment as Cardinal with an extensive library an important part in the development of Plato and other ancient Greek texts. His concern was the connection of Platonic and Aristotelian thoughts with the Christian faith. Pico della Mirandola(1463-1494) advocated for the dignity of man, which lies primarily in education. God created the world, but does not work into it, so that man must open himself up to nature. Pico argued for an agreement between Hellenism, Christianity and Judaism. His 900 theses, which he set in disputation in Rome, were banned by the Pope and escaped the Inquisition only through the protection of the Medici, through which he reached Paris via Paris. Unlike many other renaissance humanists, Pico considered the content of philosophical teachings more important than the aesthetically beautiful form.

A special role is played by Nicholas of Cusa (Cusa) (1401-1464) associated with a particular inclination for mathematics and the natural sciences already as a cardinal and bishop of Brixen very early thoughts in the field of epistemology formulated as much later new to Kant were formulated. For him, the mathematization of the objects of experience was the result of man’s interpretations, which he generates with his own thinking. This is the realitycreated by man and does not exist independently of him. Man is the measure of all things, because with his spirit he transforms all things into conceptual being. In the hierarchy of the creatures of God, man comes first: “But human nature is that exalted above all the works of God, and only a little degraded among the angels, which fills spiritual and sensuous nature, and shrinks everything in its entirety so that it was known by the ancients microcosm or small world. “(De docta ignorantia III 3) Also, the conception of the spatial-temporal infinity of the universe is already in Cusanus. God as the unity of the infinite is reflected in the coincidence of the opposite (finite – infinite) in reason(coincidentia oppositorum).

With Lorenzo Valla (1407-1457), there was also in Italy in the succession of Petrarch a well-known humanist, who became famous through the evidence along with Cusanus proof that the Donation of Constantine was a scam. In Valla, who held the position of apostolic scriptor in the Lateran, questions about the freedom of the human will and the highest good were in the foreground. He was particularly concerned with the revival of Cicero and also rated the pleasure positively.

Humanism also had important representatives north of the Alps. Rudolf Agricola (1443-1483), humanist and pedagogue, influenced the rhetoric with his essay On the dialectical method of thinking by demanding that arguments should not only be true but also reasonably comprehensible. Gabriel Biel (1415-1495) was still very close to scholasticism, but developed progressive ideas for economy and fair prices. Johannes Reuchlin (1455-1522), pupil of Angelo Poliziano and influenced by Nicholas of Kues, was a representative of Renaissance Platonism. He taught at the Universities of Ingolstadt and Tübingenand acted as opponents of Luther. He came into conflict with the Pope because he opposed the prohibition of Jewish books. Juan Luis Vives (1492-1540), who saw in science an advance in Christianity, advocated an education geared to modern natural knowledge. The outstanding figure of Northern Renaissance humanism was Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536), also an opponent of Luther, whom he considered excessive. He was in contact with the Platonic Academy in Florence, was well acquainted with Thomas Morus and advocated religious tolerance, a ban on nationalism andWar and education based on ancient and Christian foundations. In contrast to him and also to Luther, with whom he was nevertheless closely connected, Philipp Melanchthon (1497-1560) sought to combine the fundamental ideas of the Reformation with the philosophy of Aristotle in order to strike a balance between reason and revelation. For the discovery of new knowledge with a deviating from Aristotle logic entered in France Petrus Ramus (1517-1572), who was murdered in the St. Bartholomew’s night. For the physician Paracelsus (1493-1541) is more likely the predicate Mystic, but he has also on theNaturphilosophie influence. The same applies to Jacob Böhme (1575-1624), for whom God appears as life, strength and will, and who owes his high fame to his advocacy of individual freedom and the emphasis on free will.

One of the more literary representatives of the Renaissance is the freethinker Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), who in his essays, which are still interesting in terms of content and linguistics, represented a rather skeptical attitude towards reason and knowledge. He dealt with a variety of topics such as literature, philosophy, morality or education. He followed the Stoa in the contempt of externals. He was critical of scientific superstition, dogmas and human arrogance over other natural creatures. His pupil Pierre Charron(1541-1603) is especially known for his moral-philosophical work. Francisco Sanches (1550-1623), a native of Portugal and living in France, took a pragmatic skepticism at a critical distance from Aristotelianism.

Political philosophy also began to move in the Renaissance. Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527), who served as political adviser during the exile of the Medici (1494-1512) in Florence, is a precursor with a very independent view. He developed a rather skeptical image of man, who for him is primarily oriented towards his needs and desires and follows less humanistic ideals. According to his main thesis, the exercise of political power is not to be judged under the moral aspect, but under the aspect of utility. For the Republic he sees three state purposes: freedom of citizens, greatness and common good, The politician and humanist Thomas More (1478-1535) developed quite differently in his utopian novel ” On the best constitution of the community and on the new island of Utopia ” a state image without private property, education for all and freedom of religion. As Lord Chancellor, he supported the Counter-Reformation and was executed by Henry VIII.

John Fortescue (1394-1476), 1442 chief judge of the royal court, took the view that the authority of the king should rest on public approval, and thus turned against a kingdom by the grace of God. For the introduction of the concept of sovereignty in the political theory stands Jean Bodin (1530-1596). For him, the right in human nature, as given by God, is justified. Bodin did not know any theory of the treaty. Only the sovereign (whether the people, a stall or a king, remains open) is entitled to legislate. This reasoning is still with unqualified absolutismcompatible. Finally, the Scot George Buchanan (1506-1582) upheld the principle of popular sovereignty, including the right of resistance, when an absolute ruler broke the interests of the national community. Similarly, the position of the Calvinist John Althusius (1557-1638), for whom the people was politically and religiously autonomous and the state is based on a federal social contract. A direct rejection of unrestricted ruler power by a monarch was made by the Calvinist monarchic monks such as Franciscus Hotomanus, Philippe Duplessis-Mornayor Juan de Mariana. The Spaniard Francisco Suárez (1548-1617), the most important representative of the Salamanca school, is often considered late scholasticism, but emphasized the freedom of the individual and also represented the idea of natural law and of the State Treaty. The founder of international law is the Dutchman Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), whose De Jure belli ac pacis (“On the Right of War and Peace”) not only proposed rules for international relations in war and peace, but also developed a theory of natural law based on the Spanish teachings, which is put into practice by positive law.

Francis Bacon (1561-1626) was an English philosopher and statesman. He is regarded as the pioneer of empiricism. The saying “knowledge is power” is attributed to him. According to Bacon, the goal of science is the control of nature in the interest of progress. Man, however, can only control nature if he knows it. The goal of scientific knowledge, however, is determined by the philosopher, who must also find the generally binding methods. In addition to his investigation of the idolaBacon’s following two conclusions were particularly fruitful: first, it would not be enough to accept a conclusion drawn by induction. Rather, the researcher must examine the negative instances with particular care; these are the cases that prove an exception to a rule that has been valid until now. For, in philosophy, one counterexample alone suffices to refute the (allegedly already proven) truth of an inference (thus he formulated the principle of falsification). Second, Bacon was convinced that human knowledge is cumulative. With that he had himself from the view of the scholasticsliberated, who thought that all that man could know was already contained in the Holy Writ or the works of Aristotle. As a convinced opponent of subtle discussions that could bring any new element, he sat on incoming natural observation and experiment – empiricism so. Scientifically useful observations had to be repeatable for him. For this very reason Bacon was also prejudiced against intuition: intuitively or by analogy gained knowledge was not part of his worldview as an empiricist.

Reformation
The discussion about their need for reform triggered by the encrustation of the church in scholasticism led to the Reformation despite the reform councils (Basel, Constance) under the heading “Back to Scripture”. It was not connected to an independent philosophical movement, but like humanism stood for the renewal of thought, emphasizing the role of the individual. No longer the commandments of the pope, but the individual faith became the standard. Forerunners were Wycliffe (1330-1384), who had questioned the sacraments and turned against the church hierarchy, and Jan Hus(1369-1415), who had been burned as a heretic because of similar views. The final break came with Martin Luther (1483-1546), Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531) and John Calvin (1509-1564). Johannes Oekolampad worked in Basel, Wolfgang Capito in Strasbourg. Religious rites such as pilgrimages, Kasteiungen u. were rejected as well as letters of indulgence and office purchase, What counted alone was the word through which man finds God. This was the motive for the powerful Bible translation. If anything, Luther stood in the tradition of Augustine and rejected the Aristotle-oriented scholastic philosophy as the pillar of the papal regency. Despite this great distance from philosophy and modern science, the Reformation contributed significantly to the spiritual renewal and decay of power of the Church, with the consequence of a secularization of schools and universities. The peasant wars (1525) reinforced this effect as the victory of the princes further strengthened their position. This tendency could no longer be achieved by the internal purification of the church (Catholic Reform) in the run-up to or in the course of the Counter-Reformation. The individualization of the faith, which was promoted in the Reformation, made possible in the early modern period the further secularization of philosophy and the development of Deist ideas.

Cosmic Vitalism
A constant of Renaissance philosophy remains the vitalistic conception of the universe and of nature, according to which every reality, from the largest to the smallest, is animated and populated by presences and vital forces. The whole universe is conceived as one big organism. According to Neoplatonism, in fact, nature is deeply penetrated by spiritual energies, because, by virtue of the identity of being and thought, each object is also subject at the same time; each reality is based on an idea by virtue of which it is animated by an autonomous and unitary life. The principle that unifies the multipleit is the soul of the world, which allowed to consider organically joined all the different fields of reality, and with which man forms one whole. This vision of the cosmos, which will be taken up by romantic idealists and in particular by Schelling, is widely developed by three naturalist philosophers of southern Italy: Bernardino Telesio, Giordano Bruno, and Tommaso Campanella. In them neoplatonism, after having been somewhat adverse, is now reconciled with naturalism and pantheism; and despite their polemics against Aristotle, it is deeply linked to the problem and to the Aristotelian methodological procedures.

With Telesio a first form of scientific methodology is born, above all in the objections that he moves to Aristotle. Telesio proposes to unify the whole physical-natural reality, extending the field of its naturalistic conception to the same intellectual and ethical life of man.

Bruno instead, in addition to devoting himself to magic, astrology, and the art of mnemonics, inherited from Cusano the idea of infinity of the universe, anticipating the scientific discoveries of modern astronomy. Bruno in fact affirmed not only that God is present in nature (which is all alive, animated), but also that the cosmos is infinite and that there are innumerable other worlds, not limited to the shy Copernican heliocentrism, but opposed to the medieval geocentrism a conception much more radical. Impetuous personality, as a pupil of Platohe was convinced that the truth is such only when he radically transforms who owns it, that is when thought comes to life, and philosophy becomes magic. To make the divine that is within us triumphs, therefore, a rational impetus is needed according to Bruno, not a pacific activity that extinguishes the senses and the memory, but instead sharpens them: it is necessary a heroic fury (a term clearly inherited from the Platonic Eros).

Tommaso Campanella, considered one of the most original philosophers of the late-Renaissance era, had a very adventurous and troubled life. Arrested in Naples in 1599 on charges of conspiracy and heresy, he managed to escape capital punishment by simulating madness, but was sentenced to life imprisonment. During the twenty-seven years of imprisonment he composed his principal works, including La città del Sole (1602), a project of an ideal society inspired by the Republic of Plato. He attempted a reconciliation between the Thomist and the Augustinian traditions, granting them a Trinitarian vision of being, and also makingconsciousness the fundamental attribute of every reality (sensism).

Philosophical, political, and religious currents
The naturalism not only took on the shapes of the late neo-Platonism, but also of other philosophical and literary trends. To a naturalistic conception of love inspired by the Boccaccia model, for example, Poliziano and Lorenzo il Magnifico used to invite them to enjoy the pleasures of love, or Lorenzo Valla, who colored it with religious significance. But naturalism was mainly done by aristotelism, which nevertheless developed exclusively within the academic circles, even though it took features capable of uniting it with the research of the new Platonists. Following the publication of the great commentaries of Averroes, soon joined by those of Alexander of Aphrodisias, Aristotelianism was characterized by the dispute between these two interpretations, with Averroists on one side and Alexandrianists on the other; the greatest representative of the Alexandrian school was Pietro Pomponazzi, a prominent figure of the Paduan aristotelism. Other re-emerging naturalistic currents were epicureanism and stoicism, to which Montaigne adhered: a character sui generis of the sixteenth century, averse to the nostalgia of the classics while also placing the man at the center of his attention, Montaigne will end up on skeptical positions. In any case, it is parallel to Neoplatonism, which remained the favorite trend thanks to the renewed fervor with which it was re-launched by Cusano in Europe beyond the Alps, and the Ficino Neoplatonic Academy in Italy.

The revaluation of the figure of the man favored an awareness of his role and of his sense of responsibility even within the story. In the field of political philosophy, the Cinquecento opened with two almost contemporary works: Il Principe di Niccolò Machiavelli (1513) and The Utopia by Tommaso Moro (1516). Machiavelli ‘s realism and Moro ‘ s utopianism, for their opposition and diversity of intentions, can be assumed as the two fundamental poles within which the entire Renaissance political reflection takes place. Machiavelli in particular can be considered the founder of the theory of “reason of state “: at the center of his research there is exclusively political action, from the horizon of which he tends to exclude any other religious, moral or philosophical consideration.Its commitment to building a solid and efficient power is inserts in the Renaissance ideal to oppose human will and responsibility to the domain of chance and to the unknowns of history In the Italian political situation, divided into many lordships and anomalous compared to the rest of Europe where we instead witness the formation of unitary states and their slow transformation into absolute states, the Italian Machiavelli was paradoxically a precursor of modern political thought.

The Machiavellian ideal of a strong state was however rejected by Guicciardini, according to whom the political terrain remained a place of clash of purely individual forces (hence his attitude of relying on his own particular, understood as a personal advantage and profit). In the second half of the sixteenth century there was also the opposition between absolutists (the most important of which was Jean Bodin), and the so-called Monarcomachi, animated instead by an irreducible aversion to the king’s power. Among the late-Renaissance political philosophies we find the giusnaturalism of the Dutch Ugo Grozio(which also dealt with problems of international law), and finally the utopias of Francesco Bacone and the already mentioned Campanella.

The most individualistic conception of the human being, common to all of Humanism, also took on particular importance in religious faith, where on the one hand there were cases of return paganism, on the other we see a new fervor of Christian devotion.. The relationship of the individual with God became often more important than the relationship with the Church as an institution. This view includes the Reformation by Martin Luther (1483-1546), Calvino (1509-1564), and Zwingli (1484-1531); but also within Catholicismthere were numerous instances of renewal, such as the figures of Girolamo Savonarola (1452-1498), or Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536). The latter in particular argued against Luther because he saw in his denial of human freedom a position clearly in contrast with the humanist and Renaissance mentality.

The Burdach, assertor of a substantial continuity between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, identifies the genesis of the Renaissance religious renaissance already in the mystical-religious aspirations of the Italian thirteenth century, present above all in the evangelical spirit of Saint Francis of Assisi and in the expectations of Gioacchino da Fiore.

Philosophy and Science
The Portuguese Alvarus Thomaz took up the Oxford calculators of Merton College and dealt mainly with issues of movement and change. The transition to the new age is also very clearly demonstrated by the Italian natural philosophers Girolamo Cardano (1501-1576), physicians and mathematicians, known for the universal joint invented by him, at the age of the Inquisition under the prohibition of teaching, Bernardo Telesio (1509-1588), Francesco Patrizi (1529-1597), teacher of Platonic philosophy at the University of Rome and Tommaso Campanella(1568-1639), who spent 27 years in the dungeon for his reformatory ideas of the Inquisition. In his utopian state draft The Sun State ruled a priest king (Sol) together with the three princes Pon (potestas – responsible for the army), Sin (sapientia – science) and Mor (Cupid – education). All people in this state are equal and have a fixed life. Influenced by Nicholas of Kues and the pantheistic thinking of his time, Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) taught the infinity of the universe. God is the greatest and the smallest, possibilityand reality in one. God is not outside, but in the world. Nature itself is divine and in eternal change, God is the principle of eternal change and recognizable to human reason no other than indirectly in nature. Therefore, the Incarnation of God is not possible. These ideas, which resulted in pantheism, led to the arrest of the Inquisition and seven years’ imprisonment for execution at the stake.

Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543), less known for his scientific achievements, contributed significantly to the implementation of the heliocentric view of the world through his observations. Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), famous for his folding experiments and the derived laws of motion, created the foundations of mechanics, He also campaigned for the teaching of Copernicus, but had to revoke in old age under pressure from the Inquisition. He is credited with the defiant saying: “And it turns.” His commitment to the application of mathematics in natural science has significantly shaped the development of the sciences: “The great book of nature lies open before us. To read it better, we need mathematics, because it is written in mathematical language. ” In the same way this is true of Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), who confirmed Copernicus with his calculations and advanced the application of mathematics: “The human mind sees through quantitative relations most clearly; he is actually created to understand these. “The creation of thisNaturalists were mainly at the end of the Renaissance and passed into modern times, from which one can say that philosophy as well as natural science has finally emancipated itself from theology.

Another example of new thinking is swimming. In the Middle Ages it was considered unnatural and used as a judgment of God. At Cambridge philosophy professor Everad Digby conducted biomechanical swimming experiments in the water, discussed the specific gravity and developed a modern swimming gauge, which (in French translation) forms the basis for the swimming training of the Napoleonic army gave. It was the time when the rules and principles have been developed for many sports.

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