In this way every
individual
contains within itself the universe, though in limited form peculiar to this individual alone and differing from all others.
Windelband - History of Philosophy
In both these lines the peculiar nature of the Arabian Peripatetic doc trine developed, and this took place by complicated transformations of the Aristotelian conceptions of Form and Matter.
In general, we find in this connection in the Andalusian philoso phy a tendency to make matter metaphysically self-subsistent. It is conceived of, not as that which is merely abstractly possible, but as that which bears within itself as living germs the Forms peculiar to and brings them to realisation in its movement. At the same time Averroes, as regards particular cosmic processes, held fast to the Aristotelian principle that every movement of matter by which
realises out of itself lower Form, must be called forth by higher Form, and the graded series of Forms finds its termination above in God, as the highest and first mover. The transcendence of God could be united with this view, as the doctrine of Avicebron shows, only matter were regarded as itself created by the divine will. But on the other hand, this same Jewish philosopher, pro ceeding from the same presuppositions, insisted that with the excep tion of the deity, no being could be thought of otherwise than as connected with matter, that accordingly even the spiritual Forms need for their reality matter in which they inhere, and that finally the living community of the universe demands single matter as basis for the entire realm of Forms. The more, however, in the system of Averroes, matter was regarded as eternally in motion within itself, and as actuated by unity of life, the less could the moving Form be separated from realiter, and thus the same divine All-being appeared on the one hand as Form and moving force (natura naturans), and on the other hand as matter, as moved world
(natura natnrata).
This doctrine with regard to matter, that one in nature, is
informed within, and ~ts~ eternally in mutton of ttSilf, became ex tended with Averroism as an extremely naturalistic interpretation of the philosophy of Aristotle. It now became reinforced by those consequences of dialectical Realism- which compelled the view that God, as the ens generalissimum, the only substance, and that in~ qividual things are but the more or less transient Forms in which
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Chap. 2, § 27. ] Problem of Individuality : Averroe's. 339
this single substance becomes realised (cf. § 23). The Amalricans thus teach that God is the one single essence {essentia) of all things, and that creation is only an assuming of form on the part of this divine essence, a realising, completed in eternal movement, of all possibilities contained in this one single matter. David of Dinant1 establishes this same pantheism with the help of Avicebron's con ceptions, by teaching that as " hyle " (j. e. corporeal matter) is the substance of all bodies, so mind (ratio — mens) is the substance of all souls ; that, however, since God, as the most universal of all es sences, is the substance of all things whatever, God, matter, and mind are, in the last resort, identical, and the world is but their self-realisation in particular forms.
? ~. But the metaphysical self-subsistence of the individual mind was involved in doubt by yet another line of thought. Aristotle had made the vovs, as the everywhere identical rational activity, join the animal soul '• from without," and had escaped the difficul ties of this doctrine because the problem of personality, which emerged only with the Stoic conception of the i}yi/iovuc6V, did not as yet lie within the horizon of his thought. But the commenta tors, Greek and Arabian, who developed his system did not shrink before the consequences that resulted from it for the metaphysical value of mental and spiritual individuality.
In the thought of Alexander of Aphrodisias we meet, under the name of the "passive intellect" (cf. p. 150), the capacity of the in dividual psyche to take up into itself, in accordance with its whole animal and empirical disposition, the operation of the active reason, and this inteUectus agens (agreeably to the naturalistic conception of the whole system) is here identified with the divine mind, which is •till thought only as "separate Form" (inteUectus separatus). But with Simplicius, in accordance with the Neo-Platonic metaphysics, this , inteUectus agens which realises itself in man's rational knowledge has already become the lowest of the intelligences who rule the sub lunary world. ' This doctrine finds an original development in the thought of Averroes. * According to his view, the inteUectus passivus is to be sought in the individual's capacity for knowledge, a capacity which, like the individual himself, arises and perishes as Form of the individual body ; it has validity, therefore, only for the injT vidual, ai'd for that which concerns the particular. The inteUectus
1 Following the Liber de Cautii and the pseudo-Boethian treatise De Vno «( Unit ate ; cf. B. Haureau in the Mimoires de VAcad. det Itueript. , XXIX. (1877),
and also A. Jundt, Histaire du Pantheisme Populaire au M. -A. (Pari*, 1876). 'The no-called "Theology of Aristotle" identifies thin k>« with the \d-,ox.
for particular*, see E. Renan, Av. et VAv. , II. $ <l H. •Cf. principally his treatise De Anhmr Healitiidiiie.
,V*^ p\j»\
340 Mediaeval Philosophy : Second Period. [Part III.
agens, on the contrary, as a Form existing apart from empirical in dividuals and independent of them, is the eternal generic reason of the human race, which neither arises nor perishes, and which con tains the universal truths in a manner valid for all. It is the sub stance of the truly intellectual life, and the knowing activity of the individual is but a special manifestation of it. This (actual) knowing activity (as intellectus acquisitus) is indeed in its con tent, in its essence, eternal, since in so far it is just the active rea son itself ; on the contrary, as empirical function of an individual knowing process, it is as transitory as the individual soul itself. The completest incarnation of the active reason has, according to Averroes, been given in Aristotle. 1 Man's rational knowing is, then, an impersonal or supra-personal function : it is the individual's {Temporal participation in the eternal generic reason. This latter is the unitary essence which realises, itsplf in *V"> mneft Ynlligble activi-
^ties of personality.
Intimations of this pan-psychism occasionally appear in the train
of Neo-Platonic Mysticism at an earlier period in Western literature ;
as an outspoken and extended doctrine it by the side of appears
Averroism about 1200 ; the two are everywhere named in conjunc tion at the first when the erroneous doctrines of the Arabian Peripatetic thought are condemned, and it is one main effort of the Dominicans to protect Aristotle himself from being confused with this doctrine. Albert and Thomas both write a De Unitate Intellectus against the Averroists.
3. Pan-psychism encounters with Christian thinkers an oppo- sition in which the determining factor is the feeling of the meta physical value of personality, — the feeling which had been nour ished by Augustine. This is the standpoint from which men like William of Auvergne and Henry of Ghent oppose Averroes. And this is also the real reason why the main systems of Scholasticism — in diametrical contrast with Eekhart's Mysticism — did not allow the "Realism which was inherent in the intellpctualistin bases of their metaphysics to come to complete development. TJiomism was here in the more difficult case, for it maintained indeed, follow ing Avicenna's formula (cf. p. 299), that universals, and therefore also the genus " soul," exist only " individualised," i. e. in the indi vidual empirical examples as their universal essence (quidditas), but it ascribed to them, nevertheless, metaphysical priority in the divine mind. It was therefore obliged to explain how it comes
1 And with this the unconditional recognition of the authority of the Stagirite is theoretically justified by Averroes.
Chap. 2, § 27. ] Problem of Individuality : Thotnism, Scotism.
341
about that this one essence as universal matter presents itself in such manifold forms. That is to say, it asked after the pbincipium iNDrviDUATiONis, and found it in the consideration that matter in space and time is quantitatively determined (materia signata). In the capacity of matter to assume quantitative differences consists the possibility of individuation, i. e. the possibility that the same Form (e. g. humanity) is actual in different instances or examples as indi vidual substances. Hence, according to Thomas, pure Forms (sepa ratee sive subsistentes) are individualised only through themselves ; that is, there is but one example which corresponds to them.
Every angel is a genus and an individual at the same time. The inherent Forms, on the contrary, to which the human soul also belongs in spite of its subsistence (cf. p. 324), are actual in many examples, in
accordance with the quantitative differences of space and time which their matter presents.
This view was opposed by the Franciscans, whose religious and metaphysical psychology had developed in intimate relation with AugUBtlne'8 teaching. In their thought, first the individual soul, and then, with a consistent extension in general
metaphysics, individual beings in general, are regarded as self-subsisting realities. They rejected the distinction of separate and inherent Forms.
Bonaventura, Henry of Ghent, and still more energetically Duns Scotus, maintained, following Avicebron, that even intellectual Forms have their own matter, and Scotus teaches that the " soul " is not individualised and substantialised only after, and by means of, its relation to a definite body, as Thomas had taught, but that it is already in itself individualised and substantialised. On this point Scotitm shows a discord which had evidently not come to notice in the mind of its author. It emphasises on the one hand, in the strongest manner, the Reality of the universal, by maintaining the unity of matter (materia primo-prima) quite in the Arabian sense, and on the other hand it teaches that this universal is only actual by being realised by the series of Forms descending from the uni versal to the particular, and ultimately by means of the definite individual Form (haecceita*) . This individual Form is therefore for Duns Scotus an original fact; no farther question as to its ground is permissible. He designates individuality (lx>th in the sense of individual substance and in that of individual occurrence) as the contingent (contingens) ; that is, as that which is not to be deduced from a universal ground, but is only to be verified as actual fact. For him, therefore, as for his pi-P. lprpsanr Roper Rarnn, the inquiry for the principle of inHiviHmtitr" H? "-> pining • H»a indi vidual is the " last " Form of all reality, by means of which alone
342 Mediaeval Philosophy : Second Period. [Part III.
universal matter exists, and the question rather is, how, in presence of the fact that the individual being with its determined torm is the only Reality, one can still speak of a Reality of universal " naturesT71
from this noteworthy limitation of the doctrine of Scotus it becomes explicable that while some of its adherents, as for example Francls~~of Mayron, proceeded from it to extreme Realism, it sud denly changed with Occam into the renewed of the nominalist)*: thesis, that OnlyTTie" individual is real and that the universal is but a product of comparative thought.
4. The victorious development which Nominalism experienced in the second period of mediaeval philosophy rests upon an extremely peculiar combination of very different motives of thought. In the
epths of this stream of development ia dominant the Anfpistinian momentoi feeling, which seeks to see thfl proper metaphysical value secured to the individual personality; in the main philosophical current the anti-. r/iatonic tendency of the Aristotelian theory of knowledge, now just becoming Known, asserts itself, throwing its intluence toward conceding the value of "first substance" to the empirical individual only ; and on the surface plays a logico-gram- nratical schematism, which has its origin in the first operation of the Byzantine tradition of ancient thought. 2 All these influences become concentrated in the impassioned, impressive personality of William of Occam.
In their exposition of the doctrine of concepts and its application to the judgment and syllogism, the text-books of "modern" logic, as type of which that of Petrus Hispanus may serve, lay an impor tant emphasis upon the theory of "supposition" in a manner which is not without its precedent in antiquity. 3 According to this theory a class-concept or term (terminus) may, in language, and, as was then supposed, in logic also, stand for the sum of its species, and a species-concept for the sum of all its individual examples (homo = omnes homines), so that in the operations of thought a term is employed as a sign for that which it means. Occam develops Nom inalism in the forms of this Terminism* (cf. pp. 325 f). Individual
1 This method for the solution of the problem of universals, peculiar to Duns Scotus, is usually called Formalism.
3 In fact, we may see in the working of the text-book of Michael Psellos the first impetus of that accession of ancient material of culture which the West received by way of Byzantium, and which later in the Renaissance became definitely united with the two other lines of tradition that came, the one by way of Rome and York, the other by way of Bagdad and Cordova.
8 The reader need only be reminded of the investigations of Philodemus on signs and things signified (p. 162 ; cf. also p. 198).
* Cf. K. Prantl in the Sitz. -Ber. der Munch. Acad. 1864. II. a 58 ff.
Chap. 2, § 27. ] Problem of Individuality : Terminism. 348
things, to which Occam, following Scotus, concedes the Reality of original Forms, are represented in thought by us intuitively, without the mediation of species intelligibiles ; but these ideas or mental rep resentations are only the " natural " signs for the things represented. They have only a necessary reference to them, and have real simi larity with them as little as any sign " is necessarily like the object designated. This relation is that of first intention. " But now as individual ideas stand for (supponunt) individual things, so, in thought, speech, and writing, the " undetermined " general ideas of abstract knowledge, or the spoken or written words which in turn express these general ideas, may stand for the individual idea. This "second intention," in which the general idea with the help of the word refers no longer directly to the thing itself, but primarily to the idea of the thing, is no longer natural, but arbitrary or according to one's liking (ad placitum instituta). 1 Upon this distinction Occam rests also that of real and ratiotial science : the former relates imme diately or intuitively to things, the latter relates abstractly to the
immanent relations between ideas.
It is clear, according to this, that rational science also presupposes
" real " science and is bound to the empirical material presented in the form of ideas by this real science, but it is also clear that even " real " knowledge apprehends only an inner world of ideas, which may indeed serve as " signs " of things, but are different from things themselves. The mind — so Albert had incidentally said, and Nico- laus Cusanus at a later time carried out the thought — knows only what it has within itself; its knowledge of the world, terministic Nominalism reasons, refers to the inner states into which its living connection with the real world puts it. As contrasted with the true essence of things, teaches Nicolaus Cusanus, who committed himself absolutely to this idealistic Nominalism, human thought possesses only conjectures, that only modes of representation which corre spond to its own nature, and the knowledge of this relativity of all positive predicates, the knowledge of this non-knowledge, the docta ignorantia, the only way to go beyond rational science and attain to the inexpressible, signless, immediate community of knowledge
with true Being, the deity.
jn spite of this far-reaching epistemological restriction, the
real vital energy of Nominalism was directed toward the develo;t- ment of natural science and its results during the fourteenth ami fifteenth centuries remained very limited, the essential reason for this
The agreement of this with the contrast between #/<rn and 0fou, which had been aaaerted also in the ancient philosophy of language (Plato's Cratylui),
obvious.
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844 Mediceval Philosophy : Second Period. [Part III
was that the scholastic method with its bookish discussion of authori ties, which had now attained full perfection, controlled absolutely later as well as earlier the prosecution of science, and that the new ideas forced into this form could not unfold freely, — a phe nomenon, moreover, which continues far into the philosophy of the Renaissance. For all that, Duns Septus and Occam gave the chief impetus to the movement in which philosophy, taking- jfra p]apa beside the metaphysics whose interests ha. <l hitherto been essentially religious, made itself again a secular science of concrete, actual fact, ana placed itself with more and more definite consciousness upon the basis of empiricism. When Duns Scotus designated the hcecceitas or original individual Form, as contingent, this meant that it was to be known, not by logical deduction, but only by actual verification as fact ; and when Occam declared the individual being to be the alone truly Real, he was thereby pointing out to " real science " the way to the immediate apprehension of the actual world. But in this point the two Franciscans are under the influence of Roger Bacon, who with all his energy had called the science of his time from authorities to things, from opinions to sources, from dialectic to experience, from books to Nature. At his side in this movement stood Albert, who supported the same line of thought among the Dominicans, knew how to value the worth of original observation and experiment, and gave brilliant proof in his botanical studies of the independence of his own research. But strongly as Roger Bacon, following Arabian models, urged quantitative determinations in observation, and mathematical training, the time was not yet ripe for natural research. Attempts like those of Alexander Nekkam (about 1200), or those of Nicolaus d'Autricuria, at a later time (about 1350), passed away without effect.
The fruitful development of empiricism during this period was only in the line of psychology. Under the influence of the Arabs, especially of Avicenna and of the physiological optics of Alhacen, investigations concerning the psychical life took on a tendency directed more toward establishing and arranging the facts of expe rience. This had been begun even by Alexander of Hales, by his pupil, Johann of Rochelle, by Vincent of Beauvais, and especially by Albert; and in the system of Alfred the Englishman (Alfred de Sereshel, in the first half of the thirteenth century) we find a purely physiological psychology with all its radical consequences. These stirrings of a physiological empiricism would, however, have been repressed by the metaphysical psychology of Thomism, if they had not found their support in the Augustinian influence, which held fast to the experience which personality has of itself, as its
Chap. 2, § 27. ] Problem of Individuality : Nicolaut Ctuanut. 345
highest principle. In this attitude Henry of Ghent, especially, came forward in opposition to Thomism. He formulated sharply the standpoint of inner experience and gave it decisive value, particu larly in the investigation of the states of feeling. Just in this point, in the empirical apprehension of the life of feeling, the theory of which became thus emancipated at the same time from that of the will and that of the intellect, he met support in Roger Bacon, who, with clear insight and without the admixture of meta physical points of view, distinctly apprehended the difference in principle between outer and inner experience.
Thus the r*"Tiarkf'>'>1'> wait ""g""^, that pawly thtaMtJaal lajapoe developed inopposition to intellectualistic Thomism, and in connec- tion with the Augustinian doctrine of the self-certainty of person- altry; This self-knowledge was regarded as the most certain fact of " real science," even as it appeared among the nominalistic Mystics such as Pierre d'Ailly. Hence " real science " in the departing Middle Ages allied itself rather to active human life than to Nature ; and the beginnings of a " secular " science of the inter-relations of human society are found not only in the theories of Occam and Marsilius of Padua (cf. p. 328), not only in the rise of a richer, more living, and more " inward " writing of history, but also in an empirical consideration of the social relations, in which a Nicolas dCOresme,1 who died 1382, broke the path.
6. The divided frame of mind in which the departing Middle Ages round itself, between the original presuppositions of its thought and these beginnings of a new, experientially vigorous rtmrchj finds nowhere a more lively expression than in the phil- OBOpEy of Nicolati* Cusaniis, which is capable of so many interpre-_ tationsl Seized in every fibre of his being by the fresh impulse of the time, he nevertheless could not give up the purpose of arrang ing his new thoughts in the system of the old conception of the world.
This attempt acquires a heightened interest from the conceptions which furnished the forms in which he undertook to arrange his thoughts. The leading motive is to show that the individual, even in his metaphysical separateness, is identical with the most uni versal, the divine essence. To this end Nicolaus employs for the first time, in a thoroughly systematic way, the related conceptions of the infinite and thefinite. All antiquity had held the perfect to be that which is limited within itself and had regarded only indefinite possibility as infinite. In the Alexandrian philosophy,
Cf. concerning him W. Roncher, Ztiuxhr- f. SlaaUv>i*tt**cknn, 1863, 306 fl.
346 Mediceval Philosophy : Second Period. [Part 111
on the contrary, the highest being was stripped of all finite at tributes. In Plotinus the "One" as the all-forming power is provided with an unlimited intensity of Being on account of the infinity of matter in which it discloses itself ; and also in Christian thought the power, as well as the will and the knowledge of God, had been thought more and more as boundless. Here the main additional motive was, that the will even in the individual is felt as a restless, never quiet striving, and that this infinity of inner ex
perience was exalted to a metaphysical principle. But Nicolaus was the first to give the method of negative theology its positive ex pression by treating infinity as the essential characteristic of God in antithesis to the world. The identity of God with the world, required as well by the mystical view of the world as by the naturalistic, received, therefore, the formulation that in God the same absolute Being is contained infinitely, which in the world presents itself in finite forms.
In this was given the farther antithesis of unity and plurality. The infinite is the living and eternal unity of that which in the finite appears as extended plurality. But this plurality — and Gusanus lays special weight on this point — is also that of opposites. What in the finite world appears divided into different elements, and only by this means possible as one thing by the side of another in space, must become adjusted and harmonised in the infinitude of the divine nature. God is the unity of all opposites, the coin- cidentia oppositorum. 1 He therefore, the absolute reality in which all possibilities are eo ipso realised (possest, can-is), while each of the many finite entities in itself only possible, and real or actual only through him.
Among the oppositions which are united in God, those between him and the world, — that is, those of the infinite and the finite, and of unity and plurality, — appear as the most important. In consequence of this union the infinite at the same time finite in each of his manifestations in phenomena the unitary dens implicitus at the same time the deus explicitus poured forth into plurality
290). God the greatest (maximum) and at the same time also
Nicolaus also designates his own doctrine, in contrast with opposing sys tems, as a coincidentia oppositorum, since aims to do justice to all motives of earlier philosophy. Cf. the passages in Falckenberg, op. cit. , pp. 60 ff.
Thomas expressed the same thought as follows God the only necessary being, i. e. that which exists by virtue of its own nature thought which is to be regarded as an embodiment of Anselm's ontological argument, cf 23, 2), while in the case of all creatures, essence (or quidditas — whatness) really separate from existence in such way that the former in itself merely possible and that the latter added to as realisation. The relation of this doctrine to the fundamental Aristotelian conceptions, actus and potentia, obvious.
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Chaf. 2, § 27. ] Problem of Individuality : Nicolaus Cusanun. 847
the smallest (minimum). But, on the other hand, in consequence of this union it follows also that this smallest and finite is in its own manner participant in the infinite, and presents within itself, as does the whole, a harmonious unity of the many.
Accordingly, the universe is also infinite, not indeed in the same sense in which God is infinite, but in its own way; that unlimited in space and time (interminatum, or. privitively infinite). But a certain infinity belongs likewise to each individual thing, in the sense that in the characteristics of its essence carries within itself also the characteristics of all other individuals. All
in all: omnia ubique.
In this way every individual contains within itself the universe, though in limited form peculiar to this individual alone and differing from all others. In omnibus partibua relucet totum. Every individual thing is, rightly and fully known, a mirror of the universe, — thought which had already been ex pressed incidentally by the Arabian philosopher Alkendi.
Naturally this particularly true in the case of man, and in his conception of man as microcosm Nicolaus attaches himself ingeniously to the terrainistic doctrine. The particular manner in which other things are contained in man characterised by the ideas which form in him signs for the outer world. Man mirrors the universe by his " conjectures," by the mode of mental repre sentation peculiar to him (cf. above, 343).
Thus the finite also given with and in the infinite, the individ ual with and in the universal. At the same time the infinite necessary in itself; the finite, however (following Duns Scotus), absolutely contingent, t'. e. mere fact. There no proportion between the infinite and the finite even the endless series of the finite remains incommensurable with the truly infinite. The deri vation of the world from God incomprehensible, and from the knowledge of the finite no path leads to the infinite. That which
real as an individual empirically known, its relations and the oppositions prevailing in are apprehended and distinguished
the understanding, but the perception or intuition of the infinite unity, which, exalted above all these opposites, includes them all within itself, possible only by stripping off all such finite know edge, by the mystical exaltation of the docta ignorantia. Thus tin elements which Cusanus desired to unite fall apart again, even in the very process of union. The attempt to complete the mediaeval philosophy and make perfect on all sides leads to its inner disintegration.
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PART IV.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE RENAISSANCE.
J. E. Erdmann, Vertuch einer unssenschaftlichen DarsMlung der Getchichtt der neueren Philotophie. 3 pts. , in 6 Tola. Riga and Leips. 1834-63.
H. Ulrici, Getchichte und Kritik der Prineipien der neueren Philotophie. 2 Tola. Leips. 1845.
Kuno Fischer, Getchichu der neueren Philotophie. 4th ed. Heidelb. 1897 ff. [Eng. tr. of Vol. L, Dttcartet and Hit School, by J. P. Gordy, N. Y. 1877. ]
Ed. Zeller, Getchichte der deuttchen Philotophie teit Leibniz. 2d ed. , Berlin, 1876.
W. Windelband, Getchichte der neueren Philotophie. 2 vols. Leips. 2d ed. 1899. K. Falckenberg, Getchichte der neueren Philotophie. Leips. 1886. [Eng. tr. by
A. C. Armstrong, N. Y. 1893. ]
J. Schaller, Getchichte der Naturphilosophie teit Bacon. 2 vols. Leips. 1811-44. J. Baumami, Die Lehren von Raum, Zeit und Mathematik in der neueren Phi
lotophie. 2 vols. Berlin, 1868 f.
F. Vorlander, Getchichte der philotophitchen Moral-, Sechtt-, und Staatslehre
der Englander und Franzoten. Marburg, 1855.
F. Jodl, Getchichte der Ethik in der neueren Philosophic. 2 vols. Stuttgart,
1882-89.
B. Punjer, Getchichte der chrittlichen Religiontphilotophie teit der Reforma
tion. 2 vols. Braunschweig, 1880-83. [Eng. tr. of Vol. I. , History of the Christian Philosophy of Religion from the Reformation to Kant, by W. Hastie, Edin. and N. Y. 1887. ]
[B. F. Burt, History of Modern Philosophy. 2 vols. Chicago, 1892. ]
The antitheses which make their appearance in mediaeval philoso phy at the time of its close have a more general significance ; they show in theoretical form the self-conscious strengthening of secular civilisation by the side of that of the Church. The undercurrent, which for a thousand years had accompanied the religious main movement of the intellectual life among the Western peoples, swelling here and there to a stronger potency, now actually forced its way to the surface, and in the centuries of transition its slowly
wrested victory makes the essential characteristic for the beginning of modern times.
Thus gradually developing and constantly progressing, modern 348
of the Renaissance. 349
science freed itself from mediaeval views, and the intricate process in which it came into being went hand in hand with the multifold activity with which modern life in its entirety began. For modern life begins everywhere with the vigorous development of details; the tense (lapidare) unity into which mediaeval life was concen trated, breaks asunder in the progress of time, and primitive vigour bursts the band of common tradition with which history had encircled the mind of the nations. Thus the new epoch announces itself by the awakening of national life; the time of the world- empire is past in the intellectual realm also, and the wealth and variety of decentralisation takes the place of the unitary concen tration in which the Middle Ages had worked. Rome and Paris
cease to be the controlling centres of Western civilisation, Latin ceases to be the sole language of the educated world.
In the religious domain this process showed itself first in the fact that Home lost its sole mastery over the Church life of fihriat-. iimjty Wittenberg, Geneva, London, and other cities became new centres of religion. The inwardness of faith, which in Mysticism had already risen in revolt against the secularisation of the life of the Church, rose to victorious deliverance, to degenerate again at once into the organisation which was indispensable for it in the outer world. But the process of splitting into various sects, which set in in connection with this external organisation, wakened all the depths of religious feeling, and stirred for the following centuries the passion and fanaticism of confessional oppositions. Just by this means, however, the dominance at the summit of scientific life of a complete and definitive religious belief was broken. What had been begun in the age of the Crusades by the contact of religions was now completed by the controversy between Christian creeds.
It is -not a matter of accident that the number of centres of scientific life in addition to Paris was also growing rapidly. While Oxford had already won an importance of its own as a seat of the Franciscan opposition, now we find first Vienna, Heidelberg, Prague, then the numerous academies of Italy, and finally the wealth of new universities of Protestant Germany, developing their independent vital forces. But at the same time, by the invention of the art of printing, literary life gained such an extension and such a widely ramifying movement that, following its inner impulse, it was able to free itself from its rigid connection with the schools, •trip off the fetters of learned tradition, and expand unconstrained in the forms shaped out for it by individual personalities.
Philosophy
_Sa philosophy in the Renaissance loses its corporate character, and
Becomes in its best achievements the free deed ot individuals; It"
350 Philosophy of the Renaissance. [Part IV
seeks its sources in the broad extent of the real world of its own time, and presents itself externally more and more in the garb of modern national languages.
In this way science became involved in a powerful fermentation. The two-thousand-year-old forms of the intellectual life seemed to have been outlived and to have become unusable. A passionate, and at the first, still unclear search for novelty filled all minds, and excited imagination gained the mastery of the movement. But, in connection with this, the whole multiplicity of interests of secular life asserted themselves in philosophy, — the powerful development of political life, the rich increase in outward civilisation, the exten sion of European civilisation over foreign parts of the world, and not least the world-joy of newly awakened art. And this fresh and living wealth of new content brought with it the result that philos ophy became pre-eminently subject to no one of these interests, but rather took them all up into itself, and with the passing of time raised itself above them again to the free work of knowing, to the ideal ot knowledge for its own sake.
The new birth of the purely theoretical spirit is the true meaning of the scientific " Renaissance," and in this consists also its kinship of spirit ivith Greek thought, which was of decisive importance for its development. The subordination to ends of practical, ethical, and religious life which had prpvailpH in Hip whole philosophy of the Hellenistic-Roman period and of the Middle Ages, decreased more and more at the beginning of the modern period, and knowledge of reality appeared again as the absolute end of scientific research. . J 11st as at the beginnings of Greek thought, so now, this theoretical impulse turned its attention essentially to natural science. modern mind, which had taken up into itself the achievements of later antiquity and of the Middle Ages, appears from the beginning as having attained a stronger self-consciousness, as internalised, and a~s~haviiig penetrated deeper Into Its OWh nature, in comparison with the ancient mind. But true as this is, its first independent intellectual activity was the return to a disinterested concej tionoiNaEuTe": —The whole philosophy of the Renaissance presse toward this end, and in this airTtlinn 'f annipvpH its greatest results.
Feeling such a relationship in its fundamental impulse, the modern spirit in its passionate search for the new seized at first upon the oldest. The knowledge of ancient philosophy brought out by the humanistic movement was eagerly taken up, and the systems of Greek philosophy were revived in violent opposition to the mediaeval tradition. But from the point of view of the whole movement of
Xne
Philosophy of the Renaissance. 351
history this return to antiquity presents itself as but the instinctive preparation for the true work of the modern spirit,1 which in this Castalian bath attained its youthful vigour. By living itself into *■*"»■ world of Greek ideas it gained the ability to master in thought its_ own rich outer life, and thus equipped, science turned from the sub- tility ot the inner world with full vigour back to the invpstigiition of Nature, to open there new and wider paths for itself.
The history of the philosophy of the Renaissance is therefore in the main the history of the process in which the natural science mode of regarding the world is gradually worked out from the humanistic renewal of Greek philosophy. It falls, therefore, appro- pnately into two periods, the humanistic period and the natural t&eJtce period. As a boundary line between the two we may per-
■ftaps regard the year*^. 600f\ The first of these periods contains the
of mediaeval tradition by that of genuine Grecian thought, and while extremely rich in interest for the history of civilisation and in literary activity, these two centuries show from a philosophical point of view merely that shifting of earlier thoughts by which preparation is made for the new. The second period in cludes the beginnings of modern natural research which gradually conquered their independence, and following these the great meta physical systems of the seventeenth century.
The two periods form a most intimately connected whole. For the inner impelling motive in the philosophical movement of Hu manism was the same urgent demand for a radically new knowledge of the world, which ultimately found its fulfilment in the process in which natural science became established and worked out according to principles. But the manner in which this work took place, and the forms of thought in which it became complete, prove to be in all important points dependent upon the stimulus proceeding from the adoption of Greek philosophy. Modern natural science is the daughter of Humanism.
1 In this respect the course of development of science in the Renaissance ran exactly parallel to that of art. The line which leads from Giotto to Leonardo,
Kaphael, Michael Angelo, Titian, DUrer, and Rembrandt, passes gradually from the reanimation of classical forms to independent and immediate apprehension of Nature. And- Goethe is likewise proof that for us moderns tie way to Mature leads through Greece.
supplanting
CHAPTER I.
THE HUMANISTIC PERIOD.
Jac. Burckhardt, Die Cultur der Renaissance in Italic*. 4th ed. . Leipe. 1886. [The Civilisation of the Renaissance. Tr. by S. G. C. Middlemore, Lond.
1878 and 1890.
Mor. Carriere. Die philosophische Weltanschauung der Reformationszeit. 2d ed. ,
Leipa. 1887.
A. Stockl, GesehicJUe der Philosophic des MittelaUers. 3d vol. . Mainz, 1866. [J. A. Symoods, The Renaissance in Italy. 5 pis. in 7 vols. , 1875-86. ]
The continuity in the intellectual and spiritual development of European humanity manifests itself nowhere so remarkably as in the Renaissance. At no time perhaps has the want for something completely new, for a total and radical transformation, not only in the intellectual life, but also in the whole state of society, been felt so vigorously and expressed so variously and passionately as then, and no time has experienced so many, so adventurous, and so ambi tious attempts at innovation as did this. And yet, if we look closely, and do not allow ourselves to be deceived, either by the grotesque self-consciousness or by the naive grandiloquence which are the order of the day in this literature, it becomes evident that the wholp multiform process goes on within_ thff hnnndtn>f anrient anri_jnHirr val traditions, and strives in obscure longing toward a goal which is an object rather of premonition than of clear conception. It was nofuntilthe seventeenth century that the process of fermentation became complete, and this turbulent mixture clarifiecT
The essential ferment in this movement was FBe
between the inherited philosophy of the Middle AgesT which was already falling into dissolution, and the original works of Greek thinkers which began to be known in the fifteenth century. A new stream of culture flowed from Byzantium by the way of Florence and Rome, which once more strongly diverted the course of Western thought from its previous direction. In so far the humanistic Renaissance, the so-called re-birth of classical antiquity, appears as
a continuation and completion of that powerful process of appropri 362
opposition
Chap. 1. ]
Humanistic Period. 853
ation presented by the Middle Ages (cf. pp. 264 if. , 310 f. ) ; and if this process consisted in retracing in reverse order the ancient move ment of thought, it now reached its end, inasmuch as essentially all of the original ancient Greek literature which is accessible to-day,
now became known.
The becoming known of the Greek originals, and the spread_of
humanistic culture, called out a movement of opposition to Scholas-
ticism, at rirst in Italy, then also in (jermany, France, and £ngland. J^V
\s regards subject-matter, this opposition was directed against the* jVuJLf'Cc
mxlueval interpretations of Greek metaphysics ; as regards method, against authoritative deduction from conceptions taken as assunvjv tium; an regards form, against the tasteless stiffness of monastic Latin : and with the wonderful "restoration of ancient thought, with the fresh imaginative nature of a life-loving race, with the refine
ment and wit of an artistically cultivated time for its aids this oppo sition won a swift victory.
A/V^'TL_ ( j^^a^. ^
But tris opposition was divided within itself. There were {P/q/o- (f)
nisis\ who for the most part would better be called Neo-Platonists ; there were^J ristotelians\ who, in turn, were again divided into differ- ent groups, vigorously combating one another, according to their attachment to one or another of the ancient interpreters. There, too, were the reawakened older doctrines of Greek cosmology, of the Ionians zntTlPt/thagoreans} the conception of Nature held by \pemocritu9i and yEpicuruQ rose to new vigour. yScepticism\ and the mixed popular and phUosojfhi«al\ Erlecf^isnA lived again.
While this humanistic movement was either religiously indiffer ent or even engaged together with open " heathenism " in warfare against Christian dogma, an equally violent controversy between transmitted doctrines was in progress in the life of the Church. The Catholic Church intrenched itself against the assault of thought more and more firmly behind the bulwark of Thomism, under the leadership of the Jesuits. Among the Protestants, AuQustinejraa the leading mind—-a continuation of the antagonism ubocrved in the Middle Ages. But when dogmas were thrown into philosophical form in the Protestant Church, the Reformed branch remained nearer to Augustine, while in the Lutheran Church, in consequence of the influence of Humanism, a tendency toward the original form of the Aristotelian system prevailed. In addition to these ten dencies, however, German Mysticism, with all the widely ramified
traditions which united in it (cf.
In general, we find in this connection in the Andalusian philoso phy a tendency to make matter metaphysically self-subsistent. It is conceived of, not as that which is merely abstractly possible, but as that which bears within itself as living germs the Forms peculiar to and brings them to realisation in its movement. At the same time Averroes, as regards particular cosmic processes, held fast to the Aristotelian principle that every movement of matter by which
realises out of itself lower Form, must be called forth by higher Form, and the graded series of Forms finds its termination above in God, as the highest and first mover. The transcendence of God could be united with this view, as the doctrine of Avicebron shows, only matter were regarded as itself created by the divine will. But on the other hand, this same Jewish philosopher, pro ceeding from the same presuppositions, insisted that with the excep tion of the deity, no being could be thought of otherwise than as connected with matter, that accordingly even the spiritual Forms need for their reality matter in which they inhere, and that finally the living community of the universe demands single matter as basis for the entire realm of Forms. The more, however, in the system of Averroes, matter was regarded as eternally in motion within itself, and as actuated by unity of life, the less could the moving Form be separated from realiter, and thus the same divine All-being appeared on the one hand as Form and moving force (natura naturans), and on the other hand as matter, as moved world
(natura natnrata).
This doctrine with regard to matter, that one in nature, is
informed within, and ~ts~ eternally in mutton of ttSilf, became ex tended with Averroism as an extremely naturalistic interpretation of the philosophy of Aristotle. It now became reinforced by those consequences of dialectical Realism- which compelled the view that God, as the ens generalissimum, the only substance, and that in~ qividual things are but the more or less transient Forms in which
is
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Chap. 2, § 27. ] Problem of Individuality : Averroe's. 339
this single substance becomes realised (cf. § 23). The Amalricans thus teach that God is the one single essence {essentia) of all things, and that creation is only an assuming of form on the part of this divine essence, a realising, completed in eternal movement, of all possibilities contained in this one single matter. David of Dinant1 establishes this same pantheism with the help of Avicebron's con ceptions, by teaching that as " hyle " (j. e. corporeal matter) is the substance of all bodies, so mind (ratio — mens) is the substance of all souls ; that, however, since God, as the most universal of all es sences, is the substance of all things whatever, God, matter, and mind are, in the last resort, identical, and the world is but their self-realisation in particular forms.
? ~. But the metaphysical self-subsistence of the individual mind was involved in doubt by yet another line of thought. Aristotle had made the vovs, as the everywhere identical rational activity, join the animal soul '• from without," and had escaped the difficul ties of this doctrine because the problem of personality, which emerged only with the Stoic conception of the i}yi/iovuc6V, did not as yet lie within the horizon of his thought. But the commenta tors, Greek and Arabian, who developed his system did not shrink before the consequences that resulted from it for the metaphysical value of mental and spiritual individuality.
In the thought of Alexander of Aphrodisias we meet, under the name of the "passive intellect" (cf. p. 150), the capacity of the in dividual psyche to take up into itself, in accordance with its whole animal and empirical disposition, the operation of the active reason, and this inteUectus agens (agreeably to the naturalistic conception of the whole system) is here identified with the divine mind, which is •till thought only as "separate Form" (inteUectus separatus). But with Simplicius, in accordance with the Neo-Platonic metaphysics, this , inteUectus agens which realises itself in man's rational knowledge has already become the lowest of the intelligences who rule the sub lunary world. ' This doctrine finds an original development in the thought of Averroes. * According to his view, the inteUectus passivus is to be sought in the individual's capacity for knowledge, a capacity which, like the individual himself, arises and perishes as Form of the individual body ; it has validity, therefore, only for the injT vidual, ai'd for that which concerns the particular. The inteUectus
1 Following the Liber de Cautii and the pseudo-Boethian treatise De Vno «( Unit ate ; cf. B. Haureau in the Mimoires de VAcad. det Itueript. , XXIX. (1877),
and also A. Jundt, Histaire du Pantheisme Populaire au M. -A. (Pari*, 1876). 'The no-called "Theology of Aristotle" identifies thin k>« with the \d-,ox.
for particular*, see E. Renan, Av. et VAv. , II. $ <l H. •Cf. principally his treatise De Anhmr Healitiidiiie.
,V*^ p\j»\
340 Mediaeval Philosophy : Second Period. [Part III.
agens, on the contrary, as a Form existing apart from empirical in dividuals and independent of them, is the eternal generic reason of the human race, which neither arises nor perishes, and which con tains the universal truths in a manner valid for all. It is the sub stance of the truly intellectual life, and the knowing activity of the individual is but a special manifestation of it. This (actual) knowing activity (as intellectus acquisitus) is indeed in its con tent, in its essence, eternal, since in so far it is just the active rea son itself ; on the contrary, as empirical function of an individual knowing process, it is as transitory as the individual soul itself. The completest incarnation of the active reason has, according to Averroes, been given in Aristotle. 1 Man's rational knowing is, then, an impersonal or supra-personal function : it is the individual's {Temporal participation in the eternal generic reason. This latter is the unitary essence which realises, itsplf in *V"> mneft Ynlligble activi-
^ties of personality.
Intimations of this pan-psychism occasionally appear in the train
of Neo-Platonic Mysticism at an earlier period in Western literature ;
as an outspoken and extended doctrine it by the side of appears
Averroism about 1200 ; the two are everywhere named in conjunc tion at the first when the erroneous doctrines of the Arabian Peripatetic thought are condemned, and it is one main effort of the Dominicans to protect Aristotle himself from being confused with this doctrine. Albert and Thomas both write a De Unitate Intellectus against the Averroists.
3. Pan-psychism encounters with Christian thinkers an oppo- sition in which the determining factor is the feeling of the meta physical value of personality, — the feeling which had been nour ished by Augustine. This is the standpoint from which men like William of Auvergne and Henry of Ghent oppose Averroes. And this is also the real reason why the main systems of Scholasticism — in diametrical contrast with Eekhart's Mysticism — did not allow the "Realism which was inherent in the intellpctualistin bases of their metaphysics to come to complete development. TJiomism was here in the more difficult case, for it maintained indeed, follow ing Avicenna's formula (cf. p. 299), that universals, and therefore also the genus " soul," exist only " individualised," i. e. in the indi vidual empirical examples as their universal essence (quidditas), but it ascribed to them, nevertheless, metaphysical priority in the divine mind. It was therefore obliged to explain how it comes
1 And with this the unconditional recognition of the authority of the Stagirite is theoretically justified by Averroes.
Chap. 2, § 27. ] Problem of Individuality : Thotnism, Scotism.
341
about that this one essence as universal matter presents itself in such manifold forms. That is to say, it asked after the pbincipium iNDrviDUATiONis, and found it in the consideration that matter in space and time is quantitatively determined (materia signata). In the capacity of matter to assume quantitative differences consists the possibility of individuation, i. e. the possibility that the same Form (e. g. humanity) is actual in different instances or examples as indi vidual substances. Hence, according to Thomas, pure Forms (sepa ratee sive subsistentes) are individualised only through themselves ; that is, there is but one example which corresponds to them.
Every angel is a genus and an individual at the same time. The inherent Forms, on the contrary, to which the human soul also belongs in spite of its subsistence (cf. p. 324), are actual in many examples, in
accordance with the quantitative differences of space and time which their matter presents.
This view was opposed by the Franciscans, whose religious and metaphysical psychology had developed in intimate relation with AugUBtlne'8 teaching. In their thought, first the individual soul, and then, with a consistent extension in general
metaphysics, individual beings in general, are regarded as self-subsisting realities. They rejected the distinction of separate and inherent Forms.
Bonaventura, Henry of Ghent, and still more energetically Duns Scotus, maintained, following Avicebron, that even intellectual Forms have their own matter, and Scotus teaches that the " soul " is not individualised and substantialised only after, and by means of, its relation to a definite body, as Thomas had taught, but that it is already in itself individualised and substantialised. On this point Scotitm shows a discord which had evidently not come to notice in the mind of its author. It emphasises on the one hand, in the strongest manner, the Reality of the universal, by maintaining the unity of matter (materia primo-prima) quite in the Arabian sense, and on the other hand it teaches that this universal is only actual by being realised by the series of Forms descending from the uni versal to the particular, and ultimately by means of the definite individual Form (haecceita*) . This individual Form is therefore for Duns Scotus an original fact; no farther question as to its ground is permissible. He designates individuality (lx>th in the sense of individual substance and in that of individual occurrence) as the contingent (contingens) ; that is, as that which is not to be deduced from a universal ground, but is only to be verified as actual fact. For him, therefore, as for his pi-P. lprpsanr Roper Rarnn, the inquiry for the principle of inHiviHmtitr" H? "-> pining • H»a indi vidual is the " last " Form of all reality, by means of which alone
342 Mediaeval Philosophy : Second Period. [Part III.
universal matter exists, and the question rather is, how, in presence of the fact that the individual being with its determined torm is the only Reality, one can still speak of a Reality of universal " naturesT71
from this noteworthy limitation of the doctrine of Scotus it becomes explicable that while some of its adherents, as for example Francls~~of Mayron, proceeded from it to extreme Realism, it sud denly changed with Occam into the renewed of the nominalist)*: thesis, that OnlyTTie" individual is real and that the universal is but a product of comparative thought.
4. The victorious development which Nominalism experienced in the second period of mediaeval philosophy rests upon an extremely peculiar combination of very different motives of thought. In the
epths of this stream of development ia dominant the Anfpistinian momentoi feeling, which seeks to see thfl proper metaphysical value secured to the individual personality; in the main philosophical current the anti-. r/iatonic tendency of the Aristotelian theory of knowledge, now just becoming Known, asserts itself, throwing its intluence toward conceding the value of "first substance" to the empirical individual only ; and on the surface plays a logico-gram- nratical schematism, which has its origin in the first operation of the Byzantine tradition of ancient thought. 2 All these influences become concentrated in the impassioned, impressive personality of William of Occam.
In their exposition of the doctrine of concepts and its application to the judgment and syllogism, the text-books of "modern" logic, as type of which that of Petrus Hispanus may serve, lay an impor tant emphasis upon the theory of "supposition" in a manner which is not without its precedent in antiquity. 3 According to this theory a class-concept or term (terminus) may, in language, and, as was then supposed, in logic also, stand for the sum of its species, and a species-concept for the sum of all its individual examples (homo = omnes homines), so that in the operations of thought a term is employed as a sign for that which it means. Occam develops Nom inalism in the forms of this Terminism* (cf. pp. 325 f). Individual
1 This method for the solution of the problem of universals, peculiar to Duns Scotus, is usually called Formalism.
3 In fact, we may see in the working of the text-book of Michael Psellos the first impetus of that accession of ancient material of culture which the West received by way of Byzantium, and which later in the Renaissance became definitely united with the two other lines of tradition that came, the one by way of Rome and York, the other by way of Bagdad and Cordova.
8 The reader need only be reminded of the investigations of Philodemus on signs and things signified (p. 162 ; cf. also p. 198).
* Cf. K. Prantl in the Sitz. -Ber. der Munch. Acad. 1864. II. a 58 ff.
Chap. 2, § 27. ] Problem of Individuality : Terminism. 348
things, to which Occam, following Scotus, concedes the Reality of original Forms, are represented in thought by us intuitively, without the mediation of species intelligibiles ; but these ideas or mental rep resentations are only the " natural " signs for the things represented. They have only a necessary reference to them, and have real simi larity with them as little as any sign " is necessarily like the object designated. This relation is that of first intention. " But now as individual ideas stand for (supponunt) individual things, so, in thought, speech, and writing, the " undetermined " general ideas of abstract knowledge, or the spoken or written words which in turn express these general ideas, may stand for the individual idea. This "second intention," in which the general idea with the help of the word refers no longer directly to the thing itself, but primarily to the idea of the thing, is no longer natural, but arbitrary or according to one's liking (ad placitum instituta). 1 Upon this distinction Occam rests also that of real and ratiotial science : the former relates imme diately or intuitively to things, the latter relates abstractly to the
immanent relations between ideas.
It is clear, according to this, that rational science also presupposes
" real " science and is bound to the empirical material presented in the form of ideas by this real science, but it is also clear that even " real " knowledge apprehends only an inner world of ideas, which may indeed serve as " signs " of things, but are different from things themselves. The mind — so Albert had incidentally said, and Nico- laus Cusanus at a later time carried out the thought — knows only what it has within itself; its knowledge of the world, terministic Nominalism reasons, refers to the inner states into which its living connection with the real world puts it. As contrasted with the true essence of things, teaches Nicolaus Cusanus, who committed himself absolutely to this idealistic Nominalism, human thought possesses only conjectures, that only modes of representation which corre spond to its own nature, and the knowledge of this relativity of all positive predicates, the knowledge of this non-knowledge, the docta ignorantia, the only way to go beyond rational science and attain to the inexpressible, signless, immediate community of knowledge
with true Being, the deity.
jn spite of this far-reaching epistemological restriction, the
real vital energy of Nominalism was directed toward the develo;t- ment of natural science and its results during the fourteenth ami fifteenth centuries remained very limited, the essential reason for this
The agreement of this with the contrast between #/<rn and 0fou, which had been aaaerted also in the ancient philosophy of language (Plato's Cratylui),
obvious.
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844 Mediceval Philosophy : Second Period. [Part III
was that the scholastic method with its bookish discussion of authori ties, which had now attained full perfection, controlled absolutely later as well as earlier the prosecution of science, and that the new ideas forced into this form could not unfold freely, — a phe nomenon, moreover, which continues far into the philosophy of the Renaissance. For all that, Duns Septus and Occam gave the chief impetus to the movement in which philosophy, taking- jfra p]apa beside the metaphysics whose interests ha. <l hitherto been essentially religious, made itself again a secular science of concrete, actual fact, ana placed itself with more and more definite consciousness upon the basis of empiricism. When Duns Scotus designated the hcecceitas or original individual Form, as contingent, this meant that it was to be known, not by logical deduction, but only by actual verification as fact ; and when Occam declared the individual being to be the alone truly Real, he was thereby pointing out to " real science " the way to the immediate apprehension of the actual world. But in this point the two Franciscans are under the influence of Roger Bacon, who with all his energy had called the science of his time from authorities to things, from opinions to sources, from dialectic to experience, from books to Nature. At his side in this movement stood Albert, who supported the same line of thought among the Dominicans, knew how to value the worth of original observation and experiment, and gave brilliant proof in his botanical studies of the independence of his own research. But strongly as Roger Bacon, following Arabian models, urged quantitative determinations in observation, and mathematical training, the time was not yet ripe for natural research. Attempts like those of Alexander Nekkam (about 1200), or those of Nicolaus d'Autricuria, at a later time (about 1350), passed away without effect.
The fruitful development of empiricism during this period was only in the line of psychology. Under the influence of the Arabs, especially of Avicenna and of the physiological optics of Alhacen, investigations concerning the psychical life took on a tendency directed more toward establishing and arranging the facts of expe rience. This had been begun even by Alexander of Hales, by his pupil, Johann of Rochelle, by Vincent of Beauvais, and especially by Albert; and in the system of Alfred the Englishman (Alfred de Sereshel, in the first half of the thirteenth century) we find a purely physiological psychology with all its radical consequences. These stirrings of a physiological empiricism would, however, have been repressed by the metaphysical psychology of Thomism, if they had not found their support in the Augustinian influence, which held fast to the experience which personality has of itself, as its
Chap. 2, § 27. ] Problem of Individuality : Nicolaut Ctuanut. 345
highest principle. In this attitude Henry of Ghent, especially, came forward in opposition to Thomism. He formulated sharply the standpoint of inner experience and gave it decisive value, particu larly in the investigation of the states of feeling. Just in this point, in the empirical apprehension of the life of feeling, the theory of which became thus emancipated at the same time from that of the will and that of the intellect, he met support in Roger Bacon, who, with clear insight and without the admixture of meta physical points of view, distinctly apprehended the difference in principle between outer and inner experience.
Thus the r*"Tiarkf'>'>1'> wait ""g""^, that pawly thtaMtJaal lajapoe developed inopposition to intellectualistic Thomism, and in connec- tion with the Augustinian doctrine of the self-certainty of person- altry; This self-knowledge was regarded as the most certain fact of " real science," even as it appeared among the nominalistic Mystics such as Pierre d'Ailly. Hence " real science " in the departing Middle Ages allied itself rather to active human life than to Nature ; and the beginnings of a " secular " science of the inter-relations of human society are found not only in the theories of Occam and Marsilius of Padua (cf. p. 328), not only in the rise of a richer, more living, and more " inward " writing of history, but also in an empirical consideration of the social relations, in which a Nicolas dCOresme,1 who died 1382, broke the path.
6. The divided frame of mind in which the departing Middle Ages round itself, between the original presuppositions of its thought and these beginnings of a new, experientially vigorous rtmrchj finds nowhere a more lively expression than in the phil- OBOpEy of Nicolati* Cusaniis, which is capable of so many interpre-_ tationsl Seized in every fibre of his being by the fresh impulse of the time, he nevertheless could not give up the purpose of arrang ing his new thoughts in the system of the old conception of the world.
This attempt acquires a heightened interest from the conceptions which furnished the forms in which he undertook to arrange his thoughts. The leading motive is to show that the individual, even in his metaphysical separateness, is identical with the most uni versal, the divine essence. To this end Nicolaus employs for the first time, in a thoroughly systematic way, the related conceptions of the infinite and thefinite. All antiquity had held the perfect to be that which is limited within itself and had regarded only indefinite possibility as infinite. In the Alexandrian philosophy,
Cf. concerning him W. Roncher, Ztiuxhr- f. SlaaUv>i*tt**cknn, 1863, 306 fl.
346 Mediceval Philosophy : Second Period. [Part 111
on the contrary, the highest being was stripped of all finite at tributes. In Plotinus the "One" as the all-forming power is provided with an unlimited intensity of Being on account of the infinity of matter in which it discloses itself ; and also in Christian thought the power, as well as the will and the knowledge of God, had been thought more and more as boundless. Here the main additional motive was, that the will even in the individual is felt as a restless, never quiet striving, and that this infinity of inner ex
perience was exalted to a metaphysical principle. But Nicolaus was the first to give the method of negative theology its positive ex pression by treating infinity as the essential characteristic of God in antithesis to the world. The identity of God with the world, required as well by the mystical view of the world as by the naturalistic, received, therefore, the formulation that in God the same absolute Being is contained infinitely, which in the world presents itself in finite forms.
In this was given the farther antithesis of unity and plurality. The infinite is the living and eternal unity of that which in the finite appears as extended plurality. But this plurality — and Gusanus lays special weight on this point — is also that of opposites. What in the finite world appears divided into different elements, and only by this means possible as one thing by the side of another in space, must become adjusted and harmonised in the infinitude of the divine nature. God is the unity of all opposites, the coin- cidentia oppositorum. 1 He therefore, the absolute reality in which all possibilities are eo ipso realised (possest, can-is), while each of the many finite entities in itself only possible, and real or actual only through him.
Among the oppositions which are united in God, those between him and the world, — that is, those of the infinite and the finite, and of unity and plurality, — appear as the most important. In consequence of this union the infinite at the same time finite in each of his manifestations in phenomena the unitary dens implicitus at the same time the deus explicitus poured forth into plurality
290). God the greatest (maximum) and at the same time also
Nicolaus also designates his own doctrine, in contrast with opposing sys tems, as a coincidentia oppositorum, since aims to do justice to all motives of earlier philosophy. Cf. the passages in Falckenberg, op. cit. , pp. 60 ff.
Thomas expressed the same thought as follows God the only necessary being, i. e. that which exists by virtue of its own nature thought which is to be regarded as an embodiment of Anselm's ontological argument, cf 23, 2), while in the case of all creatures, essence (or quidditas — whatness) really separate from existence in such way that the former in itself merely possible and that the latter added to as realisation. The relation of this doctrine to the fundamental Aristotelian conceptions, actus and potentia, obvious.
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Chaf. 2, § 27. ] Problem of Individuality : Nicolaus Cusanun. 847
the smallest (minimum). But, on the other hand, in consequence of this union it follows also that this smallest and finite is in its own manner participant in the infinite, and presents within itself, as does the whole, a harmonious unity of the many.
Accordingly, the universe is also infinite, not indeed in the same sense in which God is infinite, but in its own way; that unlimited in space and time (interminatum, or. privitively infinite). But a certain infinity belongs likewise to each individual thing, in the sense that in the characteristics of its essence carries within itself also the characteristics of all other individuals. All
in all: omnia ubique.
In this way every individual contains within itself the universe, though in limited form peculiar to this individual alone and differing from all others. In omnibus partibua relucet totum. Every individual thing is, rightly and fully known, a mirror of the universe, — thought which had already been ex pressed incidentally by the Arabian philosopher Alkendi.
Naturally this particularly true in the case of man, and in his conception of man as microcosm Nicolaus attaches himself ingeniously to the terrainistic doctrine. The particular manner in which other things are contained in man characterised by the ideas which form in him signs for the outer world. Man mirrors the universe by his " conjectures," by the mode of mental repre sentation peculiar to him (cf. above, 343).
Thus the finite also given with and in the infinite, the individ ual with and in the universal. At the same time the infinite necessary in itself; the finite, however (following Duns Scotus), absolutely contingent, t'. e. mere fact. There no proportion between the infinite and the finite even the endless series of the finite remains incommensurable with the truly infinite. The deri vation of the world from God incomprehensible, and from the knowledge of the finite no path leads to the infinite. That which
real as an individual empirically known, its relations and the oppositions prevailing in are apprehended and distinguished
the understanding, but the perception or intuition of the infinite unity, which, exalted above all these opposites, includes them all within itself, possible only by stripping off all such finite know edge, by the mystical exaltation of the docta ignorantia. Thus tin elements which Cusanus desired to unite fall apart again, even in the very process of union. The attempt to complete the mediaeval philosophy and make perfect on all sides leads to its inner disintegration.
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PART IV.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE RENAISSANCE.
J. E. Erdmann, Vertuch einer unssenschaftlichen DarsMlung der Getchichtt der neueren Philotophie. 3 pts. , in 6 Tola. Riga and Leips. 1834-63.
H. Ulrici, Getchichte und Kritik der Prineipien der neueren Philotophie. 2 Tola. Leips. 1845.
Kuno Fischer, Getchichu der neueren Philotophie. 4th ed. Heidelb. 1897 ff. [Eng. tr. of Vol. L, Dttcartet and Hit School, by J. P. Gordy, N. Y. 1877. ]
Ed. Zeller, Getchichte der deuttchen Philotophie teit Leibniz. 2d ed. , Berlin, 1876.
W. Windelband, Getchichte der neueren Philotophie. 2 vols. Leips. 2d ed. 1899. K. Falckenberg, Getchichte der neueren Philotophie. Leips. 1886. [Eng. tr. by
A. C. Armstrong, N. Y. 1893. ]
J. Schaller, Getchichte der Naturphilosophie teit Bacon. 2 vols. Leips. 1811-44. J. Baumami, Die Lehren von Raum, Zeit und Mathematik in der neueren Phi
lotophie. 2 vols. Berlin, 1868 f.
F. Vorlander, Getchichte der philotophitchen Moral-, Sechtt-, und Staatslehre
der Englander und Franzoten. Marburg, 1855.
F. Jodl, Getchichte der Ethik in der neueren Philosophic. 2 vols. Stuttgart,
1882-89.
B. Punjer, Getchichte der chrittlichen Religiontphilotophie teit der Reforma
tion. 2 vols. Braunschweig, 1880-83. [Eng. tr. of Vol. I. , History of the Christian Philosophy of Religion from the Reformation to Kant, by W. Hastie, Edin. and N. Y. 1887. ]
[B. F. Burt, History of Modern Philosophy. 2 vols. Chicago, 1892. ]
The antitheses which make their appearance in mediaeval philoso phy at the time of its close have a more general significance ; they show in theoretical form the self-conscious strengthening of secular civilisation by the side of that of the Church. The undercurrent, which for a thousand years had accompanied the religious main movement of the intellectual life among the Western peoples, swelling here and there to a stronger potency, now actually forced its way to the surface, and in the centuries of transition its slowly
wrested victory makes the essential characteristic for the beginning of modern times.
Thus gradually developing and constantly progressing, modern 348
of the Renaissance. 349
science freed itself from mediaeval views, and the intricate process in which it came into being went hand in hand with the multifold activity with which modern life in its entirety began. For modern life begins everywhere with the vigorous development of details; the tense (lapidare) unity into which mediaeval life was concen trated, breaks asunder in the progress of time, and primitive vigour bursts the band of common tradition with which history had encircled the mind of the nations. Thus the new epoch announces itself by the awakening of national life; the time of the world- empire is past in the intellectual realm also, and the wealth and variety of decentralisation takes the place of the unitary concen tration in which the Middle Ages had worked. Rome and Paris
cease to be the controlling centres of Western civilisation, Latin ceases to be the sole language of the educated world.
In the religious domain this process showed itself first in the fact that Home lost its sole mastery over the Church life of fihriat-. iimjty Wittenberg, Geneva, London, and other cities became new centres of religion. The inwardness of faith, which in Mysticism had already risen in revolt against the secularisation of the life of the Church, rose to victorious deliverance, to degenerate again at once into the organisation which was indispensable for it in the outer world. But the process of splitting into various sects, which set in in connection with this external organisation, wakened all the depths of religious feeling, and stirred for the following centuries the passion and fanaticism of confessional oppositions. Just by this means, however, the dominance at the summit of scientific life of a complete and definitive religious belief was broken. What had been begun in the age of the Crusades by the contact of religions was now completed by the controversy between Christian creeds.
It is -not a matter of accident that the number of centres of scientific life in addition to Paris was also growing rapidly. While Oxford had already won an importance of its own as a seat of the Franciscan opposition, now we find first Vienna, Heidelberg, Prague, then the numerous academies of Italy, and finally the wealth of new universities of Protestant Germany, developing their independent vital forces. But at the same time, by the invention of the art of printing, literary life gained such an extension and such a widely ramifying movement that, following its inner impulse, it was able to free itself from its rigid connection with the schools, •trip off the fetters of learned tradition, and expand unconstrained in the forms shaped out for it by individual personalities.
Philosophy
_Sa philosophy in the Renaissance loses its corporate character, and
Becomes in its best achievements the free deed ot individuals; It"
350 Philosophy of the Renaissance. [Part IV
seeks its sources in the broad extent of the real world of its own time, and presents itself externally more and more in the garb of modern national languages.
In this way science became involved in a powerful fermentation. The two-thousand-year-old forms of the intellectual life seemed to have been outlived and to have become unusable. A passionate, and at the first, still unclear search for novelty filled all minds, and excited imagination gained the mastery of the movement. But, in connection with this, the whole multiplicity of interests of secular life asserted themselves in philosophy, — the powerful development of political life, the rich increase in outward civilisation, the exten sion of European civilisation over foreign parts of the world, and not least the world-joy of newly awakened art. And this fresh and living wealth of new content brought with it the result that philos ophy became pre-eminently subject to no one of these interests, but rather took them all up into itself, and with the passing of time raised itself above them again to the free work of knowing, to the ideal ot knowledge for its own sake.
The new birth of the purely theoretical spirit is the true meaning of the scientific " Renaissance," and in this consists also its kinship of spirit ivith Greek thought, which was of decisive importance for its development. The subordination to ends of practical, ethical, and religious life which had prpvailpH in Hip whole philosophy of the Hellenistic-Roman period and of the Middle Ages, decreased more and more at the beginning of the modern period, and knowledge of reality appeared again as the absolute end of scientific research. . J 11st as at the beginnings of Greek thought, so now, this theoretical impulse turned its attention essentially to natural science. modern mind, which had taken up into itself the achievements of later antiquity and of the Middle Ages, appears from the beginning as having attained a stronger self-consciousness, as internalised, and a~s~haviiig penetrated deeper Into Its OWh nature, in comparison with the ancient mind. But true as this is, its first independent intellectual activity was the return to a disinterested concej tionoiNaEuTe": —The whole philosophy of the Renaissance presse toward this end, and in this airTtlinn 'f annipvpH its greatest results.
Feeling such a relationship in its fundamental impulse, the modern spirit in its passionate search for the new seized at first upon the oldest. The knowledge of ancient philosophy brought out by the humanistic movement was eagerly taken up, and the systems of Greek philosophy were revived in violent opposition to the mediaeval tradition. But from the point of view of the whole movement of
Xne
Philosophy of the Renaissance. 351
history this return to antiquity presents itself as but the instinctive preparation for the true work of the modern spirit,1 which in this Castalian bath attained its youthful vigour. By living itself into *■*"»■ world of Greek ideas it gained the ability to master in thought its_ own rich outer life, and thus equipped, science turned from the sub- tility ot the inner world with full vigour back to the invpstigiition of Nature, to open there new and wider paths for itself.
The history of the philosophy of the Renaissance is therefore in the main the history of the process in which the natural science mode of regarding the world is gradually worked out from the humanistic renewal of Greek philosophy. It falls, therefore, appro- pnately into two periods, the humanistic period and the natural t&eJtce period. As a boundary line between the two we may per-
■ftaps regard the year*^. 600f\ The first of these periods contains the
of mediaeval tradition by that of genuine Grecian thought, and while extremely rich in interest for the history of civilisation and in literary activity, these two centuries show from a philosophical point of view merely that shifting of earlier thoughts by which preparation is made for the new. The second period in cludes the beginnings of modern natural research which gradually conquered their independence, and following these the great meta physical systems of the seventeenth century.
The two periods form a most intimately connected whole. For the inner impelling motive in the philosophical movement of Hu manism was the same urgent demand for a radically new knowledge of the world, which ultimately found its fulfilment in the process in which natural science became established and worked out according to principles. But the manner in which this work took place, and the forms of thought in which it became complete, prove to be in all important points dependent upon the stimulus proceeding from the adoption of Greek philosophy. Modern natural science is the daughter of Humanism.
1 In this respect the course of development of science in the Renaissance ran exactly parallel to that of art. The line which leads from Giotto to Leonardo,
Kaphael, Michael Angelo, Titian, DUrer, and Rembrandt, passes gradually from the reanimation of classical forms to independent and immediate apprehension of Nature. And- Goethe is likewise proof that for us moderns tie way to Mature leads through Greece.
supplanting
CHAPTER I.
THE HUMANISTIC PERIOD.
Jac. Burckhardt, Die Cultur der Renaissance in Italic*. 4th ed. . Leipe. 1886. [The Civilisation of the Renaissance. Tr. by S. G. C. Middlemore, Lond.
1878 and 1890.
Mor. Carriere. Die philosophische Weltanschauung der Reformationszeit. 2d ed. ,
Leipa. 1887.
A. Stockl, GesehicJUe der Philosophic des MittelaUers. 3d vol. . Mainz, 1866. [J. A. Symoods, The Renaissance in Italy. 5 pis. in 7 vols. , 1875-86. ]
The continuity in the intellectual and spiritual development of European humanity manifests itself nowhere so remarkably as in the Renaissance. At no time perhaps has the want for something completely new, for a total and radical transformation, not only in the intellectual life, but also in the whole state of society, been felt so vigorously and expressed so variously and passionately as then, and no time has experienced so many, so adventurous, and so ambi tious attempts at innovation as did this. And yet, if we look closely, and do not allow ourselves to be deceived, either by the grotesque self-consciousness or by the naive grandiloquence which are the order of the day in this literature, it becomes evident that the wholp multiform process goes on within_ thff hnnndtn>f anrient anri_jnHirr val traditions, and strives in obscure longing toward a goal which is an object rather of premonition than of clear conception. It was nofuntilthe seventeenth century that the process of fermentation became complete, and this turbulent mixture clarifiecT
The essential ferment in this movement was FBe
between the inherited philosophy of the Middle AgesT which was already falling into dissolution, and the original works of Greek thinkers which began to be known in the fifteenth century. A new stream of culture flowed from Byzantium by the way of Florence and Rome, which once more strongly diverted the course of Western thought from its previous direction. In so far the humanistic Renaissance, the so-called re-birth of classical antiquity, appears as
a continuation and completion of that powerful process of appropri 362
opposition
Chap. 1. ]
Humanistic Period. 853
ation presented by the Middle Ages (cf. pp. 264 if. , 310 f. ) ; and if this process consisted in retracing in reverse order the ancient move ment of thought, it now reached its end, inasmuch as essentially all of the original ancient Greek literature which is accessible to-day,
now became known.
The becoming known of the Greek originals, and the spread_of
humanistic culture, called out a movement of opposition to Scholas-
ticism, at rirst in Italy, then also in (jermany, France, and £ngland. J^V
\s regards subject-matter, this opposition was directed against the* jVuJLf'Cc
mxlueval interpretations of Greek metaphysics ; as regards method, against authoritative deduction from conceptions taken as assunvjv tium; an regards form, against the tasteless stiffness of monastic Latin : and with the wonderful "restoration of ancient thought, with the fresh imaginative nature of a life-loving race, with the refine
ment and wit of an artistically cultivated time for its aids this oppo sition won a swift victory.
A/V^'TL_ ( j^^a^. ^
But tris opposition was divided within itself. There were {P/q/o- (f)
nisis\ who for the most part would better be called Neo-Platonists ; there were^J ristotelians\ who, in turn, were again divided into differ- ent groups, vigorously combating one another, according to their attachment to one or another of the ancient interpreters. There, too, were the reawakened older doctrines of Greek cosmology, of the Ionians zntTlPt/thagoreans} the conception of Nature held by \pemocritu9i and yEpicuruQ rose to new vigour. yScepticism\ and the mixed popular and phUosojfhi«al\ Erlecf^isnA lived again.
While this humanistic movement was either religiously indiffer ent or even engaged together with open " heathenism " in warfare against Christian dogma, an equally violent controversy between transmitted doctrines was in progress in the life of the Church. The Catholic Church intrenched itself against the assault of thought more and more firmly behind the bulwark of Thomism, under the leadership of the Jesuits. Among the Protestants, AuQustinejraa the leading mind—-a continuation of the antagonism ubocrved in the Middle Ages. But when dogmas were thrown into philosophical form in the Protestant Church, the Reformed branch remained nearer to Augustine, while in the Lutheran Church, in consequence of the influence of Humanism, a tendency toward the original form of the Aristotelian system prevailed. In addition to these ten dencies, however, German Mysticism, with all the widely ramified
traditions which united in it (cf.
