A Beginner's History of Philosophy, Vol. 2: Modern PhilosophyCushman, Herbert Ernest
Philosophy
A Beginner's History of Philosophy, Vol. 2: Modern Philosophy
Cushman, Herbert Ernest
Philosophy -- History
(Note that Rome, Wittenberg, London, and Geneva are the
religious centres; that Paris, Oxford, Heidelberg, and Prague
are the educational centres; and that Europe is divided into
many nations)
But a deeper insight into the Renaissance shows that its revolutionary,
negative, and spectacular aspect is not its whole significance. No
doubt a strong, universal, and well-centralized government and a unity
of faith are social ideals. The reverence in which the name of Rome
was held long after the empire had been destroyed, and the reluctance
with which the first Protestants separated themselves from the Catholic
church, show that the loss of such a unity is a real loss. But the
church of the Middle Ages was not the carrier of all the treasure
of the past, nor could the church with its own inherent limitations
stand as representative of modern times. The new problem which the
Renaissance faced might be destructive of much of the traditional
past, but it contained many new elements. The “new man” found himself
in a “new universe.” He was obliged to undertake the solution of a
far deeper problem than antiquity had ever attempted. He must orient
himself in a larger world than the past had ever imagined. He must do
this in the very presence of mediæval institutions, which had not lost
their spiritual nor their temporal power. The constructive problem
before the man of the Renaissance was therefore an exceedingly complex
one. How should he explain his relation to the “new universe” in a
way that would not antagonize tradition? It was a new problem, a real
problem in which the traditional factor was always persistently present.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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