Nicola Malebranche. Solving the problem of the relationship between soul and body
Nicolas Malebranche was the most significant of all of Descartes’ followers; he was the systematizer and the greatest theorist of occasionalism. The starting point in the development of occasionalism (from the Latin occasio – case, occasion) was the problem of the relationship between the soul and the body. The solution to this problem proposed by Descartes did not satisfy even many of his followers, and seemed insufficiently convincing to them. The supporters of occasionalism held the opinion that natural interaction between bodily and spiritual substances was impossible. At the same time, they explained the relationship between the soul and the body by divine intervention.
Benedict (Baruch) Spinoza. Rationalism and pantheism. God is the only substance in the world
Benedict (Baruch) Spinoza is one of the greatest representatives of rationalism. He was born in Amsterdam to a Jewish family in 1632. He received a religious education under the guidance of rabbis. After the death of his father, he spent some time in the commercial affairs that he inherited, without showing much interest in these activities. He did not express a desire to become a rabbi. Thanks to Van den Enden, who taught him Latin, Spinoza made acquaintances among Christian scholars (Meyer, Oldenburg, etc.). Spinoza’s way of life aroused suspicions among the leaders of the community that he showed insufficient respect for the religion and customs of his ancestors. In 1656, they subjected Spinoza to the “great excommunication”, he was abandoned by his relatives. Forced to leave Amsterdam, Spinoza lived for a long time in small settlements (Rijnburg, Voorburg), later moving to The Hague. He earned his living by grinding optical glass. Limiting himself to the bare necessities, he devoted his life to philosophical research. At the same time, Spinoza continued to maintain contact with his learned friends (mostly through correspondence).
Blaise Pascal. Pascal’s law. The Great Fluid Equilibrium Experiment
Blaise Pascal was born in 1623 in Clermont-Ferrand to the royal councilor of the financial and tax district of Auvergne, Etienne Pascal, and the daughter of a local judge, Antoinette Begon, who died when her son was only two and a half years old. Pascal’s family belonged to the judicial “nobility of the robe”. Pascal’s father, a widely educated intellectual, a gifted mathematician and a talented educator (in the spirit of Montaigne’s humanistic pedagogy), after the death of his wife devoted his life to his children (there were two more daughters in the family), who received an excellent home education (ancient Greek and Latin, grammar, mathematics, history, geography, etc.). From 1631 the family lived in Paris. Blaise grew up as a very sickly and brilliantly gifted child, who later demonstrated his gift first of all in mathematics and physics, then in invention, then in polemical writings, theology and, finally, in philosophy. Everywhere his genius left a bright and unique mark.
Thomas Hobbes. About the Citizen and Leviathan
Thomas Hobbes was born in 1588 in Malmesbury to a local priest. After graduating from a provincial school, he managed to enter Oxford University and then get a job as a tutor in a family of English aristocrats. This allowed him not only to move in aristocratic circles, but also to travel with his students around France and Italy, to become acquainted with the latest achievements of European science. Hobbes assessed the English Revolution as a grave social disaster and, with the onset of revolutionary unrest, moved to Paris, where he lived for about 11 years (1640-1651). In France, he developed his political philosophy and set it out initially in his work “On the Citizen” (1642), and later in his main work “Leviathan, or the Matter, Form, and Power of the State, Ecclesiastical and Civil” (1651). When Cromwell invited him back, Hobbes returned to England, but he never found common ground with his compatriots, who were divided into two warring camps; his works “On the Citizen” and “Leviathan” were included in the index of prohibited books. Nevertheless, the thinker continued to develop his philosophical concept. Over the course of several years, he published two works – “On the Body” (1655) and “On Man” (1658), which, together with the previously written doctrine “on the citizen”, formed three parts of “The Principles of Philosophy”, presenting his views as a complete system. Hobbes died in 1679.
Rene Descartes. Founder of rationalism in philosophy. All sciences are interconnected
René Descartes is the founder of rationalism as a special direction in the philosophy of the New Age, one of the greatest mathematicians and physicists of his era. He was born in 1596 in the city of La Haye (province of Touraine) into a noble family. He studied at the Jesuit college of La Flèche, then at the University of Poitiers. Scholastic teaching did not satisfy the young Descartes: the knowledge he received seemed insufficient to him, and in large part, questionable. “That is why, as soon as age allowed me to get out of submission to my teachers, I completely abandoned book studies and decided to seek only that science that I could find in myself or in the great book of the world” (1.1, 255). He goes to Holland and enters military service there.
Francis Bacon. The mind left to its own devices has little power
The philosophy of the New Age is an era of independence of reason, its liberation from the authorities of the past. In many ways, this liberation was due to the split in Western European Christianity in the 16th century, which created a “neutral” territory of pure rationality, which the best minds began to explore. The desire for independence was also present in the Renaissance, but the philosophers of that time still looked back to ancient sources. Modern European thinkers rely on their own thinking, reinforced by empirical knowledge of nature. But the liberated mind needed internal discipline. Otherwise, it could not become an effective tool for obtaining truths that transform the environment of human existence and turn the world into a comfortable habitat for rational beings. It is no coincidence that the problem of method came to the forefront of philosophical research in the New Age. But it soon became clear that it would not be possible to develop unambiguous methodological recipes.
Philosophy of the Renaissance. A period of rapid and intense cultural development
Sometimes the term “Renaissance” is understood in a broad sense as a period of rapid and intensive cultural development, replacing long periods of spiritual and creative inertia. In this broad sense, we speak of the Carolingian Renaissance of the 8th-9th centuries, the Renaissance of the 12th century, associated with the rise of urban life in Europe, as well as the Georgian, Iranian, Armenian, Arabic, Indian, and Chinese “Renaissances”.
Scholasticism. Seven Liberal Arts. Philosophy is the handmaiden of theology
The Latin word scholastica comes from the Greek σχολαστικός (“school”, “scholarly”) and in modern historical and philosophical science serves as a designation for a set of speculative—philosophical (“dialectical”) and theological—methods of reasoning that became dominant in Western European (Latin) culture in the Middle Ages (11th–14th centuries).
Patristics. The body of teachings of the Christian Church Fathers
In the Western theological (as well as historical and philosophical) tradition , patristics (Greek: rcaxfjp , Latin: pater, father) is usually called a conditional set of teachings of the fathers of the Christian church of the 2nd-8th centuries. Initially, a “father” was called a spiritual mentor who possessed a teaching authority recognized in the church. Subsequently, by the 5th century, four fundamental characteristics of the patristic model were finally established: 1) holiness of life; 2) antiquity; 3) orthodoxy of teaching; 4) official recognition by the church. The last “father” from the point of view of the Western, Catholic, theological tradition was John of Damascus (d. 753), but all other Christian authors who lived after him were called “church writers”. On the contrary, according to the Greek, Orthodox, tradition, sacred tradition, in essence, is not subject to any chronological specification: the Holy Spirit acts through people at all times; The Orthodox Church considers the main criterion in determining the degree of orthodoxy of the views of a particular father not to be antiquity, or even holiness in itself, but the spiritual closeness of the teaching in relation to the canons of the apostolic faith commanded by the church.
Philosophy in the Middle Ages. Defenders of the Faith and the Church
In modern science, the period in the history of philosophical thought in Europe from the end of the Ancient Age to the beginning of the Renaissance is traditionally called the medieval period. At the same time, it should be noted that the expression “medieval philosophy” itself is a controversial, problematic expression and requires numerous clarifications. This is due, firstly, to the actual impossibility of accurately dating the moment of transition of the ancient world to the Middle Ages; secondly, to the extremely unique approach, or, more precisely, approaches, to understanding the purpose of philosophical studies and the problems of philosophy as such within the framework of the medieval (Western European Latin and Byzantine), primarily Christian, culture.