Renaissance and Extra-University Philosophy

The Diversity of Problems in Renaissance Philosophy

Venice held a significant position in the development of Renaissance thought. The bustling population of the Venetian Republic was always delineated by the dynamic forces of prepared topoi and commonplaces. Panegyrists extolled Venice for its peacefulness and initial practicality: while other cities were founded by fierce warriors, and Romulus could not restrain his hand from slaying Remus—leading the orphans of Remus to establish Siena—Venice was constructed through the concord of its citizens. From the very beginning, the inhabitants of Veneto were traders, seeking true agreement of interests and genuine commerce—a free exchange of ideas, thoughts, speeches, and financial assets.

It is not difficult to observe how, within the rhetoric of Venetian indomitable concord and a unique transparency of intentions—through which the depths of centuries are discerned—there emerged a youthful spirit of enterprise. Such vigorous politics did not merely aim to provide work for guilds or to enrich itself with material treasures; rather, it sought to create a singular forum where earned wealth could be immediately transformed into investment. Venice amalgamated the old concept of banking capital as usury with new images of capital turnover as a strategic economic game; thus liberating early capitalism from the former routine of profit extraction and the servitude of tactical maneuvers, broadening its strategic horizons.

The treatise by Cardinal Gasparo Contarini (1483—1542), a contemporary of Lorenzo Lotto, who was a fervent reformer and brilliant stylist, titled "On the Magistrates and the Organization of the Venetian Republic," serves as both an apology for the trading state and an assertion of its place in history. Contarini concurred with the opinions of both his compatriots and foreigners: yes, Venice is conveniently situated; yes, it is a global market for goods and services; yes, it enjoys the favor of all rational and irrational forces. Yet he discovered new words for familiar institutions: for instance, the Council of Ten (arguably the first example of European intelligence services) emerged as a tyrant-dismantling body capable of neutralizing new Catilines, while the Doge, the head of Venice, was portrayed as a natural commander, perpetually defending the city’s resources from pirates.

At first, reading such descriptions of political reality is uncomfortable—too hastily do unseemly matters become obscured by examples of Roman valor. However, it soon becomes clear that for Contarini, an administrator in Venice is one who knows how to protect not only the beloved walls and hearth but also the well-being of the people, the simple joys of humanity. In his work, the phrase "The Senate turned its thoughts" signifies not a hasty decision-making by the political class but rather the ability to establish reasonable rules of the game—a schedule of thoughts that can subsequently be appropriately turned into action. Whenever Contarini intended to describe tactics, he invariably articulated strategy, unwittingly positioning himself as a precursor to strategists, fortunate or otherwise, such as Richelieu or Napoleon.

Overall, the Renaissance, by reviving antiquity, sought to reawaken or reinvent, with its love for spectacle, the norms of public life of the time. The word "theater" in late antiquity and Byzantium did not refer to performances but to public philosophical debates. The common ground of these theological disputes, frequently encountered in hagiographies, is that heresy typically relies on texts, on the letter of authoritative sources, while orthodoxy stands on inspiration, on immediate contemplation and exposition of truth. Therefore, the theater became a venue not only for heretical roles but also for orthodox improvisation. This intellectual improvisation, distant from the triviality of grammarians, was precisely encouraged by the Renaissance. It introduced a conditional system of "masks" for defining genres: a conversation with oneself is one thing (the philosophical genre); a dialogue with a partner is another, constituting discussion (philological genres, i.e., revived ancient genres); while a conversation in a group is yet a third, manifesting life narratives (as seen in Boccaccio's "Decameron"). For the Renaissance and its poetics, the essence of art is conceived as a bestowed gift, an open positive future: the revival of forgotten genres signifies the revival of representations and performances.

The essay, as invented by the French humanist Michel de Montaigne (1533—1592), became a new genre of philosophy, a sort of "draft," a sketch that can be completed by the reader into a final picture through their own experience. One of the most intriguing interpretations of Montaigne's legacy was offered by the Soviet philosopher Mikhail Lifshitz. For Lifshitz, Montaigne stands at a crossroads between Platonism, with its naively childlike view of things, and Kantianism, with its culture of self-examination and constant verification. According to Lifshitz, Montaigne, attentive to the birth of ideas and perceiving their grandeur in their initial formulation rather than in their subsequent, not entirely pure embodiment, was a genuine dialectician. What emerges recently is easily interwoven with creative intent and resolution, making it readily amenable to dialectical play.

The Dutch humanist Justus Lipsius (1547—1606) exemplified a philosopher and philologist. He believed that the study of ancient philosophy could establish a common ground between the positions of Catholics and Protestants. His reasoning was as follows: God's omniscience is an attribute of His perfection, whereas predestination directed at imperfect beings, such as individual humans, ceases to be perfection. Therefore, the followers of Calvin, who derive a fateful predestination from the incomprehensibility of God's will, rendering salvation possible solely through faith, are mistaken. Predestination can only be understood as an eternal property of God—eternal mercy and eternal justice. However, those Catholics who attempt to rely on divine attributes and believe that by becoming merciful and just, they will certainly attain salvation are also mistaken. For they may not have the opportunity to embody these qualities or may express them through predetermined templates, thus doing so completely incorrectly. Consequently, fate will befall them—Lipsius resurrects from ancient philosophy and religion the term "fate" to denote this earthly necessity that obstructs virtuous living: for example, illness might hinder one from performing good deeds, or a misunderstanding of a situation could twist good intentions into malevolence. A person must recognize that their will is free, although Luther taught otherwise, yet it is limited by fate, and divine predestination allows individuals to be freed even from the fate of their free will when they grasp the infinity of God's mercy. A person needs "the rudder of prudence and the compass of virtue" to navigate the sea of life toward the harbor of divine wisdom.

In response to the Reformation, the Counter-Reformation emerged, led by the Order of Jesus (the Jesuits), which established new forms of self-discipline through texts, such as the nightly written confession—no confessor could manage to hear the confessions of all students each evening. From this written confession, diaries as a means of daily self-reporting were born.

During the Counter-Reformation, a "second scholasticism" emerged, an intellectual baroque, with its most prominent philosopher being the Jesuit Francisco Suárez (1548—1617). Protestantism claimed that only God could interpret the "natural law," the rules by which the world exists, and thus we, as beings capable of understanding, can only grasp God's will as having already interpreted this law, not the rules themselves; therefore, salvation is only possible through faith. Suárez asserted that the natural law is not only interpreted but also interprets: for instance, when we love or hate, we are not merely fulfilling or failing to fulfill a commandment but also demonstrating that love is still possible in the world or that hatred arises in some manner. To a certain extent, we act as directors of the world, and thus we come to know not only God's will but also the alignment of our actions with His will, and hence the order of things. From this followed Suárez's crucial thesis: we come to know not individual things nor general concepts, but primary distinctions—in other words, the possibility of a thing deviating from its original intent, discrepancies. For example, something may have been conceived as finite in time yet is still remembered, or conversely, something intended as eternal may, under the influence of another entity, merge with a third entity. From these deviations, one can derive fundamental philosophical concepts such as individuality or unity, and also examine time, memory, and other notions that we now categorize as "existential," relating to existence rather than essence. Suárez's thought influenced the 20th-century position of Martin Heidegger, who engaged significantly with his work in his youth, asserting that existential distinction precedes the logical identification of things, thereby impacting all of continental philosophy, including existentialists such as Jean-Paul Sartre.

The Counter-Reformation engendered its own political theory, at the heart of which lay Augustine's ancient thesis that any earthly state is founded upon some act of foundational transgression, war, or sacrifice. Thus, the Church emerges as the sole institution wherein usurpation is impossible, for it allows for self-renunciation, which occurs in two ways: the Roman Pope, upon ascending to the papacy, renounces his previous life and even his former name; he may also, if necessary, renounce the throne. This stands in stark contrast to kings, who are already entangled in events and thus incapable of renouncing their power. Even if a king were to abandon everything in the heat of battle and flee into the forest, he would still be regarded as king, viewed in that capacity, and all successes and failures of the battle would be attributed to him. Here, the Counter-Reformation projected into realpolitik what had previously been confined to rhetoric: the heroism of a ruler cannot simply be dismissed; rather, it can only find a noble conclusion in a dying speech that elucidates all successes and failures and culminates in a valorous death. This thesis regarding the impossibility of usurpation within the Church was contested by Hannah Arendt in the 20th century, who pointed out that Augustine's understanding of predestination is not political but spiritual. Therefore, spiritual predestination for salvation or destruction does not preclude the political volition of actions; Romulus or Theseus act as they see fit, and if the Pope too acts according to his own judgment rather than the dictates of conscience, he becomes an usurper.

At the periphery of Europe existed a phenomenon known as Protestant scholasticism. For instance, the Slovak Eliáš Ladiver (circa 1633—1686) asserted that the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith is entirely reconcilable with Aristotle: for Aristotle teaches the immortality of the soul and the unalterability of logical laws. Thus, it suffices to demonstrate the unalterability of faith, such that even God cannot change the articles of faith, allowing Protestant scholasticism to flourish. God cannot change the doctrine because He trusts humanity, as evidenced by the martyrs who stood firm for this doctrine until the end; therefore, He would refrain from actions that would undermine the trust of all humanity in Him. Here, Ladiver recalls his contemporary, the German Catholic poet writing under the pseudonym Angel Silesius, who likewise claimed that God requires man as one who truly loves Him sincerely. The mystical dialectic of Angel Silesius—that God and man are two centers of self-consciousness in a relationship of necessary complementarity—exerted influence on Leibniz, Schelling, and Hegel.

Another example of a Protestant scholastic, even earlier, is the Hungarian István Gelly Katona (1589—1649). Katona criticized Catholics for the perennial "deferment" in their theology: one can repent of sins and postpone judgment, waiting for the decision of a confessor or the Pope. In contrast, Aristotle never spoke of such deferments; rather, in his system, a thing always strives to improve, and even if it does not reach entelechy, it is already manifest in its activity with all its properties. Thus, it is simply necessary to transfer Aristotle's apparatus of reasoning into the realm of sin, redemption, grace, and patience, demonstrating that just as nature abhors a vacuum, so righteousness cannot tolerate the postponement of sin.

A belated representative of the Renaissance was the Neapolitan professor Giambattista Vico (1668—1744), the creator of the "new science of the general nature of nations," which combined allegorical interpretations of biblical history and mythology with a broader conception of historical progress. Vico reasoned thus: regarding the earliest period of human history, we lack written sources, and for later periods, these are not always sufficiently detailed. Yet it is evident that the beginning of human history must be very compelling, as it determined the subsequent paths of humanity and the common nature of humans, independent of their habits, preferences, and plans. This beginning was free will, which had not been tested by history—the world had nearly been destroyed by the Great Flood. Hence, people after the flood began to learn not only crafts but also the recognition of signs and the rules of reading signs; thus, the first philosophy arose. Among the Jews, as the biblical people, these signs corresponded to specific meanings, such as manna in the desert representing the necessity to care for one's neighbor, thereby gradually creating the idea of freedom. In contrast, among the pagans, myths turned out to be ambiguous, leading them down a path of trial and error. By recognizing signs, they sometimes created ideas, while at other times, with equal enthusiasm, they fashioned their own bodies—hence arose giants, titans, and heroes who perished, while ideas remained immortal.