Let's consider a circle. It has a finite radius, and it also has a finite circle, which is quite physically visible. If we start imagining that the radius of a circle becomes longer and longer, at the same time as the radius of the circle increases, the circumference of this circle will begin to straighten out more and more. When the radius of the circle becomes infinitely large, then the circle will turn into a straight line.
Or, for example, an infinite line is at the same time an infinite triangle, since two sides of a triangle are always greater than the third, and if we imagine that the third side is infinite, then the other two sides cannot be less than this infinity, and therefore, respectively, and they are endless. There cannot be more than one infinity, then an infinite triangle also consists of one infinite straight line. In a similar way, the author generally proves that the ball, straight line, triangle and circle coincide at infinity in one inseparable identity.
Cusansky not only uses mathematical figures as symbols of an inexpressible infinite maximum, but also admits the possibility of raising a figure to the infinite, with the aim of transforming it into the greatest figure. And the figure loses those qualities that it possesses in the sphere of the finite, in the process of such an erection. As a result of such an operation, mathematical figures go beyond the sphere of competence of reason and the faculty of representation to which they originally belonged and rise into the sphere of reason.
“The ascent to the infinite, where all figures coincide, requires the transcendence of every possible figure and the withdrawal from all individual figures. Kuzansky wrote about this: “You will, of course, be surprised by what we have said, namely, that he who wants to understand the maximum in simple contemplation must make a leap beyond the limits of material difference and diversity, just as he must go beyond the limits of all mathematical figures.” (ch. 10, book 1)
Nicholas of Cusa turns the analysis of geometric figures into an analysis of rational thinking, and the reduction of a geometric figure to infinity into a reduction to the infinity of reason, where the mind begins to carry out its activities in a very special way, and the human spirit is able to rise above itself to the coincidence of opposites. It is only with the help of these opposites that he can accomplish such an ascent. Whatever keeps our spirit in mind cannot be a geometric figure or a certain number, but is a coincidence of opposites that we discover when we consider a number or a figure.
CONCLUSION: Thus, we can consider the following typology of infinity:
1. infinity as a “coincidence of opposites” of absolute maximum and absolute minimum, in which all differences are absent.
2. limited infinity type
3. everything exists in everything
Infinity as a “coincidence of opposites” is conceived without its individual elements, in its pure form, that is, it is not even conceived. Infinity is “conceived only in the order of unthinkability”, ignorance. Kuzansky called his work not just a treatise on ignorance, but specifically on scientific ignorance. In its pure form, infinity is the coincidence of all opposites, and in this sense it is unknowable. However, this is not absolute unknowability. As described above, we arrived at this infinity by operating with finite numbers, and concluding that these finite numbers are possible only if, in the only case, if there is an infinity, that is, an infinite number. Consequently, we have come to this infinity in a rational way, that is, nothing else, namely common sense, makes us recognize infinity as the coincidence of all existing opposites.
The next type of infinity is a type where we can already distinguish between individual parts, individual moments, individual elements, whose ultimate totality forms that first and already indivisible infinity that we described in the first type. In other words, we see how absolute infinity passes into limited infinity, that is, into its own otherness. This limited infinity is not just a coincidence of opposites, but at the same time their difference. Consequently, this is already an ordered infinity, and in the foreground it is not just infinity itself, “but its internal separateness, orderliness and figure”.
The third type of infinity implies that in every thing, as in a mirror, all the fullness and all the diversity of the universe is reflected.
Above we defined that infinity is indivisible, and now we imagine that infinity consists of individual elements or finite things. Then this may mean that in each such separate part there is the whole of infinity as a whole. If we assume that infinity is divisible, then this will mean that it is not present in the individual things that make up infinity. Or if we assume that infinity is seriously indivisible, then from this we can conclude, “that it is indivisible and wholly present in each of its individual elements, in each of its parts, in each separate thing.”
Hence the teaching of Nicholas of Cusa that “everything exists in anyone and everything exists in everything” (ch.5, ab.1, kn.2). That is, we see that this is already the third type of infinity.
Chapter 2.”Collapse-expand”
2.1 On the relationship between God and the world
As we saw above, in geometric examples, at infinity all mathematical figures coincide with a straight line, but this does not mean that they become absolutely the same, they are, as it were, folded, but they can be deployed, which means that to be infinite means to have not the countable variety of everything that can be unfolded. If we renounce geometry, we can say that, as infinity and unity, God is absolute being, which, in a folded state, contains all opposites. Therefore, the existence of God is the existence of absolute unity, both of everything real and of everything possible. The infinite coincidence of opposites in God by Nicholas of Cusa gives a new understanding of the created world: “In one God, everything is folded, since everything is in him, and he unfolds everything, because he is in everything” (ch.3, ab.6, kn.2) . The unfolding of all things from God, in which they are initially folded, is one of the main themes of Cusa. One of the chapters of "Scientific ignorance" in the second book of the treatise is called: "On the fact that the maximum incomprehensibly collapses and unfolds everything."
The author shows that all numbers are folded in unity, all figures are folded in a point, all times are folded in “now”, all movements are folded in peace, all differences are folded in identity. At the same time, “God folds and unfolds all things, and since he folds, they are all in him, and since he unfolds, he is in every thing everything that it is, like truth in an image.” In other words, things folded in God, he himself is, and God, deployed in things, is their truth.
Thus, what is folded is constantly unfolding, and any unfolded state has a folded state in it no less than in any other. Therefore, it can be argued that God is present everywhere in the world, everything equally contains God, that he is close to everything, that God is the beginning and end of every thing, and, as Kuzansky says, “he is nothing in the world.” None of unfolded states of the world cannot unfold all its convolutedness, therefore the world is not God, on the other hand, the world is an unfolding of Divine convolution, therefore, the world is not something different from God. Thus, we see that enfoldment does not turn into unfolding: it remains itself, that is, enfoldment, a variety of possibilities never unfolded in itself. Following Kuzansky, one can say that curtailment is an ideal logical source, which arrives curtailed, but which is the progenitor of all possibilities and all unfoldings. Coagulation precedes unfolding only logically, and it precedes all those opposites that exist in the expanded world, and only from our logical constructions unfolding is a consequence of curtailment. Ontologically they are identical.
Therefore, since God is present in every part of the universe, and everything is in it, and “the Universe, as it were, in a natural order, being the most perfect fullness, always already precedes everything in advance, so that everyone is in everyone: in every creation the Universe exists as this creation and so each absorbs all things that become in him concretely himself: not being able, because of his concrete determinateness, to be actual to everything, each concretizes everything by itself, defining everything in itself” (ch.5, ab.2, book 2) .
2.2 Universe at Cusa
The unity of the Universe comes in plurality and is concretized by it “The Universe (universum) means universality (universalitem), that is, the unity of the many” (ch. 4, ab. 4, kn. 2). Further, Kuzansky says that every thing comes in God through the mediation of the Universe: it is a limitation of the unity and completeness of the universe, and it, in turn, is a limitation of the unity of absolute infinity. Nikolai fixes our attention on the fact that “only the absolute maximum is negatively infinite; only he is what he can be in all his potentiality. On the contrary, the Universe, embracing everything that is not God, cannot be negatively infinite, although it has no limit and is thus privatively infinite” (ch.1, ab.9, book 2).
Thus, along with the understanding of infinity as non-finite, Kuzanz develops an understanding of infinity as an absolute limitless, devoid of limit. The world is viewed as an infinite extension that embraces all the inexhaustible variety of things. It cannot be placed between the bodily center and the outer circle “It turns out that the machine the world will, as it were, have a center everywhere and a circumference nowhere. For its circumference and center is God, who is everywhere and nowhere” (ch.12, ab.2, book 2).
Therefore, knowledge, if it relies on the measuring ability of the mind, seeks fixed centers of measurement. Thus, relying on the primary source, we can draw the following conclusion: for the Cusan “creator and creation are one and the same” (ch. 2, ab. 8, book 3), so he thinks of the Universe as the result of limitation, the collapse of the absolute maximum, alternating with expansion, which in itself creates a picture of a constantly changing cosmos.
Nicholas of Cusa asserts the idea not only of the infinity of the Universe, but also of the absence of a permanent center in it, because, unlike God, it is “a limited maximum” and “potential infinity”, which implies that the center and boundaries here are unstable and conditional . With all this, the world itself, considered as an infinite extension, has a mathematical configuration. And in view of its infinite extent, the world is a closed sphere, and this sphere is devoid of a center, and any center is relative (thus, the principle of relativity in cognition begins to form). Kuzansky sees the Earth as a noble star like all the others. And what is not unimportant, he argues that the Earth is not the center of the universe.
Chapter 3. Man as a microcosm
The author introduces an anthropological aspect into the theological understanding of the “coagulability-expansion” problem. In the philosophy of Nicholas of Cusa, man occupies a special position among all things. If he considers God as a macrocosm, then man as his likeness is a microcosm. Kuzansky considers human nature as the highest and most significant divine creation: according to Nicholas of Cusa, human nature enfolds both rational and sensual nature, it is exalted above all other creatures and slightly inferior to the angels, it “combines everything in the world within itself and for that it is rightly called by the ancient philosophers a microcosm, a small world” (ch. 3, ab. 3, kn. 3).
The principle of “coincidence of opposites”, which is the cornerstone of “scientific ignorance” and, in turn, characteristic of all things, is also reflected in human nature. And according to Cusa, it is such that, being raised in conjunction with maximum, “it would therefore turn out to be the fullness of all perfections and the universe as a whole and of each individual thing, so that everything through man would reach its highest level” (ch. 3, ab. 3, book 3).
This fullness of perfection is Divinity, and it seems possible only for one person to rise to the union with the maximum according to Nicholas of Cusa, who could embody the whole truth of man. , as well as God, and God, just like a man, - the perfection of the Universe, having primacy in everything ”(ch. 3, ab. 4, book 3). And he can only be thought of as a god-man. In chapter three, book of the third treatise “On Scientific Ignorance”, the author gives the following definition of this concept: “the God-man, that is, the created humanity accepted by God into the highest union with him, the universal concreteness of all things, hypostatically and personally united with the equality of all being, so that the concrete Universe through the medium of universal concreteness what man is, could exist from the divine absolute” (ab.6).
Such a union of Divine and human nature is embodied only in the Son of God, the God-Man Christ.
Kuzansky considers the intellect to be an ability that makes up the essence of human existence, and he says that all other abilities are folded in it. mind-mediator. Sensation is an order of magnitude lower than reason, reason - intellect. The intellect is not immersed in the temporal and material, it is absolutely free from them” (ch.6, ab.1).
The human intellect is inherently similar to God, based on this, Nicholas of Cusa says that “man is his mind, and intellectual nature becomes, in a sense, the basis of being a specific sensibility; intellectual nature for sensuality is, as it were, an absolute separate divine being” (ch.4, ab.3, book 3).
Based on the foregoing, we can draw the following conclusion: the essence of man is embodied in Christ, therefore man is infinite, at the same time this essence is limited in each individual, from this it follows that man is finite. This gives us reason to assert that Nicholas of Cusa defines man as a finite-infinite being: as a bodily earthly being, he is finite and as a spiritual, divine, infinite.
Conclusion.
Nicholas of Cusa adhered to progressive, innovative for his time philosophical views. In conclusion of our work, let us once again dwell on the main ideas of his teaching. At the beginning of his treatise On Scientific Ignorance, Kuzansky points out the impossibility of achieving absolute knowledge, the incomprehensibility of truth, since an increase in knowledge leads us only to learning, that is, to scientific ignorance. He was one of the first philosophers who expressed the idea that “knowledge is an eternal, infinite approximation of thinking to an object”, that is, to infinity, which Nicholas of Cusa understood as “coincidence of opposites”.
The progressive significance of the philosophy of Cusa is determined by its role in the history of the development of dialectics. His dialectical doctrine of the “coincidence of opposites” was further developed in the philosophy of German classical idealism in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Nicholas of Cusa extended the principle of “coincidence of opposites” to the world of real things, which can be considered his merit in the development of dialectics. Referring to Anaxagoras and developing his idea of the universal connection of things, Kuzansky in the second book of "learned ignorance" writes: "The causes of the future are hidden in earthly things, like a cornfield in a seed." And without the assumption of opposites, the universal connection of things is unthinkable.
The doctrine of Nicholas of Cusa about “curtailment” and “expansion” is also permeated with dialectics. It solves the problem of the relationship between the finite and the infinite in its own way in a peculiar form. According to Cusa, any thing is connected with infinite unity, but it does not completely coincide with it, the infinite is contained in the finite, and the infinite includes the finite, but they are not identical. Kuzanets asserts that everything that exists is contained in God, that everything is in everything. For the philosopher, the Divine being, which contains all the opposites, in a folded form contains all the diversity of things, and the world for Nicholas of Cusa is the unfolding of the Divine. “One” (God) and “infinite” (his creation) correlate with each other as minimum and maximum (opposites), and since God and his creation coincide in Kuzan, the minimum and maximum coincide. This new conception of the world opened up “many revolutionary implications for the knowledge of nature”(1)
Kuzansky believed that there really is an actual infinity that absorbs everything else. That infinity unites opposites, and Cusansky proves this in his treatise with the help of mathematical examples. That the infinity of the universe leads to the infinity of knowledge. He gives the following definition of infinity: it is a single being as a “coincidence of opposites”, as a coincidence of completeness and simplicity. Thus, “the category of infinity becomes one of the most fundamental in the philosophy of the New Age.”(2) The entire structure of cognition is transformed, and the previous tradition of thinking is completely changed. According to Cusansky, knowledge must begin with the possibility, which contains any actuality, and not with the finite.
The understanding of God as “folded” and the world as “folded out” was continued in the works of B. Spinoza.
Let us dwell separately on the cosmology of Cusa, which was based on the dialectical-pantheistic worldview of the philosopher himself. For the development of philosophy, the cosmology of Cusa also played a very important role, this is that part of his philosophical teaching, in which Cusa was significantly ahead of his contemporaries. The Cusanic Universe is one, all opposites coincide in it, it is the maximum, it is in all things. The statement of Nicholas of Cusa that the Earth is not the center of the Universe was substantiated a century later in the work of Nicolaus Copernicus “On the Revolution of the Celestial Spheres”, where he substantiated the heliocentric system of the world. The idea of the infinity of the Universe for that time was revolutionary. Cusan's idea of the Universe as an infinite one, without a center and a circle, had a great influence on D. Bruno, who connected the heliocentric system of Copernicus with the ingenious dialectics of Cusa.
Kuzansky highly appreciated the importance of a person's personality, asserted the limitless abilities of the human mind in its desire to deepen its knowledge. The philosopher emphasized that this ability is much more important than the reason's claim to the possession of eternal truth.
Thus, being a philosopher and theologian, Nicholas of Cusa came very close to the materialistic understanding and explanation of the world around us and had a great influence on the natural-philosophical teachings of N. Copernicus, D. Bruno and others.
List of used literature:
1. Losev A.F. Aesthetics of the Renaissance. M .: Thought, 1978.
2. Sergeev K.A. Philosophy of infinity of Nikolai Kuzansky. St. Petersburg: Verbum, issue 9, Publishing House of St. Petersburg University, 2007.
3. Sokolov V.V. European philosophy of the XV-XVIII centuries. M .: Higher school, 1984.
4. Tazhurizina Z.A. Philosophy of Nicholas of Cusa. M .: Publishing House of Moscow State University, 1972.
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One of the characteristic representatives of the Renaissance philosophy was Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464). An analysis of his teaching makes it especially clear to see the differences between the ancient Greek and Renaissance interpretations of being.
Nicholas of Cusa, like most philosophers of his time, was guided by the tradition of Neoplatonism. However, at the same time, he rethought the teachings of the Neoplatonists, starting with the central concept of the unity for them. In Plato and the Neo-Platonists, as we know, the one is characterized through the opposite of the “other”, the non-one. This characteristic goes back to the Pythagoreans and Eleatics, who opposed the one to the many, the limit to the boundless. Nicholas of Cusa, who shares the principles of Christian monism, rejects ancient dualism and declares that "nothing is opposed to the one." And from here he draws a characteristic conclusion: “the one is everything” - a formula that sounds pantheistic and directly anticipates the pantheism of Giordano Bruno.
This formula is unacceptable for Christian theism, which fundamentally distinguishes creation (all) from the creator (single); but, no less important, it also differs from the concept of the Neoplatonists, who never identified the one with "all". This is where a new, renaissance approach to the problems of ontology appears. From the statement that the one has no opposite, Nicholas of Cusa concludes that the one is identical to the infinite, the infinite. Infinite is that which nothing can be greater than. Therefore, it is characterized as a "maximum", the same as a "minimum". Nicholas of Cusa thus discovered the principle of the coincidence of opposites (coincidentia oppositorum) - maximum and minimum. To make this principle clearer, he turns to mathematics, pointing out that as the radius of a circle increases to infinity, the circle becomes an infinite straight line. For such a maximum circle, the diameter becomes identical to the circle, moreover, not only the diameter, but also the center coincides with the circle, and thus the point (minimum) and the infinite line (maximum) are one and the same. The situation is similar with a triangle: if one of its sides is infinite, then the other two will also be infinite. Thus it is proved that an infinite line is both a triangle, and a circle, and a sphere.
The coincidence of opposites is the most important methodological principle of the philosophy of Nicholas of Cusa, which makes him one of the founders of the New European dialectics. In Plato, one of the greatest dialecticians of antiquity, we do not find the doctrine of the coincidence of opposites, since ancient Greek philosophy is characterized by dualism, the opposition of the idea (or form) and matter, the one and the infinite. On the contrary, in Nicholas of Cusa the place of the one is now occupied by the concept of actual infinity, which is, in fact, the combination of opposites - the one and the infinite.
Carried out, although not always consistently, the identification of the one with the infinite subsequently led to the restructuring of the principles not only of ancient philosophy and medieval theology, but also of ancient and medieval science - mathematics and astronomy.
The role that the indivisible (unit) played among the Greeks, introducing a measure, a limit both to beings as a whole and to each kind of being, is played by Nicholas of Cusa by the infinite - now it is entrusted with the function of being the measure of everything that exists. If infinity becomes a measure, then paradox becomes synonymous with exact knowledge. And in fact, this is what follows from the assumptions accepted by the thinker: “... if one infinite line consisted of an infinite number of segments in a span, and the other - of an infinite number of segments in two spans, they would still necessarily be equal, since infinity cannot be greater than infinity. As you can see, in the face of infinity, all finite differences disappear, and two becomes equal to one, three, and any other number.
In geometry, as Nicholas of Cusa shows, the situation is the same as in arithmetic. The distinction between rational and irrational relations, on which the geometry of the Greeks rested, he declares to be significant only for the lower mental ability - reason, and not reason. All mathematics, including arithmetic, geometry and astronomy, is, in his opinion, the product of the activity of the mind; reason just expresses its basic principle in the form of the prohibition of contradiction, that is, the prohibition to combine opposites. Nicholas of Cusa returns us to Zeno with his paradoxes of infinity, with the difference, however, that Zeno saw paradoxes as an instrument for the destruction of false knowledge, and Nicholas of Cusa as a means of creating the true. True, this knowledge itself has a special character - it is "wise ignorance."
The thesis about the infinite as a measure introduces transformations into astronomy as well. If in the field of arithmetic and geometry the infinite as a measure transforms knowledge of finite ratios into an approximate one, then in astronomy this new measure introduces, in addition, the principle of relativity. And in fact: since the exact definition of the size and shape of the universe can be given only by referring it to infinity, then the center and the circle cannot be distinguished in it. The reasoning of Nicholas of Cusa helps to understand the connection between the philosophical category of the one and the cosmological idea of the ancients about the presence of the center of the world, and thus about its finiteness. The identification of the one with the infinite that he carried out destroys the picture of the cosmos from which not only Plato and Aristotle, but also Ptolemy and Archimedes proceeded. For ancient science and most representatives of ancient philosophy, the cosmos was a very large, but finite body. And the sign of the finiteness of the body is the ability to distinguish in it the center and the periphery, the “beginning” and the “end”. According to Nicholas of Cusa, the center and circumference of the cosmos is God, and therefore, although the world is not infinite, it cannot be thought of as finite either, since it has no limits between which it would be closed.
Nicholas of Cusa is the largest European thinker of the 15th century, one of the prominent humanists of the Renaissance and the founder of Italian natural philosophy. His name is associated with the transition from the medieval to the Renaissance style of thinking. He synthesized the ideas of Neoplatonism and Pythagoreanism. Developing the most important methodological principle of dialectics - the coincidence of opposites in a single subject, he came to an anti-theological interpretation of God: God is one, which becomes everything. Then the conclusion followed: the one has no opposites, which means that it is identical to the boundless and infinite. The concept of infinity becomes the measure of everything that exists. Man is a special microcosm. The main abilities of his mind yavl. feeling, reason and reason. The main problems of his philosophy are the attitude of God to the world, the place and role of man in the world, as well as the nature of knowledge. Cognition is carried out, according to Nicholas of Cusa, through the interaction of feelings, imagination, reason and reason. Sensory cognition, which animals also possess, is a limited faculty of the mind. Reason, relying on the material supplied by the senses, forms general, abstract concepts. At the highest level of knowledge is the mind, which, thinking in all things the coincidence of opposites, overcomes the limitations of sensory knowledge and reason. Nicholas of Cusa dialectically approached the truth, seeing it as inseparable from delusions. The mind, which is in a state of "scientific ignorance" and opposes the pride of reason, infinitely approaches the truth.Naturphilosophy of the Renaissance
On the basis of the largest discoveries and technological progress in the Renaissance, a kind of natural philosophy (philosophy of nature) develops. It was she who had a decisive influence on the development of philosophy and natural science of modern times.
Naturphilosophy often had a pantheistic character, i.e., without directly denying the existence of God, it identified him with nature. A similar natural philosophy was developed by Bernardino Telesio [1509-1588], Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464).
Kuzansky brings God closer to nature, attributing divine attributes to the latter, and above all infinity in space; he also opposes the theological principle of the finiteness of the Universe in space and its creation in time, although he stipulates that the world is not infinite in the sense in which God appears as an “absolute maximum”.
One of the greatest geniuses of the Renaissance was Giordano Bruno (1548-1600). He rejected all church dogmas about the creation of the world, about the alleged beginning of the world and its coming end; developed the heliocentric ideas of Copernicus, arguing that there are an infinite number of worlds in the universe. Bruno's natural-philosophical views are combined with elements of elemental dialectics, which he draws in many respects from ancient sources.
Of no small philosophical importance are the works of Galileo Galilei (1564-1642). He gained fame as the "Columbus of the sky" by discovering craters and ridges on the Moon, made out the countless clusters of stars that form the Milky Way, saw the satellites of Jupiter, examined, thanks to the telescope he designed, spots on the Sun, etc. All these discoveries marked the beginning of his fierce polemics with scholastics and churchmen who defended the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic picture of the world. Dealing with questions of mechanics, Galileo discovered some of its fundamental laws, which testified that there is a natural necessity.
The heliocentric concept of the structure of the universe has made a truly revolutionary revolution in the view of the world order, which is characterized by objective, proper and universal laws of being and movement. The proof of their existence is based on scientific facts obtained in the course of observation, experiments, experimental verification as scientific methods of cognition. Mathematics is becoming a universal method of proving the laws of the existence of nature and the Universe and a method of analyzing empirical data obtained in the course of observing the movements of celestial bodies. The rationalistic and at the same time demonstrative, rather than scholastic, understanding of the laws of the Being of the world as a universal Unity is being strengthened.
New time in Europe: development of culture and philosophy
The new time is the time when the middle class, the bourgeois class, comes to power and dominates. This is also a time of rapid development of science and, based on it, applied knowledge, the introduction of fundamentally new technologies for the production of goods, and philosophy was not only the ideological basis of the progressive changes of the New Age, but also preceded these changes. The new time came first in the spiritual sphere of philosophy, and only then in reality. In this plan, the beginning of the philosophy of modern times was laid by the English philosopher Francis Bacon of an unprecedented increase in labor productivity ...
Philosophy is based on a systematic and holistic explanation of the world, which was based on the orderliness of the world order. The world is dominated by a natural order, determined by chains of determination, the knowledge of which must be dealt with by a person. The natural ordering of the world is the subject and goal of knowledge and at the same time predetermines the methods of comprehending the truth. Philosophical conclusions about the structure of the world have the same degree of accuracy as the conclusions of geometry or mathematics. An essential feature of classical philosophy is its enlightening pathos. putting forward this or that system of norms, each thinker spoke not on his own behalf, but as if on behalf of Reason, into the secrets of which he managed to penetrate.
The historical layers of the classical philosophical tradition are the following trends:
1.Philosophy of the Enlightenment
Rationalism: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz
Empiricism: Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume
French Enlightenment: Pascal, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau
2. German idealism: Kant, Hegel, Schelling, Fichte
The beginning of the era of the New Age is inextricably linked with the Renaissance and the Reformation. The 18th century - the century of the Enlightenment - is perhaps the brightest and most significant stage of the New Age. The century is permeated with the pathos of novelty: it feels like a destroyer of old stereotypes and a builder of a new free culture.
XIX century - the bourgeois, in essence, has already deepened the trends in socio-cultural development, identified in the Enlightenment. A manifestation of individualism in art is that in the Renaissance, for the first time, secular “realistic” painting appears: for the first time, artists trusted their eyes, for the first time, a picture visible precisely to human vision began to be considered true. Paintings on religious subjects become just paintings and cease to be icons.
Another important source of modern culture is the Reformation. But strangely enough, the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation that followed it, being religious phenomena, influenced such completely secular areas of culture as economics and politics.
The Renaissance and the Reformation converge in one important point - in the desire to free a person from external authorities, giving him the right to freely, at his own discretion, choose a way of life.
There are 3 layers of European religiosity at this time: 1) Protestantism 2) Catholicism after the Reformation and Counter-Reformation 3) Philosophical skepticism and freethinking
The spread of materialistic atheism, the development of the natural and exact sciences, pushed aside faith. People of the 19th century attended churches, performed rituals, but the emotionality of faith was clearly fading away. Religiosity became sober.
Thus, in modern times, religiosity itself becomes worldly, and culture becomes completely secular. Secularization directly concerns the ethical area. In modern times there is secular morality.
The key figure in the philosophical thought of the Renaissance was Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464) , born Nikolai Krebs (he acquired the name that entered the history of philosophy at the place of his birth - the small village of Kuzy, on the banks of the Moselle, in southern Germany). His father was a fisherman and winemaker. The political, scientific and philosophical activity of N. Cusansky is closely connected with Italy, which allows us to consider his philosophical work within the framework of Italian philosophy.
Having been educated at Heidelberg, Padua and Cologne Universities, Cusa became a clergyman and later a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church.
The philosophical and social activities of Nicholas of Cusa, despite his religious rank, actively contributed to the secularization of public consciousness in general and philosophical consciousness in particular. He was close to many ideas of humanism. Being the greatest scientist of his time, he was seriously engaged in mathematics, astronomy, medicine, and geography.
One of the central places in the philosophy of Cusa is occupied by doctrine about God. In accordance with the medieval scholastic tradition, he argues that the divine being plays a decisive role in the formation of the natural world and the human world. However, Kuzanets departs from orthodox scholastic ideas in the interpretation of God and develops ideas close to ancient pantheism, depersonalizes God, who appears in him as “non-other”, “being-possibility”, “possibility itself”, and most often as “absolute maximum”, actual infinity. The world is a "limited maximum", potential infinity.
Kuzansky comes to the idea of the inconsistency of God, which is due to the fact that the absolute maximum, being infinity, does not suffer from any finite operations. Being indivisible, it is also the absolute minimum, and thus represents unity of opposites- absolute maximum and absolute minimum. The coincidence of the maximum and minimum allows us to conclude, firstly, that God is in everything (“everything is in everything”) and the recognition of the world outside of God is inconsistent; that, secondly, God is the unity of cause and effect, i.e. creating and created; and, finally, thirdly, the essence of visible things and God coincides, and this testifies to the unity of the world. Understanding God as a unity of opposites weakens his creative personal functions, brings together the infinite God and the finite world, leads to a departure from the principle of creationism.
idea genesis of the universe Cusa develops in accordance with the Neoplatonic principle emanations. The divine principle, being the unlimited possibility of all that exists and absolute unity, contains all the infinite diversity of the natural and human world in a folded form, the emergence of the world is the result of its deployment from the divine depths. There is an “eternal generation” of the unlimited limited, the single plural, the abstract-simple, the concrete-complex, the individual. The return of the diverse, individual world of nature and man to God is a kind of process of "coagulation".
Thus, without completely breaking with the theistic views of medieval scholasticism, Nicholas of Cusa puts forward the idea mystical pantheism, identifying the creator and the creation, dissolving the creation in the creator. He neglects the idea of a gap between the divine and the natural, the earthly and the heavenly, which is characteristic of scholastic thinking. Arguing that "the existence of God in the world is nothing else than the existence of the world in God", Kuzansky formulates the principles inherent in the cultural and philosophical tradition of the Renaissance, which seeks to understand the spiritual world and the earthly world as a whole.
The pantheistic and dialectical ideas of Nicholas of Cusa found their further expression in cosmology and natural philosophy. Having brought down the infinity of God into nature, Kuzansky puts forward the idea of the infinity of the Universe in space. He argues that the sphere of fixed stars is not a circle that closes the world: “... the machine of the world will, as it were, have a center everywhere and a circle nowhere. For its circumference and center is God, who is everywhere and nowhere.” The universe is homogeneous, the same laws prevail in different parts of it, any part of the universe is equivalent, not one of the stellar regions is devoid of inhabitants.
The initial provisions of Cusa's cosmology were the basis for the assertion that the Earth is not the center of the Universe, it has the same nature as other planets and is in constant motion. Such a view contradicted the idea prevailing in the Middle Ages about the finiteness of the universe in space and about the Earth as its center. Kuzansky in a speculative form rethought the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic picture of the world and was a harbinger of the heliocentric view of the universe. He anticipated with his concept the conclusions of Copernicus, who “having moved the Earth, stopped the Sun” and limited the Universe to the sphere of fixed stars.
The cosmological ideas of Kuzansky had a great influence on G. Bruno, who overcame the narrowness of Copernicus's views, relying on the deep dialectical ideas of Cusa.
The natural world, according to Kuzants, is a living organism animated by the world soul. All parts of this world are in common connection and exist in constant dynamics. Nature is contradictory, acts as a unity of opposites. “All things,” writes Kuzansky in “Scientific Ignorance,” “consist of opposites ... revealing their nature from two contrasts by the predominance of one over the other.” He draws examples of the coincidence of opposites, as a rule, from mathematics because he believes that mathematical principles underlie all phenomena. The extension of the principle of the unity of opposites to the real natural world allowed Cusa to occupy a prominent place in the history of the development of dialectics.
Particular attention in the philosophy of Nicholas of Cusa is given to doctrine of man. Kuzansky renounces the Christian idea of creationism in the interpretation of man and returns to the ideas of antiquity, considering man as a kind of microcosm. Trying to connect the microcosm with the divine essence, he introduces the concept "small world" those. the man himself, "big world", i.e. universe and "Maximum Peace"- divine absolute. According to Cusa, the small world is a likeness of the big one, and the big one is the likeness of the maximum. This statement necessarily leads to the conclusion that the small world, man, not only reproduces the many-sided natural world surrounding him, but is also a likeness of the world of the maximum God.
A superficial analysis gives the impression that by likening man to God, Nicholas of Cusa does not go beyond medieval orthodoxy. However, on closer examination, it becomes clear that he does not so much liken a person to God, but comes to his deification, calling a person "human god" or "Manifested Gods". Man, from the point of view of Cusa, is the dialectical unity of the finite and the infinite, a finitely infinite being. In ontological terms, man stands above all other creations of God, with the exception of angels, as close as possible to God. "Human nature is a polygon inscribed in a circle, and the circle is divine nature," says Kuzanski in his Treatise on Scientific Ignorance.
Deifying man, Kuzansky expresses the idea of his creative essence. If the absolute, God, is creativity, then man, like God, is also an absolute, represents a creative principle, i.e. has complete free will.
The naturalistic tendencies of the philosophy of Nicholas of Cusa, close to anthropocentrism, were strengthened in the later humanistic concepts of the Italian Renaissance of the 15th century.
The teaching of Cusa about man is closely connected with epistemological problems and the question of human cognitive abilities. Cusansky sees the main task of knowledge in the elimination of scholastic faith in authorities. “No one’s authority guides me, even if it encourages me to move,” he writes in the dialogue “The Simple One about the Mind”, and in the dialogue “The Simple One about Wisdom”, Cuzansky compares the scholastic, shackled by faith in authority, with a horse that is naturally free , but is tied by a bridle to a feeder and cannot eat anything other than what was served to him. Kuzansky believes that man, as a microcosm, has a natural ability to understand nature. Its cognitive abilities are realized through crazy likened to the divine, creative mind. The mind is individual, which is due to the different bodily structure of people. There are three faculties, three kinds of mind: feeling (sensations plus imagination), mind and mind.
The selection of sensory cognition as one of the cognitive abilities of a person indicates that Kuzansky does not deny the need for an experimental-empirical study of reality, and this goes beyond the medieval tradition. However, he considers sensory knowledge to be the most limited kind of mind, inherent even in animals. Sensual cognition of a person is subject to the distinguishing and ordering principle of the mind. But neither feelings nor reason are capable of knowing God. They are a tool for understanding nature. Kuzansky does not doubt the possibility of knowing nature, the methodological core of which is mathematics.
Reason is the highest cognitive ability of man. "The mind cannot comprehend anything that would not already be in itself in a reduced, limited state." The mind is completely isolated from sensory-rational activity, being a purely speculative, purely spiritual entity, a product of God himself. He is able to think universal, imperishable, permanent, thereby approaching the sphere of the infinite and absolute. The understanding of infinity inherent in the mind leads it to an understanding of the meaning of opposites and their unity. This is the superiority of reason over reason, which "stumbles because it is far from this infinite power and cannot connect the contradictions separated by infinity."
Considering the main cognitive abilities of a person in their interaction, Kuzansky comes to the conclusion that the process of cognition is the unity of opposite moments - the knowable nature and the unknowable God, the limited abilities of feeling and reason and the higher possibilities of the mind.
The problem of the truth of knowledge solved by Cusa dialectically. At the heart of the doctrine of truth is the position: truth is inseparable from its opposite - delusion, as light is inseparable from shadow, without which it is invisible. A person in cognitive activity is only capable of a more or less accurate idea of the essence of the world, because the divine ways are incomprehensible, they cannot be comprehended accurately and consistently. The inconsistency of "learned" ignorance can only be understood by the mind, which thereby approaches the truth. However, “our mind ... never comprehends the truth so accurately that it cannot comprehend it more and more accurately without end, and relates to truth like a polygon to a circle: being inscribed in a circle, it is the more similar to it, the more angles it has, but even when multiplying its angles to infinity, it is never equal to a circle. As for reason, it is dogmatic, inclined to consider each of its provisions as the ultimate truth. Kuzansky believes that the mind needs to constantly overcome the dogamtic self-confidence of the mind regarding the final truth of judgments, thereby contributing to the understanding of truth as a process of ever greater deepening of knowledge on the way to the unattainable absolute.
The philosophical views of Nicholas of Cusa played a significant role in overcoming the scholastic tradition in philosophy, in the development of the ideas of the late Renaissance
On the basis of discoveries and technological progress in the Renaissance, a kind of natural philosophy(philosophy of nature).
The largest representatives of natural philosophy are Nicholas of Cusa, Giordano Bruno, Nicholas Copernicus, Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo Galilei. Summarizing their views, we can formulate basic provisions inherent in their teachings.
1. Naturphilosophy was often pantheistic in nature, that is, without directly denying God, she identified him with nature. 2. Cognition of God-the Universe goes through the following stages: sensory perception; reason that separates opposites; the mind that composes them; intuition.
At the same time, sensual and rational merge, become one in the knowledge of the surrounding nature.
Nicholas of Cusa one of the greatest European thinkers of the 15th century. He is one of the most prominent humanists of the Renaissance and is considered the founder of Italian natural philosophy. Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464, born in Germany, studied in Padua). Coming from a family of winemaker and fisherman, he went through all the levels of the priesthood, going all the way to the papal cardinal and bishop.
N. Kuzansky expressed deeply dialectical ideas in his teaching about God as infinity in space - the "absolute maximum".
Nicholas of Cusa considers infinity as a kind of figured construction, which is subject to the principle of ordering. If in the system of natural numbers we begin to move from one finite number to another, then we will not be able to stop anywhere. Indeed, in the series of natural numbers, each finite number is possible only if there is an even greater number, even if it is only one greater. Thus, passing from one number to another, we understand that there is an infinite number that we cannot get by adding one to one or another finite number, no matter how large it is. And this infinity we can neither increase nor decrease, neither multiply nor divide.
Infinity +1 is still infinity, infinity - 1 is also infinity, infinity multiplied by any finite number will remain infinity. And infinity divided by one or another number as a result will give us the same infinity. From this we can conclude that there is an absolute maximum that cannot be changed by any finite operations, but being indivisible, it is also an absolute minimum, so the absolute maximum and the absolute minimum are the same.” The absolute maximum is in full actuality, being all that it can be, and for the same reason that it cannot be more, it cannot be less: for it is everything that can be. But that, less than which nothing can be, is the minimum. Hence, since the maximum is as stated, it obviously coincides with the minimum.
Being as an absolute unity contains both a maximum and a minimum, and they are opposites in their essence, hence the conclusion follows that this infinite being is a coincidence of opposites, as a coincidence of completeness and simplicity. Infinity according to Cusa is the maximum being, absolute unity or integration of all differences and opposites.
God is absolute unity in the sense of the maximum fullness of being. “God, that is, absolute maximum itself, is light” and “God is also maximum light as minimum light.” After all, if absolute maximum were not infinite, if it were not a universal limit, not determined by anything in the world, it would not be the relevance of everything possible.”
Pantheism G. Bruno.
Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) - Italian philosopher, in whose views the philosophical thought of the Renaissance found its full expression. Creator of the religion of the cosmos. He preached his ideas at the universities of England, Germany, France, Switzerland. Sentenced to death by the Inquisition for heretical religious messianism. Burnt at the stake in Rome.
Bruno's teaching. - specific poetic pantheism, based on the latest achievements of natural science (especially the heliocentric system of Copernicus) and fragments of Epicureanism, Stoicism and Neoplatonism. He considered the world around us as one, in which matter and form are merged together. The universe, according to Bruno, is one, infinite and motionless. It undergoes constant changes and movements, but in general it does not move, because it fills everything around us. The universe is a coincidence of God and nature, matter and form, unity and plurality. The idea of the One permeates all the main provisions of Bruno's philosophy. One for Bruno is both the essence of being and the form of its existence. One is such a category, which, according to Bruno, explains everything in the world - both its variability and its constancy. All contradictions and opposites can be explained by the fact that the Universe is one. .The infinite universe as a whole is God. He is in everything and everywhere, not "outside" and not "above", but as "the most present".
Bruno emphasizes that in the Universe spiritual and corporeal substances have one being, one root. Matter has the property of divinity. By this, Bruno rejected the idea of creation and the conditionality of nature by God as an external source of its existence. Thus, Bruno stood on the positions of radical pantheism. Bruno considered matter as consisting of atoms, following in this respect the ancient atomists. Everything in nature, according to Bruno, consists of indivisible particles, atoms, which determine the unity of all things. Bruno formulates the atomistic understanding of nature in the form of the concept of a minimum: there is nothing in the world except the minimum, which determines everything in the world, the entire maximum. The minimum contains all power, and therefore it represents the maximum of things. The minimum determines the maximum. The absolute minimum in the Universe is an atom, in mathematics it is a point, in the sphere of metaphysics it is a monad. The minimum or the monad constitutes everything that determines the maximum and the whole. The monad reflects all the properties of nature. Here Bruno stands on the positions of the dialectical coincidence of opposites. In his dialectic, Bruno follows Nicholas of Cusa, but extends this dialectic to all of nature. According to Bruno, the whole Universe is animated, it has an inner vital principle, which he calls the "world soul". By universal animation, Bruno explained the causes of movement in nature, which has the property of self-movement. Recognizing all nature as animate, Bruno thereby occupied the position of hylozoism, which at that time, under the dominance of scholasticism and theology, played a progressive role, since it recognized man as part of nature. Bruno developed questions of cosmology based on the heliocentric theory of Copernicus. He argued that the Universe is infinite, that there is only one Universe around us and that there are an infinite number of worlds in it. The number of individual things is also infinite, although each thing represents a finite amount. The recognition of the existence of one Universe excludes from Bruno the presence of an external God who created the world. Bruno rejects creationism and believes, following his pantheism, that nature is God in things, matter is the divine being in things. God is contained in things as an active principle. Nature and God are one and the same, they have the same single beginning: this is the same order, the law that determines the course of things. Bruno identifies God with nature, understood as a set of patterns of movement and development inherent in the world around us. Moreover, Bruno identifies God-nature with matter. Nature is matter. Thus, according to Bruno, God is another name for the natural surrounding world. The concept of panpsychism is closely connected with Bruno's pantheism, namely, that the spiritual substance determines the whole variety of manifestations of things.
