2024-08-24 11:03:28
Dr. Diego Almeida Guzmán/Quito
The Renaissance begins the modern philosophy, not to mention a revaluation of religion… which ends, or is inaugurated, with the Reformation of M. Luther. Regarding the reference to Ancient Greece, we note the rescue of Plato from the Renaissance, which meant “rethinking the thought” of Aristotle.
The term designates a “movement” that arose in the middle of the 15th century, which lasted until the 16th. Although it can be said to have been largely artistic from its origins, it covered many other forms of human knowledge. We are interested in what it represents in the field of thought as a modern approach to the concept of “logos” … the reason for things. We begin by talking about the natural versus the dogmatic. It was an awakening to everything the Middle Ages meant, which began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476.
They were a thousand years marked by a real postponement in the realization of man as an individual and as a member of society. The Crusades were particularly associated with that period, the Catholic Church’s attempt to conquer lands in the name of God, even at the expense of the dignity of people other than Europeans. Apart from what the Renaissance included in the political and socio-economic sphere, it was a “thoughtful” reaction to the obscurity of the Middle Ages, in which, unfortunately, “knowledge” was faith, not reason.
The starting point of the Renaissance is the acceptance of Constantinople by the Ottomans, in 1453 by Mehmed II. It was the end of more than a millennium of the city’s history, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, which for centuries had seen a clear decline. The Ottoman attack was met with such fury that the inhabitants of the city took it as the presence of the Apocalypse, seeking honest refuge in prayer within the Christian temples. Although the war aid that came from the Italian cities helped Constantine XI, it was not enough to stop the sultan’s troops. More in number and better in technology. Constantinople would never be Christian again. The Renaissance was consolidated in 1492 with the discovery of America, which also coincided with the fall of Granada and the end of the Catholic Renaissance in the Iberian Peninsula after seven centuries of Muslim rule.
Although it would take many years from the end of the 15th century for Europe to establish its presence in the New World, the reference to something to the west of the continent was enough to start thinking differently. Spain with the Catholic Monarchs – and then with their grandson and great-grandson, Charles I of Spain and V of the Holy Roman Empire, and Philip II – began a process of restructuring the social, economic and political relations of Europe. He overcomes, more or less, that medieval tendency to look at the Islamic East, since he imagines in America the opportunity to expand Christianity. The European continent is embarking on a new vision for the world. But the English thinkers who shook Rome looked far from that.
On the other hand it was the weight maintained by the Catholic Church, which greatly hindered the progress of the Continent and the new Continent, in what would happen if there were no mystical burdens. Remember, for example, that the Inquisition lasted until the 19th century; It was only officially abolished in 1834 under the reign of María Cristina de Borbón. Unlike what happened for the better in Renaissance England – and to some extent in France – Spain and Portugal struggled with mystical obscurity. This will have an impact on how early industrialization is in the Islands compared to the Iberian countries.
In the field of philosophy, the scholarly questioning of the Middle Ages, as well as the new interpretation of the Greek classics, has its patented beginning. The Renaissance begins the modern philosophy, not to mention a revaluation of religion… which ends, or is inaugurated, with the Reformation of M. Luther. Regarding the reference to Ancient Greece, we note the rescue of Plato from the Renaissance, which meant “rethinking the thought” of Aristotle. The result of this new approach was to lay down the foundations of “humanism” by considering the soul and love, not by ethnic considerations but by reason. It will not escape the good analyst that freedom of thought was decisive in matters of philosophy. Erasmus of Rotterdam laid the metaphysical foundations of the Renaissance – and certainly of humanism after that – under the protection of the intellectual facility provided by his native Holland and Switzerland which welcomed him.
There is also a renaissance in the understanding and acceptance of politics. The work of N. Machiavelli is a reference shown in The Prince and his Discourses. He tells what would be called “realpolitik” today. For the Florentine, the Christian virtues of medieval politicians were only a hypocritical disguise to overcome in pragmatism. (FOUR)
#Renaissance #Nation