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Middle Ages / Dark Ages Birth of Christianity Greek Rome 300 BCE 300 CE 476 CE Fall of Rome Renaissance 1400 CE
After Aristotle
Romans invasion to Greek territory (around 300 BC) making chaos and more uncertainty to life The main question of philosophy are how is it best to live? what is the nature of the good life? what is worth believing in?
Stoicism
Neoplatonism
nature should be the guide of human behavior The best life is a simple, close to nature and free of wants and passions
The good in life is find pleasure; seeking the greatest amount of pleasure over longest period of time life of moderation
There are divine plan, so that everything is part of the plan, more or less Human have to be good actor and participating in divine plan accept whatever happens with courage and indifference. The good life involved living in harmony with nature.
Try to find philosophical base that hasnt been established by other views Combination of Judaism and Platos philosophy emphasized on spirit rather than flesh The One Spirit Soul physical world Become the foundation of Christianity
Human in christianity
St. Augustine Form the philosophical framework of Christianity humans can know God through intense introspection Free will : humans responsible for their own destiny, and personal guilt became an important means of controlling behavior
DARK AGES
Characteristics :
Greek and roman books were lost or destroyed Little or no progress was made in science, philosophy or literature Uniform Roman law collapsed and was replaced by a variety of local customs Villages armed themselves against attack from both their neighbors and invaders from afar Christian church became increasingly powerful Europe was dominated by mysticism, superstition and antiintellectualism
Renaissance
New paradigm : humanism (more emphasize to human), with four major themes:
A belief in the potential of the individual; An insistence that religion be more personal and less institutionalized; An intense interest in the classics A negative attitude toward Aristotles philosophy
Pre-renaissance philosopher
Francesco Petrarch
Concerned with freeing the human spirit form the confines of medieval traditions A persons life in this world is at least as important as life after death Thus develop the climate to enhance the potentiality of human in every subjects
Exploration of new places, like central Asia, China, America, and around the globe Modern printing techniques by Guttenberg Martins Luther challenge to Catholicism Shifting from geocentricism to heliocentricism
Heliocentric theory
Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo
Emphasize the mathematical principles from Phytagoras Plato inline with the development of the Renaissance which focused on mathematics Found that the planets move on elliptical path, and all planetary motion could be described by a single mathematical statement Motions of all bodies under all circumstances are governed by a single set of mathematical laws experiment is performed to confirm or disconfirm the law
Implication of bacons view to humanism Nature could be understood only by studying it directly and
objectively. Demanded science based on induction no theories, no hypotheses, no mathematics, and no deductions but should involve only the facts of observation. 4 source of errors : cave, tribe, marketplace, theater (see p. 116)
Implication of descartes view to humanism Rationalist, nativist and phenomenologist influence his
view about human Ultimate knowledge is always mathematical knowledge Believe in innate ideas find truth through introspective activity Sensory information could be trusted because God had created our sensory apparatus and would not deceive us