ទស្សនវិជ្ជា: សម័យបុនភព

សម័យបុនភព 

thumb|Giordano Bruno
The Renaissance ("rebirth") was a period of transition between the Middle Ages and modern thought,Charles Schmitt and Quentin Skinner (eds.), The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 5, loosely define the period as extending "from the age of Ockham to the revisionary work of Bacon, Descartes and their contemporaries." in which the recovery of classical texts helped shift philosophical interests away from technical studies in logic, metaphysics, and theology towards eclectic inquiries into morality, philology, and mysticism.Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, Volume III: From Ockham to Suarez (The Newman Press, 1953) p. 18: "When one looks at Renaissance philosophy ... one is faced at first sight with a rather bewildering assortment of philosophies."Brian Copenhaver and Charles Schmitt, Renaissance Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 4: "one may identify the hallmark of Renaissance philosophy as an accelerated and enlarged interest, stimulated by newly available texts, in primary sources of Greek and Roman thought that were previously unknown or partially known or little read." The study of the classics and the humane arts generally, such as history and literature, enjoyed a scholarly interest hitherto unknown in Christendom, a tendency referred to as humanism.Jorge J.E. Gracia in Nicholas Bunnin and E.P. Tsui-James (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy, 2nd ed. (Blackwell, 2002), p. 621: "the humanists ... restored man to the centre of attention and channeled their efforts to the recovery and transmission of classical learning, particularly in the philosophy of Plato."Copleston, ibid.: "The bulk of Renaissance thinkers, scholars and scientists were, of course, Christians ... but none the less the classical revival ... helped to bring to the fore a conception of autonomous man or an idea of the development of the human personality, which, though generally Christian, was more 'naturalistic' and less ascetic than the mediaeval conception."  Displacing the medieval interest in metaphysics and logic, the humanists followed Petrarch in making man and his virtues the focus of philosophy.Charles B. Schmitt and Quentin Skinner (eds.), The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, pp. 61 and 63: "From Petrarch the early humanists learnt their conviction that the revival of humanae literae was only the first step in a greater intellectual renewal" [...] "the very conception of philosophy was changing because its chief object was now man—man was at centre of every inquiry".

The study of classical philosophy also developed in two new ways. On the one hand, the study of Aristotle was changed through the influence of Averroism. The disagreements between these Averroist Aristotelians, and more orthodox catholic Aristotelians such as Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas eventually contributed to the development of a "humanist Aristotelianism" developed in the Renaissance, as exemplified in the thought of Pietro Pomponazzi and Giacomo Zabarella. Secondly, as an alternative to Aristotle, the study of Plato and the Neoplatonists became common. This was assisted by the rediscovery of works which had not been well known previously in Western Europe. Notable Renaissance Platonists include Nicholas of Cusa, and later Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola.

The Renaissance also renewed interest in anti-Aristotelian theories of nature considered as an organic, living whole comprehensible independently of theology, as in the work of Nicholas of Cusa, Nicholas Copernicus, Giordano Bruno, Telesius, and Tommaso Campanella.Copenhaver and Schmitt, Renaissance Philosophy, pp. 285–328. Such movements in natural philosophy dovetailed with a revival of interest in occultism, magic, hermeticism, and astrology, which were thought to yield hidden ways of knowing and mastering nature (e.g., in Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola).Pico Della Mirandola, Conclusiones philosophicae, cabalisticae et theologicae; Giordano Bruno, De Magia

These new movements in philosophy developed contemporaneously with larger religious and political transformations in Europe: the Reformation and the decline of feudalism.  Though the theologians of the Protestant Reformation showed little direct interest in philosophy, their destruction of the traditional foundations of theological and intellectual authority harmonized with a revival of fideism and skepticism in thinkers such as Erasmus, Montaigne, and Francisco Sanches.Richard Popkin, The History of Scepticism from Savonarola to Bayle (Oxford University Press, 2003).Copleston, pp. 228–229.Kenny, A New History of Western Philosophy, vol. 3 (Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 8: "The Lutheran Reformation [...] gave new impetus to the sceptical trend."  Meanwhile, the gradual centralization of political power in nation-states was echoed by the emergence of secular political philosophies, as in the works of Niccolò Machiavelli (often described as the first modern political thinker, or a key turning point towards modern political thinking"Machiavelli appears as the first modern political thinker" . "Machiavelli ought not really to be classified as either purely an "ancient" or a "modern," but instead deserves to be located in the interstices between the two." ), Thomas More, Erasmus, Justus Lipsius, Jean Bodin, and Hugo Grotius.Copenhaver and Schmitt, Renaissance Philosophy, pp. 274–284.Schmitt and Skinner, The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, pp. 430–452.