Modern Philosophy

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Marilena Chaui

Universidade de S. Paulo, USP

1- Problems of chronology: When you start the "modern philosophy"?

Often, historians of philosophy describe how modern philosophy that knowing that takes place in Europe during the seventeenth century and as a main Cartesianism - that is, the philosophy of Rene Descartes - the science of Nature galilaea - that is, the mechanics of Galileo Galilei - the new idea of knowledge as a synthesis of observation, experimentation and reason Baconian theory - that is, the philosophy of Francis Bacon - and elaborations about the origin and forms of political sovereignty from the ideas of natural right and duty civil Hobbesian - that is, the philosopher Thomas Hobbes.

However, the chronology can be a criterion illusory, as the philosopher Bacon publishes his Essays in 1597, while the philosopher Leibniz, one of the leading exponents of modern philosophy, publishes Monadology and the Principles of Nature and Grace in 1714, so that essential works of modernity appear before and after the seventeenth century. Many historians prefer to locate the modern philosophy in the period designated as the Century of Iron, located between 1550 and 1660, with reference to the great social, political and economic deployment brought about by capitalism, while others consider the crucial period between 1618 and 1648, this is, the Thirty Years' War, which outlines the political and cultural landscape of modern Europe.

However, these dates and times may invite a new mistake, namely, to establish a direct causal relationship between events and socio-political constitution of philosophical insight, scientific and technical or artistic creation. Relationship between them, no doubt exists. But is not linear or causal: ideas and creations can be in advance or in arrears with respect to events socio-political and economic thinkers and artists not because they are creatures out of space and time, but because everything depends on how questions facing placed on their time, going beyond or getting behind them. In summary, the relationship between a work and your time is not a mere intellectual reflection of social realities in hand. A thinker and an artist are addressed to his contemporaries, but this does not mean they are in their ideas and creations, contemporary recipients. Capture the questions posed by his age, but this does not mean that his time picking up the answers they encountered or created. For these reasons, many historians consider the ideas that artists and thinkers, after all, create their own public works produce its recipients, both contemporary as the posterity.

The chronology can be misleading when we want to trace the contours of an era of thought. Thus, for example, the inauguration of the modern idea of politics as understanding of human origins and forms of power, as an understanding of power as a solution that offers an internally divided society itself symbolically to create a unit that, in fact, has no is an opening and anterior to the seventeenth century, as was done by Machiavelli. Moreover, the idea that politics is a sphere of action lay or secular, regardless of religion and the Church, subject dear to the modern philosophers, was developed in the late Middle Ages by a lawyer as Marsilius of Padua. Also the idea of the value and importance of observation and experience to human knowledge appears in the late Middle Ages with philosophers such as Roger Bacon and William of Ockham. The extreme enhancement of the capacity of human reason to understand and transform reality - to trust in science or practice in active opposition to the contemplative know - is a key feature of the so-called humanism, developed during the Renaissance. In contrast with the medieval view, which was theocentric (God as the center of knowledge and politics), humanists seek to secularize knowledge, morality and politics, taking as a center man Virtuoso.

To circumvent these difficulties, many historians of philosophy have come to designate the Renaissance as a period of transition to modernity or the initial rupture in the face of medieval knowledge that prepared the advent of modern philosophy. In this perspective, the Renaissance would have two main characteristics: firstly, it would be a time of great intellectual and political conflicts (between Platonic and Aristotelian, between atheists and humanists humanist Christian, between church and state, between secular and religious universities academies, among conceptions geocentric and heliocentric, etc.). and, moreover, a moment of uncertainty theory, the renaissance has not yet found ways of thinking, concepts and discussions that had definitely abandoned the land of medieval polemics. The Renaissance would have been time of great intellectual and artistic ferment, of great passion for new discoveries about the nature and the man of knowledge rediscovered Greco-Roman released interpretive crust that swept the medieval Christianity, the desire to demolish everything had come from the past, favored both by the desire called Modern Devotion (the attempt to reform the Roman Catholic religion without break with papal authority) and by the Protestant Reformation and the wars of religion that have shaken the idea of European unity as a politico-religious and opened the door for the emergence of the territorial Moderns.

At the same time, however, the vagueness and conflicts have made the Renaissance a period of crisis. First, the crisis of conscience, for the discovery of the infinite universe by men like Giordano Bruno was leaving humans without reference and without a center, and secondly, the religious crisis, since both the Modern Devotion as the Protestant Reformation created countless trends, sects, churches and interpretations of Scripture, dogma and sacraments, so that the reference to the idea of Christianity, since central Charlemagne, had been lost and thirdly, political crisis since the collapse of the cosmic center (the universe is infinity), the loss of religious center (the papacy), the theoretical loss of the center (geocentric, Aristotelian Thomist, hierarchical world of beings and ideas) has also been losing the political center (the Holy Roman Empire destroyed by modern independent kingdoms and the cities of bourgeois capitalism in expansion) and its institutions (pope, emperor, Roman Law, Canon Law, social relations determined by the hierarchy of vassalage between the nobles and the clear division between masters and servants, economic relationships defined by ownership land and agriculture and grazing, with the urban crafts only alternative for the small trade of towns).

The result of the transition, the uncertainty and crisis, as many historians, was philosophical skepticism, whose greatest exponents have been Montaigne and Erasmus.

Only very recently, historians of ideas and socio-political history scrapped this image of transience and uncertainty Renaissance, showing the Renaissance created its own knowledge with new concepts and categories and without which modern philosophy would have been impossible.

Thus, for example, the historian of ideas and of European institutions, Michel Foucault, in his book Words and Things (Les Mots et les choses), considers the Renaissance period in which knowledge is governed by a fundamental concept: the concept Similarity, thanks to which are thought relations between beings that constitute the whole reality, which is why science such as medicine and astronomy, disciplines like rhetoric and history, theories about human nature, society, politics and theology employ concepts such as sympathy and antipathy (in diseases and movements of the stars), of imitation or emulation (among human beings between living things, between humans and things, between the visible and invisible, as in alchemy), concepts that have nothing to do with the "magic" as superstition, but with magic as a means of revealing the hidden powers of the human mind, ie the similarity defines a certain kind of knowledge and a certain kind of power. Also central is the concept of friendship, as natural and spontaneous attraction of equals (animals, humans) and serving as a reference to think the figure of the tyrant and enemy of the people and the creator of kingdoms governed by mutual enmity (way to understand social divisions and conflicts between power and society).

Nature is thought of as a great All Living, internally cohesive and connected by various forms of similarity, ranging from minerals hidden deep in the earth to the brightness of the stars in the firmament of things to men, men of God. This whole idea of living is expressed in the phrase of Giordano Bruno's "Nature operates from the Centre" (La Natura opra dal centro). This same idea allows us to distinguish a human history and natural history in one sense the difference between human actions, which have processing power over reality, and the actions that nothing can about nature as a divine, an idea that is expressed in the philosophy of history Vico.

The idea of imitation appears in political theory when some humanists (especially the Christian humanists like Erasmus and Thomas More) believe that the qualities (virtues or vices) of the rulers are a mirror to society as a whole, so that a tyrannical regime subjects be tyrants too. This idea of a huge mirror reappears in the trial of La Boétie, Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, but with one major innovation: the tyrant is not establishing a tyrannical society, but it is a tyrannical society (a society in which men desire the easement) that produces the tyrant, his mirror.

Imitation also appears in the prestige of rhetoric who teach the imitation of great writers and artists of classical antiquity, but not as repeat or reproduce what they thought, wrote or did, but as a recreation from the old procedures. The scholarship, one of the main features of the humanists, there is accumulation of information, but a controversial attitude towards the tradition (Catholic refuse the appropriation of ancient culture). This appears very clearly in the historians who seek to learn about primary sources and original documents in order to produce an objective history and patriotic, that is, a national history that is, itself, a refutation of the legitimacy of the domination of the Roman Church and Empire Romano Germanic on the National States. The scholarship also serves, along with the rhetoric, to a very peculiar kind of imitation of the ancients, one that is made by writers in order to create a national language of educated, rich, beautiful and replacing the imperialism of Latin. Thus, in all spheres of cultural activity can be seen that the famous renaissance of the old "do not have a purpose, but nostalgic and creative controversy, with regard to this and your questions.

2. Some aspects of the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation

Side of what we call the Renaissance, we find the following defining elements of intellectual life: a) emergence of academies secular and free, parallel to the confessional universities, which prevailed in the Christianized versions of the thought of Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus and the Stoics and discussions on the relationship between faith and reason, making clerics and theologians entrusted with the defense of ecclesiastical ideas; academies rediscover other sources of ancient thought, an interest in developing knowledge without direct links with theology and religion, encourage the arts and sciences ( first, classicism and then the Counter-Reformation, mannerism), 2) the preference for discussions on the clear separation between faith and reason, nature and religion, politics and religion. It is considered that natural phenomena can and should be explained by themselves, without recourse to divine intervention and continues without submitting them to the Christian dogma (eg, the geocentric, Earth stationary at the center of the universe), and advocates the idea that observation, experimentation, logical and rational assumptions, mathematical calculations and geometrical principles are the fundamental tools for understanding natural phenomena (Bruno, Copernicus, Leonardo da Vinci being the exponents of this position). Develop, thus trends that religious orthodoxy blocked during the Middle Ages, that is, naturalism (things and men as natural beings, operate according to natural principles and not by providential divine decrees and secret), 3) interest in science active practice or in a place of learning contemplative, ie, belief in the ability of rational knowledge to transform the natural reality and politics, where interest in the development of techniques (responding to economic and intellectual demands of the time when capitalism asks instruments that are increasing the capacity of the productive forces), 4) change the perspective of the grounds for knowing, that is, moving from vision theocentric (God as the center, beginning, middle and end of the real) for the naturalist and the humanist. Here, two lines are developed: on one hand, the discussion about the essence of the human soul as rational and passionate, its strength and its limits, leading to what would later be known as the Subject of Knowledge and Subjectivity which, in the Renaissance, is still closer to a "psychology of the soul" and a moral, as in modern philosophy is more geared for what would be called epistemology (this concern with the man, Nicholas of Cusa, Ficino, Erasmus and Montaigne will be the great exponents) and on the other hand, the discussion of the fundamentals of natural and human politics. In this, three main lines develop. The first, coming from the populist and conciliarist medieval history and patriotic and republican Italian cities, finds its highest point at issue and that in Machiavelli, and dismantle the classical and Christian conceptions of the good virtuous ruler "and a divine origin or natural or rational power, founded the original power in the division of society between the Great (who want to oppress and control) and people (who do not want to be oppressed or controlled), the Law and the creation of symbolic unity for social action policy and the logic of action (and not by force, as they suppose). In the second line, the discussion turns to the criticism of this by the establishment of a different society possible-impossible, just, free, egalitarian, rational, perfect - the utopia, whose exponents are Morus, Campanella. The third line presents the politics from the concept of natural law and civil law (line that will prevail among modern), the causes of differences between political regimes and forms of sovereignty, and its exponents Pasquier, Bodin, Grotius. In three lines we find the preoccupation with history, whether as proof that another society is possible, in any examination of the errors committed by other regimes, is an example of what can be replicated or saved.

In turn, the Reformation destroys belief (particularly illusory, for they never provided) the unity of the Christian faith, dogma and ceremony, and especially of religious authority: questions the papal and episcopal authority, questioned whether the privilege of only some might read and interpret the holy books, the question is that God has invested the papacy's right to anoint and crown kings and emperors, one may question the dogmas and rituals (like the Mass and even the baptism). The European Christian world splits itself up and down in new orthodoxies (Lutheranism, Calvinism, Anglicanism, Puritanism) and new heterodoxies (Anabaptists, Mennonites, Quakers, the "unchurched Christians"). Religious conflicts occur not only between Catholics and Protestants, but also between the latter and particularly between them and the small sects and radical libertarian who will often be decimated, with enormous violence. Modifies itself how to read and interpret the Bible, it changes the relationship between religion and politics: everyone should have the right to read the Holy Book and in it God has not declared that the monarchy is the best of political regimes. Two results flow from this new cultural approach: first, the development of Protestant schools for literacy of the faithful for them to read the Bible and write about their own religious experiences, disseminating the new and true faith (the pamphlets will be one of the hallmarks Reform, which produced a literate population) on the other hand, the initial phase of Protestantism (which would be superseded when some sects triumphed and became dominant), the defense of the idea of community, popular or aristocratic republic and the political right to resistance, ie civil disobedience against the papacy and the Catholic kings and emperors.

Finally, the Counter-Reformation, whose highest expression and the more effective the Society of Jesus, sets a new framework for intellectual life: first, to counter the Protestant school, the Jesuits (but not only them) emphasize the pedagogical and educational action (let us not forget Nobrega and Anchieta teaching Indians to read and write!), and, moreover, emphasize the divine right of kings, the strengthening trend of the new nation states to absolute monarchy of divine right. Is within the framework of the Counter-Reformation as a renewal of Catholicism to Protestantism to fight, that the Inquisition took a new impetus and, during the Middle Ages, the main targets of the Inquisition were witches and wizards, in addition to heterodoxies regarded as heresies, now the main target of the Inquisition are the wise: Giordano Bruno is burned as a heretic, Galileo is questioned and censured by the Inquisition, the works of philosophers and scientists of the seventeenth century Catholics become the first Holy Office before receiving the right to publish and the works of Protestant thinkers are briefly placed in the works for reading forbidden (the Index). The Counter-Reformation take place, the Catholic side, the same as the triumphant Reformation, the Protestant side: the control of intellectual activity release that the Renaissance and cultivated as freedom of thought and expression.

It is within this context controversial, often authoritarian and violent that develops Modern Philosophy of the seventeenth century.

3. General characteristics of knowledge in the seventeenth century

The term "modern philosophy and philosophy of the seventeenth century" is an abstraction, as suggested by mentioning the issue of chronology. But it is also an abstraction if we consider the various philosophies that arguing with each other during this period, philosophers conceive of metaphysics, the science of nature, techniques, morality and politics in ways very different. However, for those who look from afar, it is impossible not to recognize the existence of a field of thought and a discursive field common to all modern thinkers and within which their similarities and differences present themselves. It is common ground that we will be talking here.

We have to remember that the distinction between philosophy and science is very new (consolidated only in the mid-nineteenth century), so that the thinkers of the seventeenth century are considered wise (and not intellectual, a notion that is also very recent) and not separate their scientific, technical, metaphysical, political. For them, all this is the philosophy and each tends to be a wise or a researcher knowledgeable in all areas of knowledge, even more preferably engaged to some than to others. This relationship between activities led by the philosopher Merleau-Ponty to designate modern philosophy as the time of the Great Rationalism to which the relationship between science of nature, metaphysics, ethics, politics, spirit and matter, soul and body, consciousness and the outside world because they were articulated based on the same principle that linked internally all dimensions of reality: the Infinite Substance, namely the concept of the Infinite Being or God.

General characteristics of the field of thought and discourse of Modern Philosophy, highlight the following: the meaning of the new science of nature, the concepts of causality and substance, the idea of method or mathesis universalis, and the idea of reason, explicitly or implicitly developed by these thinkers.

3.1. The New Science of Nature or Natural Philosophy

On a superficial level, one can say that the new science of nature or natural philosophy has three characteristics 1) the shifting of speculative science to active by continuing the Renaissance project of domination of nature and whose formula is in Francis Bacon: "Knowledge is Power ", 2) shift from qualitative explanation of natural and teleological explanation for the quantitative and mechanistic, that is, abandonment of the Aristotelian-medieval conceptions about the qualitative differences between things as a source of explanation of their operations (light, heavy, natural artificial, big, small, located in low or high) and the idea that natural phenomena occur because final causes or purposes they cause to happen. Such concepts are replaced by mechanical relationships of cause and effect according to laws necessary and universal, valid for all phenomena regardless of the qualities that differentiate them to our five senses (weight, color, flavor, texture, odor, size) and without any purpose, hidden or obvious, 3) conservation of teleological explanation just in terms of metaphysics: the freedom of the divine will and human intelligence and divine and human, though immeasurable, are held in order to end (the philosopher Hobbes remove most of the objectives in the field of moral, giving him countenance too mechanistic, and philosopher Espinosa abolish purpose in metaphysics and ethics, criticizing it as superstition and ignorance of true causes of actions).

However, as noted by the historian of ideas, Alexandre Koyre, these features are just the effects of deeper changes in the new science of nature, which are:

1) the destruction, the coming of the Renaissance, the idea Greco-Roman and Christian Cosmos, that is, as the world's second fixed order hierarchies of perfection, gifted center and knowable boundaries, cyclical time and limited space. In its place comes the Infinite Universe, opened in time and space, without beginning, without end, without limit and that will lead to the philosopher Pascal's famous formula "sphere whose circumference is everywhere and the center at no." Not only heliocentrism is possible from this idea, but with her two new phenomena occur: first, the loss of center, leading thinkers to a question which, according to the historian of philosophy Michel Serres, is essential and Prior to the very possibility of knowledge, that is, they ask if we can find another center, or a fixed point from which to think and act (philosophers speak in search of Archimedean point for thought), second , a new formulation of the concept of order and, according to Michel Foucault, is the primary motivation in developing the modern method to know (without order there is no possible knowledge, the first thing to order is the very faculty of knowing);

2) the geometrization of space. This was, in physics Aristotelian-Thomistic, a topological space and topographic (ie, consisting of places - topoi - that determined the form of a natural phenomenon, its importance, its meaning), the world being divided into hierarchies of perfection such as places. Now, the space becomes neutral, homogeneous, measurable, calculable, without hierarchies, without values, without qualities. That is the idea that is expressed in the famous opening sentence of Galileo the modern scientific and philosophic: "Philosophy is written in this vast book, constantly open before our eyes (I mean the universe) and we can only understand it if first learn to know the language, the characters in which it is written. However, it is written in mathematical language and its characters are the triangle and circle and other geometric figures without which it is impossible to understand a single word. " Or how shall Espinosa, writing about the emotions and passions in his Ethics, stating that treat them as if they were writing on lines, surfaces, volumes and geometric figures;

3) the mechanics of how the new science of nature, ie the idea that all natural phenomena (things non-human and human) bodies are composed of particles with greatness, figure and motion, and that their knowledge is to establish the necessary laws of motion and rest that retain or modify the magnitude and figure things perceived by us because they save or alter the magnitude and figure of the particles. And the idea that these laws are mechanical, ie laws of cause and effect model which is the local motion (direct contact between particles) and the movement distance (ie, action and reaction of the bodies for mediation or other , controversial issue that splits the sages, by the action of vacuum). Physiology, anatomy, medicine, optics, passions, ideas, astronomy, physics, all will be treated under this new mechanical model. And it's the perfect opportunity to know everything in this way allows the technical intervention on the physical and human nature and construction of instruments, whose ideal is autonomous and whose model is the clock.

3.2. The ideas of substance and causality

While the Greek-Roman and Christian admitted the existence of a plurality infinite (or indefinite) of substances, the modern will greatly simplify the concept.

Substance is all reality can exist (or subsist) itself and for itself. Everything that needs to be another way there will be a substance or an accident. In the traditional version, was a mineral substance, the substance was vegetable, animal, other substance, spiritual one another. But not only that, depending on the philosophies, every mineral, every vegetable, every animal, every spirit, it was substance, so that there are so many substances as many individuals. Simply put: the substance could be thought of as a genre, or as a species or even as an individual. And each would have their way or their own accidents and causalities.

The modern, especially after Descartes, admit that there are only three substances: the extension (which is the matter of bodies governed by the movement and the rest), thought (which is the essence of ideas and is the souls) and infinite (ie is, the divine substance). This change means just that: a substance is defined by its main attribute that constitutes its essence (the extension, ie matter as figure, magnitude, motion and rest, thinking, ie the idea as intelligence and will; infinity, ie God as the cause infinite and uncreated).

Indeed, the modern not agree with the tripartite division of Descartes. Materialists, for example, will say that there are only extension and infinity, the spiritualists, who only thought and infinite. And in both extremes of this discussion, Espinosa will be on one side, and Leibniz on the other. For Spinoza there is one and only one substance - the infinitely infinite, that is, God with infinite infinite attributes of which we know two, thought and extension (ultimate heresy: Spinoza says that God is full) the whole remainder of the universe are natural modes of single substance. For Leibniz, there are infinite substances, each containing in itself one of the two major attributes - thinking (intelligence, will, desire) or extension (figure, magnitude, motion and rest). These substances are called monads (last drive and indivisible) and there is only one difference between the monads - that is, there is the Infinite Monad, which is God, and there are monads created and finite, that is, beings in the universe, and which may be extensive or thinking.

Either way, the essential question of the substance defined by its main attribute is that, from now on, knowing is knowing only three types of essences and their fundamental operations: the subject (geometric), soul (intellect, will and appetites ) and the infinite.

This knowledge will be made by the concept of causality. Knowing is knowing the cause of the essence of existence and the actions and reactions of a being. A true knowledge will only offer and only when these causes. Evidently, the philosophers disagree about the cause and what they mean by causality, would disagree as to the determination of a reality as cause or as effect, disagree on the number of causes, disagree about the procedures that allow scholars to determine causes and therefore disagree about the definition of the notion of truth, since it depends on what is meant by cause and causal operation. But all, without exception, believe that knowledge can only aspire to the truth if knowledge of the causes, whatever they may be and in any event the way they operate. It is important to note that made the truth, intelligibility, and thought depend on the causal explanation and ruled out the explanation merely descriptive or interpretive.

4. The modern idea of Reason

In his book History of Philosophy, Hegel says that modern philosophy is the birth of philosophy itself because it the first time, the philosophers say:

1) that philosophy is independent and not submit to any authority other than reason itself as a college full of knowledge. That is, the modern are the first to demonstrate that true knowledge can only come from work carried out inside the ground, through your own efforts, without accepting religious dogmas, prejudices, social, political censorship and immediate data provided by the senses. Only reason she knows and can judge only to itself;

2) that modern philosophy makes the first discovery of subjectivity itself because in it the first act of knowledge from which all others depend, is the reflection or reflective self-awareness. This is the start of the modern consciousness of consciousness, consciousness of the act of being conscious of the consciousness upon itself to recognize himself as subject and object of knowledge and as a condition of truth. Consciousness is for itself the first object of knowledge, or knowledge that is able to and knowing;

3) that modern philosophy is the first to recognize that all human beings are conscious and rational beings, all also have the right to thought and truth. According to Hegel, this assertion of the right to thought, coupled with the idea of freedom of reason to judge herself, so the intellectual egalitarianism and rejection of any censorship on the thought and word, would be the realization of a philosophical principle born with Protestantism and that, being merely a religion, could not meet need of philosophy to take place: the principle of free subjectivity and individuality that mingles freely with the infinite and with the truth.

The reason, the thinking, the ability of consciousness to know itself the natural and spiritual reality, visible and invisible, human beings, the moral and political action, is called Natural Light. Although modern differentiate themselves on the Natural Light (for some, for example, why not just innately brings the possibility for true knowledge, but even the ideas that would be innate, for others, our consciousness is like a blank sheet in which everything will be printed by the sensations and experience, possessing nothing of innate), it is essential that Natural Light is the ability of autoiluminação of thought, an entirely natural faculty of knowledge which reaches the truth without the light of revelation or supernatural (though some philosophers, such as Pascal, Leibniz and Malebranche, considers that certain truths can only be achieved by natural light if it is aided by the light of Divine Grace).

The first intuition evident, indubitable truth of which will leave all modern philosophy, focuses on Descartes' famous formulation: "I think, therefore I am" (Cogito, ergo sum.) Conscious thought of themselves as "indigenous forces" (the phrase is Spinoza), capable of offering oneself and a method of intervening in the natural and political reality to change it, here is the fixed point found by modern philosophers.

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