Материал: isaeva_av_sost_professionalnyi_angliiskii_iazyk_dlia_student (1)

Vocabulary

peripatetic – перипатетический, аристотелевский; plausible – вероятный, возможный;

profane – языческий;

to decipher – расшифровывать, интерпретировать;

Marsilio Ficino – Марсилио Фичино;

Enneads – Эннеады;

Synesius – Синезий;

Zoroaster – Заратустра (Заратуштра); secularism – отрицание религии;

Oration on the Dignity of Man – Молитва о Достоинстве человека; divinatory astrology – пророческая астрология;

diatribe – обличительная речь, критика; to reconcile – мирить;

devout – набожный, религиозный;

eclectic – эклектик (тот, кто не создает собственной философской системы, основывающейся на едином принципе, и не присоединяется ко взглядам какого-либо одного философа, а берет из различных систем то, что находит правильным, и все это связывает в одно более или менее законченное целое); Muslim – мусульманский;

condemnation – осуждение, порицание;

Pope Innocent VIII – Папа Иннокентий VIII; to exalt – возносить, возвеличивать;

Proclus – Прокл;

Pseudo-Dionysius – псевдо-Дионисий;

human knower – человеческий субъект познания; undifferentiated – единообразный;

On Conjectures – О домыслах;

conjectural – предположительный, предполагаемый.

Questions:

1.What revival had a great impact on the history of philosophy?

2.What did many Christians think about Platonic philosophy?

3.What was their opinion of the Platonic dialogues?

4.Who was the most important Renaissance Platonist? What was his contribution to the development of philosophy?

5.Who was Ficino‟s most distinguished associate? What were his most prominent works?

6.Who also took Platonic themes in his work?

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Read the text, answer the questions and give the summary of it.

4.5 Hellenistic Philosophies.

Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Skepticism underwent a revival over the course of the 15th and 16th centuries as part of the ongoing recovery of ancient literature and thought. The revival of Stoicism began with Petrarca, whose renewal of Stoicism moved along two paths. The first one was inspired by Seneca and consisted in the presentation, in works such as De vita solitaria (The Life of

Solitude) and De otio religioso (On Religious Leisure), of a way of life in which the cultivation of the scholarly work and ethical perfection are one. The second was his elaboration of Stoic therapy against emotional distress in De secreto conflictu curarum mearum (On the Secret Conflict of My Worries), an inner dialogue of the sort prescribed by Cicero and Seneca, and in De remediis utriusque fortunae (Remedies for Good and Bad Fortune, 1366), a huge compendium based on a short apocryphal tract attributed at the time to Seneca.

While many humanists shared Petrarca‟s esteem for Stoic moral philosophy, others called its stern prescriptions into question. They accused the Stoics of suppressing all emotions and criticized their view for its inhuman rigidity. In contrast to the extreme ethical stance of the Stoics, they preferred the more moderate Peripatetic position, arguing that it provides a more realistic basis for morality, since it places the acquisition of virtue within the reach of normal human capacities. Another Stoic doctrine that was often criticized on religious grounds was the conviction that the wise man is entirely responsible for his own happiness and has no need of divine assistance.

The most important exponent of Stoicism during the Renaissance was the Flemish humanist Justus Lipsius (1547–1606), who worked hard to brighten the appeal of Stoicism to Christians. His first Neostoic work was De constantia (On Constancy, 1584), in which he promoted Stoic moral philosophy as a refuge from the horrors of the civil and religious wars that ravaged the continent at the time. His main accounts of Stoicism were Physiologia Stoicorum (Physical Theory of the Stoics) and Manuductio ad stoicam philosophiam (Guide to Stoic Philosophy), both published in 1604. Together they constituted the most learned account of Stoic philosophy produced since antiquity.

During the Middle Ages, Epicureanism was associated with contemptible atheism and hedonist dissipation. In 1417, Bracciolini found Lucretius‟s poem De rerum natura, the most informative source on Epicurean teaching, which, together with Ambrogio Traversari‟s translation of Diogenes Laertius‟s Life of Epicurus into Latin, contributed to a more discriminating appraisal of Epicurean doctrine and a repudiation of the traditional prejudice against the person of Epicurus himself. In a letter written in 1428, Francesco Filelfo (1398–1481) insisted that, contrary to popular opinion, Epicurus was not “addicted to pleasure, lewd and lascivious”, but rather “sober, learned and venerable”.

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The revival of ancient philosophy was particularly dramatic in the case of Scepticism, whose revitalization grew out of many of the currents of Renaissance thought and contributed to make the problem of knowledge crucial for early modern philosophy. The major ancient texts stating the Skeptical arguments were slightly known in the Middle Ages. It was in the 15th and 16th century that Sextus Empiricus‟s Outlines of Pyrrhonism and Against the Mathematicians, Cicero‟s

Academica, and Diogenes Laertius‟s Life of Pyrrho started to receive serious philosophical consideration.

The most significant and influential figure in the development of Renaissance Scepticism is Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592). The most thorough presentation of his Sceptical views occurs in Apologie de Raimond Sebond (Apology for Raymond Sebond), the longest and most philosophical of his essays. In it, he developed in a gradual manner the many kinds of problems that make people doubt the reliability of human reason. He considered in detail the ancient Sceptical arguments about the unreliability of information gained by the senses or by reason, about the inability of human beings to find a satisfactory criterion of knowledge, and about the relativity of moral opinions. He concluded that people should suspend judgment on all matters and follow customs and traditions. He combined these conclusions with fideism.

Many Renaissance appropriators of Academic and Pyrrhonian Sceptical arguments did not see any intrinsic value in Scepticism, but rather used it to attack Aristotelianism and disparage the claims of human science. They challenged the intellectual foundations of medieval Scholastic learning by raising serious questions about the nature of truth and about the ability of humans to discover it.

(1469–1533) set out to prove the futility of pagan doctrine and the truth of Christianity. He regarded Scepticism as ideally suited to his campaign, since it challenged the possibility of attaining certain knowledge by means of the senses or by reason, but left the scriptures, grounded in divine revelation, untouched. In the first part of the work, he used the Sceptical arguments contained in the works of Sextus Empiricus against the various schools of ancient philosophy; and in the second part he turned Scepticism against Aristotle and the Peripatetic tradition. His aim was not to call everything into doubt, but rather to discredit every source of

knowledge except scripture and condemn all attempts to find truth elsewhere as vain30.

30 http://www.iep.utm.edu/renaissa/

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Vocabulary

Epicureanism – учение Эпикура, эпикурейство; solitude – уединение, одиночество;

elaboration – тщательное исследование, разработка; Cicero – Цицерон;

compendium – сжатое изложение; apocryphal – недостоверный, сомнительный; stern – суровый, непреклонный;

rigidity – жестокость, суровость; stance – положение, позиция;

peripatetic – перипатетический, аристотелевский; acquisition – приобретение, получение;

exponent – истолкователь, представитель;

Justus Lipsius – Юст Липсий;

to ravage – опустошать, разорять; contemptible – презренный, ничтожный; dissipation – исчезновение, потеря; Bracciolini – Поджо Браччолини;

Lucretius – Лукреций;

Ambrogio Traversari – Амброджо Траверсари; Diogenes Laertius – Диоген Лаэртский; repudiation – отрицание, отрешение; prejudice – предубеждение, предрассудок; Francesco Filelfo – Франческо Филельфо; lewd – похотливый, распутный;

lascivious – развратный;

venerable – достойный почитания; revitalization – возрождение; Sextus Empiricus – Секст Эмпирик; pyrrhonism – пирронизм;

Michel de Montaigne – Мишель де Монтень;

fideism – фидеизм (философское учение, утверждающее главенство веры над разумом и основывающееся на простом убеждении в истинах откровения); intrinsic – подлинный, действительный;

to disparage – недооценивать; futility – тщетность, бесполезность;

scripture – рукопись, цитата из Библии; to discredit – подвергать сомнению.

Questions:

1. Who marked the revival of Stoicism? What were his main ideas of renewed Stoicism?

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2.What were the most important views of philosophers who preferred the more moderate Peripatetic position?

3.Who was the most important exponent of Stoicism during the Renaissance? What were the main ideas of his philosophy?

4.What was the attitude towards Epicureanism in the 15th century?

5.How did Scepticism develop during the Renaissance?

6.Who was the most influential figure in the development of Renaissance Scepticism?

7.What was the attitude of many Renaissance thinkers towards Scepticism?

Read the text and give the summary of it.

4.6 New Philosophies of Nature.

Part I.

In 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) published De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres), which proposed a new calculus of planetary motion based on several new hypotheses, such as heliocentrism and the motion of the earth. The first generation of readers underestimated the revolutionary character of the work and regarded the hypotheses of the work only as useful mathematical fictions. The result was that astronomers appreciated and adopted some of Copernicus‟s mathematical models but rejected his cosmology. Yet, the Aristotelian representation of the universe did not remain unchallenged and new visions of nature, its principles, and its mode of operation started to emerge.

During the 16th century, there were many philosophers of nature who felt that Aristotle‟s system could no longer regulate honest inquiry into nature.

Therefore, they stopped trying to adjust the Aristotelian system and turned their backs on it altogether. It is hard to imagine how early modern philosophers, such as Francis Bacon (1561–1626), Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655,) and René Descartes (1596–1650), could have cleared the ground for the scientific revolution without the work of novatores such as Bernardino Telesio (1509–1588), Francesco Patrizi (1529–1597), Giordano Bruno (1548–1600), and Tommaso Campanella (1568–1639).

Telesio grounded his system on a form of empiricism, which maintained that nature can only be understood through sense perception and empirical research. In 1586, two years before his death, he published the definitive version of his work De rerum natura iuxta propria principia (On the Nature of Things according to their Own Principles). The book is a frontal assault on the foundations of Peripatetic philosophy, accompanied by a proposal for replacing Aristotelianism with a system more faithful to nature and experience. According to Telesio, the only things that must be presupposed are passive matter and the two principles of heat and cold, which are in perpetual struggle to occupy matter and exclude their

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