Waldseemüller map (Martin Waldseemüller) from 1507 is the first map to include the name “America” and the first to depict the Americas as separate from Asia. There is only one surviving copy of the map, which was purchased by the Library of Congress in 2001
By Dr. Garth Kemerling / 11.12.2011
Professor of Philosophy
Capella University
Humanism and Science
The Renaissance
Medieval philosophy had culminated in the cumulative achievements ofscholasticism, a grand system of thought developed by generations of patient scholars employing neoplatonic and Aristotelean philosophy in the service of traditional Christian theology. But by the end of the fifteenth century, confidence in the success of this enterprise had eroded, and many thinkers tried to make a fresh start by rejecting such extensive reliance on the authority of earlier scholars. Just as religious reformers challenged ecclesiastical authority and made individual believers responsible for their own relation to god, prominent Renaissance thinkers proposed an analogous elimination of all appeals to authority in education and science.
Educational practice was revolutionized by the recovery of ancient documents, the rejection of institutional authority, and renewed emphasis on individual freedom. The humanists expressed an enormous confidence in the power of reason as a source of profound understanding of human nature and of our place in the natural order. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s Oration, for example, held forth the possibilities for a comprehensive new order of knowledge relying on human understanding without reference to divine revelation. For some, like Desiderius Erasmus and Marsillio Ficino, this spirit found expression in a return to careful study of classical texts in their own right, without relying on centuries of scholastic commentary. But for more revolutionary thinkers as diverse as Giordano Bruno and Francisco Suárez, humanism offered an opportunity to incorporate modern developments along with classical elements in entirely new systems of metaphysical knowledge.
The rise of the new science also offered a significant change in the prospects for human knowledge of the natural world. Copernicus argued on theoretical grounds for a heliocentric view of the universe, for which Kepler provided a more secure mathematical interpretation. Galileo contributed not only an impressive series of direct observations of both celestial and terrestrial motion but also a serious effort to explain and defend the new methods. By abandoning explanation in terms of final causes, by emphasizing the importance of observation, and by trying to develop quantified accounts of all, renaissance scientists began to develop the foundations of a thoroughly empirical view of the world.
This emerging emphasis on empirical methods permanently transformed study of the natural world. Making extensive use of sensory observations made possible by the development of new instrumentation fostered an urge to seek quantification of every phenomenon. There were exceptions like Herbert of Cherbury, who hoped that the natural light of common notions imprinted innately in every human being would provide perfect certainty as a foundation for Christianity. But most of the moderns gladly embraced the methods, style, and content of the new science.
The Skeptical Challenge
While the Renaissance encouraged abandonment of the benefits of scholastic learning, it could offer only the promise that new ways of thinking might one day suitably replace them. Along with high hopes for the achievement of human knowledge came significant doubts about its possibility. By recovering and translating the work of Sextus Empiricus, humanist scholars introduced the tradition of classical skepticism as an element of modern thought. Turning the power of reasoning against itself at every opportunity, the Pyrrhonists proposed that we suspend all belief whenever we find ourselves capable of doubting the truth of what we suppose. The trouble is that very little beyond immediate personal experience can pass this test of indubitability.
The greatest exponent of modern Pyrrhonism was Michel de Montaigne, whose Essays (1580, 1588) gave prominent place to skeptical arguments. Any attempt to achieve knowledge is misguided, on his view, because it arrogantly supposes that the natural world and everything in it exists only for the satisfaction of our idle curiosity. Since the evidence of our senses is notoriously liable to error and the reliability of logical reasoning cannot be demonstrated without circularity, we would indeed be better off to doubt everything and rest comfortably with mere opinion. Even the new science offers no hope, Montaigne argued, since it must eventually be surpassed in the same way that it has overcome the old. These concerns created a challenge to which modern philosophers were bound to respond.
The Central Questions
Against the background of humanistic scholarship, the rise of the new science, and the challenge of skepticism, modern philosophers were preoccupied with philosophical issues in several distinct areas:
- Epistemology: Can human beings achieve any certain knowledge of the world? If so, what are the sources upon which genuine knowledge depends? In particular, how does sense perception operate in service of human knowledge?
- Metaphysics: What kinds of things ultimately compose the universe? In particular, what are the distinctive features of human nature, and how do they function in relation to each other and the world at large? Does god exist?
- Ethics: By what standards should human conduct be evaluated? Which actions are morally right, and what motivates us to perform them? Is moral life possible without the support of religious belief?
- Metaphilosophy: Does philosophy have a distinctive place in human life generally? What are the proper aims and methods of philosophical inquiry?
Although not every philosopher addressed all of these issues and some philosophers had much more to say about some issues than others, our survey of modern philosophy will trace the content of their responses to questions of these basic sorts.
Francis Bacon
Portrait of Bacon by Frans Pourbus (1617) / Palace on the Water in Warsaw (Royal Bath Museum)
British politician and entrepeneur Francis Bacon, for example, expressed the modern spirit well in a series of works designed to replace stultified Aristoteleanism with improved methods for achieving truth. Assuming that the difficulties we experience are invariably the results of poor training and can therefore be eliminated, Bacon promised that the adoption of more appropriate habits of thinking will enable individual thinkers to transcend them.
Believing that the first step toward knowledge is to identify its major obstacles, Bacon took note of four distinct varieties of distractions that too often prevent us from understanding the world correctly:
- Idols of the Tribe, which arise from human nature generally, encourage us to over-estimate our own importance within the greater scheme of things by supposing that everything must truly be as it appears to us.
- Idols of the Cave, which arise from our individual natures, lead each one of us to extrapolate inappropriately from his or her own case to a hasty generalization about humanity, life, or nature generally.
- Idols of the Marketplace, which arise from the use of language as a means of communication, interfere with an unbiased perception of natural phenomena by forcing us to express everything in traditional terms.
- Idols of the Theatre, which arise from academic philosophy itself, produces an inclination to build and defend elaborate systems of thought that are founded on little evidence from ordinary experience.
Once we notice the effects that these “Idols” have upon us, Bacon supposed, we are in a position to avoid them, and our knowledge of nature will accordingly improve.In a more positive spirit, Bacon proposed a patient method borrowed from the practice of the new scientists of the preceding generation. First, we must use our senses (properly freed from the idols) to collect and organize many particular instances from experience. Resisting the urge to generalize whenever it is possible to do so, we adhere firmly to an experimental appreciation of the natural world. Only when it seems unavoidable will we then tentatively postulate modest rules about the coordination and reqularity we observe among these cases, subject always to confirmation or refutation by future experiences.
Machiavelli
Portrait of Niccolò Machiavelli by Santi di Tito, 16th century / Palazzo Vecchio, Musei Civici Fiorentini
Life and Works
In 1498, Niccolò Machiavelli began his career as an active politician in the independent city-state of Florence, engaging in diplomatic missions through France and Germany as well as Italy. After more than a decade of public service, he was driven from his post when the republic collapsed. Repeated efforts to win the confidence and approval of the new regime were unsuccessful, and Machiavelli was forced into retirement and a life of detached scholarship about the political process instead of direct participation in it. The books for which he is remembered were published only after his death.
Machiavelli originally wrote Principe (The Prince) (1513) in hopes of securing the favor of the ruling Medici family, and he deliberately made its claims provocative. The Prince is an intensely practical guide to the exercise of raw political power over a Renaissance principality. Allowing for the unpredictable influence of fortune, Machiavelli argued that it is primarily the character or vitality or skill of the individual leader that determines the success of any state. The book surveys various bold means of acquiring and maintaining the principality and evaluates each of them solely by reference to its likelihood of augmenting the glory of the prince while serving the public interest. It is this focus on practical success by any means, even at the expense of traditional moral values, that earned Machiavelli’s scheme a reputation for ruthlessness, deception, and cruelty.
His Dell’arte della guerra (The Art of War) (1520) explains in detail effective procedures for the acquisition, maintenance, and use of a military force. Even in his more leisurely reflections on the political process, Machiavelli often wrote in a similar vein. The Discorsi sopra la prima Deca di Tito Livio (Discourses on Livy) (1531) review the history of the Roman republic, with greater emphasis on the role of fortune and a clear admiration for republican government. Here, too, however, Machiavelli’s conception of the proper application of morality to practical political life is one that judges the skill of all participants in terms of the efficacy with which they achieve noble ends. Whatever the form of government, Machiavelli held, only success and glory really matter.
Principality and the Republic
Among the most widely-read of the Renaissancethinkers was Niccolò Machiavelli, a Florentine politician who retired from public service to write at length on the skill required for successfully running the state. Impatient with abstract reflections on the way things “ought” to be, Machiavelli focussed on the way things are, illustrating his own intensely practical convictions with frequent examples from the historical record. Although he shared with other humanists a profound pessimism about human nature, Machiavelli nevertheless argued that the social benefits of stability and security can be achieved even in the face of moral corruption.
In 1513 Machiavelli wrote his best-known work, Il Principe (The Prince). Dedicated to Lorenzo de’ Medici, this little book offers practical advice on how to rule a city like sixteenth-century Florence. Its over-all theme is that the successful prince must exhibit virtù [variously translated as “strength,” “skill,” or “prowess”] in both favorable and adverse circumstances. This crucial quality of leadership is not the same as the virtuous character described by ethical philosophers, since Machiavelli held that public success and private morality are entirely separate. The question is not what makes a good human being, but what makes a good prince.
Since all governments are either republics or principalities, Machiavelli noted, their people will be accustomed either to managing their own affairs or to accepting the leadership of a prince. (For that reason, the safest princes are those who inherit their rule over people used to the family.) A prudent leader, however, will be able to anticipate problems long before they actually arise, using virtù to forestall what would otherwise be great difficulties. Whatever vitality a former republic may have, then, Machiavelli counselled that it either be destroyed or ruled carefully by a resident prince. (Prince 5)
One of the most obvious ways of doing so is by the careful use of military forces, and to this Machiavelli devoted great attention. In fact, in a separate work entitled L’Arte della guerra (The Art of War) (1520) he offered extensive advice on the acquisition, management, and employment of the army of the state. In The Prince he was content to distinguish types of forces which one might acquire, noting the advantages and disadvantages of each, and to emphasize that such matters are the most vital component of any prince’s interest. (Prince 14)
Leadership Qualities
Machiavelli’s insistence on the practicality of his political advice is most evident in his consideration of the personality, character, and conduct of the successful ruler. (Prince 15) No matter what idealistic notions are adopted as principles of private morality, he argued, there is no guarantee that other people will follow them, and that puts the honorable or virtuous individual at a distinct disadvantage in the real world. In order to achieve success in public life, the ruler must know precisely when and how to do what no good person would ever do.
Although private morality may rest on other factors—divine approval, personal character, or abstract duties, for example—in public life only the praise and blame of fellow human beings really counts. Thus, Machiavelli supposed, the ruler needs to acquire a good reputation while actually doing whatever wrong seems necessary in the circumstances. (Prince 18) Thus, rulers must seem to be generous while spending their money wisely, appear to be compassionate while ruling their armies cruelly, and act with great cunning while cultivating a reputation for integrity. Although it is desirable to be both loved and feared by one’s subjects, it is difficult to achieve both, and of the two, Machiavelli declared, it is far safer for the ruler to be feared. (Prince 17)
Since the modern state is too complex to be managed by any single human being, the effective ruler will naturally need to have advisors who assist in governance. Choosing the right people for these jobs and employing their services appropriately, Machiavelli supposed, is among the practical skills most clearly associated with good leadership. (Prince 22) A good ruler will invariably choose competent companions who offer honest advice in response to specific questions and carry out the business of the state without regard for their private interests; such people therefore deserve the rewards of honor, wealth, and power that unshakably secure their devotion to the leader. Ineffective leaders, on the other hand, surround themselves with flatterers whose unwillingness to provide competent advice is a mark of their princes’ inadequacy.
All of this talk about skillful leadership would be pointless, of course, if human beings do not in fact have control over their own actions, but must constantly live at the mercy of blind fate or fortune. In the end, Machiavelli argued that even if sheer luck determines the greater portion of our destinies, we can still take full responsibility for whatever remains. (Prince 25) Acknowledging the possibilities for failure, the skillful ruler does better to act boldly than to try to calculate every possible eventuality.
Hobbes
Portrait of Thomas Hobbes by John Michael Wright, 17th century / National Portrait Gallery
Life and Works
Decades after completing his traditional education as a classicist at Oxford and serving as tutor of William Cavendish, Thomas Hobbes became convinced that the methods employed by mathematicians and scientists—geometry, in particular—hold the greatest promise for advances in human knowledge. Voluntarily exiled to Holland during the years of Parliamentary Rule, the royalist Hobbes devoted much of his time to the development and expression of a comprehensive philosophical vision of themechanistic operation of nature. Although he returned to England with the restoration of Charles II, Hobbes was for the remainder of his life embroiled in bitter political and religious controversies. They did not prevent the ninety-year-old Hobbes from completing his English translation of the works of Homer.
Hobbes’s first systematic statement of a political philosophy, Elements of Law, Natural and Politic (1640), relies heavily upon the conception of natural law that had dominated the tradition from Aquinas to Grotius. But his views had begun to change by the time he reissued portions of his work in a Latin version known as De Cive(1642).
The Leviathan (1651) is the most complete expression of Hobbes’s philosophy. It begins with a clearlymaterialistic account of human nature and knowledge, a rigidly deterministic account of human volition, and a pessimistic vision of the consequently natural state of human beings in perpetual struggle against each other. It is to escape this grim fate, Hobbes argued, that we form the commonwealth, surrendering our individual powers to the authority of an absolute sovereign. For Hobbes, then, individual obedience to even an arbitrary government is necessary in order to forestall the greater evil of an endless state of war.
Even more than Bacon, Thomas Hobbes illustrated the transition from medieval to modern thinking in Britain. His Leviathan effectively developed a vocabulary for philosophy in the English language by using Anglicized versions of the technical terms employed by Greek and Latin authors. Careful use of words to signify common ideas in the mind, Hobbes maintained, avoids the difficulties to which human reasoning is most obviously prone and makes it possible to articulate a clear conception of reality. (Leviathan I 4)
For Hobbes, that conception is bound to be a mechanistic one: the movements of physical objects will turn out to be sufficient to explain everything in the universe. The chief purpose of scientific investigation, then, is to develop a geometrical account of the motion of bodies, which will reveal the genuine basis of their causal interactions and the regularity of the natural world. Thus, Hobbes defended a strictly materialist view of the world.
Human Nature
Human beings are physical objects, according to Hobbes, sophisticated machines all of whose functions and activities can be described and explained in purely mechanistic terms. Even thought itself, therefore, must be understood as an instance of the physical operation of the human body. Sensation, for example, involves a series of mechanical processes operating within the human nervous system, by means of which the sensible features of material things produce ideas in the brains of the human beings who perceive them. (LeviathanI 1)
Human action is similarly to be explained on Hobbes’s view. Specific desires and appetites arise in the human body and are experienced as discomforts or pains which must be overcome. Thus, each of us is motivated to act in such ways as we believe likely to relieve our discomfort, to preserve and promote our own well-being. (Leviathan I 6) Everything we choose to do is strictly determined by this natural inclination to relieve the physical pressures that impinge upon our bodies. Human volition is nothing but the determination of the will by the strongest present desire.
Hobbes nevertheless supposed that human agents are free in the sense that their activities are not under constraint from anyone else. On this compatibilistview, we have no reason to complain about the strict determination of the will so long as we are not subject to interference from outside ourselves. (LeviathanII 21)
As Hobbes acknowledged, this account of human nature emphasizes our animal nature, leaving each of us to live independently of everyone else, acting only in his or her own self-interest, without regard for others. This produces what he called the “state of war,” a way of life that is certain to prove “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” (Leviathan I 13) The only escape is by entering into contracts with each other—mutually beneficial agreements to surrender our individual interests in order to achieve the advantages of security that only a social existence can provide. (Leviathan I 14)
Human Society
Unable to rely indefinitely on their individual powers in the effort to secure livelihood and contentment, Hobbes supposed, human beings join together in the formation of a commonwealth. Thus, the commonwealth as a whole embodies a network of associated contracts and provides for the highest form of social organization. On Hobbes’s view, the formation of the commonwealth creates a new, artificial person (the Leviathan) to whom all responsibility for social order and public welfare is entrusted. (Leviathan II 17)
Of course, someone must make decisions on behalf of this new whole, and that person will be the sovereign. The commonwealth-creating covenant is not in essence a relationship between subjects and their sovereign at all. Rather, what counts is the relationship among subjects, all of whom agree to divest themselves of their native powers in order to secure the benefits of orderly government by obeying the dictates of the sovereign authority. (Leviathan II 18) That’s why the minority who might prefer a different sovereign authority have no complaint, on Hobbes’s view: even though they have no respect for this particular sovereign, they are still bound by their contract with fellow-subjects to be governed by a single authority. The sovereign is nothing more than the institutional embodiment of orderly government.
Since the decisions of the sovereign are entirely arbitrary, it hardly matters where they come from, so long as they are understood and obeyed universally. Thus, Hobbes’s account explicitly leaves open the possibility that the sovereign will itself be a corporate person—a legislature or an assembly of all citizens—as well as a single human being. Regarding these three forms, however, Hobbes himself maintained that the commonwealth operates most effectively when a hereditary monarch assumes the sovereign role. (Leviathan II 19) Investing power in a single natural person who can choose advisors and rule consistently without fear of internal conflicts is the best fulfillment of our social needs. Thus, the radical metaphysical positions defended by Hobbes lead to a notably conservative political result, an endorsement of the paternalistic view.
Hobbes argued that the commonwealth secures the liberty of its citizens. Genuine human freedom, he maintained, is just the ability to carry out one’s will without interference from others. This doesn’t entail an absence of law; indeed, our agreement to be subject to a common authority helps each of us to secure liberty with respect to others. (Leviathan II 21) Submission to the sovereign is absolutely decisive, except where it is silent or where it claims control over individual rights to life itself, which cannot be transferred to anyone else. But the structure provided by orderly government, according to Hobbes, enhances rather than restricts individual liberty.
Whether or not the sovereign is a single heredetary monarch, of course, its administration of social order may require the cooperation and assistance of others. Within the commonwealth as a whole, there may arise smaller “bodies politic” with authority over portions of the lives of those who enter into them. The sovereign will appoint agents whose responsibility is to act on its behalf in matters of less than highest importance. Most important, the will of the sovereign for its subjects will be expressed in the form of civil laws that have either been decreed or tacitly accepted. (Leviathan II 26) Criminal violations of these laws by any subject will be appropriately punished by the sovereign authority.
Despite his firm insistence on the vital role of the sovereign as the embodiment of the commonwealth, Hobbes acknowledged that there are particular circumstances under which it may fail to accomplish its purpose. (Leviathan II 29) If the sovereign has too little power, is made subject to its own laws, or allows its power to be divided, problems will arise. Similarly, if individual subjects make private judgments of right and wrong based on conscience, succomb to religious enthisiasm, or acquire excessive private property, the state will suffer. Even a well-designed commonwealth may, over time, cease to function and will be dissolved.