Chapter 50 Volume 3 Modern Philosophy Part 1 From the Renaissance to Hume Chapter 1 General Introduction

In this period of history, which is usually called "modern times", there are many differences between people's ideas and ideas and ideas and ideas in the Middle Ages.Among them, two points are the most important, that is, the prestige of the church has declined, and the prestige of science has gradually increased.The other differences are all related to these two points.Modern culture is rather a secular culture rather than a monk culture.The state is increasingly replacing the church as the ruling power over culture.The ruling power of each nation was mostly in the hands of the king at first; later, as in ancient Greece, the king was gradually replaced by democratic countries or tyrants.The power of the nation-state, and the powers it exercises, have grown steadily and expanded throughout this period (not counting minor disturbances); but in most cases the state has had less influence on the opinions of philosophers Church in the Middle Ages.North of the Alps, the feudal aristocracy, which until the fifteenth century had been able to stand up to the central government, lost first its political and then its economic importance.

They were replaced by kings and merchants, who shared power in different proportions in different countries.There is a tendency for wealthy merchants to merge into the aristocracy.Democracy in its modern sense has been a major political force since the days of American Independence and the French Revolution.Socialism, as opposed to democracy based on private property, first came to power in 1917.If such a political system spread, it would obviously bring about a new culture; but the culture we shall be dealing with hereafter is in the main "liberal" culture, that is to say, very closely related to commerce and trade. The kind of cultures that are naturally linked together.There are a number of important exceptions to this, especially in Germany; to name two, the views of Fichte and Hegel have nothing to do with commerce.But such exceptional figures are not representative of their time.

The denial of the prestige of the Church is a negative feature of modern times, which began earlier than its positive feature, the acknowledgment of the prestige of science.In the Italian Renaissance, science occupied a very small place; the objection to the Church was inseparable from the minds of the people of ancient civilization, still resting on the past, but more so than the early Church and the Middle Ages. The distant past.The first major invasion of science was the publication of Copernicus's theory in 1543; but this theory did not start to gain momentum until Kepler and Galileo set out to improve it in the seventeenth century.What followed was the prelude to a long battle between science and dogma in which the old guard lost the battle against new knowledge.

The prestige of science is recognized by most modern philosophers; and since it is not political prestige but intellectual prestige, it is a very different thing from ecclesiastical prestige.Those who deny it will not be punished; those who admit it will never be swayed by any reason based on practical interests.It seeks rational judgment in essence, and it wins by virtue of this.Moreover, this is an incomplete prestige; unlike the catholic teachings, which set up a complete system that summarizes human morality, human hope, and the past and future history of the universe.It expresses an opinion only on matters which at the time seem to be established by science, which is but an island in a vast sea of ​​ignorance.Another point is different from the prestige of the church: the prestige of the church declares that its judgments are absolutely true and cannot be changed for ten thousand years; scientific judgments are put forward on the basis of probabilities and in a tentative manner, and they believe that it is inevitable to be revised at any time.This produces in man a temperament of mind quite different from that of the medieval dogmatic scholars.

So far I have been talking about theoretical science, which is science that attempts to understand the world.Practical science, science that attempts to change the world, has been important from the beginning, and has continued to grow in importance until it has almost driven theoretical science out of the minds of ordinary people.The practical importance of science was first recognized in warfare; both Galileo and Leonardo professed to improve cannon and fortification, and thus obtained government offices.Since that era, scientists have played an increasing role in warfare.As for the development of machine production and the habituation of the population first to steam and later to electricity, the role of scientists was relatively late, and this role did not begin to have significant political influence until the end of the nineteenth century.The success of science has always been mainly due to practical utility, so there have always been attempts to separate this side of science from the theoretical side, so that science becomes more and more technology and less and less a theory about the nature of the world.The penetration of this view among philosophers is quite recent.

Emancipation from the prestige of the Church resulted in the development of individualism, even to the point of anarchy.In the minds of people during the Renaissance, the so-called "cultivation", whether intellectual, moral, or political, was always associated with scholasticism and church rule.The Aristotelian logic of the scholastics, narrow though it is, was an exercise in a certain precision.When this school of logic goes out of fashion, at first it is replaced by something superior, but an eclectic imitation of various ancient models.Until the seventeenth century there was nothing of importance in philosophy.Fifteenth-century Italy was so appallingly morally and politically disorganized that Machiavelli's teachings arose.At the same time, once the spiritual shackles are cast off, he will show amazing talent in art and literature.But such a society is unstable.The Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, together with the submission of Italy to Spain, brought to an end both the merits and demerits of the Italian Renaissance.As the movement spread north of the Alps, it ceased to be of this chaotic nature.

Much of modern philosophy, however, has retained its individualistic and subjective tendencies.This is evident in Descartes, who bases all knowledge on the certainty of his own existence and admits "clearness" and "clearness" (both subjective) as criteria for judging truth.This tendency is not prominent in Spinoza, but it reappears through Leibniz's "windowless list".Locke's temperament is thoroughly objective, and he can't help falling into the subjective argument that knowledge consists in the agreement or disagreement of ideas—a view he loathes, so he risks serious contradictions. dodge it.After Berkeley discarded matter, he escaped complete subjectivism only by using the concept of "God", which was considered unreasonable by most philosophers afterwards.By the time of Hume, empiricist philosophy reached its peak, becoming a skepticism that no one could refute or believe.Kant and Fichte were subjective in theory, as well as temperament; Hegel saved himself through the influence of Spinoza.Rousseau and the Romantic movement expanded subjectivism from epistemology to ethics and politics, and the final inevitable outcome was Bakunin's complete anarchism.This extreme of subjectivism is a madness.

At the same time, science as technology has gradually developed in the average practical man a view quite different from anything to be found among theoretical philosophers.Technology has given people a sense of competence: it feels that human beings are far less at the mercy of the environment than in previous eras.But the ability given by technology is a social ability, not an individual ability; if an ordinary person is in distress on a ship and falls on a desert island, if it was in the seventeenth century, he would be able to do more than he is now.Science and technology require the collaboration of a large number of individuals organized under a single direction.So its tendency is anti-anarchist, even anti-individualistic, because it requires a well-organized social structure.Unlike religion, science and technology are morally neutral: they guarantee that humans can perform miracles, but they do not tell them what miracles to perform.At this point, it's not perfect enough.In fact, what purpose science and technology are used for depends mainly on chance.In the huge organizations that science and technology will inevitably create, those who occupy leading positions can control the direction of science and technology as they please within a certain limit.The desire for power thus has an unprecedented outlet.The various philosophies inspired by science and technology have always been power philosophies, which often regard everything other than human beings as mere raw materials to be processed.The purpose is no longer exquisite, only the ingenuity of the method is admired.This is another kind of madness.Today, this is the most dangerous kind. To deal with this kind of madness, rational and sound philosophy should be an antidote.

The ancient world ended in chaos with the Roman Empire, but the Roman Empire was a cold fact, not a human ideal.It was an ideal that the Old Church sought from the Church to end the chaos, but it was never fully realized in reality.Neither the ancient nor the medieval solution was satisfactory: the former because it failed to imbue the ideal, the latter because it failed to materialize.The modern world now seems to be heading towards a solution similar to that of the ancients: a social order imposed by violence, which represents the will of the powerful, not the wishes of the common people.The problem of a satisfactory and lasting social order can only be solved by combining the consolidation of the Roman Empire with the ideal of St. Augustine's "Kingdom of God."To do this, a new philosophy is needed.