Modern philosophy is an outgrowth of the spirit and work of Roger Bacon, John Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham. These men claimed that philosophy should be a free and independent inquiry concerning truth and life.
All modern philosophy is in quest for the meaning of nature and experience. It rejects the authority of tradition and works independently of ecclesiastical dogmas and religious beliefs.
The Catholic Theory Of The State
The Scholastics had presented a theory of the State which defined the temporal power of the hierarchy and subordinated the State to the Church. They made theology supreme and declared that the purpose of all government is human welfare. The Church is the representative of God on earth and all matters of State are subservient to the Church. Politics, like philosophy, is therefore the handmaid of theology.
Opposition To The Catholic Theory Of The State
The papacy declined in power and prestige and many Catholic writers gradually forsook the Catholic idea. The Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation laid the foundation for new thought and the new political theories of modern history.
The most radical attack on the Catholic theory came from Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), an Italian diplomat and Secretary of the Chancellery of the Council of Ten at Florence. Machiavelli opposed the political corruption of the Roman Curia and the Italian Government. He claimed that the united, independent, and sovereign Italian nation must be free from the domination of the Church in politics, science, and religion.
Christianity was considered too passive; the old Roman religion was preferred. The best form of government was republican. In times of corruption (as witnessed in his day), Machiavelli thought that absolute despotism is needed to realize the ideal of a strong and independent State, hence his argument in his famous work The Prince (1515). Machiavelli abhorred existing anarchy and corruption seen in the secular and ecclesiastical politics of his time. He saw no way out of the disorder except by force.
New Political Theories Begin To Appear
During the modern period, the popular sovereignty of the Ruler takes form and natural law was commending natural rights. Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) and some others accepted the theory of absolutism, which led to Thomas Hobbes' doctrine of absolutism and to John Locke's and Rousseau's democracy.
The doctrine of social contract appeared and was represented by Jean Bodin (1530-1596); the social contract being committed to the ruler or sovereign. The notion is growing that the State rests on reason and human nature and the State is a natural institution. The idea of the sovereignty of the people was taking root, but absolutism (theoretical unlimited power of the ruler) persisted until the eighteenth century. Eventually the theories of Locke (England) and Rousseau (France) resulted in movements for constitutional monarchies or democracies.
The Renaissance and Reformation
The Renaissance and Reformation created new thinking. The Italian Renaissance rebelled against authority and Scholasticism. The German Reformation turned attention to the Bible and the protest of heart and faith against ecclesiastical mechanization.
The German Reformation opposed a barren Scholasticism and offered a revived and rejuvenated evangelical Christianity. It fostered critical reflection and the tolerance of the scientific spirit, and thus opposed absolutism and ecclesiastical authority. A few fanatical religious sects grew during this period. A new Scholastic Theology was in the making through Philip Melanchthon (co-partner with Martin Luther in the German Reformation) and it recognized the foundation of Aristotle.
Other reformers (such as John Calvin) return to Augustine and mysticism, while others (for instance, Zwingli) follow Neo-Platonism. In the seventeenth century mysticism finds a strong voice in Jacob Boehme (1575-1642) in his work Aurora. A new philosophy of religion, built on natural rather than supernatural metaphysics, appears through Herbert of Cherbury (1583-1648).
The New Humanism
The new Humanism turned to ancient philosophy, literature, and art. Skepticism found an able advocate in Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592). Despairing reason he urges a return to uncorrupted nature and revelation. Skepticism kept alive the spirit of inquiry and fostered the growth of modern science.
Reason became the authority in science and philosophy. The idea of the individual was born and paternalism was opposed. Human reason was made the highest authority in the pursuit of knowledge based on the sciences of external nature. But the basic doctrines of Christianity are still accepted by the great modern philosophers: Bacon, Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, and Leibnitz.
The Beginning of Modern Philosophy
Modern philosophy becomes empirical in tendency with Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. Criticism awoke, old theological systems with their traditional authority and ecclesiasticism were challenged. The individual asserted his independence.
Philosophy cut loose from theology and nursed the fires of science. Nominalism became entwined in the natural study of man. Dante eulogized the medieval spirit and Goethe (in Faust) typified the spirit of the Renaissance.
Nature philosophies first appeared in Italy, the cradle of learning in this period of culture, with Cardan and Telesio. Science burst forth in Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), Copernicus (1473-1543), Galileo (1564-1641), Kepler (1571-1630), and Newton (1642-1727). Pope Leo XIII made the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas the official philosophy of the Catholic Church, opposing naturalistic tendencies.
The New Science
Scientific development appears in Telesio, who founded the Telesian Academy, a naturalistic science society at Naples. Francis Patrizzi (1529-1597) combined Telesian principles with Neo-Platonism and Aristotelian forms, essences, purposes, and ends were replaced by mechanical explanations of nature determined by fixed laws.
Kepler's discoveries became the groundwork for modern astronomy. Robert Boyle (1627-1691) introduced the atomic theory into chemistry. Galileo reasserted the atomic theory of Democritus (there is neither origin nor decay, everything is atomic movement). Quantitative relations brought forward mathematical laws and Leonardo, Kepler, and Galileo took their science from these sources.
Copernicus built his heliocentric theory of astronomy. Newton discovered the law of gravitation (1682). Darwin, in the nineteenth century, pushed these frontiers to apparent conquest. He explained organic forms organically and mechanically, rejecting all teleological thought such as vital force and purpose. The first really modern system of philosophy is that of Giordano Bruno.