ВОЗРОЖДЕНИЕ ФИЛОСОФСКОЕ

Renaissance (philosophical)

A term used in the history of philosophy to denote the general sociological and philosophical doctrines that developed in Europe (primarily in Italy) during the period of feudal decline and the establishment of early bourgeois society (15th to early 17th centuries). While scholasticism remained the official philosophy in this period, the rise of humanist culture (see Humanism), the revival of the philosophical legacy of antiquity, and a series of important scientific discoveries enabled the progressive philosophy of the Renaissance to break free of theology and develop anti-scholastic trends.

These first showed themselves in ethics, bringing about a revival of the ethical doctrines of stoicism (Petrarch) and epicureanism (Laurentius Valla), which struck at the prevailing Christian morality of the time. The major role in the philosophy of the new age was played by natural philosophical conceptions (Nicholas of Cusa, Cardano, Telesio, Paracelsus, Bruno, Campanella, etc.), which testified to the collapse of the scholastics' picture of the world and their methods of explaining nature.

Although the transitional character of the Renaissance was evident in some of these conceptions (preoccupation with astrology, magic, alchemy, and other unscientific interpretations of the world), the general line of development of natural philosophy came to mean the increasing supremacy of the materialist understanding of the world, most typically expressed in the philosophical views held by Bruno.

The anti-scholastic direction of the philosophy of the Renaissance was even more apparent in the philosophical doctrines that grew up directly from the new natural science (particularly the heliocentric system of Copernicus), and depended less than natural philosophy on the philosophical systems of antiquity. The most important results of the scientific trends in the Renaissance were the methods of experimental mathematical investigation of nature, philosophically generalised in the works of Leonardo da Vinci and particularly Galileo, the determinist interpretation of reality, as opposed to its teleological interpretation by the scholastics, and the formulation (by Kepler in astronomy and Galileo, in mechanics) of genuinely scientific laws of nature free of elements of anthropomorphism.

The determining features of Renaissance philosophy were: metaphysical understanding of the ultimate elements of nature as absolutely unqualitative and inanimate in spite of the views of some natural philosophers; absence of a historical view of nature and, consequently, a deistic inconsistency which set a place apart for God in an infinite world (Galileo and, to a certain extent, Francis Bacon).

The vast socio-economic changes that took place in the new age were also reflected in much of the sociological thought of the time, particularly the characteristic view of society as a conglomeration of isolated individuals, which expressed the growing individualism of the bourgeoisie (see Machiavelli). The emergence and consolidation of national states were reflected in the new conceptions of state power as something completely independent of religious sanction and the authority of the church (Machiavelli, Bodin, and Modrzewski).

The Renaissance saw the appearance of utopian philosophers such as Münzer, who demanded the socialisation of property on the basis of the "holy scriptures", and the first attempts were made to outline a communist social system, which at that time could not but be utopian (see More and Campanella).

Возрождение

Посёлок городского типа на С. Саратовской области РСФСР, на правобережье Волги. Железнодорожная станция на линии Сызрань - Саратов. 3,1 тыс. жителей (1968). Завод «Электрофидер».