The Beginning of Modernity [Philosophy]

[Conrad_Jalowski]

The transition from the period of Antiquity and the Medieval Era to the Modern Period was a gradual shift with the change from Scholasticism and the "arid theorizing of Aristotelianism" to Modern philosophy occurring through the effects of the Scientific Revolution [The Age of Reason/Age of Rationalism] and the great empiricists and rationalists of Johannes Kepler, Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo, Francis Bacon, Rene Descartes, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, the scientific historiography of Charles-Louis de Secondat Montesquieu and the other philosophes of the Age of Enlightenment culminating in the attempted synthesis of Rationalism and Empiricism and the amelioration of the mind-body dichotomy by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. However, if the transition from the Ancient and Medieval worlds to the Modern Era could be embodied by the work and philosophical treatises of a single philosopher, which philosopher would represent the nascent shift from the Ancient and Medieval worlds to the period of Modernity? The four listed philosophers are those that have been mentioned quite frequently in discussions that I have maintained with experts and scholars in the field of philosophy and other developing or budding philosophers.

The problems of Modernity include the disassociation from nature, existential angst and despair, atrabiliousness, social disconnection and the superficiality of contemporary society. It can be said that with Rene Descartes' Meditations on the First Philosophy and his mathematics that man has generally lost his intimate connection with nature and has placed an overwhelming reliance on mathematical constructs as opposed to adhering to an organic and intimate approach to nature. For Rene Descartes, everything in existence can be doubted except for mathematics. For this rationalist, mathematics was universalizable or applicable to every conceivable situation. The truths or principles of mathematics were innate and were not based on sensory knowledge or external stimuli. While all other things and objects can be doubted through his systematic process of doubt, Descartes viewed the core principles of mathematics as things that were not illusory and that which could not be doubted out of existence. Many individuals have labeled Rene Descartes and his rationalistic approach to philosophical concerns as setting in motion the beginning of the period of Modernity. However, the problems of Rationalism [In Rationalism, knowledge is innate and is derived through reason, rationality and logical principles] and Empiricism [In Empiricism, knowledge is derived from sensory knowledge and experience] were debated and discussed by the philosophers Philo of Larissa and Antiochus of Ascalon in Classical Antiquity.

My choice for the philosopher that ushered in the period of Modernity would be the Florentine humanist, historian, political philosopher and military theorist Niccolo Machiavelli. Niccolo Machiavelli's philosophy shattered the two main pillars of European philosophy: Ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, and Christian theology. Unlike Plato, Thomas More and Desiderius Erasmus, Niccolo Machiavelli sought to provide practical points on how a princeps should acquire power and on how a princeps should maintain his political sovereignty amidst political upheaval and tension as opposed to theoretical constructs while his amoral political philosophy went contrary to the concept of a chivalrous Christian ethos. As Thucydides did for the Ancients, Niccolo Machiavelli accomplished the same for Renaissance Europe: placing humans and human motives, desires and fears at the center or core of social and political transformations and disruptions as opposed to the influence of firmament or Nature. For Machiavelli, the ideal state of Plato and the commonwealth of Cicero were chimerical and had no basis in reality. Instead, his purpose was to reveal historical truth and the actual nature of human individuals which was as morally vulgar and selfish beings driven by hubris and desire instead of reason or rationality.